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αὐτόπτης. This statement is especially attacked as untrue by Sayce (ad loc. and Introd. p. 27; also in J. of P. xiv). His arguments are (answers are added in brackets): (1) Elephantine is an island—not a town (it is both, cf. Artace iv. 14. 2, and in Egyptian records is frequently called ‘a town’). (2) H. makes Amasis bring stones from Elephantine (175. 3 n.); the red granite quarries were really at Syene (cf. ‘Syenite’). (But Egyptian sources also call granite ‘stone from Elephantine’.) (3) H. could never have been at Thebes, or he would describe the great buildings there. (The argument ex silentio is always most untrustworthy; cf. also 143. 2 n.) (4) Had H. been at Elephantine he would have known more of the Nile's course above it. (But cf. notes on following chapters, which show that his knowledge was really considerable.) Sayce's attack is usually held to fail completely. Elephantine = ‘Elephant town’, because here the Nubians brought their ivory for tribute (iii. 97. 3) or to exchange it for Egyptian products.
H. is quite right in his description of the way in which a boat is towed up the first cataract—‘from both sides’ (δια-; ἀμφοτέρωθεν is really superfluous); he does not give the exaggerated difficulties which later writers ascribe to the cataracts, e.g. that the dwellers around were permanently deaf from the noise (Cicero, Som. Scip. 5). ‘The foaming rapids of the Great Cataract are now things of the past’ (Baedeker, p. 335), owing to the Nile Dam built just above.
For the rest of this chapter cf. E. Sparig, Herodot's Angaben über die Nilländer oberhalb Syene's, Halle, 1889. He seems clearly right in identifying Tachompso with Djerar, an island south of Dakkeh, some 78 (Murray, p. 519 and map) miles from Syene; H. here, as usual, reckons the σχοῖνος at 60 stades (cf. Strabo, 804, and 6. 1 n.), which gives about 80 miles for the distance. This was the natural boundary of the two nations (§ 4); just below Djerar was Hierasykaminos, the southern limit of Egypt under the Ptolemies. H. makes no distinction between the first cataract, which begins just below Philae, and the Nile above it. Others, however (e.g. Wiedemann), wrongly identify Tachompso with Philae; Strabo (818) calls Philae κοινὴ κατοικία Αἰθιόπων καὶ Αἰγυπτίων. σχοῖνος is then explained as the space a man could tow before being relieved, i.e. about 500 yards; cf. Jerome (on Joel iii. 18) ‘In Nilo solent naves funibus trahere, certa habentes spatia, quae appellant funiculos’. But this identification of Tachompso with Philae is not what H. says, and it leaves his ‘four days’ quite unexplained. The distance from Syene to Philae could really be done in rather more than five hours, but perhaps the boatmen demanded such a fee of H. that he imagined it must mean a four days' journey. At all events he never went up the cataract. There is no lake either at Philae or at Djerar; but the Nile widens out above Philae, and at various places south of that island.
H. does not give the time spent on ‘the lake’, i.e. between Philae and the second cataract at Wadi Halfa (where the boat was left ἀποβάς). If this be reckoned at four days, H.'s account gives 60 days from Syene to Meroe, i.e. 4 days for the rapids, 4 days for the lake, 40 days' land journey, and 12 more by boat again. This corresponds to the estimate of Timosthenes, admiral of Ptolemy Philadelphus (60 days from Syene to Meroe, Pliny, N. H. vi. 183); ‘this is a very fair approximation to the truth’ (Bunbury, i. 302).
σκόπελοι κτλ.: the obstructions on the river, beginning with the second cataract just above Halfa. The river in modern times is usually left here by travellers; the railway from Halfa runs to Abu Hammed, where the Nile turns south-west; the caravan route went straight across the desert from Korosko, 90 miles below Halfa.
The ‘island’ of Meroe later was formed by the Nile and the Atbara (Astaboras), just south of Berber, and ruins of pyramids have been found in this region at Bakarawiya, south of the junction of the two rivers. H., however, probably means the town of Napata, the northern capital of the Aethiopian kingdom, which lay (near the modern Merawi, which preserves the name) some thirty miles south-west of the fourth cataract, under the ‘holy mountain’, Gebel Barkal. (So Sparig, and Hall in Murray, p. 552.) H. had certainly never heard of the River Atbara (cf. iv. 50. 1), and the southern site for Meroe seems inconsistent with (30. 1) the statement that Meroe is only half way to the ‘Deserters’. If, however, Meroe be Napata, then the ‘twelve days' voyage’ must be explained as not continuous, as H. had been told, but made up of two parts, one from just below Djerar (u. s.) to Halfa, and one from El Debba (south of Dongola) to Merawi. Δία. There is a temple of Amon (i.e. Zeus) at Napata, where he was worshipped in a ram-headed shape. H. is quite right in speaking of the theocratic character of the Ethiopian kingdom; the oracle at Napata chose the king (cf. Diod. iii. 5. 6 of the later Meroe). As Ethiopia had been conquered by kings from Thebes, the Theban deities naturally were more prominent there, and the high priests of Amon, expelled by the 22nd dynasty from Thebes, had retired to Ethiopia (Maspero, Annuaire des E. G. 1877, p. 126 seq., gives interesting details as to the working of the oracle).
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