Volume 2 — AFRICA.

Cyrenaica.

The coast of Libya between the Syrtes and Egypt, both begins and ends with a narrow, inhabitable, and yet barren tract of land; but in the middle, where the country reaches the northernmost parallel, it is beautiful, inhabited, and of considerable breadth. The eastern coast of the Syrtes is a complete sandy desert, still, however, not so much so as to be totally uninhabitable; towards Egypt, the country is stony, dry, and incapable of cultivation. But between Berenice and a little to the east of Cyrene, it is beautiful, richly watered, and fertile. The whole forms a slope; the interior of Africa is considerably elevated, and the desert, too, where it is removed from the coast, is high, while towards the coast the land sinks down; only the tract on which Cyrene is situated, forms another table-land rich in wood and springs of water. From Cyrene downwards to the sea, the country is likewise well watered and capable of cultivation. The elevation of Cyrene is so considerable, that the harvest time differs by a full month from that in the lower country. The coast, however, is not so beautiful nor so well fitted to be inhabited as the higher country.

Cyrene is situated at a distance of about ten English miles from the sea, but the beautiful country extends much farther into the interior; in the neighbourhood of Barca and Berenice, the fertile country is less broad. There are different traditions about the first settlement at Cyrene; according to one, the town was founded by Aristaeus and his mother Cyrene, and according to another by the Antenorids. This we learn from Pindar’s epinician hymns and his scholiasts; and these statements clearly show, that either a Tyrrheno-Pelasgian settlement existed there before the arrival of the Greeks, or at least that there was a belief that the coast had previously been inhabited by Pelasgians. Confusions, like that of Aristaeus with the Trojan Agenorids, also occur among other nations, among whom Tyrrhenian traditions existed. These legends, moreover, show different phases: according to one, the colonists who founded Cyrene came from Thera, whereas, according to Apollonius Rhodius, in his Argonautics, Triton, the Libyan god of the sea, gave to the Argonauts a clod of earth, which, on being thrown by them into the sea, formed the island of Thera. Here, then, we have again the same fluctuation as to mother-city and colony, which we have seen so often. Afterwards Cyrene was Doric, and unquestionably a colony of Thera. It was originally a small settlement, but during the period of the great commotion in Greece, about Olymp. 40, people from all parts of Greece flocked to Cyrene, being invited to defend the colony against the Libyans. Cyrene thus became great, and acquired the circumference which is still indicated by its magnificent ruins. Its kings traced their origin to the heroic ages, and are mentioned in history down to the Persian period, after which they disappear. The isolated situation of Cyrene was extremely fortunate, and few Greek cities have been visited by so few great calamities as Cyrene. When the Persians ruled in Egypt, Cyrene was little more than nominally dependent, for the deserts by which it was separated from Egypt, afforded it the means of putting itself in a favourable relation to Persia. When Egypt was governed by native kings, Cyrene was doubly well off, because it was for the interest of the Egyptians to keep up a good understanding with the Greeks. At the time of the overthrow of the Persian empire, Cyrene placed itself under the protection of Alexander; afterwards it fell into the hands of Magas, a half-brother of Ptolemy Soter, under whom the country became very prosperous, because Greeks and Greek civilisation withdrew to that coast. It then was for a time an Egyptian province, but again emancipated itself; on which occasion it was severely ravaged. Afterwards it became an appanage principality of the family of the Ptolemies, until in the end it came under the dominion of Rome, under whose rule it gradually decayed. In the history of Hadrian, we hear of the subjugation of rebellious Jews in Cyprus and Cyrenaica, which may have been one of the more immediate causes of the decay of Cyrene, so that in the time of Synesius it appears as a deserted, inactive, and insignificant place. Greek civilisation, however, maintained itself there for a long time, as we see from the letters of Synesius, the talented bishop of Cyrene in the fifth century. The city was at last destroyed during the Arab conquest, and has never recovered since that time. At present it is in a condition like that of Palmyra: the wandering Arabs encamp among the ruins of its temples, and the few peasants living in the neighbourhood destroy the monuments still more.

Berenice is the westernmost place on the same coast. Three towns, Berenice, Arsinoe, and Ptolemais, derived their names from members of the royal family of Egypt. Berenice was a newly-built town, situated on the frontier towards Carthage. At present not a trace of it remains, but the ruins of Arsinoe, or Tauchira, are very numerous. According to the description of Della Celia, a Genoese physician, the walls measure three Italian miles in circumference, and are covered all over with inscriptions. The most ample materials for history might be discovered there. The origin of the town is unknown.

Barca, founded in the reign of the third Arcesilaus, was an ἀποδασμὸς of the Cyreneans, and for a long time hostile to Cyrene. Afterwards its name was changed into Ptolemais, and it is still called Tolometa, which arose out of Ptolemaide.

