HELIOPOLIS. 141 
to have been originally named, and whose 
delicious water attracted the earliest settlers to 
the eastern side of the Nile, was, according to 
Monkish legends, only known from the time 
that the Holy Family came into Egypt. It 
burst forth, they say, when the Virgin with 
tions made by modern travellers, the evidence for the position of the 
city is complete ; and nothing seems likely to supersede it. He is 
describing the country along the Pehisinc branch of the Nile ; and 
coming to the Canal between that river and the Red Sea, he deduces 
its origin from a period anterior to the Trojan War. The subject leads 
him ioArsinoe, near which city this canal joined the Sinus Her oopolites. 
Thence returning to the Nile, he speaks of places on its eastern side, 
which are near to the southern point or vertex of the Delta; mention- 
ing first liubastus, then Ueliopolis, Letopolis, &c. and their respective 
names ; enumerating these as they occurred from the North towards 
the South, until he reaches the Nile beyond the Delta ; and speaks of 
Libya as being on the right, and .-Arabia upon the left : " Wherefore" 
says he, " the Heliopolitan district is in Arabia." 'H fAv oZv 'KXioTroXlns 
t» TJ) 'Apajiia IffTiv. After this observation, can it be affirmed that 
Heliopolis was in the Delta ? Another very remarkable observation 
of Strabo may be cited, with reference to antiquities observed by 
Maillet, which seem to prove, not only that Mataria denotes the site 
of Heliopolis, but also that Old Cairo stands within the LetopolUan 
district: it is, the mention he makes of certain Caves, or pits, for 
astronomical observations, lying in the Letopolitan prcEfecture, beyond 
Heliopolis. Maillet discovered, among the ruins of Old Cairo, several 
pits excavated to a very great de])th in the rock, after the manner of 
Joseph's Well. {See the Note top. 125 of this volume.) These corre- 
spond with the notions at present entertained of the astronomical wells 
of the Antients ; and perhaps they are the Astronomical Caves aUuded 
to by Strabo. — For other particulars concerning Heliopolis, see Herodot. 
Euterpe; Diodorus Siculus, lib. v. c. 57 ; Ptolemceus ; Stephanus; 
fyc. Sfc. 
