which usually follow in the rear of an army, but by the building of
new cities, the more certain administration of justice, the revival of
trade, and the growth of learning. On reaching Memphis, his first care
was to prove to the Egyptians that he was come to re-establish their
ancient monarchy. He went in state to the temple of Apis, and sacrificed
to the sacred bull, as the native kings had done at their coronations;
and gamed the good-will of the crowd by games and music, Performed by
skilful Greeks for their amusement.

[Illustration: 021.jpg PHTAH the god of Memphis]

But though the temple of Phtah at Memphis, in which the state ceremonies
were performed, had risen in beauty and importance by the repeated
additions of the later kings, who had fixed the seat of government in
Lower Egypt, yet the Sun, or Amon-Ra, or Kneph-Ra, the god of Thebes, or
Jupiter-Amnion, as he was called by the Greeks, was the god under whose
spreading wings Egypt had seen its proudest days. Every Egyptian king
had called himself "the son of the Sun;" those who had reigned at Thebes
had boasted that they were "beloved by Amon-Ra;" and when Alexander
ordered the ancient titles to be used towards himself, he wished to lay
his offerings in the temple of this god, and to be acknowledged by the
priests as his son. As a reader of Homer, and the pupil of Aristotle,
he must have wished to see the wonders of "Egyptian Thebes," the proper
place for this ceremony; and it could only have been because, as a
general, he had not time for a march of five hundred miles, that he
chose the nearer and less known temple of Kneph-Ra, in the oasis of
Ammon, one hundred and eighty miles from the coast.

Accordingly, he floated down the river from Memphis to the sea,
taking with him the light-armed troops and the royal band of