Histories

Thus, then, the shrine is the most marvellous of all the things that I saw in this temple; but of things of second rank, the most wondrous is the island called +Akhmim [31.733,26.566] (inhabited place), Sawhaj, Upper Egypt, Egypt, Africa Khemmis.

This lies in a deep and wide lake near the temple at +Kawm al-Farain [30.733,31.2] (deserted settlement), Kafr ash-Shaykh, Lower Egypt, Egypt, Africa Buto, and the Egyptians say that it floats. I never saw it float, or move at all, and I thought it a marvellous tale, that an island should truly float.

However that may be, there is a great shrine of Apollo on it, and three altars stand there; many palm trees grow on the island, and other trees too, some yielding fruit and some not.

This is the story that the Egyptians tell to explain why the island moves: that on this island that did not move before, Leto, one of the eight gods who first came to be, who was living at +Kawm al-Farain [30.733,31.2] (deserted settlement), Kafr ash-Shaykh, Lower Egypt, Egypt, Africa Buto where this oracle of hers is, taking charge of Apollo from Isis, hid him for safety in this island which is now said to float, when Typhon came hunting through the world, keen to find the son of Osiris.

Apollo and Artemis were (they say) children of Dionysus and Isis, and Leto was made their nurse and preserver; in Egyptian, Apollo is Horus, Demeter Isis, Artemis Bubastis.

It was from this legend and no other that Aeschylus son of Euphorion took a notion which is in no poet before him: that Artemis was the daughter of Demeter. For this reason the island was made to float. So they say.