year, to make the seasons right, whereas the Egyptians, reckoning the
twelve months at thirty days each, bring in also every year five days
beyond number, and thus the circle of their season is completed and
comes round to the same point whence it set out. They said moreover that
the Egyptians were the first who brought into use appellations for the
twelve gods and the Hellenes took up the use from them; and that they
were the first who assigned altars and images and temples to the gods,
and who engraved figures on stones; and with regard to the greater
number of these things they showed me by actual facts that they had
happened so. They said also that the first man who became king of Egypt
was Min; and that in his time all Egypt except the district of Thebes
was a swamp, and none of the regions were then above water which now lie
below the lake of Moiris, to which lake it is a voyage of seven days
up the river from the sea: and I thought that they said well about the
land; for it is manifest in truth even to a person who has not heard it
beforehand but has only seen, at least if he have understanding, that
the Egypt to which the Hellenes come in ships is a land which has been
won by the Egyptians as an addition, and that it is a gift of the river:
moreover the regions which lie above this lake also for a distance of
three days' sail, about which they did not go on to say anything of
this kind, are nevertheless another instance of the same thing: for the
nature of the land of Egypt is as follows:--First when you are still
approaching it in a ship and are distant a day's run from the land, if
you let down a sounding-line you will bring up mud and you will find
yourself in eleven fathoms. This then so far shows that there is a
silting forward of the land. Then secondly, as to Egypt itself, the
extent of it along the sea is sixty _schoines_, according to our
definition of Egypt as extending from the Gulf of Plinthine to the
Serbonian lake, along which stretches Mount Casion; from this lake then
the sixty _schoines_ are reckoned: for those of men who are poor in