GEOGRAPHY, 17. 1. 3-4

...country, and when the Nilometer registered only twelve cubits, the crop was the largest, and once, when it registered only eight cubits, no one felt hunger. Such is the organization of Egypt original: "Aegypt"; but let me now describe the things that come next in order.

4. The Nile flows from the Ethiopian boundaries towards the north in a straight line to the district called "Delta," and then, being "split at the head," as Plato says Reference to Plato's Timaeus 21 E, the Nile makes this place as it were the vertex of a triangle. The sides of the triangle are formed by the streams that split in either direction and extend to the sea—the one on the right to the sea at Pelusium and the other on the left to the sea at Canopus and the neighboring Heracleium, as it is called—and the base is formed by the coastline between Pelusium and Heracleium. An island, therefore, has been formed by the sea and the two streams of the river; and it is called Delta on account of the similarity of its shape; and the district at the vertex has been given the same name because it is the beginning of the above-mentioned figure; and the village there is also called Delta. Now these are two mouths of the Nile, of which one is called Pelusiac and the other Canopic or Heracleiotic; but between these there are five other outlets, those at least that are worth mentioning, and several that are smaller; for, beginning with the first parts of the Delta, many branches of the river have been split off throughout the whole island and have formed many streams and islands, so that the whole Delta has become navigable—canals on canals having been cut, which are...