We need not point out other instances of his ignorance of the country above the Fayyûm. Those which have been already quoted are enough. The summer months which he spent in Egypt were more than fully employed in visiting the wonders of Memphis and the chief cities of the Delta, and in exploring the Fayyûm. Upper Egypt was closed to him, as it was to the rest of his countrymen for many a long day.
But we are now able to trace his journey with some degree of exactness. He must have arrived about the beginning of July at the mouth of the Kanôpic arm of the Nile—the usual destination of Greek ships—and thus have made his way by Hermopolis or Damanhur to the Greek capital Naukratis. There he doubtless hired his Karian dragoman, with whom he sailed away over the inundated land to Sais. But his expedition to Sais was only an excursion, from which he returned to continue his voyage in a direct line past Prosôpitis and the pyramids of Gizeh to Memphis. There he inspected the great temple of Ptah, whom his countrymen identified with their Hephæstos, and from thence he went by water to see the pyramids. It was while he was at Memphis, moreover, that he paid a visit to Heliopolis, with its university and its temple, of which all that is left to-day is the obelisk of Usertesen. Next he made his voyage up the Nile, past the brick pyramids of Dahshûr, to Anysis or Herakleopolis, and from thence to the Fayyûm. Then he returned to Memphis, and then again passing Heliopolis sailed northward to Bubastis and Buto. It was now probably that he made excursions to Paprêmis and Busiris, though our ignorance of the precise situation of these places unfortunately prevents us from being certain of the fact. Eventually he found himself at Daphnæ, on the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. This brought him to Pelusium, where he took ship for Tyre.
Let us follow Herodotos in his Egyptian journey and meet him where he landed at the Kanôpic mouth of the Nile. The place had been known to Greek sailors in days of which tradition alone had preserved a memory. It was here that pirates and traders had raided the fields of the _fellahin_ or exchanged slaves and Ægean vases for the precious wares of Egypt in the age when Achæan princes ruled at Mykenæ and Tiryns. Guided by the island of Pharos, they had made their way a few miles eastward to the mouth of the great river which is called Aigyptos in the _Odyssey_.