Apollonia was the port town of Cyrene.

On the west, Cyrene bordered upon the great republic of

Carthage.

The frontier between these two states was as natural as any can be between two countries. The whole district from the bay of the lesser Syrtis, or the country of Tripoli, is a deep sandy desert, of which only a few parts, the neighbourhood of Tripoli, and the ancient Leptis, are capable of cultivation. But agriculture there being limited to sandy districts, produces nothing but durra, the African millet, and palm trees, which succeed in sandy ground, if it is well watered. The desert advances close to the coast, and the inhabitable coast tract is interrupted and unequal. On the east of Leptis, where the desert retreats farther into the interior and around the great Syrtis, the country forms a real sea of sand, which is far more dangerous than the Sahara, where the ground is for the most part firm; on this Syrtis, on the other hand, persons sink deep into the sand at every step.

On the frontier there were boundary marks, called Arae Philaenorum. The tradition about them was as follows:—Once the Cyreneans and Carthaginians being involved in a dispute about their frontiers, determined to send out men from the two extreme towns of their countries at the same moment, agreeing that the point of their meeting should be the frontier. This tradition is probably an invention, like so many other things which Sallust relates from Punic authorities. The Syrtes are generally described by the ancients, especially by the earlier Greeks, as one only. The Syrtis, they say, has tides, and is a bay full of sand-banks, which are sometimes sufficiently covered with water and sometimes rise above the water like lagoons. The existence of tides in the Mediterranean has, until recently, been denied, and all the statements of the ancients regarding them have been rejected, as in general ancient geography, about thirty or forty years ago, was treated with extreme recklessness. Tides do exist beyond all doubt, but they occur in a very irregular and unaccountable manner. They are very unequal: at Venice you may see it every day, and during a spring tide, the water rises as much as one foot and a half; it also exists in the Archipelago and in the Euripus near Chalcis, where it comes from the north, which has given rise to the story about the death of Aristotle.⁠[76] It is said, that at Naples the tides are not perceptible, but that at Antium they are, especially when there is a spring tide. The peculiarity of the Syrtes, which the ancients asserted, and which moderns have denied, is that a current runs into the Syrtes and thus throws vessels on the sand-banks. This arises from the meetings of two currents, one of which comes from the Adriatic and the other from the Aegean; the one coming from the Euxine encounters that coming from the Ionian sea, and moves round in a curve, as in general all currents of the sea move in curves. We cannot wonder, therefore, that during a north-west wind, ships, sailing from Sicily to the Archipelago, were thrown into the Syrtes: the danger was, of course, much greater for the ancients than for us. The countries round the Syrtes are the most wretched and melancholy districts of all the inhabited parts of the earth; they are worse than the desert itself, except that water is not wanting for so long a period as in the desert. The caravans dig wells, but the water is bad.

The whole of the western part of the north coast of Africa, of which Carthage is the central point, was once under the dominion of Carthage, from the Syrtes to the straits of Gibraltar, though that dominion was not the same everywhere. The modern Algiers and Morocco contain no traces of Carthaginian colonies; there existed in those parts nothing but Carthaginian forts and factories for commercial purposes; but Tunis and Tripoli, that is, the whole coast from Hippo to Leptis, was covered with Punic towns. Some of them were more ancient than Carthage (which was for this reason called “New Town”); Utica, Hippo, Leptis, and perhaps also Hadrumetum, and others whose names can no longer be ascertained, were, like Gades, direct colonies of Tyre and Sidon in Phoenicia, and had been founded at the time when so many Phoenician settlements were formed on the coasts of Greece, in the islands of the Archipelago, and in Cyprus. It was during that period of the greatness of Phoenicia, which lies beyond our history, that numerous colonies were established on the coast of Africa. We do not know what circumstances directed the attention to those parts, for the Libyans were a great people. The nature of the country is very different in different parts: Tripoli (which is inhabitable from the head of the lesser to the greater Syrtis), is the foreland of the desert, while Tunis is much more fertile. Here the northern chain of mount Atlas terminates; and the western part of Tunis is a mountainous, beautiful, and fertile country. One range of the mountain extends as far as the sea, forming a hilly country, with the beautiful promontory and the bay of Carthage. The territory from this promontory as far as the Syrtes is, according to all descriptions, one of the most fertile countries, though the district in which Carthage was situated was less healthy and of a less agreeable climate. Byzacene, or the eastern coast of Tunis, on the other hand, is very healthy, and has no overpowering heat, except in rare cases when the poisonous wind blows from the desert this wind is much more frequent at Carthage and it neighbourhood.

