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ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
Alexandria, long from west to the rising of the sun, is girdled on the south by the mouths of the Nile, on the north by Lake Mareotis, whose harbor, more difficult than the rest, is, as it were, in the form of a human body: more capacious at the head itself and in its anchorage, but narrower at the jaws, where it receives the passage of the sea and of ships, to which certain aids for breathing are supplied for the harbor. When one has passed the narrows and the mouth of the harbor, then, like the remaining form of the body, the expanse of the sea stretches far and wide.
On the right of this harbor there is a small island, on which is the Pharos, that is, a very great tower, burning at night with the torches of its flames, lest sailors, deceived by the darkness, dash upon the rocks and be unable to grasp the threshold of the entrance—which entrance is itself always restless with the waves clashing from this side and that. But the harbor is always calm, having a breadth of thirty stadia. To those entering the city from the Egyptian side, on the right there meets a church in which the blessed evangelist Mark rests, whose body is buried in the eastern part of that same church before the altar, with a memorial of squared marble set above it.
Around the Nile the Egyptians are wont to make frequent embankments against the inrush of the waters, which, if by chance they are broken through the negligence of the keepers, do not irrigate but overwhelm the lands lying below; and those who dwell in the lowlands of Egypt make houses for themselves above the streams of the waters, placing them upon crosswise beams. XVIIII. ON CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE BASILICA IN IT WHICH CONTAINS THE CROSS OF THE LORD. Constantinople is girdled on every side except the north by the sea, which extends from the Great Sea for sixty miles up to the city wall, and from the city wall up to the mouths of the Danube for forty miles; with the circuit of its walls angular along the line of the sea, it encompasses twelve miles.
Constantine at first arranged to build this city in Cilicia by the sea which divides Asia and Europe; but one night all the iron tools, when men were sent to seek them, were found in the part of Europe where the city itself now stands. For there the will of God was understood that it should be made. In this city there is a basilica of wondrous workmanship, which is called Holy Sophia, of round design, both constructed from the foundations and vaulted, encircled by three walls and supported by great columns, and raised aloft by arches.
Its inner chamber, in its northern part, has a great and very beautiful cabinet, in which a wooden chest, covered also with a wooden lid, contains three particles of the Lord's cross, namely a long beam cut into two parts, and the crossbeam of the same holy cross. These are brought forth for the people to venerate only on three days in the year, that is, on the Lord's Supper (Maundy Thursday), on Good Friday, and on Holy Saturday. On the first of these, that chest is uncovered together with the holy cross and set upon a golden altar two cubits in height and one in breadth. And the emperor, approaching first, then all the orders of the laity in turn, venerate and kiss the holy cross.
On the following day the empress and all the matrons and virgins do the same; on the third day likewise the bishops and all the orders of the clergy do the same; and thus the chest, closed again, is carried back to the aforesaid cabinet. But as long as it remains open upon the altar, a wondrous fragrance fills the whole church. For from the knots of the holy wood a fragrant liquor, like oil, flows forth, of which, if even a small particle should touch one, it heals every sickness. These things concerning the holy places I have set forth as I was able, following the trustworthiness of the histories, and chiefly the dictation of Arculf, bishop of Gaul, which Adamnan, a priest most learned in the Scriptures, describing in a wordy discourse, comprised in three little books.
Indeed, the aforementioned prelate, out of desire for the holy places, leaving his homeland, went to the land of promise; he tarried some months at Jerusalem, and, using as both guide and interpreter a veteran monk named Peter, he surveyed with eager attention all things round about that he had desired. He also traversed Alexandria, Damascus, Constantinople, and Sicily. But when he wished to revisit his homeland, the ship in which he was carried, after many windings, was borne by a contrary wind to our island, that is, of the Britons; and at last he himself, after not a few perils, coming to the aforesaid venerable man Adamnan, by recounting both his journey and the things he had seen, taught him to be the writer of a most beautiful history.
From which work, plucking out certain things and comparing them with the writings of the ancients, we transmit them to you to be read, beseeching you in all things that you take care to temper for yourself the labor of the present age, not by the leisure of wanton torpor, but by the zeal of reading and prayer.