B E R 



260 



B E R 



This coin may probably belong to the Berenice the in- 

 scription is ' Queen Berenice.' Mionet assigns it to Bere- 

 nice (3). 



The portraits of Alexander II. and this Berenice appear 

 frequently on the great wall of sandstone which encloses 

 the temple of Edfu, and the portrait of Berenice is always 

 the same. See Rosellini, plate xxii. fig. 80, 81 ; and xxiii. 

 29, which is a full-length portrait of Berenice. Figs. 80, 

 81, represent respectively the heads of Alexander and 

 Berenice, which are distinguished by the handsome fea- 

 tures that appear to have characterized the descendants of 

 the first Ptolemy. It would seem that the great sculptures 

 of the inclosure-wall of Edfu, which cover it on both sides, 

 were executed in the joint reigns of Alexander II. and 

 Berenice, from which fact Rosellini infers that a longer 

 period must be assigned to their joint reign than the nine- 

 teen days given by the chronologers. The Athenians 

 made a bronze statue of this Berenice. (Pausan. i. 9.) 



BERENI'CE (j), a daughter of Ptolemy IX., Auletes, 

 who began to reign in Egypt B.C. 81, and sister of the cele- 

 brated Cleopatra. During the absence of her father at 

 Rome Berenice was made regent, which oflice she held from 

 about B.C. 58 to B.C. 55. Gabinius, about the close of B.C. 

 55, came to Egypt with an army and restored Auletes, who 

 put his daughter to death. Berenice first married Seleucus, 

 the pretended son of Antiochus Eusebes, a feeble man, 

 whom, it is said, she caused to be strangled ; and afterwards 

 Archelaus, who was also put to death on the restoration of 

 Auletes. (See Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, and the authori- 

 ties there quoted.) 



BERENI'CE (6), a daughter of Ilerodes Agrippa I., 

 who was the son of Aristobulus, who was the son of Herod 

 the Great. (Acts xii. ; Matthew ii.) She "as the sister of 

 Herodes Agrippa II., before whom Paul preached A.D. 63 

 (Acts xxv. 13), and the wife of Herodes of Chalcis, who 

 seems to have been her uncle, and left her a young widow. 

 Titus, the son of Vespasian, fell in love with Berenice, who 

 had taken an active part at the time when Syria declared 

 in favour of Vespasian against Vitellius. (Tacit. Hist. ii. 

 2, 81.) Berenice was then a young and very handsome 

 woman. After the capture of Jerusalem she came to Rome 

 (A.D. 75), and Titus is said to have been so much attached 

 to her that he promised to marry her ; but on the death of 

 his father he sent Berenice from Rome, much against his 

 will and hers, when he found that the proposed match was 

 disagreeable to the people. (Suetonius, Titus.) Juvenal 

 (Sat. vi. 156) appears to allude to this Berenice and her 

 brother Agrippa. Racine has written a tragedy on the 

 subject of Titus and Berenice. (See some remarks in the 

 Btnraphie Universdle on the age of Berenice.) 



BEHENI'CE, inCyrenaica. [SeeBENOAzi; and Strabo, 

 p. 836-7. Casaub.] 



BERENI'CE, a port on the west side of the Red Sea, at 

 the bottom of a bay, which is described by Strabo (p. 770) 

 under the name of Acathartus (obstructed, see Strabo) : 

 the island Ophiodes (Snake Island) is to the south of this : 

 this island produced topazes. Belzoni describes the place 

 which he takes to be the site of Berenice as being near the 

 point where it was fixed by D'Anville (sec Mvmoires tur 

 r Kgypte Ancienne, $c.), a little south of the parallel of 

 24 . Ptolemy gives the latitude of Berenice at 23 50', which 

 is also the latitude of S\ ene. Belzoni says the town measured 

 1600 feet from north to south, and 2000 from east to west. 

 A small temple built of soft calcareous and sand stone, 

 in tho Egyptian style, is 102 feet long and 43 wide. A 

 part of the wall which was uncovered by digging, was 

 sculptured with well-executed figures in basso-rilievo, in 

 the Egyptian style : hieroglyphics were also found on the 

 wall. 



The recent survey of the Red Sea, made in the years 

 1830 1-2-3, by Commander R. Moresby, and Lieutenant 

 T. G. Carless of the East India Company's service, confirms 

 the description of Strabo, and the accuracy of the position 

 iied by D'Anville as the site of Berenice. According 

 to their chart, Berenice is at the bottom of a bay, the north 

 side of which is formed by the promontory called Ras Be- 

 nass, which is about 19 miles E. by S. from Berenice. A 

 range of high mountains runs along this part of the coast, 

 leaving near the bay a small narrow strip on which stand 

 the supposed ruins of Berenice. The emerald mountains, 

 which lie near the coast and N.W. of Berenice, are of great 

 height one of them, called Jebel Wady Lehuma, about 

 34 miles N.W. of Berenice, is marked in the survov as visible 



at 120 miles distance; but this is probably not quite correct, 

 as it would give the mountain a height, in round numbers, 

 of 9600 feet. Two peaks which lie S. of Berenice and near 

 the coast, are marked respectively 4440 and 4036 feet. 

