traveller on the Nile had to turn homewards on reaching Elephantine, as that was the station of the last Persian garrison.  Nubia lay immediately beyond the cataract, and the Ethiopians at times crossed the frontier and carried their raids as far as Thebes.  Elephantine, like Assuan at the present day, was the centre of a flourishing trade.  Here might be seen Kushites from Napata or Meroe, negroes from the Upper Nile and the Bahr el-Ghazal, and Ammonians, from all of whom the curious visitor might glean information while frequenting the bazaars.  The cataract was navigable all the year round, and the natives in its vicinity enjoyed the privilege of piloting freight boats through its difficult channel.  It took four days to pass through it, instead of the three, or even two, which suffice at the present day.  Above it, the Nile spread out and resembled a lake dotted over with islands, several of which, such as Phike and Biggeh, contained celebrated temples, which were as much frequented by the Ethiopians as by the Egyptians.

Correctly speaking, it was not Egypt herself that the Greeks saw, but her external artistic aspect and the outward setting of Egyptian civilisation.  The vastness of her monuments, the splendour of her tombs, the pomp of her ceremonies, the dignity and variety of her religious formulas, attracted their curiosity and commanded their respect:  the wisdom of the Egyptians had passed into a proverb with them, as it had with the Hebrews.  But if they had penetrated behind the scenes, they would have been obliged to acknowledge that beneath this attractive exterior there was hopeless decay.  As with all creatures when they have passed their prime, Egypt had begun to grow old, and was daily losing her elasticity and energy.  Her spirit had sunk into a torpor, she had become unresponsive to her environment, and could no longer adapt herself to the form she had so easily acquired in her youth:  it was as much as she could do to occupy fully the narrower limits to which she had been reduced, and to maintain those limits unbroken.  The instinct which made her shrink from the intrusion of foreign customs and ideas, or even mere contact with nations of recent growth, was not the mere outcome of vanity.  She realised that she maintained her integrity only by relying on the residue of her former solidarity and on the force of custom.  The slightest disturbance of the equilibrium established among her members, instead of strengthening her, would have robbed her of the vigour she still possessed, and brought about her dissolution.

[Illustration:  367.jpg DARIUS III.]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin in the Cabinet des
     Medailles.