The Kanôpic arm of the Nile has long since been filled up, and the _fellah_ ploughs his field or the water-fowl congregate in the stagnant marsh where Greek trading ships once sailed. But a large part of the marsh is now in process of being reclaimed, and the engineers who have been draining and washing it have come across many traces of the ancient Kanôpos. It lay to the east of Zephyrion, between the shore and the marshy lake.
Though the journey from Alexandria to Abukîr must now be undertaken in a railway carriage and not in a barge, it is still pleasant in the early autumn. We pass through fertile gardens and forests of fig-trees, past groves of palm with rich clusters of red dates hanging from them, while the cool sea-breeze blows in at the window, and the clear blue sky shines overhead. But instead of temples and taverns we find at the end of our journey nothing but sand and sea-shells, broken monuments, and a deserted shore.
The vessel in which Herodotos must have gone from Kanôpos to Naukratis was probably native rather than Greek. It would have differed in one important respect from the Nile-boats of to-day. Its sail was square, not triangular like the modern lateen sails which have been introduced from the Levant. But in other respects it resembled the vessels which are still used on the Nile. Part of the deck was covered with the house in which the traveller lived, and which was divided into rooms, and fitted up in accordance with the ideas of the day. Awnings protected it from the sun, and the sides of the boat as well as the rudder were brilliantly painted.
On the way to Naukratis the voyager passed Hermopolis, the modern Damanhur, a name which is merely the old Egyptian _Dema n Hor_, or “City of Horus.” It is not surprising, therefore, that Herodotos refers to the city, though the statement he makes in regard to it is not altogether correct. All the dead ibises of Egypt, he says, were carried to Hermopolis to be embalmed and buried. Such might have been the case on the western side of the Delta, but it was true only of that limited district. There was another Hermopolis in the east of the Delta, called Bah in ancient Egyptian, Tel el-Baqlîyeh in modern times, where a large burial-place of the sacred ibises was discovered by the _fellahin_ six or seven years ago. Tel el-Baqlîyeh is the second station on the line of railway from Mansurah to Abu Kebîr, and from it have come the bronze ibises and ibis-heads which have filled the shops of the Cairene dealers in antiquities. The bronzes were found among the multitudinous mummies of the sacred bird, like the bronze cats in the cemetery of the sacred cat at Bubastis. Bah was, in fact, the holy city of the “nome of the Ibis.” The mound of the old city has now been almost demolished by the hunter for _antikas_, but Dr. Naville noticed some fragments of inscribed stone in the neighbouring village which led him to believe that Nektanebo II. once intended to erect a temple here to Thoth.