Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato.  In the foreground are the ruins of the Roman mole built of brick, which protected the entrance to the harbour of Syene; in the distance is the Libyan range, surmounted by the ruins of several mosques and of a Coptic monastery.  Cf. the woodcut on p. 275 of the present work.

A few scattered buffaloes and cows graze in corners, while fowls and pigeons without number roam about in flocks on the look-out for what they can pick up.  It is a world in miniature, tranquil and pleasant, where life is passed without effort, in a perpetually clear atmosphere and in the shade of trees which never lose their leaf.  The ancient city was crowded into the southern extremity, on a high plateau of granite beyond the reach of inundations.  Its ruins, occupying a space half a mile in circumference, are heaped around a shattered temple of Khnurnu, of which the most ancient parts do not date back beyond the sixteenth century before our era.

[Illustration:  267.jpg THE FIRST CATARACT]

Map by Thuillier, from La Description de l’Egypte, Ant., vol. i. pl. 30, 1.  I have added the ancient names in those cases where it has been possible to identify them with the modern localities.

It was surrounded with walls, and a fortress of sun-dried brick perched upon a neighbouring island to the south-west, gave it complete com-mand over the passages of the cataract.  An arm of the river ninety yards wide separated it from Suanit, whose closely built habitations were ranged along the steep bank, and formed, as it were, a suburb.  Marshy pasturages occupied the modern site of Syene; beyond these were gardens, vines, furnishing wine celebrated throughout the whole of Egypt, and a forest of date palms running towards the north along the banks of the stream.  The princes of the nome of Nubia encamped here, so to speak, as frontier-posts of civilization, and maintained frequent but variable relations with the people of the desert.  It gave the former no trouble to throw, as occasion demanded it, bodies of troops on the right or left sides of the valley, in the direction of the Red Sea or in that of the Oasis; however little they might carry away in their raids—­of oxen, slaves, wood, charcoal, gold dust, amethysts, cornelian or green felspar for the manufacture of ornaments—­it was always so much to the good, and the treasury of the prince profited by it.  They never went very far in their expeditions:  if they desired to strike a blow at a distance, to reach, for example, those regions of Puanit of whose riches the barbarians were wont to boast, the aridity of the district around the second cataract would arrest the advance of their foot-soldiers, while the rapids of Wady Haifa would offer an almost impassable barrier to their ships.  In such distant operations they did not have recourse to arms, but disguised themselves as peaceful merchants.  An easy road led almost direct from their capital