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For the rest of this chapter cf. E. Sparig, Herodot's Angaben über die Nilländer oberhalb Syene's, Halle, 1889. He seems clearly right in identifying Tachompso with Djerar, an island south of Dakkeh, some 78 (Murray, p. 519 and map) miles from Syene; H. here, as usual, reckons the σχοῖνος at 60 stades (cf. Strabo, 804, and 6. 1 n.), which gives about 80 miles for the distance. This was the natural boundary of the two nations (§ 4); just below Djerar was Hierasykaminos, the southern limit of Egypt under the Ptolemies. H. makes no distinction between the first cataract, which begins just below Philae, and the Nile above it.

Others, however (e.g. Wiedemann), wrongly identify Tachompso with Philae; Strabo (818) calls Philae κοινὴ κατοικία Αἰθιόπων καὶ Αἰγυπτίων. σχοῖνος is then explained as the space a man could tow before being relieved, i.e. about 500 yards; cf. Jerome (on Joel iii. 18) ‘In Nilo solent naves funibus trahere, certa habentes spatia, quae appellant funiculos’. But this identification of Tachompso with Philae is not what H. says, and it leaves his ‘four days’ quite unexplained. The distance from Syene to Philae could really be done in rather more than five hours, but perhaps the boatmen demanded such a fee of H. that he imagined it must mean a four days' journey. At all events he never went up the cataract.

There is no lake either at Philae or at Djerar; but the Nile widens out above Philae, and at various places south of that island.

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