the former capitals, had fallen to the size and rank of villages. At
Memphis Strabo saw the bull-fights in the circus, and was allowed to
look at the bull Apis through a window of his stable. At Crocodilopolis
he saw the sacred crocodile caught on the banks of the lake and fed
with cakes and wine. Ptolemais, which was at first only an encampment of
Greek soldiers, had risen under the sovereigns to whom it owed its name
to be the largest city in the Thebaid, and scarcely less than Memphis.
It was built wholly by the Greeks, and, like Alexandria, it was under
Greek laws, while the other cities in Egypt were under Egyptian laws and
magistrates. It was situated between Panopolis and Abydos; but, while
the temples of Thebes, which were built so many centuries earlier, are
still standing in awful grandeur, scarcely a trace of this Greek city
can be found in the villages of El Menshieh and Girgeh (Cerkasoros),
which now stand on the spot. Strabo and the Roman generals did not
forget to visit the broken colossal statue of Amenhôthes, near Thebes,
which sent forth its musical sounds every morning, as the sun, rising
over the Arabian hills, first shone upon its face; but this inquiring
traveller could not make up his mind whether the music came from the
statue, or the base, or the people around it. He ended his tour with
watching the sunshine at the bottom of the astronomical well at Syênê,
which, on the longest day, is exactly under the sun's northern edge, and
with admiring the skill of the boatmen who shot down the cataracts in
their wicker boats, for the amusement of the Roman generals.

In the earlier periods of Egyptian history Ethiopia was peopled, or, at
least, governed, by a race of men, whom, as they spoke the same language
and worshipped the same gods as their neighbours of Upper Egypt, we must
call the Kopts. But the Arabs, under the name of Troglodyte, and other
tribes, had made an early settlement on the African side of the Red Sea.
So numerous were they in Upper Egypt that in the time of Strabo half the