"Naukratis was for a long time the privileged port [in Egypt]
for Grecian commerce with Egypt. No Greek merchant was
permitted to deliver goods in any other part (port), or to
enter any other of the mouths of the Nile except the Kanôpic.
If forced into any of them by stress of weather, he was
compelled to make oath that his arrival was a matter of
necessity, and to convey his goods round by sea into the
Kanôpic branch to Naukratis; and if the weather still forbade
such a proceeding, the merchandise was put into barges and
conveyed round to Naukratis by the internal canals of the
delta. Such a monopoly, which made Naukratis in Egypt
something like Canton in China or Nangasaki in Japan, no
longer subsisted in the time of Herodotus. … At what precise
time Naukratis first became licensed for Grecian trade, we
cannot directly make out. But there seems reason to believe
that it was the port to which the Greek merchants first went,
so soon as the general liberty of trading with the country was
conceded to them; and this would put the date of such grant at
least as far back as the foundation of Kyrene, … about 630
B. C., during the reign of Psammetichus. … [About a century
later, Amasis] sanctioned the constitution of a formal and
organised emporium or factory, invested with commercial
privileges, and armed with authority exercised by presiding
officers regularly chosen. This factory was connected with,
and probably grew out of, a large religious edifice and
precinct, built at the joint cost of nine Grecian cities: four
of them Ionic,—Chios, Teos, Phokæa and Klazomenæ; four
Doric,—Rhodes, Knidus, Halikarnassus, and Phaselis; and one
Æolic,—Mitylene. By these nine cities the joint temple and
factory was kept up and its presiding magistrates chosen; but
its destination, for the convenience of Grecian commerce
generally, seems revealed by the imposing title of The
Hellênion."
_G. Grote,
History of Greece,
part 2, chapter 20._
The site of Naukratis has been determined lately by the
excavations of Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie, begun in 1885, the
results of which are appearing in the publications of the
"Egypt Exploration Fund." The ruins of the ancient city are
found buried under a mound called Nebireh. Its situation was
west of the Canobic branch of the Nile, on a canal which
connected it with that stream.
See EGYPT: B. C. 670-525.
NAULOCHUS, Battle of.
A naval battle fought near Naulochus, on the coast of Sicily,
in which Agrippa, commanding for the triumvir Octavius,
defeated and destroyed the fleet of Sextus Pompeius, B. C. 36.
_C. Merivale,
History of the Romans,
chapter 27._
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