lis with its temple of Ra,
then there were the quarries of Turah, which had been worked from time
immemorial, yet never exhausted, and from which the monuments he had
been admiring, and the very Pyramids themselves had been taken stone by
stone.*

* These are "the quarries in the Arabian Mountain,"
mentioned by Herodotus without indication of the local name.

The Sphinx probably lay hidden beneath the sand, and the nearest
Pyramids, those at Saqqarah, were held in small esteem by visitors;*
they were told as they passed by that the step Pyramid was the most
ancient of all, having been erected by Uenephes, one of the kings of the
first dynasty, and they asked no further questions.

* Herodotus does not mention it, nor does any other writer
of the Greek period.

Their whole curiosity was reserved for the three giants at Gizeh and
their inmates, Cheops, Chephren, Mykerinos, and the fair Nitokris with
the rosy cheeks. Through all the country round, at Heliopolis, and even
in the Fayum itself, they heard the same names that had been dinned into
their ears at Memphis; the whole of the monuments were made to fit into
a single cycle of popular history, and what they learned at one place
completed, or seemed to complete, what they had learned at another.

I cannot tell whether many of them cared to stray much beyond Lake
Moris: the repressive measures of Ochus had, as it would appear,
interrupted for a time the regular trade which, ever since the Saite
kings of the XXVIth dynasty, had been carried on by the Greeks with the
Oases, by way of Abydos. A stranger who ventured as far as the Thebaid
would have found himself in the same plight as a European of the last
century who undertook to reach the first cataract. Their point
of departure--Memphis or Cairo--was very much the same; their
destinations--Elephantine and Assuan--differed but little. They employed
the same means of transport, for, excepting the cut of the sails, the
modern dahabeah is an exact counterpart of the pleasure and passenger
boats shown on the monuments. Lastly, they set out at the same time of
year, in November or December, after the floods had subsided. The same
length of time was required for the trip; it took a month to reach
Assuan from Cairo if the wind-were favourable, and if only such
stoppages were made as were strictly necessary for taking in fresh
provisions. Pococke, having left Cairo on the 6th of December, 1737,
about mid