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Let us leave these things, however, to their natural course, to
continue as they are and have been from the beginning. With regard to
the sources of the Nile, I have found no one among all those with
whom I have conversed, whether Egyptians, Libyans, or Greeks,
who professed to have any knowledge, except a single person. He was
the scribe who kept the register of the sacred treasures of Minerva in
the city of Sais, and he did not seem to me to be in earnest when he
said that he knew them perfectly well. His story was as follows:
"Between Syene, a city of the Thebais, and Elephantine, there
are" (he said) "two hills with sharp conical tops; the name of the
one is Crophi, of the other, Mophi. Midway between them are the
fountains of the Nile, fountains which it is impossible to fathom.
Half the water runs northward into Egypt, half to the south towards
Ethiopia." The fountains were known to be unfathomable, he
declared, because Psammetichus, an Egyptian king, had made trial of
them. He had caused a rope to be made, many thousand fathoms in
length, and had sounded the fountain with it, but could find no
bottom. By this the scribe gave me to understand, if there was any
truth at all in what he said, that in this fountain there are certain
strong eddies, and a regurgitation, owing to the force wherewith the
water dashes against the mountains, and hence a Sounding-line cannot
be got to reach the bottom of the spring.
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