

422 On Egypt and the Nils 



borders of Egypt: the Seventy wrote it Peitho, and Herodotus calls It 

 Patumos; but, the fecond, cafe in Sanfcrit being generally affected in the 

 weflern dialects, we find it written Phithom by the old Latin interpreter, 

 Fithom by Hieronymus, and Pelhom in the Coptick tranflation. The 

 Greek name of that city was Hero'dpolis^ or according to Strabo, Heroon; 

 but we are informed by Stephanus of Byzantium ( a) t that, " when Ty> 

 V phon was fmitten by lightning, and blood (4<,«) flowed from his 

 *< wounds, the place, where he ftll, was thence called Hcemus % though it 

 " had likewife the name of Htro" fo the ftation of Ra'hu was on the 

 fpot, where Pi't'he'na's and Singhica' found his bloody head rolling 

 on the fands j and, if Singhicd, or the Woman like a Lionejs, be the Sphinx^ 

 the smonftrous head, which the Arabs call Abulhaul, or Father of Ter- 

 mur, may have been intended for that of Ra'hu, and not, as it is com- 

 monly believed, for his mother. Though the people of Egypt abhorred 

 Typhon, yet fear made them worfhip him i and in early times they offered 

 him human victims : the Greeks fay, that he had a red complexion, and 

 mention his expulfion from Egypt \ but add a ftrange ftory of his arrival in 

 Palejiine y and of his three fons. We muff not, however, confound 

 Ra'hu with Maha'jde'va', who, in his deftru&ive character was called 

 alfo Typhon; though it be difficult fometimes to diftinguiih them.* feveral 

 places in Egypt were dedicated to a divinity named Typhon ; as the Ty- 

 phaonian places between Teniyra and Coptos; and the tower of Melite t 

 where daily facrifices were made to a dragon fo terrible, that no mortal 

 durft look on him j the legends of the temple relating, that a man, who 

 had once the temerity to enter the recedes of it, was fo terrified by the 

 fight of the monfter, that he foon expired (b). Mekte, I prefume, was in 



(«} Under the word 'Hgca, (i>) ^Elian on Animals, B. n. C. 17, 





