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The Chaldæan tomb gives us, by its arrangement and furnishing, glimpses of a faith similar at bottom to that of Egypt, but we find nothing parallel to the representations of daily work and pleasure which fill the mastabas and the Theban sepulchres; there is nothing that can be compared to those animated forms and images that play over again on the tomb walls the long drama of a hundred acts whose first performance occupied so many centuries and filled a stage stretching from the swamps of the Delta to the cataracts of Syene.

The Sixth Dynasty is called the Elephantine, from the island immediately facing Syene which was the traditional seat of the Dynasty, and on which the temples stood. The tombs of Elephantine were discovered by General Sir F. Grenfell, K.C.B., in 1885, in the neighbouring cliffs of the Libyan Desert: see foot-note p. 149.

Turres sunt fastigiata, ultra celsitudinem omnnem, qua fieri manu possit; itaque mensuram umbrarum egressa, nullas habent umbras, regum pecunia otiosa ac stulta ostentatio. Reliqua urbes sunt, Syene, Sais, Bubastis, Elephantis, Tentyris, Arsinoe et Abydus, Memnonis olim regia; postea Osiris fano inclyta: et Arabia contermina, claritatis magna Heliopolis, id est, Solis urbs.

To me however this man seemed not to be speaking seriously when he said that he had certain knowledge of it; and he said as follows, namely that there were two mountains of which the tops ran up to a sharp point, situated between the city of Syene, which is in the district of Thebes, and Elephantine, and the names of the mountains were, of the one Crophi and of the other Mophi.

After listening to the musical statue of Amenhothes, Germanicus went on to Elephantine and Syênê; and, on his return, he turned aside to the pyramids and the Lake of Mceris, which regulated the overflow of the Nile on the neighbouring fields. At Memphis, Germanicus consulted the sacred bull Apis as to his future fortune, and met with an unfavourable answer.

He merely measured the angle of the shadow which his perpendicular gnomon at Alexandria cast at mid-day on the day of the solstice, when, as already noted, the sun was directly perpendicular at Syene.

The imperial orders wrere very little obeyed beyond those places where the troops were encamped; the Arabs were each year pressing closer upon the valley of the Nile, and helping the sands of the desert to defeat the labours of the disheartened husbandmen; and the Greek language, which had hitherto followed and marked the route of commerce from Alexandria to Syênê, and to the island of Socotra, was now but seldom heard in Upper Egypt.

However, as it was customary to give boatmen a few days of repose after their labor, and before undertaking the still more severe work which lay before them, Jethro thought it better to avoid any appearance of haste. There was much to be seen that was new to them at Syene. A great trade was carried on with Meroe.

To the south of the town lie the ancient granite quarries of Syene, which furnished the Egyptian workmen building material so long ago, and still lack a great deal of being exhausted. I saw an obelisk lying here which is said to be ninety-two feet long and ten and a half feet wide in the broadest part, but both ends of it were covered.

His meridian line passed through Rhodes and Alexandria, as far as Syene and Meroe. Meroe, on this account, became an object of the greatest interest and importance to all the succeeding ancient geographers and astronomers, and they have taken the utmost labour and care to ascertain its latitude accurately.