PHYSICAL CONTEMPIiATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 127 



canal from Suez, probably for the purpose of facilitating in* 

 tercourse with the land of the Arabian copper mines." More 

 considerable maritime expeditions, as, for instance, the fre- 

 quently contested, but not, I think, improbable* circumnavi- 

 gation of Africa under Neku II. (611-595 B.C.), were con- 

 fided 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 settlement at 

 Naucratia, laid the foundation of a permanent foreign com- 

 merce, and by the admission of new elements, opened the way 

 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 



* To the impoi'taut opinions of Rennell, Heeren, and Sprengel, who 

 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 {M^moires de V Acad, des Inscriptions, t. xv., Part ii., 1845, p. 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 Phoeni- 

 cians " to return to Egypt through the passage of the Pillars of Her- 

 cules." 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. 100) ; 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 to its completion (lib. i., p. 4). Strabo by no 

 means agreed to the extraordinary isthmus hypothesis of Hipparchus 

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

 the southeast end of Asia, and the Indian Ocean converted into a Med- 

 iterranean Sea. (Humboldt, Examen Crit. de VHist. de la G6ogra' 

 phie, t. i., p. 139-142, 145, 161, and 229; t. ii., p. 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 counterpart for the 

 horse's head of the ship of Gadeira, which Eudoxus is said to have ex- 

 hibited 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 cur- 

 rents, according to the account of a very tinistworthy Arabian historian 

 (Masudi, in the Morudj-al-dzeheb, Quatrem^re, p. 389, and Reinaud, 

 Relation des Voyages dans V Rde, 1845, t. i., p. xvi., andt. ii,, p. 46). 



