92 
plint's natueal history. 
[Book VI. 
Soea, upon which is situate the city of Heroon.*^* The town 
of Cambysu''^ also stood here formerly, between the Neli and 
the Marchades, Cambyses having established there the in- 
valids of his army. We then come to the nation of the Tyri, 
and the port of the Danei, from which place an attempt has 
been made to form a navigable canal to the river Nile, at the 
spot where it enters the Delta previously mentioned,'''^ the 
distance between the river and the Red Sea being sixty-two" 
miles. This was contemplated first of all by Sesostris,'^''' king 
of Egypt, afterwards by Darius, king of the Persians, and 
still later by Ptolemy II. who also made a canal, one hundred 
feet in width and forty deep, extending a distance of thirty- 
seven miles and a half, as far as the Eitter Springs. He was 
deterred from proceeding any further with this work by ap- 
prehensions of an inundation, upon finding that the Eed b:ea 
was three cubits higher than the land in the interior of Egypt. 
Some writers, however, do not allege this as the cause, but 
say that his reason was, a fear lest, in consequence of intro- 
ducing the sea, the water of the Nile might be spoilt, that being 
the only source from which the Egyptians obtain water for 
drinking. Ee this as it may, the whole of the journey from 
the Egyptian Sea is usually performed by land one of the 
three following ways : — Either from Pelusium across the sands, 
in doing which the only method of finding the way is by means 
of reeds fixed in the earth, the wind immediately effacing all 
"^^ Or Heroopolis, a city east of the Delta, in Egypt, and situate near 
the mouth of the royal canal whicli connected the Nile with the Eed Sea. 
It was of considerable consequence as a trading station upon the arm of the 
Eed Sea, which runs up as far as Arsinoe, the modern Suez, and was 
called the " Gulf" or Bay of the Heroes." The ruins of Heroopolis 
are still visible at Abu-Key scheid. 
'^^ This place, as here implied, took its name from Cambyses, the son of 
Cyrus. 
'^^ In c. 9 of the preceding Book. " Dictum," however, may only mean, 
called" the Delta. 
■^■^ Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and Tzetzes, mention this, not with re- 
ference to Sesostris, but Necho, the grandson of Sesostris. 
Ptolemy Philadelphus, son of Ptolemy Soter, or Lagides. 
"9 Now known by the name of Scheib. They derived their name from 
the saline flavour and deposition of their waters. These springs were 
strongly impregnated with alkaline salts, and with muriate of lime washed 
from the rocks which separated the Delta from the Eed Sea. The salt" 
which they produced being greatly valued, they were on that account re- 
garded as the private property of the kings. 
