 Pelusium lay between the seaboard and the marshes of the Nile Delta, about two-and-a-half miles from the sea.The port was choked by sand as early as the first century BC, and the coastline has now advanced far beyond its ancient limits that the city, even in the third century AD, was at least four miles from the Mediterranean.The principal product of the neighbouring lands was flax, and the "linum Pelusiacum" (Pliny's Natural History xix.