oee, and that, like the porphyry
vases, they were to find their way to Rome, by the canal, the Nile, and
the port of Alexandria. Sir Gardner Wilkinson has shown that these
granite quarries were abandoned not long after the reign of Hadrian; and
an inscription, quoted by Letronne, proves that the granite quarries at
Syene were first worked about the years A.D. 205-209. The great
facilities afforded by the Nile for transporting the largest columns
from Syene to Alexandria, appears to have caused the immediate
abandonment of the quarries of Djebel Fattereh; as the expense of
transporting the columns already finished was doubtless greater than the
cost of working and conveying new ones from Syene to Alexandria.

The canal of Trajan continued to be kept open, after the building mania,
to which it owed its origin, had ceased. It had extended the sphere of
the export trade of the Delta; and it continued to serve as the means of
transporting the blocks of porphyry--for which there was a constant
demand at Rome and Constantinople, and, indeed, in almost every city of
wealth in the Roman empire. Eusebius, in his ecclesiastical history,
mentions that the porphyry quarries of the Thebaid were worked during
the time of the great persecution, in the reign of Dioclesian. He says,
"that one hundred martyrs were selected from the innumerable crowd of
Christians condemned to labour in the Thebaid, in the place called
Porphyritis, from the marble which was quarried at the spot."[1]

[1] Eusebius, lib viii. c. 8.

In the reign of Justinian, we find these quarries still worked on a
considerable scale, as they are alluded to more than once by Paul the
Silentiary, in his description of the Church of St Sophia at
Constantinople. He affords evidence that the porphyry still continued to
be transported by the Nile to Alexandria; and though his words contain
no express mention of the canal, it is evident that the workmen of
Justinian would always prefer the easier road by Myos Hormos and
Arsinoee, to the almost impracticable task of conveying the blocks
across the desert.[1] In the reign of Justin I., the trade of the Red
Sea was of great importance, and must have created an immense demand
for the agricultural produce of Egypt. The King of Ethiopia, resolving
to attack Dunaan, the Jewish king of the Homerites in Arabia,
collected, during the winter, a fleet of seven hundred Indian vessels,
and six hundred trading ships, belonging to the Roman an