" All the information
we possess respecting these maps is derived from Apollonius Rhodius, and
his scholiast: the substance of it is as follows: according to this
poet,--Phineas, king of Colchos, predicted to the Argonauts the events
which would accompany their return. Argus, one of the Argonauts, explained
that prediction to his companions, and told them, that the route which they
must keep was described on tables, or rather on columns, which an Egyptian
conqueror had before left in the city of Oca, the capital of Colchis; on
these columns, the whole extent of the roads, and the limits of the land
and sea were marked out. An ingenious, and by no means an improbable
inference, has been drawn from this circumstance: that if Sesostris left
such columns in a part so remote from Egypt, it is to be supposed that they
were more numerous in Egypt itself. In short, though on a point like this
it is impossible to gain clear and undoubted testimony, we are, upon the
whole, strongly disposed to coincide in opinion with Gibbon, that tradition
has some colour of reason for affirming that the Egyptian colony at Phasis
possessed geographical maps.
After the death of Sesostris, the Egyptians seem to have relapsed into
their former dislike to the sea: they indeed sent colonies into Greece, and
other parts; but these colonists kept up no relation with the mother
country.
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