When Egypt was at last opened to Greek trade and enterprise in the time of the twenty-sixth dynasty it was still the Kanôpic arm of the Nile towards which their vessels had to steer. Nowhere else were they allowed to land their goods or sail up the sacred stream of the Nile. If stress of weather drove them to some other part of the coast, they were forced to remain there till the wind permitted them to sail to Kanôpos or to send their goods in native boats by the same route. From time immemorial the coast of the Delta had been carefully guarded against the piratical attacks of the barbarians of the north. Watch-towers and garrisons were established at fitting intervals along it, which were under the charge of a special officer. The mouth of the Kanôpic branch of the river was guarded with more than usual care, and here was the custom-house through which all foreign goods had to pass.
Kanôpos, from which the arm of the river took its name, was a small but wealthy city. It was called in Egyptian Peguath, sometimes also Kah-n-Nub, “the soil of gold” from the yellow sand on which it was built, though Greek vanity believed that this name had been given to it from Kanôbos, the pilot of Menelaos, whose tomb was of course discovered there. In later days, when Alexandria had absorbed its commerce and industry, it became, along with the outlying Zephyrion, a fashionable Alexandrine suburb. It was filled with drinking-shops and chapels, to which the pleasure-loving crowds of Alexandria used to make their way by the canal that united the two cities. The sick came also to seek healing in the temple of Serapis, or to ask the god to tell them the means of cure. The rich, too, had their villas close to the shrine of Aphroditê Arsinoê, on the breezy promontory of Zephyrion, while the rocks on the shore were cut into luxuriously-fitted baths for those who wished to bathe in the sea.
The site of Zephyrion is now occupied by the little village of Abukîr, memorable in the annals of England and France. In 1891 Daninos Pasha made some excavations there which brought to light a few scanty remains of the temple of Aphroditê. The foundations of its walls were found, as well as two limestone sphinxes inscribed with the name of Amon-em-hat IV., and three great statues of red granite, one of them upright, the others seated. The upright figure was that of Ramses II. with a roll of papyrus in his hand; while the other two were female, one of them being a representation of Hont-mâ-Ra, the Pharaoh’s wife. The sphinxes and statues must have been brought from some older building to decorate the shrine of the Alexandrine goddess, and their discoverer believes that the figure of Ramses II. is older even than the age of that monarch, who has usurped it, and that it goes back to the epoch of the twelfth dynasty. Other relics of the temple—fragments of red granite from some gigantic naos, portions of statues, broken sphinxes, and a colossal human foot—strew the rocks at the foot of the promontory whereon Zephyrion stood and bear witness to the intensity of Christian zeal when paganism was abolished in Egypt.