This coast, then, was thickly studded with towns, the more ancient ones were Tyrian, and the more recent ones Carthaginian settlements. The inhabitants of the latter are called Libyphoenices, whence, from their very name, we cannot suppose that they were of pure Punic blood: they were Punians who had admitted Africans among them, and their language was a corrupt Punic. The Carthaginians were greatly inclined to mix with, and admit other tribes, which accounts for the fact of their language being so widely spread: all the civilisation adopted by the Africans was Punic. The Carthaginians had a peculiar Libyan alphabet, and when the writing of the Tuariks is once discovered, I hope the Carthaginian inscriptions also will be deciphered. Their literature, however, was Punic. The Romans gave the library of Carthage as a present to the kings of Numidia; that library contained the native historical records of Africa, from which such singular statements were extracted by Sallust in composing his Jugurtha, and the key to which must still be discovered: they did not contain real history, but we can see from them in what light those nations regarded their history.

The language of the original inhabitants of northern Africa was perhaps more widely spread than any other: this is the language of the Berbers, which was once spoken from the Canary islands in the west to the cataracts of the Nile, and in some parts it is spoken even at the present day. It is singular that the nation speaking that language embraced tribes of quite different physical characters, whites as well as blacks (though not negroes); the ancients, in fact, distinguish between Gaetulians and Melanogaetulians, though they regard them as one nation. Harsh rudeness was a generally prevailing characteristic of the nation, but in proportion to the extent of country occupied by it, it was not numerous; at present their descendants occur only in the oases of the desert, while formerly they extended from the Mediterranean to the banks of the Niger; on the coast they have nearly everywhere been displaced by the Arabs, who are still gaining ground, so that now they are found only in some parts of Algiers and Morocco. The Romans called them Afri, and the Greeks, Λίβυες; it has been supposed that the latter name is connected with that of Levante or Leguante. The name by which the nation designates itself, viz., Amazirgh, Mazirgh, or Mzirgh, is found, according to an observation of Castiglione, even in Herodotus, who speaks of Μάσυες; this is the correct form occurring in the MSS., instead of which the printed editions erroneously give Μάξυες. The name Massaesyli, which was given to the western Libyans between the lesser Syrtis and the Ocean, also is nothing but Mazirgh Shilha, for they also call themselves Shilhas. The eastern tribes are called Massyli, which is the same as Μάσυες, for the termination yli seems to be the common Italian one, which we find in Aequuli for Aequi. The Carthaginians probably called them by this name. The bilingual inscriptions, which exist in considerable numbers, would throw more light upon the language of those countries, if they were deciphered, and they may possibly contain the key by which the Punic inscriptions also are to be explained.

It is singular that the Romans called those nations Numidae, which is not a proper name, but a common noun. The Greek form was νομάδες, and from this the Romans made Numidae, a circumstance which shows to what extent Greek words were in common use among the Romans. Afterwards Numida and Numidia became names of the nation and the country, so that, no doubt, Masinissa called himself king of Numidia. These tribes extended from the boundary of the Carthaginian territory to the river Molochath (Mulucha), which still may be regarded as the frontier of Algiers. We must not, however, suppose that the country beyond that river was occupied by a different race, for it was only another tribe of the same stock. These latter were called Mauri (Μαυροὶ, Blacks, in the Alexandrian dialect), a name which became as firmly established for the western tribes as Numidae was for the eastern ones. The country in the south, between Mount Atlas and the Sahara, as far as the Niger, was inhabited by the Gaetuli and Melanogaetuli, the modern Tuariks. The Melanogaetuli were unquestionably of the same race as the Gaetuli, but had no doubt arisen from a mixture with the Aethiopians, who dwelt there. They were accordingly a dark mixed race like that at present in Darfoor. We do not know by what name they called themselves.

The Garamantes are placed too far to the south-east in our maps; they were the inhabitants of the modern Fezzan, and the present town of Germa was their capital, where Roman inscriptions are still found among the ruins. The dominion of the Romans in those parts, about which nothing is said by ancient geographers, belongs to the second century, when they extended their power in different directions, for under Trajan they entered far into the interior of Arabia, and in Nubia they advanced as far as Dongola, the surrounding tribes being too weak to offer effectual resistance. The distance between Tripoli and Fezzan is about forty days’ journey. The town of Augila, mentioned by Herodotus, in the country of the Nasamones, is called to this day Audyeelah or Eudyeelah; the name of the Nasamones themselves has not yet been re-discovered. Count Castiglione has written a very beautiful essay on those countries in the form of an appendix to his work entitled “Les Monnaies des Arabes frappées en Afrique.”

