STRABO

...occupies a width of three hundred stadia continuously, starting from the borders of Ethiopia and extending to the vertex of the Delta. It resembles, therefore, a long, stretched-out bandage The original Greek text here is considered corrupt; "bandage" is a suggested interpretation of the manuscript "κειρία", excluding the more extensive diversions. The mountains on both sides, which run down from the regions around Syene to the Egyptian Sea, create this shape of the river-land and the country. For as far as these mountains extend and remain separated from each other, to that extent the river is also compressed, flows out, and shapes the inhabited land in various ways. Beyond the mountains, for a long distance, the land is uninhabited.

5. The ancients mostly relied on conjecture, but those who came later and became eyewitnesses realized that the Nile is filled by summer rains that drench Upper Ethiopia, especially in the outermost mountains, and that the flood gradually subsides when the rains cease. This became most evident to those who sail the Arabian Gulf as far as the cinnamon-bearing region, and to those sent out for the hunting of elephants, and if any other needs urged the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt to send men there. These kings cared for such matters, especially the one surnamed Philadelphus.