III. 
GRAND CAIRO. 129 
the foundation, even of the Egyptian Babylon, an chap. 
estabUshment had taken place upon the same 
spot. The situation of the Citadel of Cairo 
corresponds with the locaUty of a city ahiiost 
as old as Memphis. The district in which it 
stands was the Land of Goshen, or Rameses of 
Scripture, assigned by Joseph unto his father 
and his brethren, that they might be near to 
the seat of the Egyptian kings ^ Their first 
settlement was in the same territory, at On^ 
the Bethshemesh of the Prophet Jeremiah^, 
both of which names are rendered, in the Sep- 
tuagint, Heliopolis'"; but in their departure, 
according to Josephus, they passed by the ruins 
of a city called Letopolis , upon the site of 
which Camhyses afterwards erected the Egyptian 
Babylon '-. 
(7) " And thou shalt be near unto me, thou and thy children." 
Gen. xiv. 10. 
(8) t/o5e/5/j;« uses the words t> 'HAIOTnoAEI. J ntiq. lib. ii. cap, A. 
(9) Jerem. xliii. 13. 
(10) 'HXiBv-roXis. 
(11) So called from Atiroij;, Latona Dea. It has been confounded 
with LatopoUs. See the Notes to the Oxford edition of Strabo, vol. II. 
p. 1 143. Might not the annual sacrifice of a f^irgin to the Nile, which 
is said by some authors to have happened here, at the period of its 
inundation, have some reference to the mythological history of the 
persecution of Latona by the Serpent Python? 
(12) Joseph. kvii\({. lib. ii. cap. 15. Colon. 
VOL. V. K 
