“And upon another gate, near the cathedral, is a head of Hannibal, cut in stone. From hence, if you mount still higher up the rock, you come to an amphitheatre, which has twenty-six rows of seats one above another, all cut in the rock; and in the other parts the arches are so thick and strong, that they are little inferior to the rock itself. There are remains of prodigious aqueducts, and numbers of vast cisterns under ground. As this country has been celebrated by Titus Livius, and Polybius, for its fertility, I shall take notice of one or two of its productions, which are peculiar to it. First then, the winter figs, which Pliny speaks of, are to be met with in great perfection at this day; and are almost as remarkable for their flavour and sweetness, as for their hanging upon the trees in the middle of the winter. Their pears also have a higher reputation than any others. There are cherry-trees that are full of fine fruit in January: and in a place near Canet, about half a league off, they raised a melon that weighed thirty pounds[198].” NO. XXIII.—SAIS. Sais stands on the eastern side of the Nile, near the place where a canal, passing across the Delta, joins the Pelusiac with the Canopic branch of the Nile. It was the metropolis of Lower Egypt; and its inhabitants were, originally, an Athenian colony. At this place there was a temple dedicated to Minerva, who is supposed to be the same as Isis, with the following inscription:—“I am whatever hath been, and is, and shall be; no mortal hath yet pierced through the veil that shrouds me.” In this city Osiris is said to have been buried. “They have a tomb at Sais,” says Herodotus, “of a certain personage, whom I do not think myself permitted to specify. It is behind the Temple of Minerva, and is continued by the whole length of the wall of that building: around this are many large obelisks, near which is a lake, whose banks are lined with stone. It is of a circular form, and, I should think, as large as that of Delos, which is called Trochoeides.” To name this “personage” seems to have been an act carefully to be avoided. How very sacred the ancients deemed their mysteries appears from the following passage in Apollonius Rhodius:— “To Samothrace, Electra’s isle, they steer: That there, initiated in rights divine, Safe might they sail the navigable brine. But Muse, presume not of those rights to tell. Farewell, dread isle, dire deities, farewell! Let not my verse these mysteries explain; To name is impious, to reveal profane.” In this temple (that of Minerva) Herodotus informs us the inhabitants buried their princes; and in the area before it stood a large marble edifice, magnificently adorned with obelisks in the shape of palm-trees, with various other ornaments. This temple was erected by Amasis, who was a native of Sais.[199]