Herodotus divides Africa into four parts, the agricultural, the mountainous, the country of beasts of prey, and the desert. Beyond the river, Nigritae also are mentioned, but we must not imagine that either this name or that of the river Niger has anything to do with niger, black; it is the Punic nahar which signifies “a river,” and shows the intercourse of the Carthaginians with those countries. The same fact has also been confirmed by the discovery of balls and staves of glass of exquisite beauty in those parts. The art of treating glass in such a manner as to include in a white glass a number of flowers, balls, and other objects, without injuring the outlines, is assuredly of Phoenician origin, and at present quite unknown. Some specimens of such glass are found in Italy, where it was partly employed to ornament rooms, and quite a similar piece of glasswork has been discovered in the tomb of a negro king in Guinea, whither it had evidently been exported from Carthage. Such pieces are said to have been used as ornaments for victors, and there is even a tradition among the negroes, that these glass ornaments have from time immemorial belonged to their sceptres. Servius states, that the Romans gave to the chiefs of the Berbers ornamented sticks instead of sceptres; the same custom still exists, but the sticks are not adorned with silver.

The name Marmarica is derived from mar, salt, with a reduplication very frequent in those languages.

Among all the settlements on that Coast, Carthage is by far the most illustrious. The situation and greatness of the city are described in the later excerpts from Diodorus of Sicily, in Strabo, and in Appian’s Punica. One point, however, must not be lost sight of in these descriptions, viz., the ancients assume that Carthage covered the peninsula which was connected with the mainland by the isthmus, and that the isthmus was cut off by means of a wall. But the fact is, that the whole of the peninsula was not occupied by the city, which, in that case, would have been immensely large. M. Humbert, a Dutch lieutenant, who was long engaged in the service of the pasha of Tunis, and was a good observer, discovered during his excavations, some years ago, the ruins of ancient Carthage and the walls by which it was surrounded. He made an excellent ground plan of those remains, which, however, has never been published, but exists only in MS. According to this plan, the peninsula contained two towns, the ancient Punic Carthage on the south side, perhaps not occupying one-half of the peninsula, and Roman Carthage on the other side towards Rome, which had been built by J. Caesar: lying under the curse of Scipio, the site of the ancient city could not be occupied by a new town. The remains of Roman Carthage are far more numerous than those of the more ancient city; the little that is to be seen of the latter consists of gigantic works about the harbour (Cothon).

Ancient Carthage consisted of two parts, viz., the city called Bozra (the Greeks call it Βύρσα), and the suburb Megara, the Punic name of which was probably Magal. The remaining part of the peninsula may have been included under this name. These suburban districts were protected against the attacks of the barbarous Libyans by walls across the isthmus.⁠[77] We must not imagine that there was a separate acra besides Byrsa, the elevation of which is insignificant, only the point containing the temple of Aesculapius may perhaps be compared to a real acra. According to Timaeus, Carthage was built thirty-seven⁠[78] years before the commencement of the Olympiads; this may be regarded as a settled date, as we see from the work of Josephus against Apion, for the Phoenician authorities, which he followed, are thoroughly trustworthy, and perfectly agree with the books of Samuel and Kings in the Old Testament. The books of Judges are of later origin, and contain chronological impossibilities; but from the time of David we have contemporary and quite trustworthy history; some few erroneous dates are probably mere slips in writing. In the reigns of Manasseh and Amon there are a few incorrect statements, and I have shown where the mistake of from twenty to thirty years is probably concealed,⁠[79] but I cannot say how the text is to be emended. After the first three centuries, Carthage had already acquired many possessions in Byzacene, that is, the country from the headland on the bay to the lesser Syrtis; in Sardinia, too, it exercised a powerful influence, and some Punic settlements already existed in Spain. But not long before that time, Carthage was still engaged in deadly war with the Libyans, and its rule certainly did not extend to the interior of Africa. The real greatness of the city lasted about 150 years, from about the close of the Peloponnesian to the commencement of the first Punic war.

Utica (Atica, the Old Town, as opposed to Carthage, or New Town) was situated not far from Carthage. The simplicity and constant repetition of the Phoenician names show the want of poetry in that nation; the Greeks have an endless variety of names. Utica and Hippo are the two old towns on that coast; they were more ancient than Carthage, and independent of it, being sometimes even allied with it on equal terms. This honour they retained until the second Punic war; they also concluded treaties with full independence, but were virtually subject to Carthage. Hence in the war of Agathocles, both declared in his favour, and in the same manner they acted in the war of the mercenaries, until, in the end, they separated themselves entirely and joined the Romans, whence, notwithstanding their Punic origin, they remained civitates foederatae. It is interesting to observe, how easily Greek culture was engrafted upon those Punians; the Carthaginian senate, on one occasion, found it necessary to enact a law against it,⁠[80] and at times Utica had a theatre, in which Greek plays, translated into Punic, were performed. Both St. Augustin and Apuleius (the latter was a native of Madaura in the interior) spoke Punic as their mother tongue, whence we see that the people throughout the province of Carthage spoke Punic, and that the language of the Amazirghs had become extinct. In some parts of the coast, Latin was spoken. When the Arabs conquered the country, the inhabitants still employed the Punic language, and the adoption of the Arabic was facilitated by the kindred nature of the two languages. The foreign elements in the languages of Tunis and Malta are probably derived from that of the Amazirghs; Latin also is mixed up with them.

