Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:
chapter:
chapter 1chapter 2chapter 3chapter 4chapter 5chapter 6chapter 7chapter 8chapter 9chapter 10chapter 11chapter 12chapter 13chapter 14chapter 15chapter 16chapter 17chapter 18chapter 19chapter 20chapter 21chapter 22chapter 23chapter 24chapter 25chapter 26chapter 27chapter 28chapter 29chapter 30chapter 31chapter 32chapter 33chapter 34chapter 35chapter 36chapter 37chapter 38chapter 39chapter 40chapter 41chapter 42chapter 43chapter 44chapter 45chapter 46chapter 47chapter 48chapter 49chapter 50chapter 51chapter 52chapter 53chapter 54chapter 55chapter 56chapter 57chapter 58chapter 59chapter 60chapter 61chapter 62chapter 63chapter 64chapter 65chapter 66chapter 67chapter 68chapter 69chapter 70chapter 71chapter 72chapter 73chapter 74chapter 75chapter 76chapter 77chapter 78chapter 79chapter 80chapter 81chapter 82chapter 83chapter 84chapter 85chapter 86chapter 87chapter 88chapter 89chapter 90chapter 91chapter 92chapter 93chapter 94chapter 95chapter 96chapter 97chapter 98chapter 99chapter 100chapter 101chapter 102chapter 103chapter 104chapter 105chapter 106chapter 107chapter 108chapter 109chapter 110chapter 111chapter 112chapter 113chapter 114chapter 115chapter 116chapter 117chapter 118chapter 119chapter 120chapter 121chapter 121Achapter 121Bchapter 121Cchapter 121Dchapter 121Echapter 121Fchapter 122chapter 123chapter 124chapter 125chapter 126chapter 127chapter 128chapter 129chapter 130chapter 131chapter 132chapter 133chapter 134chapter 135chapter 136chapter 137chapter 138chapter 139chapter 140chapter 141chapter 142chapter 143chapter 144chapter 145chapter 146chapter 147chapter 148chapter 149chapter 150chapter 151chapter 152chapter 153chapter 154chapter 155chapter 156chapter 157chapter 158chapter 159chapter 160chapter 161chapter 162chapter 163chapter 164chapter 165chapter 166chapter 167chapter 168chapter 169chapter 170chapter 171chapter 172chapter 173chapter 174chapter 175chapter 176chapter 177chapter 178chapter 179chapter 180chapter 181chapter 182
This text is part of:
28.
Let this be, then, as it is and as it was in the beginning. But as to the sources of the Nile, no one that conversed with me, Egyptian, Libyan, or Greek, professed to know them, except the recorder of the sacred treasures of Athena in the Egyptian city of Saïs.
[2]
I thought he was joking when he said that he had exact knowledge, but this was his story. Between the city of Syene in the Thebaid and Elephantine, there are two hills with sharp peaks, one called Crophi and the other Mophi.
[3]
The springs of the Nile, which are bottomless, rise between these hills; half the water flows north towards Egypt, and the other half south towards Ethiopia.
[4]
He said that Psammetichus king of Egypt had put to the test whether the springs are bottomless: for he had a rope of many thousand fathoms' length woven and let down into the spring, but he could not reach to the bottom.
[5]
This recorder, then, if he spoke the truth, showed, I think, that there are strong eddies and an upward flow of water, such that with the stream rushing against the hills the sounding-line when let down cannot reach bottom.
Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.
show
Browse Bar
hide
Places (automatically extracted)
View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.
Sort places
alphabetically,
as they appear on the page,
by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Nile (2)Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Egypt (Egypt) (2)
Thebaid (Egypt) (1)
Syene (Egypt) (1)
Ethiopia (Ethiopia) (1)
Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.
hide
References (26 total)
- Commentary references to this page
(1):
- Sir Richard C. Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Electra, 314
- Cross-references to this page
(3):
- A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), CATAPIRA´TES
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), SAIS
- Basil L. Gildersleeve, Syntax of Classical Greek, The Article
- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page
(22):
- LSJ, Θηβα_ΐς
- LSJ, ἄβυσσος
- LSJ, ἀφικνέομαι
- LSJ, ἀπάγω
- LSJ, ἀρχή
- LSJ, βυσσός
- LSJ, δίν-η
- LSJ, διά-πειρα
- LSJ, ἐξικνέομαι
- LSJ, ἐμβάλλω
- LSJ, γραμμα^τ-ιστής
- LSJ, κάλως
- LSJ, καθίημι
- LSJ, κατανο-έω
- LSJ, ὀξύς
- LSJ, παίζω
- LSJ, πα^λίρ-ροια
- LSJ, πηγή
- LSJ, πλέκ-ω
- LSJ, ὑπισχνέομαι
- LSJ, χι_λι-άς
- LSJ, χρῆμα
hide
Search
hide
Display Preferences