138 HELIOPOLIS. 
; CHAP, attracted the regard of the most enlightened 
t ^y* , travellers of Greece and Rome. Nearly thirty- 
years before the Christian sera they were visited 
by Strato; and his description of them proves 
that the condition of this once famous seat 
of science was almost as forlorn then as at the 
present period. If, as Shaiv has ingeniously 
attempted to prove', the accretion of soil, from 
the annual inundation of the Nile, ''have been 
in a proportion of somewhat more than afoot in a 
hundred years,'' we might search for some of 
the antiquities mentioned by Straho, at the 
depth of six yards below the present surface. 
But when Pococke visited the place, he observed 
the fragments of Sphinxes yet remaining, in the 
antient way leading to the eminence on which 
the Temple of the Sun stood, between the prin- 
cipal entrance to its area, and the southern side 
of the obelisk standino- before it". The Sbhinxes 
which Pocochc saw, were, in fact, a part of 
the identical antiquities that were noticed by 
Straho so many centuries before''; whence it is 
(0 Travels, Socond Edition, p. 338. Ch. 11. sect. 3. 
(2) Pocnch.i'.i D2scriiit. of the East, vol. I. p. 23. Loml. 1743. 
(3) A(a Ss rou [.'Ax-avi truyro; e^j?,- l^' iKKTipa toZ TXcirav; ir^iyyis l^^uvTm 
Xihtai, T'/,^iis uaairri, n fiiK^ci -xXi'iov; a-jr dXXt.i.av ^/■■^ov(rKi, aaf iva fiiv Ix 
*;;/a» iitcti (TTiKcv {arolx.o'^) ~oJy (r^iyyaiv, 'itia 2' sj iuarJuuy. " Per totam vero 
loii;:it'.'.di"cm ilcinceps cs utraque latitudini> parte sunt positse lapide;e 
sp!;injcs. 
