PHYSICAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE UNIVEKSE. 489 



navigation of Africa under Neku II. (611 -5 95 B.C.), were 

 confided to Phoenician vessels. About the same period or a 

 little earlier, under Neku's father, Psammitich (Psemetek), 

 and somewhat later, after the termination of the civil war 

 under Amasis (Aahmes), Greek mercenaries, by their settle- 

 ment at Naucratia, laid the foundation of a permanent foreign 

 commerce, and by the admission of new elements, opened the 

 \ray for the gradual penetration of Hellenism into Lower Egypt. 

 Thus was introduced a germ of mental freedom, and of greater 

 independence of local influences a germ which was rapidly 



are inclined to believe in the reality of the circumnavigation of Libya, 

 we must now add that of a most profound philologist, Etienne Quatre- 

 mere (Memoires de I'Acad. des Inscriptions, t. xv. P. 2, 1845, pp. 380-- 

 388). The most convincing argument for the truth of the report of 

 Herodotus (iv. 42), appears to me to be the observation which seems 

 to him so incredible, viz., " that the mariners who sailed round Libya 

 (from east to west), had the sun on their right hand." In the Mediter- 

 ranean, in sailing from east to west, from Tyre to Gadeira, the sun at 

 noon was seen to the left only. A knowledge of the possibility of 

 such a navigation must have existed in Egypt previous to the time of 

 Neku II. (Nechos), as Herodotus makes him distinctly command the 

 Phoenicians " to return to Egypt through the passage of the Pillars of 

 Hercules." It is singular that Strabo, who (lib. ii. p. 98) discusses 

 at such length the attempted circumnavigation of Eudoxus of Cyzicus 

 under Cleopatra, and mentions fragments of a ship from Gadeira, which 

 were found on the Ethiopian (eastern) shore, considers the accounts given 

 of the circumnavigations actually accomplished as Bergaic fables (lib. 

 ii. p. ICO); but he does not deny the possibility of the circumnavigation 

 itself (lib. i. p. 38), and declares that from the east to the west, there 

 is but little that remains for to its completion (lib. i. p. 4). Strabo by 

 no means agreed to. the extraordinary isthmus-hypothesis of Hippar- 

 chus and Marinus of Tyre, according to which Eastern Africa is 

 joined to the south-east end of Asia, and the Indian Ocean con- 

 verted into a Mediterranean Sea. (Humboldt, Examen crit. de 1-HisL 

 de la Geographic, t. i. pp. 139-142, 145, 161, and 229; t. ii. pp. 370- 

 373). Strabo quotes Herodotus, but does not name Nechos, whose 

 expedition he confounds with one sent by Darius round Southern 

 Persia and Arabia (Herod, iv. 44). Gosselin even proposed, somewhat 

 too boldly, to change the reading from Darius to Nechos. A counter- 

 part for the horse's head of the ship of Gadeira, which Eudoxus is 

 said to have exhibited in a market-place in Egypt, occurs in the 

 remains of a ship of the Red Sea, which was brought to the coast of 

 Crete by westerly currents, according to the account of a very trust- 

 worthy Arabian historian (Masudi, in the Morudj-al-dzeheb, Quatremere, 

 p. 389, and Reinaud, delation des Voyages dam I'Inde, 1845, t. i.-p. 

 xyi. and t. ii. p. 46). 



