2.24.1
If, after having condemned the opinions proposed, I must indicate what I myself think about these obscure matters, I shall say why I think the Nile floods in the summer. During the winter, the sun is driven by storms from his customary course and passes over the inland parts of Libya.
2.24.2
For the briefest demonstration, everything has been said; for whatever country this god is nearest, or over, it is likely that that land is very thirsty for water and that the local rivers are dried up.
ch. 25
2.25.1
A lengthier demonstration goes as follows. In its passage over the inland parts of Libya, the sun does this: as the air is always clear in that region, the land warm, and the winds cool, the sun does in its passage exactly as it would do in the summer passing through the middle of the heaven:
2.25.2
it draws the water to itself, and having done so, expels it away to the inland regions, and the winds catch it and scatter and dissolve it; and, as is to be expected, those that blow from that country, the south and the southwest, are the most rainy of all winds.
2.25.3
Yet I think that the sun never lets go of all of the water that it draws up from the Nile yearly, but keeps some back near itself. Then, as the winter becomes milder, the sun returns to the middle of the heaven, and after that draws from all rivers alike.
2.25.4
Meanwhile, the other rivers are swollen to high flood by the quantity of water that falls into them from the sky, because the country is rained on and cut into gullies; but in the summer they are low, lacking the rain and being drawn up too by the sun.
2.25.5
But the Nile, being fed by no rain, and being the only river drawn up by the sun in winter, at this time falls far short of the height that it had in summer; which is but natural; for in summer all other waters too and not it alone are attracted to the sun, but in the winter it alone is afflicted.
ch. 26
2.26.1
I am convinced, therefore, that the sun is the cause of this phenomenon. The dryness of the air in these parts is also caused by the sun, in my opinion, because it burns its way through it; hence, it is always summer in the inland part of Libya.
2.26.2
But were the stations of the seasons changed, so that the south wind and the summer had their station where the north wind and winter are now set, and the north wind was where the south wind is now—if this were so, the sun, when driven from mid-heaven by the winter and the north wind, would pass over the inland parts of Europe as it now passes over Libya, and I think that in its passage over all Europe it would have the same effect on the Ister as it now does on the Nile.
ch. 27
2.27.1
And as to why no breeze blows from the river, this is my opinion: it is not natural that any breeze blow from very hot places; breezes always come from that which is very cold.
ch. 28
2.28.1
Let this be, then, as it is and as it was in the beginning. But as to the sources of the Nile, no one that conversed with me, Egyptian, Libyan, or Greek, professed to know them, except the recorder of the sacred treasures of Athena in the Egyptian city of Saïs.
2.28.2
I thought he was joking when he said that he had exact knowledge, but this was his story. Between the city of Syene in the Thebaid and Elephantine, there are two hills with sharp peaks, one called Crophi and the other Mophi.
2.28.3
The springs of the Nile, which are bottomless, rise between these hills; half the water flows north towards Egypt, and the other half south towards Ethiopia.
2.28.4
He said that Psammetichus king of Egypt had put to the test whether the springs are bottomless: for he had a rope of many thousand fathoms' length woven and let down into the spring, but he could not reach to the bottom.
