Assyria was nothing more than a name, Babylon and Phoenicia were growing weaker every day; the Jews, absorbed in questions of religious ethics, were deficient in material power, and had not as yet attained sufficient moral authority to exercise an influence over the eastern world:  the Egypt indestructible had alone escaped the general shipwreck, and seemed fated to survive her rivals for a long time.  Of all these ancient nations it was she who appealed most strongly to the imagination of the Greeks:  Greek traders, mercenaries, scholars, and even tourists wandered freely within her borders, and accounts of the strange and marvellous things to be found there were published far and wide in the writings of Hecataeus of Miletus, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, and Hellanicus of Lesbos.  As a rule, they entered the country from the west, as European tourists and merchants still do; but Eakotis, the first port at which they touched, was a mere village, and its rocky Pharos had no claim to distinction beyond the fact that it had been mentioned by Homer.  From hence they followed the channel of the Canopic arm, and as they gradually ascended, they had pointed out to them Anthylla, Arkandrupolis, and Gyna> copolis, townships dependent on Naucratis, lying along the banks, or situated some distance off on one of the minor canals; then Naucratis itself, still a flourishing place, in spite of the rebellions in the Delta and the suppressive measures of the Persians.  All this region seemed to them to be merely an extension of Greece under the African sky:  to their minds the real Egypt began at Sais, a few miles further eastwards.  Sais was full in memories of the XXVIth dynasty; there they had pointed out to them the tombs of the Pharaohs in the enclosure of Nit, the audience hall in which Psammetichus II. received the deputation of the Eleians, the prison where the unfortunate Apries had languished after his defeat.  The gateways of the temple of Nit seemed colossal to eyes accustomed to the modest dimensions of most Greek sanctuaries; these were, moreover, the first great monuments that the strangers had seen since they landed, and the novelty of their appearance had a good deal to do with the keenness of the impression produced.  The goddess showed herself in hospitable guise to the visitors; she welcomed them all, Greek or Persian, at her festivals, and initiated them into several of her minor rites, without demanding from them anything beyond tolerance on certain points of doctrine.

[Illustration:  346.jpg FOUNTAIN AND SCHOOL OF THE MOTHER OF LITTLE MOHAMAD]

Her dual attributes as wielder of the bow and shuttle had inspired the Greeks with the belief that she was identical with that one of their own goddesses who most nearly combined in her person this complex mingling of war and industry:  in her they Fountain and School of the Mother of Little Mohammed worshipped the prototype of their own Pallas.  On the evening of the 17th day of Thoth, Herodotus saw the natives, rich and poor, placing on the fronts of their dwellings large flat lamps filled with a mixture of salt and oil which they kept alight all night in honour of Osiris and of the dead.*