The coast of Byzacene is one of the most fertile in the world: the olive-tree, which is one of the richest blessings of the temperate zone, was, strange to say, not introduced into those parts until a late period, and that district is the only one in which the palm and the olive-tree grow side by side. In the earlier times, Carthage obtained its oil from Greece and Italy. The coast was studded with towns, just like the country of Cyrene. Notwithstanding the destruction of Carthage, those countries were perhaps never so well cultivated and so thickly peopled as under the Roman emperors, especially in the reign of Severus, as is attested by Tertullian, a contemporary writer, and by the immense number of ruins in the territory of Tunis.

Zeugitana is the basin of the bay of Tunis. The southern part of the eastern coast of Tunis was called Byzacion, Byzacene or Byzacitis. Tunis deserves to be mentioned among the provincial towns on account of its subsequent importance, of which antiquity knows nothing.

The greater part of the Carthaginian territory was given by the Romans to Masinissa, who, by the most shameless usurpation, and by the support of the most faithless policy on the part of the Romans, endeavoured to make himself master of it; for after the second Punic war, the Carthaginians still possessed an extensive territory. Even before, Numidia had received nearly all the districts which had been conquered in war, such as Zama, and other places.

The Numidian kings resided at Cirta, that is, “the town,” in the Punic language, which is another proof of the poverty of its nomenclature. This town rose to greatness under Masinissa, and still more under Micipsa, who drew into it a Greek colony, just as in the time of Louis XIV, French colonies were established in the north of Germany. The time of that colony belongs to the period in which Corinth was destroyed and the whole of Greece was devastated, and when the poor Greeks were scattered all over the earth. Under Constantine the Great, its name was changed into Constantina, and large Roman ruins still exist there. It was a Roman colony founded by P. Sitius of Nuceria, who assembled an army of Roman fugitives and Gauls that had served under the African princes, and received Cirta from Julius Caesar, after the conquest of Juba, as a place to settle in. It is, therefore, a colony of quite a peculiar kind, differing essentially from all other colonies.

Aethiopia, Aegyptus.

The Ethiopians, with the earliest Greeks, are the black people in the south-east and south-west, whence Indians and Ethiopians are synonymous, the southern Indians being black. I believe that the Indian peninsula was conquered by the Indians, and that the black race was subdued by them. Ethiopia, with the Greeks, is only a vague name for Africa. Its derivation from αἴθω is erroneous, but it is doubtful whether the nation had any special name by which it designated itself. We must, however, distinguish the Leucaethiopes, that is, the Fellatahs, or Fellahs, whom Ptolemy distinctly places on the Senegal, to which locality they are also assigned by the great D’Anville. The name Ethiopians was afterwards limited to the Abyssinian race and the tribes belonging to them, and these latter nations still call their country Ithopya, though we can hardly suppose the name to be of native origin. The excerpts from Agatharchides of Cnidos, a most excellent writer of the seventh century of Rome, who for a long time resided in Egypt, but does not call the nations by their own names, but only by appellatives, are very obscure, and have been entirely neglected. He gives information about nations which are found at present only in the innermost parts of Africa: he describes, e.g., the Hottentots and Bushmen, whom he calls Acridophagi, that is, eaters of grasshoppers, so that even those living in the distant south were noticed by him. The Hottentots cut out one of their testicles, a fact with which he was acquainted.

