CHAP. IV. VARIATIONS IN THE RISE OF THE NILE. 297 CHAPTER IV. “WHEN MORIS WAS KING," &c.-Chap. 13. 1. Rise of the Nile 16 cubits. 2. Differed in different parts of Egypt. 3. Oldest Nilometer. 4. The lowering of the Nile in Ethiopia by the giving way of the rocks at Silsilis. 5. Ethiopia affected by it, but not Egypt below Silsilis. 6. Other Nilometers and measurements. 7. Length of the Egyptian cubit "When Maris was king," says Herodotus, "the Nile overflowed all 1. Egypt below Memphis, as soon as it rose so little as 8 cubits;" and this, he adds, was not 900 years before his visit, when it required 15 or 16 cubits to inundate the country. But the 16 figures of children (or cubits, Lucian. Rhet. Præc. sec. 6) on the statue of the Nile at Rome show that it rose 16 cubits in the time of the Roman Empire; in 1720, 16 cubits were still cited as the requisite height for irrigating the land about Memphis; and the same has continued to be the rise of the river at old Cairo to this day. For the proportion is always kept up by the bed of the river rising in an equal ratio with the land it irrigates; and the notion of Savary and others that the Nile no longer floods the Delta, is proved by experience to be quite erroneous. This also dispels the gloomy prognostications of Herodotus that the Nile will at some time cease to inundate the land. The Mekeeas pillar at old Cairo, it is true, is calculated to measure 24 cubits, but this number merely implies "completion;" and it has been ascertained by M. Coste that the 24 Cairene cubits are only equal to about 16 or 16 real cubits. The height of the inundation varies of course, as it always did, in different parts of Egypt, being about 40 feet at Asouan, 36 at Thebes, 25 at Cairo, and 4 at the Rosetta and Damietta mouths; and Plutarch gives 28 cubits as the highest rise at Elephantine, 15 at Memphis, and 7 at Xois and Mendes, in the Delta (de Isid. s. 43). The Nilometer at Elephantine is the one seen by Strabo, and used under the Empire, as the rise of the Nile is recorded there in the 35th year of Augustus and in the reigns of other Emperors. The highest remaining scale is 27 cubits; but it has no record of the inundation at that height, 2. 3. 298 66 RISE ABOUT MEMPHIS-NILOMETERS. APP. BOOK II. though Plutarch speaks of 28; and the highest recorded there is of 26 cubits, 4 palms, and 1 digit. This, at the ratio stated by Plutarch, would give little more than 14 at Memphis; but Pliny (v. 9) says the proper rise of the Nile is 16 cubits, and the highest known was of 18 in the reign of Claudius, which was extraordinary and calamitous. Ammianus Marcellinus (22), in the time of Julian, also says, no landed proprietor wishes for more than 16 cubits." The same is stated by El Edrisi and other Arab writers. (See Mém. de l'Acad., vol. xvi. p. 333 to 377; M. Eg. W., p. 279 to 284; and At. Eg. W., vol. iv. p. 27 to 31.) The great staircase of Elephantine extends far above the highest scale, and measures 59 feet, and with the 9 steps of the lower one, the total from the base is nearly 69 feet, while the total of the scales that remain measures only about 21 feet; but the cubits, 27 (KE) marked on the highest, answer to a height of 46 feet 10 inches, which shows that this was reckoned from a lower level than the base of the lowest staircase. From all that has been said it is evident that the change from the time of Moris to Herodotus could not have been what he supposes; and that the full rise of the Nile about Memphis was always reckoned at 16 cubits. The 8 cubits in the time of Moris were either calculated from a different level, or were the rise of the river at some place in the Delta far below Memphis. The oldest Nilometer, according to Diodorus, was erected at Memphis; and on the rocks at Semneh, above the second cataract, are some curious records of the rise of the Nile during the reigns of Amun-m-he III. and other kings of the 12th dynasty, which show that the river does not now rise there within 26 feet of the height indicated in those inscriptions. But this was only a local change, confined to Ethiopia, and the small tract between the first cataract 4. and Silsilis; and it was owing to a giving way of the rocks at Silsilis, which till then had kept up the water of the Nile to a much higher level south of that point. For though the plains of Ethiopia were left without the benefit of the annual inundation, no effect was produced by it in Egypt north of Silsilis, except the passing injury done to the land just below that place by the sudden rush of water at the moment the barrier was burst through. The channel is still very narrow there, being only 1095 feet broad; and tradition pretends that the navigation was in old times impeded by a chain thrown across it by a king of the country, from which the name of Silsil is thought to be derived. But though silsili signifies a "chain" CHAP. IV. NILOMETERS. 