[3508] Its capital was Busiris. It worshipped Isis, and at one period was said to have sacrificed the nomad tribes of Syria and Arabia.
[3509] Its chief town was Onuphis.
[3510] Its chief city was Sais, and it worshipped Neith or Athene, and contained the tomb and a sanctuary of Osiris.
[3511] Its capital was Tava.
[3512] Its chief town was Naucratis on the coast, the birth-place of Athenæus, the Deipnosophist. By some authors it is made part of the Saitic nome. The names given by Pliny vary very considerably from those found in others of the ancient writers.
[3513] The capital of this nome was Heracleopolis, ‘The city of Hercules,’ as Pliny calls it, situate, as he says, on an island, at the entrance of the nome of Arsinoïtes, formed by the Nile and a canal. After Memphis and Heliopolis, it was probably the most important city south of the Thebaid. Its ruins are inconsiderable; a portion of them are to be seen at the modern hamlet of Amasieh.
[3514] He probably means Arsinoë or Arsinoïtis, the chief town of the nome of that name, and the city so called at the northern extremity of the Heroöpolite Gulf in the Red Sea. The former is denoted by the modern district of El-Fayoom, the most fertile of ancient Egypt. At this place the crocodile was worshipped. The Labyrinth and Lake Mœris were in this nome. Extensive ruins at Medinet-el-Fayoom, or El-Fares, represent its site. The modern Ardscherud, a village near Suez, corresponds to Arsinoë on the Red Sea. There is some little doubt however whether this last Arsinoë is the one here meant by Pliny.
[3515] Memphis was the chief city of this nome, which was situate in Middle Egypt, and was the capital of the whole country, and the residence of the Pharaohs, who succeeded Psammetichus, B.C. 616. This nome rose in importance on the decline of the kingdom of Thebais, but was afterwards eclipsed by the progress of Alexandria under the successors of Alexander the Great.
[3516] At which Middle Egypt terminates.
[3517] They are more generally looked upon as forming one nome only, and included under the name of Hammonium.