 There is good anchorage inside of Ras Benass, but the bot- 

 tom is very foul. Off Ras Benass, a few miles nearly due 

 S. is the small island Macour, where the variation is marked 

 8 4' west. The lat. of Berenice according to the recent 

 survey is about 23 56', very nearly that of Ptolemy ; the 

 long, is about 35 34' E. 



This town of Berenice was built or restored by Ptolemy 

 Philadelphus; and a road was formed from Berenice to 

 Coptos on the Nile (26 N. lat.), by which the merchandise 

 of Arabia, India, and Ethiopia was conveyed on camels to 

 the Nile, and the troublesome navigation to the head of the 

 gulf of Suez was avoided. This route was chosen, because 

 water was found at certain places in greater abundance 

 than is common in the arid desert between the Red Sea 

 and the Nile. The halting places, ten in number, between 

 Berenice and Coptos, were of course determined by the si- 

 tuation of the wells (Plin. vi. 23.) : the distance from Bere- 

 nice to Coptos is 258 Roman miles according to Pliny, or 

 266 according to the Antonine Itinerary. Belzoni, from a 

 rough calculation, concludes that Berenice may have had a 

 population of about 10,000. (See Belzoni's Kesearches, fyc., 

 ii. 73, &c., 8vo. ed.) 



BERENI'CE, Panchrysos, 'all golden,' (Plin. vi. 29.) 

 is placed by D'Anville on the west coast of the Red Sea, 

 between 20" and 21 N. lat., near the gold mines of Jehel 

 Ollaki, or Allaki. / 



BERENI'CE, Epi-dires, situated near the entrance of 

 the Red Sea, according to Pliny, on the African side, and 

 on a projecting piece of land. It was so called from being 

 near a place named Dira. (See D'Anville, Memoires, quoted 

 above.) 



BERESINA, The, (BEREZYNA or BERESNA,) a 

 river in Western Russia, which has two sources, one 

 of which lies in the circle of Vileika, in the province of 

 Minsk, and the other in the circle of Oshmiana, in the pro- 

 vince of Vilna. Its waters (low in a OToad channel and in a 

 south-eastern direction, generally between low and swampy 

 banks edged with reeds and rushes ; it becomes navigable 

 in an early part of its course, and is not bordered by 

 any high ground except in the vicinity of Borissoff. The 

 Bercsina, after (lowing past Beresna or Beresino (a small 

 town of about 900 inhabitants in the province of Minsk), and 

 Bobruisk, falls into the Dnieper, after a course of about 

 260 miles, to the north of Reshitza and south of Horwale, 

 in the circle of Rogatsheff and province of Mohileff. During 

 this course it receives several small rivers, the most con- 

 siderable of which are the Plissa, the Swislocz, which runs 

 through Minsk, and the Ola. The Beresina has become 

 memorable from the disasters which befel the French army 

 when Napoleon, on his retreat from Moscow, effected a pas- 

 sage across it, about nine miles above Borissoff, on the 26th 

 and 27th November, 1812. The Beresina or Lepel Canal, 

 by uniting the Dnieper with the Diina, has established a 

 navigable communication between the Black Sea and the 

 Baltic : it is about five miles long, and unites the Diina 

 with the Beresina by connecting Lake Plavia, out of which 

 the Sergutsh Hows into the Beresina, with Lake Bereshta : 

 this last lake makes its way into the Essa by the channel of 

 the Bereshta river, and the Essa falls into Lake Beloje, 

 which is connected with the Diina through the river Ulla. 

 The whole line from the Beresina to the Ulla is about sixty- 

 five miles in length, has been rendered navigable at a con- 

 siderable expense, and is provided with several branch 

 canals. There is a small river also, called the Lesser Be- 

 resina, in the government of Mohileff. 



BERESNA or BEREZNA, a small town of Little 

 Russia in the province of Tshernigoff, is situated on the 

 Desna at a distance of thirty-six versts (about twenty-four 

 miles) west of Tshernigoff; it contains six churches, and, 

 inclusive of the villages dependent upon it, has a population 

 of about 5500 souls. 51 26' N. lat, and 31 50' E. long. 

 (Vsevoloysky > 



BERESOFF, an extensive circle in the province of To- 

 bolsk, in Siberia, traversed by the Ob, and, according to 

 Georgi, situated between 61" and 77 N. lat., and 54 

 and 78 E. long. Its western boundaries are the Carion 

 arm of the Icy Sea, and the most northern part of the 

 Ural Mountains, which separate it from the province of 

 Archangel ; its southern are the circle* of Turinsk and 