Ethiopia proper is highly remarkable in ancient history: in Scripture it is called Koosh, and its kings are distinguished from those of the Mauri. The country of these Mauri was in very ancient times a great state in the south of Egypt; its capital, Meroe, contrary to the express testimony of the ancients, has generally been placed too near Egypt; it was probably situated in the neighbourhood of Sennaar. The Meroites had a peculiar kind of civilisation; and there can be no doubt that the hieroglyphics, and all that we afterwards find as Egyptian civilisation, originated among them. At a very remote time they conquered Egypt; the ancients themselves trace to them the knowledge and religion of the Egyptians; they describe their monuments as Ethiopian, and all that can be made out by historical inquiry is confirmatory of this view. The southernmost monuments of Egypt, between the two cataracts, are the grandest and most ancient; then follows Thebes, and as we advance northward, the monuments become smaller and more insignificant. But monuments are found also higher up the river to the south of Meroe. The accounts in Diodorus about the condition of that city are perfectly credible and satisfactory. The Egyptians, like the Celtiberians, Celtoligyans and others, were a mixed people, in which one nation ruled while the other obeyed. In the Greek documents of Egypt, such as contracts, and the like, we find a singular custom, occasioned by the extremely small number of proper names: the notary, in order to prevent confusion, added a description of the persons concerned. Accordingly, we can clearly distinguish the different races, for we find such characteristics as short, yellow, flat nose, curly hair, and the like.⁠[81] The most ancient idols resemble negroes, as, for example, the celebrated Isis of Elephantine. Among the mummies, too, there are a great many negro forms, faces altogether non-European, different both in their skulls and teeth; and this is another sign that Egypt was conquered by the Ethiopians, who settled among the conquered people. Champollion the younger is not only an honest man, but has no doubt discovered the truth. The most ancient documents we have, go back as far as the eighteenth dynasty of Manetho; and the seventeenth and eighteenth dynasties are probably the period when the yoke of the Hycsos was thrown off in consequence of this conquest. The original inhabitants were probably Libyans, who extended as far as lake Mareotis, for Mareotis is a Libyan name; and Egyptians, in the sense in which Herodotus understands the name, do not occur beyond the Canobian mouth of the Nile. The original inhabitants, therefore, may have been under the dominion of a Semitic race, which among the Egyptians bore the name of Hycsos, and was intensely hated by the later Egyptians. This expulsion of the Hycsos, which is so often represented on monuments, was the result of the establishment of the Kooshites in Upper Egypt, who thence also spread over Lower Egypt. The modern Egyptians have scarcely a trace left of the ancient physiognomy; their features are rather Libyan. The Copts have harsh and rude features, but they are just those of the Berbers, whence they are different from the Arabs and Syrians. The mummies which are brought to Europe belong to the higher castes, descended for the most part from Ethiopians—a race which has now disappeared: the great mass of the nation consisted of natives. The settlement of the Egyptian warriors (μάχιμοι) in the south of Meroe, of which Herodotus speaks, is nothing else but another instance of the confusion of the two poles in legends about migrations; arising from the fact that a tribe was found in those southern parts resembling the one ruling in Lower Egypt. The story, as it is related, is only ridiculous. This also accounts for the institution of castes, for wherever they exist they originate in conquest.

Upper and Lower Egypt differ most widely from each other: the former is a narrow and deep valley, which is but rarely overflowed by the river; Middle Egypt is more frequently exposed to inundations; and Lower Egypt, in antiquity, was put under water by every rising of the Nile; at present it is only the districts between the arms of the river and the neighbourhood of Damietta that are overflowed. This is accounted for by the circumstance that after every inundation the river leaves behind a stratum of mud, whereby the country is constantly raised: on the bank the different years may be traced by very thin strata, a fact which has been unjustly denied. In ancient times, the arms of the Nile were large rivers, while at present ships of some size cannot sail into any of the mouths of the river, because the bed has been so much elevated. But the surrounding country has been raised much more; for in the time of Herodotus all the towns were situated on hills rising above the ground which was usually inundated; but this is not the case now, the lower parts having been filled up, and the extensive marshes in the Delta having, for the most part, become arable land, while the ancient lakes are changed into marshes. Upper Egypt must have been irrigated by artificially raising the water. There is, moreover, this remarkable change in the climate of Egypt, that, while in Herodotus’ time it never rained in Upper Egypt, at present there are occasional showers, though never without violent thunderstorms.

Thebes was the ancient capital of Upper Egypt; but it had fallen from its greatness even before the Persian conquest, for Psammetichus, for the sake of commerce, had transferred the capital to Lower Egypt, and he was strong through the support of foreigners. From that time, Thebes was always in opposition to the rulers; it was eclipsed by Memphis, and afterwards by Sais, but it still regarded itself as the repository of ancient wisdom and as the venerable seat of religion. The city was greatly deserted and decayed; but there is no reason for doubting its immense magnitude; its ruins are gigantic, and its temples are as vast as cities. Thebes received its death-blow during the unfortunate rebellion against Ptolemy Physcon; under the Romans, too, it was frequently the centre of insurrection.

Ptolemais, the next town after Thebes down the river, was founded by the first or second Ptolemy against the seditious disposition of the Thebans; it was a σύστημα Ἑλληνικὸν in the proper sense of the term, with Greek institutions, both public and private, and Greek was the language of the place. By means of this city, the Ptolemies endeavoured to keep Upper Egypt in subjection, while, on the other hand, they admitted colonisation to Alexandria for similar purposes, exercising their power from above through a number of local magistrates. In other respects, the Ptolemies did not favour Greek colonisation as much as the Seleucidae, for they confined it to Ptolemais and Alexandria.⁠[82]⁠

Memphis never was comparable to Thebes in size and importance, for it contained only very few large buildings, of which at present no traces exist. All the buildings, such as royal palaces and the like, must have consisted of unburnt bricks. The city was large and populous, but it already represents a different state of things: the transfer of the capital to this place must be regarded as the epoch in which the pyramids were built, that is, as the age of Sesostris. Its citadel is called λευκὸν τεῖχος (arx alba, murus albus is a wrong translation), just as the walls of Moscow had different colours, and as at Ecbatana the parapets of the different circles.⁠[83]⁠

Sais, a still more recent capital, was built by Psammetichus and his successors, entirely with a view to be near the sea. In its vicinity were the castra praetoria of the Ionians and Carians, by the aid of which those kings maintained their dominion.

