Note 61 — Chapter XII · PHILÆ.

These and the following particulars about the Christians of Nubia are found in the famous work of Makrizi, an Arab historian of the fifteenth century, who quotes largely from earlier writers. See Burckhardt’s “Travels in Nubia,” 4to, 1819, Appendix iii. Although Belak is distinctly described as an island in the neighborhood of the cataract, distant four miles from Assûan, Burckhardt persisted in looking for it among the islets below Mahatta, and believed Philæ to be the first Nubian town beyond the frontier. The hieroglyphic alphabet, however, had not then been deciphered. Burckhardt died at Cairo in 1817, and Champollion’s discovery was not given to the world till 1822.