fontes historiae nubiorum - Digitalt - Universitetet i Bergen

Fontes Historiae Nubiorum II
became attached to the library of Alexandria in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus,
is his source here as well.
Text
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Translation
.tyrci)y Katvorpa.
The ancients understood, mostly by guessing, as later generations by becoming
eyewitnesses, that the Nile is filled by summer rains when Upper Aithiopia is
being deluged, especially in the most distant mountains; and when the rains
cease, the flooding gradually ceases. This became particularly evident to those
who sailed on the Arabian Gulf as far as the Cinnamon-producing country and
to those who were sent out to hunt elephants, or whenever some other needs
urged the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt to detach men thither. For these kings took
an interest in such things, in particular Ptolemy surnamed Philadelphus, who
favoured research and because of his frail body always sought to find some distractions
and novel amusements.
{TH}
Comments
Strabo here discusses the problem of the inundation of the Nile and presents
the views of a number of writers on it, presumably as a result of literary research
he had conducted before he accompanied his protector Aelius Gallus,
Prefect of Egypt, on his Nile voyage (cf. Honigmann 1931, 91 and see FHN III,
187). The knowledge conveyed by the above-quoted passage, which probably de-
rives from Eratosthenes' lost work (see Introduction to source), reflects the discoveries
made by the explorers of the early Hellenistic period who visited
Aithiopia in the course of the first half of the 3rd century BC. The ancient Egyptians
did not see any causal connection between the rains in Aithiopia and the
Nile inundation; it is only Taharqo's inscription from Year 6 (see FHN I, 22 9)
that comes close to an association of the two as coincidental phenomena (cf.
Zivie 1983, 204). Herodotus denied altogether the occurrence of rain in Aithiopia
(2.20-22). Strabo, however, believes that the fact that "the summer rains are
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