126 A. D. 14. 



goods, made from cotton produced in the upper Egypt; coflly oint- 

 ments ; marble; alabafter; lalt ; alum of the very beft quality j gums; 

 paper, the general ufe of which, Pliny finely remarks, polidies and im- 

 mortalizes man ; alfo the rufli called papyrus, froni which paper was 

 likeways manufactured at Rome. Paper varied in its qualities and 

 fizes, from the wrapping Emporetica for the fhops, of fix inches in 

 breadth, to the Augufla, Liviana, and Kieratica, as they were called at 

 Rome, which were of thirteen inches *. Glafs ware was alfo Ihipped from 

 Alexandria, which rivaled Sidon in that manufadture f . The Egyptians 

 had a procefs, which, as defcribed by Pliny, [L. xxxv, f. 1 1] had, at leafl: 

 in its effect, fome refemblance to the modern art of printing upon cot- 

 ton, linen, &c. They drew figures upon cloth with various colourlefs 

 materials, which, when the cloth was plunged into a cauldron of hot 

 dye-ftuff, in a moment aflumed various colours fuitable to the figures, 

 which were fo flrongly fixed, that no wafhing could efface them. 



Egypt was alio the entrepot of the principal trade carried on between 

 the Oriental countries and Rome, which will be defcribed under the 

 head of India. 



Alexandria, the port at which all the produce and manufadures of 

 Egypt, and all the goods carried through it, were fhipped, was a large 

 and beautiful city, when it was the capital of the Macedonian kings of 

 Egypt, and the feat of the Egyptian commerce. Being now not only 

 the feat of the Roman government, but alfo of a commerce greatly ex- 

 tended by the confumption of the Roman world, and proteded by the 

 Roman power, it almofl inflantaneoufly increafed to an extent and po- 

 pulation, which yielded only to the imperial city itfelf, containing, ac- 

 cording to Diodorus Siculus, three hundred thoufand free people, whence 

 its whole population may be fiirly fuppofed above a million. It is, 

 therefor, chieliy from the reign of Auguftus, that Alexandria is entitled 

 to the rank of the commercial capital of the Mediterranean, or, as Stra^ 

 bo exprefles it, the greateft emporium of the whole world. 



Though Egypt was a Roman province, the whole of the commerce . 

 continued now, and afterwards in its more extended ffate, in the hands 

 «f the Greeks, the haughty Romans, thinking commercial concerns 



* Tlie Augufta proving too traiifparent, a paper the paper is taken.] A fpecimen, wliicli is in tlic 



of a thicker quality, and greater breadth, being Mnfcum, is about nine feet long, and twelve or 



eighteen inches, was iiitioduced in the reign of thirteen inches broad. It contains a donation by. 



Claudius, which of courfe was called Claudia, a pious lady, dated in the twenty-feventh year of 



Each fhect of the aiitient paper was double, the Juftinian, i. c. A. D. 553. 



principal fide being the largell dice that could be f The Ethiopians to the fouthward of Egypt 



got, of uniform breadth, in the whole length of preferved their dead bihde them in tianfparcnt 



the papyrus, which was covered, or lined, with coffins, nade of fofllle glafs, or ehrydal. [IlcroJ, 



fiiorter pieces, faflened on with the glutinous water /,. iii, c. 24.] Such a cofiin Ptolemy Coctus fub- 



of the Nile, or with paltc. The longitudinal fibres llituted for the golden one, wherein the body of 



of the plant, crofTing each other, gave the paper Alexander the Great had been preferred at Alex- 



the appearance of linen. [P/in. llijl. nat. L. xiii, andria. 

 (C. II, n; whence the iiifonnalion concerning 