Alexandria was, properly speaking, situated beyond the frontiers of Egypt, and it was only on the consideration that water of the Nile from the arm of Canobus flowed into lake Mareotis, that it could be said to belong to Egypt, for it stood in reality on Libyan ground. It had been a much frequented port even in the time of the Egyptian kings, being protected by the island of Pharos at the entrance of it; but the kings kept a garrison there for the purpose of preventing strangers from landing. The place had formerly been called Rhacotis. Alexander is justly praised for having perceived the advantages of the locality, which is so well fitted to form a point of communication between Africa, Europe, and Asia: he was not generally very fortunate in his choice of places. Alexandria was probably destined by him to be the capital of his empire, seeing he intended to conquer, at least, the north coast of Africa and southern Italy, and in general all countries so far as he was not checked by the temperate zone and his own ambition. Of the city founded by Alexander, every trace has disappeared, and all that remains belongs to the Roman period. The city rose with wonderful rapidity, and three distinct bodies of citizens were formed in it. The noblest consisted of Macedonians and Greeks, who, like Greek citizens, were divided into phylae and demi. The intention was that it should appear as a free city; and the Macedonians and Greeks were according to all appearance, not kept distinct. The second part, consisting of a numerous Jewish colony, formed a demos, enjoying civil, but no political, rights; these Jews were not allowed to dwell in three out of the five regions into which the city was divided. The third body, which in point of numbers was the largest, consisted of native Egyptians, who, however, were regarded almost as bondsmen, like the Lettonians and Esthonians at Reval and Riga. Cleomenes, by Alexander’s command the founder of Alexandria, was a wicked adventurer, but an able man. The city rose greatly even under the first Ptolemy; but it afterwards continued to increase in consequence of its extremely favourable situation. It was the legitimate staple of commerce, which had there its necessary centre; it was almost in the exclusive enjoyment of the trade with Egypt, Africa, Arabia, and India. Ptolemy Physcon destroyed the greater part of the Macedonian and Greek inhabitants. Caesar’s war was very destructive, for the struggle was carried on in the very streets of the city; and from that time the suburb in the island of Pharos remained deserted; at least under Tiberius it still was so. During the empire, Alexandria was the scene of several insurrections; the one occurring in the reign of Diocletian was fearful, but that emperor took such bloody revenge, that the city probably never recovered; and for a century afterwards the whole part called Bruchion was quite uninhabited. D’Anville has made a ground-plan of Alexandria.

The island of Pharos was situated in front of the city, and between it and the coast there were excellent places for anchoring, which communicated with one another, but were separated by cliffs. The Ptolemies constructed a causeway across the narrow channel by means of draw-bridges. Thus arose the two harbours, the old and the new one, which are at present separated by a neck of land, but are much inferior to what they were in antiquity; they have been spoiled during a long period of barbarous neglect, and especially by throwing ballast overboard. The ships of the Mahommedans enter only the western port, which is the safer one. The island of Pharos contained the celebrated light-house, one of the improvements of an age in which the feelings and the heart had already become greatly deteriorated, but in which the mechanical arts had made considerable progress. Lucian, who often embellishes history, here also furnishes a story which is as absurd as it well can be. He says that Sostratus of Cnidus built this light-house, and that, against the will of Ptolemy, he caused his own name to be engraved under the inscription in praise of the king.⁠[84] But according to Strabo, Sostratos was the king’s minister, and acquired the special favour of his sovereign by building the light-house at his own expense. The inscription, Σώστρατος Δεξιφανοῦς Κνίδιος θεοῖς σωτῆρσιν ὑπὲρ τῶν πλωιζομένων is quite in the style of the time; the θεοὶ σωτῆρες are Ptolemy and Berenice. The whole space between the harbour and lake Mareotis was occupied by the city of Alexandria, and in the time of Augustus a large suburb is said to have existed at a distance of thirty stadia from the city, in the direction of Canobus. Alexandria is a classical place in the history of nations and of literature: it was the residence of Eratosthenes, the first geographer we meet with in the history of the world.⁠[85]⁠

Naucratis, below Sais in Lower Egypt, was a Greek settlement, under the supremacy of Egypt, nearly in the same manner in which Macao is a Portuguese town: Greeks dwelt there and had their own magistrate, or, so to speak, their own consul. Many authors are said to have been natives of the place; Phylarchus, e.g., is called Naucratites, but it was mere pedantry and affectation to speak of Naucratis instead of Alexandria as the Greek city.

