I shall begin by giving my reasons why Gojam is not Meroë: and, first, Diodorus[1] tells us, this island had its name from a sister of Cambyses, king of Persia, who died there in the expedition that prince had undertaken against Ethiopia. Now, Cambyses's army perished in the desert immediately to the southward, after he had passed Meroë, consequently he never was in Gojam, nor within 200 miles of it; his mother, therefore, could not have died there, nor would his army have perished with hunger if he had arrived in Gojam, or near it, for he would then have been in one of the most plentiful countries in the world.
The next reason to prove that Gojam is not Meroë, is, that that island was inclosed between the Astaboras and the Nile, but Gojam is surrounded entirely by the Nile; there is no other river than it that can, or ever did, pass for the Astaboras, whose situation was distant, and which, retaining its ancient name, cannot be mistaken, for it is at this day called Atbara. Again, as the ancients knew Meroë, if Gojam had been Meroë, they must have known the fountains of the Nile; and this we are sure they did not.
On the other hand, Pliny says, Meroë, the most considerable of all the islands of the Nile, is called Astaboras, from the name of its left channel—"Circa clarissimam earum Meroën, Astabores lævo alveo dictus;[2]" which cannot describe any other place than the confluence of those two rivers, the Nile and Atbara. The same author says farther, that the sun is vertical twice a year, once when proceeding northward heenters
