DESCRIPTIONS OF EGYPT. 
189 
dytes, its ancient inhabitants. Perhaps all these 
terms are connected with Suah, a characteristic 
name of the shepherd tribes. The Ptolemais Epi- 
theras, or Ptolemais in the country of wild beasts, 
was the last station on this coast founded for the 
protection of the elephant hunters of Egypt. It 
appears to have been situated on a promontory, 
which projects into a bay of the Nubian forest, a- 
bout N. L. 17° 6'. These extreme stations on the 
African coast are rather to be regarded as frontier 
posts, than as forming any part of the proper ter- 
ritory of Egypt. They have in every age been oc- 
cupied by a race distinct from the inhabitants of 
the valley of the Nile, in features, in language, in 
customs, and in manners ; but they have been sub- 
ject to Egypt whenever the government of that 
country possessed either energy or stability. 
The fervid imagination of the Orientals, always 
fond of conferring life and motion on inanimate 
objects, compares Egypt to their fabulous bird, the 
great Rokh 9 the valley of the river representing its 
body, and the deserts of the east and west its ex- 
panded wings. After delineating the course of 
the Nile and the eastern desert, another wing, if it 
may be allowed to adopt the metaphor, still re- 
mains to be described. Behind the western ridge 
of mountains which confines the valley of the Nile, 
a vast desolate tract extends, which the Arabian 
geographers assign to Egypt, and denominate Al 
