any other of those labours which other men have about a crop; but when
the river has come up of itself and watered their fields and after
watering has left them again, then each man sows his own field and turns
into it swine, and when he has trodden the seed into the ground by
means of the swine, after that he waits for the harvest, and when he has
threshed the corn by means of the swine, then he gathers it in.

If we desire to follow the opinions of the Ionians as regards Egypt, who
say that the Delta alone is Egypt, reckoning its sea-coast to be from
the watch-tower called of Perseus to the fish-curing houses of Pelusion,
a distance of forty _schoines_, and counting it to extend inland as far
as the city of Kercasoros, where the Nile divides and runs to Pelusion
and Canobos, while as for the rest of Egypt, they assign it partly to
Libya and partly to Arabia,--if, I say, we should follow this account,
we should thereby declare that in former times the Egyptians had no land
to live in; for, as we have seen, their Delta at any rate is alluvial,
and has appeared (so to speak) lately, as the Egyptians themselves say
and as my opinion is. If then at the first there was no land for them
to live in, why did they waste their labour to prove that they had come
into being before all other men? They needed not to have made trial of
the children to see what language they would first utter. However I am
not of the opinion that the Egyptians came into being at the same time
as that which is called by the Ionians the Delta, but that they existed
always ever since the human race came into being, and that as their land
advanced forwards, many of them were left in their first abodes and many
came down gradually to the lower parts. At least it is certain that in
old times Thebes had the name of Egypt, and of this the circumference
measures six thousand one hundred and twenty furlongs.

If then we judge aright of these matters, the opinion of the Ionians