NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

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arithmetic, it is evident, that if one thousand sevenhundred of the male children born on the same day withSefoftris were alive when his great expedition commenced,the number of children bom in Egypt on each day of the,ye 3 r must have been at least ten thousand, and the po-pulation of the kingdom must have exceeded sixty millions JGoguet, Origine des Lois, des Arts, &c. torn. ii. P. 12,&c. A number far beyond the bounds of credibility, irta kingdom which, from the accurate calculations of M.D’Anville, Memoire fur FEgypte Anc. et Moderne, p. zj,&c. does not contain more than two thousand one hun-dred square leagues of habitable country. Another marvel-lous particular is the description of a ship of cedar, fourhundred and ninety feet in length, covered on the outsidewith gold, and on the inside with silver, which Sefoftrisconsecrated to the deity who was the chief object of wor-ship at Thebes. Lib. i. p. 67. Such too is the account!he gives of the Egyptian army, in which, beside sixhundred thousand infantry, and twenty-four thousand ca-valry, there were twenty-seven thousand armed chariots.Ibid. p. 64.—4. These and other particulars appeared sofar to exceed the bounds of probability, that the foundunderstanding of Strabo the geographer rejected, withouthesitation, the accounts of the Indian expedition of Se so.stris; and he not only asserts, in the most explicit terms,that this monarch never entered India, lib. xv. p. 1007.C. edit. Cafaub. Amst. 1707; but he ranks what has beenrelated concerning his operations in that country, with thefabulous exploits of Bacchus and Hercules, p. 1007. D.1009. B. The philosophical Historian of Alexander the Greatseems to have entertained the fame sentiments with respectto the exploits of Sefoftris in India. Hist. Ind. c. 9. Arrian,Exped. Alex. edit. Gronov. L. Bat. 1704, — N 7 hat flendefinformation concerning India ^ or its inhabitants j, HerodotuShad received, seems to have been derived, hot from theEgyptians, but from the Persians, lib. iii. c. 105, whichrenders it probable, that in his time there was littleintercourse between Egypt and India.

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