314 : .O-N Egypt and t h e Nile 



fo aufpicious a beginning • but it has before been intimated, that they pro- 

 bably retreated, to .Ajagara in the reigns of Sani and Rahu, at which 

 time, according to the Pur dru » the Devatds, among whom the Sharmices 

 are reckoned, were compelled to feek refuge in the mountains; a fimilar flight of 

 the D&vatas is, however, faid to have been caufed by the invasion of Deva- 

 Nahush or Dxonysius. 



The Padmd-mandir feems to be the town o£ By bios in Egypt now called 

 Babel i or rather that of Babel, from which original name the Greeks made 

 By bios : it Rood on the canal, which led. from the Balbitwe branch of the 

 Nile to the Pbatmetic ; a canal, which is pretty well delineated in the 

 Peutingerian table j and it appears, that the moll fouthern Ifeum of that 

 table is the fame with the Byblos of the Greeks. Since this mound or pyra- 

 mid was raifed but a fhort time after that on the Cumdvatz, and by a part 

 of the fame builders, and fince both have the fame name in Sanfcrit, whence 

 it mould feem, that both were inferibed to the fame divinity, we can hardly 

 fail to conclude s that the Padmd-mandir as were the two Babels, the nrii on 

 the Euphrates, and the fecond on the Nile. The old place of worfhip at 

 Byblos was afterwards much neglected, being fcarce mentioned by ancient 

 authors : Stephanus of [Byzantium fays it. was very ftrong; and it v/as there, 

 according to Thucydides, and to the Perficks of Ctesias quoted by 

 Photius, that Inarus, king of Lybia, with his Athenian auxiliaries and 

 the Egyptians, who were attached to him, fuftained a liege of a year and a 

 half againft the whole Perjian army under Megaby&us j but, as it Hood 

 in low marfhy ground, it probably owed its chief ftrength . to the vail 

 mound of earth mentioned in the Purdnas, the dimenfions of. which are, 

 However, (as it is ufual in poetical defcriptions) much exaggerated. One of 

 .three grand branches of the Nile, m the vicinity of Padmd-mat'b, is calteda 



