it as a fresh form of superstition, and thus we discover from a Christian document dating from the sixth century, that the rising of the Nile “in its time” was no longer attributed to Osiris, but to a certain Saint Orion, and, as the priest of antiquity taught that a tear of Isis led to the overflowing of the Nile, so we hear the Egyptians of the present day say that “a divine tear” has fallen into the stream and caused the flood.

The trade of the Egyptians had given them very little knowledge of geography.  Indeed the whole trade of the ancients was carried on by buying goods from their nearest neighbours on one side, and selling them to those on the other side of them.  Long voyages were unknown; and, though the trading wealth of Egypt had mainly arisen from carrying the merchandise of India and Arabia Felix from the ports on the Red Sea to the ports on the Mediterranean, the Egyptians seem to have gained no knowledge of the countries from which these goods came.

[Illustration:  256b.jpg SUK EL SALEH, CAIRO]

They bought them of the Arab traders, who came to Cosseir and the Troglodytic Berenice from the opposite coast; the Arabs had probably bought them from the caravans that had carried them across the desert from the Persian Gulf; and that these land journeys across the desert were both easier and cheaper than a coasting voyage, we have before learned, from Phila-delphus thinking it worth while to build watering and resting-houses in the desert between Koptos and Berenice, to save the voyage between Berenice and Cosseir.  India seems to have been only known to the Greeks as a country that by sea was to be reached by the way of the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf; and though Scylax had, by the orders of Darius, dropped down the river Indus, coasted Arabia, and thence reached the Red Sea, this voyage was either forgotten or disbelieved, and in the time of the Ptolemies it seems probable that nobody thought that India could be reached by sea from Egypt.  Arrian indeed thought that the difficulty of carrying water in their small ships, with large crews of rowers, was alone great enough to stop a voyage of such a length along a desert coast that could not supply them with fresh water.

The long voyages of Solomon and Necho had been limited to coasting Africa; the voyage of Alexander the Great had been from the Indus to the Persian Gulf; hence it was that the court of Euergetes was startled by the strange news that the Arabian guards on the coast of the Red Sea had found a man in a boat by himself, who could not speak Koptic, but who they afterwards found was an Indian, who had sailed straight from India, and had lost his shipmates.  He was willing to show any one the route by which he had sailed; and Eudoxus of Cyzicus in Asia Minor came to Alexandria to persuade Euergetes to give him the command of a vessel for this voyage of discovery.  A vessel was given him; and, though he was but badly fitted out, he reached a country, which he called India, by sea, and brought back a cargo of spices and precious stones.  He wrote an account of the coasts which he visited, and it was made use of by Pliny.  But it is more than probable the unknown country called India, which Eudoxus visited, was on the west coast of Africa.  Abyssinia was often called India by the ancients.