h 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 calle