is certainly true; the foregoing dispute is a sufficient evidence of this.
But I will not suffer it to be said, that, soon after the building of Alexandria, or in the time of the Ptolemies, this was the case, because Strabo [1] says, that when he was in Egypt, Memphis, next to Alexandria, was the most magnificent city in Egypt.
It was called the Capital [2] of Egypt, and there was entire a temple of Osiris; the Apis (or sacred ox) was kept and worshipped there. There was likewise an apartment for the mother of that ox still standing, a temple of Vulcan of great magnificence, a large [3] circus, or space for fighting bulls; and a great colossus in the front of the city thrown down: there was also a temple of Venus, and a serapium, in a very sandy place, where the wind heaps up hills of moving sand very dangerous to travellers, and a number of [4] sphinxes, (of some only their heads being visible) the others covered up to the middle of their body.
In the [5] front of the city were a number of palaces then in ruins, and likewise lakes. These buildings, he says, stood formerly upon an eminence; they lay along the side of the hill, stretching down to the lakes and the groves, and forty stadia from the city; there was a mountainous height, that had many Pyramids standing upon it, the sepulchres of the kings, among which there are three remarkable, and two the wonders of the world.
