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Now and then a traveller, after measuring the pyramids of Memphis and the underground tombs of Thebes, might venture as far as the cataracts, and watch the sun at noon on the longest day shining to the bottom of the sacred well at Syênê, like the orator Aristides and his friend Dion. But such travellers were few; the majority of those who made this journey have left the fact on record.
This idea, however, is refuted by the evidence of Pliny, who regarded it as a genuine Egyptian relic, and tells us that it was cut from the quarry of Syene, and dedicated to the sun by the son of Sesores, in obedience to an oracle, after his recovery from blindness.
Antonius proved by figures that the profit on the delivery of material for the Caesareum only would cover more than three quarters of the outlay. Then Polykarp began to speak and declared that the granite of the Holy Mountain was finer in color and in larger blocks than that from Syene. "We work cheaper here than at the Cataract," interrupted Antonius.
This Legend is cut in hieroglyphs on a large rounded block of granite, which stands on the south-east portion of Sāhal, a little island in the First Cataract in Upper Egypt, two or three miles to the south of the modern town of Aswān, the ancient Syene.
Taking a general view of the primitive formation of Atures, we perceive, that, like the granite of Syene in Egypt, it is a granite with hornblende, and not a real syenite formation. Many of the layers are entirely destitute of hornblende. The black crust is 0.3 of a line in thickness; it is found chiefly on the quartzose parts.
"Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see at What conflux issuing forth or entering in; Pretors, proconsuls, to their provinces Hasting, or on return in robes of state; Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power; Legions or cohorts, turns of horse and wings; Or embassies from regions far remote, In various habits on the Appian road, Or on the Emilian; some from farthest south, Syene, and where the shadow both way falls, Meroe, Nilotic isle: and, more to west, The realm of Bocchus to the Blackmoor Sea; From India and the Golden Chersonese, And utmost Indian isle, Taprobane, Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed; From Gallia, Gades, and the British, west, Germans, and Scythians, and Sarmatians, north, Beyond Danubius to the Tauric pool."
The Nubians, thus surprised on all sides, were defeated and forced to retreat, leaving the fortress of Rym, now known as Ibrim, and situated fifty miles from Syênê, in the hands of the Egyptians.
He found the distance between the tropics less than 53° 6', and greater than 52° 96', which gives a mean of 23° 51' for the obliquity of the ecliptic. Plutarch, however, who died A.D. 119, informs us, that, in his time, the gnomons at Syene were no longer shadowless on the day of the summer solstice.
"And if my lions are a success," added Polykarp, "and if Zenodotus is satisfied with our stone and our work, it may easily happen that we outstrip Syene in competition, and that some of the enormous orders that now flow from Constantine's new residence to the quarries at Syene, may find their way to us."
The ape was sacred to and an emblem of Toth, the male deity of Wisdom and Law. Thebes Diospolis, the hundred-gated, was in holiday attire. The great suburb to the west of the Nile had emptied her multitudes into the solemn community of the gods. Besides her own inhabitants there were thousands from the entire extent of the Thebaid and visitors even from far-away Syene and Philae.
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