Chap. 9.] ACCOTTNT OF COUNTEIES, ETC. 409 



fifty miles In lengtli, upon wliicli there is a city, called the 

 ' City of Hercules.' There are two places called Arsinoites* : 

 these and Memphites^ extend to the apex^ of the Delta ; ad- 

 joining to which, on the side of Africa, are the two Nomes 

 of Oasites"*. Some writers vary in some of these names and 

 substitute for them other Nomes, such as Heroopolites* 

 and Crocodilopolites^. Between ArsinoTtea and Mem- 

 phites, a lake', 250 miles, or, according to what Muci- 

 anus says, 450 miles in circumference and fifty paces deep, 

 has been formed by artificial means: after the king by 

 whose orders it was made, it is called by the name of Moeris. 

 The distance from thence to Memphis is nearly sixty-two 

 miles, a place which was formerly the citadel of the kings of 

 Egypt ; from thence to the oracle of Hammon it is twelve 

 days' journey. Memphis is fifteen miles from the spot where 

 the river Nile divides into the different channels which we 

 have mentioned as forming the Delta. 



nome of Arsinoites, formed by the Nile and a canal. After Memphis 

 and Heliopolis, it was probably the most important city couth of the 

 Thebaid. Its ruins are inconsiderable ; a portion of them are to be seen 

 at the modem hamlet of Amasieh. 



^ He probably means Arsinoe or Arsinoitis, the chief town of the 

 nome of that name, and the city so called at the northern extremity of 

 the Heroopolite Gulf in the Eed Sea. The former is denoted by the 

 modem district of El-Fayoom, the most fertile of ancient Egypt. At 

 this place the crocodile was worshipped. The Labyrinth and Lake 

 Moeris were in this nome. Extensive ruins at Medinet-el-Fayoom, or 

 El-Fares, represent its site. The modem Ardscherud, a village near 

 Suez, corresponds to Arsinoe on the Red Sea. There is some httle doubt 

 however whether this last Arsinoe is the one here meant by Pliny. 



2 Memphis was the chief city of this nome, which was situate in 

 Middle Egypt, and was the capital of the whole country, and the resi- 

 dence of the Pharaohs, who succeeded Psammetichus, B.C. 616. This 

 nome rose in importance on the decline of the kingdom of Thebais, but 

 was afterwards ecHpsed by the progress of Alexandria under the suc- 

 cessors of Alexander the Great. 



3 At which Middle Egypt terminates. 



'* They are more generally looked upon as forming one nome only, 

 and included imder the name of Hammonium. 



5 Its chief town was Heroopohs, a principal seat of the worship of 

 Typhon, the evil or destroying genius. 



^ The same as the nome of Arsinoites, the capital of which, Arsinoe, 

 was originally called CrocodilopoHs. 



7 Now known as Birket-cl-Keroum. This was a vast lake on the 

 western side of the Nile in Middle Egypt, used for the reception and 