299 in Arabic, the name of Silsilis was known long before the Arabs occupied Egypt; and it is not impossible that its Coptic appellation, Golgel, may have been borrowed from the catastrophe that occurred there, and point to an earthquake as its cause; or from a similar word, Golgol, alluding apparently to the many channels worn by the cataracts there, or to the breaking away of the rocks at the time of the fall of the barrier. The change in the level of the Nile was disastrous for Ethiopia, 5. since it left the plains of that hitherto well-irrigated country far above the reach of the annual inundation; and, as it is shown, by the position of caves in the rocks near the Nile, and by the foundation of buildings on the deposit, to have happened only a short time before the accession of the 18th dynasty, it is singular that no mention should have been made of so remarkable an occurrence either by Manetho or any other historian. The narrow strip of land in Nubia and Southern Ethiopia, as well as the broad plains of Dongola, and even some valleys at the edge of the eastern desert, are covered with this ancient deposit. I have seen water-worn rocks that prove the former extent of the annual inundation in spots often very distant from the banks; and even now this soil is capable of cultivation, if watered by artificial irrigation. Though this change did not affect Egypt below Silsilis, it is not impossible that the measurements of Moris may apply to other observations made in his reign in Egypt also; and the discovery of the name of Amun-m-he III. at the Labyrinth by Dr. Lepsius, shows that this was at least one of the kings to whom the name of Moris was ascribed. (See note on ch. 13, B. ii.) Other measurements are mentioned at different 6. times besides those under Moeris and in the days of Herodotus. A Nilometer stood at Eileithyias in the age of the Ptolemies; there was one at Memphis, the site of which is still pointed out by tradition; that of Elephantine remains with its scales and inscriptions recording the rise of the Nile in the reigns of the Roman Emperors; a movable one was preserved in the temple of Sarapis at Alexandria till the time of Constantine, and was afterwards transferred to a Christian church; the Arabs in A.D. 700 erected one at Helwan, which gave place to that made, about 715, by the caliph Suleyman in the Isle of Roda, and this again was succeeded by the "Mekeeas" of Mamoon, A.D. 815, finished in 860 by Motawukkelal-Allah, which has continued to be the government Nilometer to the present day. 6 300 7. LENGTH OF THE EGYPTIAN CUBIT. APP. BOOK II. The length of the ancient Egyptian cubit and its parts may be stated as follows: The cubit in the Turin Museum, according to my measure 527 or 20.7484 ... 20.6250 about 21.0000 Cubit of Elephantine Nilometer, according to Jomard 20.6500 From all which it is evident that they are the same measure, and not two different cubits; and there is nothing to show that the Egyptians used cubits of 24, 28, and 32 digits.1-[G. W.] 1 See Ancient Egyptians, W., vol. iv. p. 31. CHAP. V. HIERATIC AND DEMOTIC WRITING. 301 CHAPTER V. "THEY HAVE TWO QUITE DIFFERENT KINDS OF WRITING, ONE OF WHICH IS CALLED SACRED, THE OTHER COMMON."-Chap. 36. 1. Hieratic and Demotic, the two sorts of letters written from right to left. 2. Hieroglyphics. 3. Three kinds of writing. 4. Hieratic. 5. Demotic, or enchorial. 6. The three characters. 7. First use of demotic. 8. Of sym. bolic hieroglyphics: The ikonographic. 9. The tropical. 10. The enigmatic. 11. Symbolic also put with phonetic hieroglyphics. 12. Determinatives after the word, or name of an object. 13. Initial letters for the whole words, to be called limited initial signs. 14. Distinct from other "mixed signs." 15. Syllabic signs. 16. Medial vowel placed at the end of a word. 17. Earliest use of hieroglyphics. 18. Mode of placing hieroglyphics. 19. First letter of a word taken as a character. 20. Determinative signs. 21. They began with representative signs. 22. The plural number. 23. Abstract ideas. 24. Phonetic system found necessary. 25. Some parts of the verb. 26. Negative sign. 27. Invention of the real alphabetic writing Phoenician. 28. Greek letters. 29. Digamma originally written. 30. Sinaïtic inscriptions not of the Israelites. 31. Tau used for the cross. 32. Materials used for writing upon. 33. The papyrus. THESE two kinds of writing, written, as he says, from right to left, 1. evidently apply to the hieratic and demotic (or enchorial); for though the hieratic was derived from an abbreviated mode of writing hieroglyphics, it was a different character; as the demotic was distinct from the hieroglyphic and the hieratic. The same is stated by Diodorus (i. 81), who says "the children of the priests were taught two different kinds of writing; " . . . . " but the generality of the people learn only from their parents, or relations, what is required for the exercise of their peculiar professions, a few only being taught anything of literature, and those principally the better class of artificers." Herodotus and Diodorus consider the hiero- 2. glyphics merely monumental; but they were not confined to monuments, nor to sacred purposes. Clemens (Strom. v. p. 555) more correctly reckons three kinds of writing: 1, the epistolo- 3. graphic; 2, the hieratic, or sacerdotal; 3, the hieroglyphic, which was an ordinary written character like the other two, and originally the only one. He then divides the hieroglyphic into, 1, kyriologic |