The Egyptian towns generally had two names, one Egyptian and the other Greek; the native names are preserved in Coptic fragments, and have been made out by Champollion; a map also has been made with these names. The modern names are formed from the Arabic.

Some more Greek Colonies.

Phaselis, on the coast of Lycia, was a Doric colony; but the date of its foundation is unknown. The place deserves to be noticed as the frontier town between Greece and the barbarians, in what is commonly called the peace of Cimon. This peace probably never existed as a regular treaty of peace, but there certainly was a treaty between the Greeks and the satraps of Asia Minor, which the later Greeks, contrary to historical truth, extended into a peace.⁠[86]⁠

Pamphylia is a country full of large and flourishing towns, of which we have numerous coins with a peculiar language, and an alphabet akin to the Greek; these coins have all the beauty of Greek art, and we may well ask, whether Greece ever had anything more beautiful. The Cilician coins, especially those of Tarsus, are of the same kind. We do not know to what race those people belonged; certain it is that they were not barbarians any more than the Lycians and Lydians. In regard to intellectual culture and political organisation, they were equal to the Greeks. Lycia had a very happy federative constitution, quite in the spirit and according to the principles of the Greeks.

Cyprus.

The only Greek colonies in that eastern part of the sea occur in Cyprus; but we are not informed by any one author at what time they were established. The statement, that Teucer founded Salamis, refutes itself, and all the traditions about colonies referring to the Trojan times are worthless; they either mean generally that the colonies belong to a very early time, or they are inventions. We cannot now determine in what manner Salamis in Cyprus arose, and we are not in a condition to say as to whether the island of Salamis off the coast of Attica ever was sufficiently flourishing to send out colonies. The Greek settlements in Cyprus were connected with very great difficulties. We see this from the prophets, for their Chittim is no doubt Cyprus; subsequently the name became more extended, for in the books of Maccabees it also comprises Greece, including even Macedonia. Hence the name of Citium, the Phoenician capital of the island, is nothing else but Chittim. In the time of the prophets, the island was under the dominion of the Phoenician cities; and we may ask, how could Greeks establish themselves there? This question may be answered from the Old Testament and from the fragments of Berosus in Eusebius. It can have been no other period than that during which Nebuchadnezzar carried on his protracted wars in Phoenicia and Syria, and destroyed ancient Tyre, in consequence of which the Phoenicians were very much reduced. It is also possible that the somewhat earlier expeditions of Sanherib and Assarhaddon may have been the occasion. We know, from Berosus, that, in Olymp. 20, a Greek army landed in Cilicia, which is a sign of a commotion among the Greeks at that time, about which history furnishes no information. I connect these movements with the extensive emigration of the Greeks and Carians who entered the service of Psammetichus in Egypt. Accordingly, we may assume that the Greek settlements in Cyprus were founded between Olymp. 20 and 40; and we cannot wonder that, one hundred and twenty years later, during the war of Darius Hystaspis, the Greek towns of Cyprus had already become great.

The principal places, Salamis and Amathus, were as purely Greek as the cities in Asia Minor; Lapathos and others were smaller. In the time of Evagoras, after the Peloponnesian war, Salamis was the ruling city of the island, and in reality sovereign. Soli is absurdly connected with Solon.

In later times, Greeks and Phoenicians lived peaceably together in the island. Citium was the capital of the Phoenicians, and the native place of the philosopher Zeno. We have no information about the race of the native Cyprians; but, under the predominating influence of the two ruling nations, they became partly Hellenised and partly Punicised.

Cyprus is justly called by the ancients one of the most blessed countries in the world; there are but few parts of it which are unhealthy. Its rich copper mines and its timber were of particular importance to the ancients.

Phoenicia.

The Phoenicians extended from the frontiers of the Philistines to those of Cilicia near Myriandros. It is an ancient tradition, that they had immigrated into that country from a distance, and this tradition is confirmed by its situation; it is quite clear that they cannot have been the original natives. Of the northern towns, it is quite certain, that they were colonies of those in the south. Would that we had their history, which was quite authentic up to a very remote period! They were a nation which had been pressed onward from the south towards the north. According to a tradition in Herodotus, they had come from the Red Sea, and according to another, from the Persian gulf. The latter of these, which has much engaged the attention of modern historians, is of no value at all. It would seem most probable, that they were one of those nations that were pressed onward by the emigration of the Hycsos.