Beyond and above Heliopolis , Egypt is a narrow land. For it is bounded on the one side by the mountains of Arabia , which run north to south, always running south towards the sea called the Red Sea . In these mountains are the quarries that were hewn out for making the pyramids at Memphis . This way, then, the mountains run, and end in the places of which I have spoken; their greatest width from east to west, as I learned by inquiry, is a two months' journey, and their easternmost boundaries yield frankincense. Such are these mountains. On the side of Libya , Egypt is bounded by another range of rocky mountains among which are the pyramids; these are all covered with sand, and run in the same direction as those Arabian hills that run southward. Beyond Heliopolis , there is no great distance—in Egypt , that is: the narrow land has a length of only fourteen days' journey up the river. Between the aforesaid mountain ranges, the land is level, and where the plain is narrowest it seemed to me that there were no more than thirty miles between the Arabian mountains and those that are called Libyan. Beyond this Egypt is a wide land again. Such is the nature of this country.