[458] The Shushan of Scripture, now called Shu. It was the winter residence of the kings of Persia, and stood in the district Cersia of the province Susiana, on the eastern bank of the river Choaspes. The site of Susa is now marked by extensive mounds.
[459] The island of Patala or Patale, previously mentioned in c. 23.
[460] Most probably the Cape Ras-el-Bad, the most easterly peninsula of Arabia.
[461] 35,000,000 francs, according to Ansart, which would amount to £1,400,000 of our money.
[462] Pliny is the only writer that mentions this place among the towns of Lower Egypt. Some suppose it to have been Nicopolis, or the City of Victory, founded by Augustus B.C. 29, partly to commemorate the reduction of Egypt to a Roman province, and partly to punish the Alexandrians for their adhesion to the cause of Antony and Cleopatra. Mannert, however, looks upon it as having been merely that suburb of Alexandria which Strabo (B. xvii.) calls Eleusis.
[463] From the Greek ὕδρευμα, a “watering-place.”
[464] From Coptos, the modern Kouft or Keft. Ptolemy Philadelphus, when he constructed the port of Berenice, erected several caravansaries or watering-places between the new city and Coptos. Coptos was greatly enriched by the commerce between Lybia and Egypt on the one hand, and Arabia and India on the other.
[465] Belzoni found traces of several of the stations here mentioned. The site of Berenice, as ascertained by Moresby and Carless, 1830-3, was nearly at the bottom of the inlet known as the Sinus Immundus, or Foul Bay. Its ruins still exist.
[466] Now called Gehla, a harbour and emporium at the south-western point of Arabia Felix.
[467] An emporium or promontory on the southern coast of Arabia, in the country of the Adramitæ, and, as Arrian says, the chief port of the incense-bearing country. It has been identified by D’Anville with Cava Canim Bay, near a mountain called Hissan Ghorab, at the base of which there are ruins to be seen.