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The interest of this chapter is the light that it throws on H.'s comparative method, and also on the date of his travels. It is natural to suppose that he heard the Nineveh story, presumably in Chaldaea, before he was in Egypt (cf. Intr. p. 5).


τετραμμένη. The ‘lake lies north and south’ (149. 1); but it had some extension to the west. Translate ‘with its western parts turned inland along the mountain which lies south of Memphis’, i. e. the Libyan chain, which starts above Memphis and runs south.


ὀρύγματος: of the lake (149. 2), not the underground channel, as to the existence of which H. does not commit himself; he seems to distinguish it (in § 1) from the lake by adding καί.


Sardanapallus, so far as he is historical, is Assurbanipal (cf. App. II. 3), the last of the Assyrian conquerors; Ctesias (Ass. fr. 15, p. 429) wrongly made him the last king of Nineveh, a compound of effeminacy and desperate bravery, as he is represented in Byron's drama. The story of the treasure-house is that of Rhampsinitus over again (cf. c. 121).

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