tery are made to testify to the antiquity of man, is by estimating the length of time requisite for their burial at the alleged depth under the sediment deposited by the overflow of the Nile. "M. Girard, of the French expedition to Egypt, supposed the average rate of the increase of Nile mud in the plain between Assouan and Cairo to be five English inches in a century. This conclusion, according to Mr. Horner, is very vague, and founded on insufficient data; the amount of matter thrown down by the waters in different parts of the plain varying so much that to strike an average with any approach to accuracy must be most difficult. Were we to assume six inches in a century, the burnt brick met with at a depth of sixty feet would be 12,000 years old. "Another fragment of red brick was found by. Linant Bey in a boring seventy-two feet deep, being two or three feet below the level of the Mediterranean, in the parallel of the apex of the delta, 200 metres distant from the river, on the Libyan side of the Rosetta branch. M. Rosière, in the great French work on Egypt,* has estimated the mean rate of deposit of sediment in the delta at two inches and three lines in a century. Were we to take two and a half inches, a work of art seventy * Description de l'Egypt (Histoire Naturelle, tom. ii. p. 494). says Sir Charles Lyell," of chief importance were obtained from two sets of shafts and borings, sunk at intervals in lines crossing the great valley from east to west. One of these consisted of no less than fifty-one pits and artesian perforations made where the valley is sixteen miles wide from side to side, between the Arabian and Libyan deserts, in the latitude of Heliopolis, about eight miles above the apex of the delta. The other line of. borings and pits, twenty-seven in number, was in the parallel of Memphis, where the valley is only five miles broad. "In some instances the excavations were on a large scale for the first sixteen or twenty-four feet, in which cases jars, vases, pots, and a small human figure in burnt clay, a copper knife, and other entire articles were dug up; but when water, soaking through from the Nile, was reached, the boring instrument used was too small to allow of more than fragments of works of art being brought up. Pieces of burnt brick and pottery were extracted almost everywhere, and from all depths, even where they sank sixty feet below the surface toward the central parts of the valley. In none of these cases did they get to the bottom of the alluvial soil.” * The mode in which these pieces of brick and pot * Geological Evidences, etc., pp. 34, 36. tery are made to testify to the antiquity of man, is by estimating the length of time requisite for their burial at the alleged depth under the sediment deposited by the overflow of the Nile. "M. Girard, of the French expedition to Egypt, supposed the average rate of the increase of Nile mud in the plain between Assouan and Cairo to be five English inches in a century. This conclusion, according to Mr. Horner, is very vague, and founded on insufficient data; the amount of matter thrown down by the waters in different parts of the plain varying so much that to strike an average with any approach to accuracy must be most difficult. Were we to assume six inches in a century, the burnt brick met with at a depth of sixty feet would be 12,000 years old. "Another fragment of red brick was found by Linant Bey in a boring seventy-two feet deep, being two or three feet below the level of the Mediterranean, in the parallel of the apex of the delta, 200 metres distant from the river, on the Libyan side of the Rosetta branch. M. Rosière, in the great French work on Egypt,* has estimated the mean rate of deposit of sediment in the delta at two inches and three lines in a century. Were we to take two and a half inches, a work of art seventy * Description de l'Egypt (Histoire Naturelle, tom. ii. p. 494). two feet deep must have been buried more than 30,000 years ago. But if the boring of Linant Bey was made where an arm of the river had been silted up at a time when the apex of the delta was somewhat further south, or more distant from the sea than now, the brick in question might be comparatively very modern." (pp. 37, 38.) It is truly surprising that any author of repute should build such a conclusion on data so imperfect, and involving so many elements of doubt. What assurance have we that these fragments of brick and pottery were actually found in the places alleged? In Egypt, and throughout the East generally, the native population are skilled in the art of furnishing artificial antiques, and will always produce whatever specimens are supposed to be wanted. Or, conceding their genuineness, what evidence is there of a uniform rate of increase in the Nile deposits for so many thousands of years. Lyell himself admits that the Egyptians were "in the habit of inclosing with embankments the areas on which they erected temples, statues, and obelisks, so as to exclude the waters of the Nile," and " Herodotus tells us that in his time those spots from which the Nile waters had been shut out for centuries, appeared sunk, and could be looked down into from the surrounding grounds, which had been raised by the gradual accumulation over them of sediment annually thrown down. If the waters at length should break into such depressions, they must at first carry with them into the inclosure much mud, washed from the steep surrounding banks, so that a greater quantity would be deposited in a few years than perhaps in as many centuries on the great plain outside the depressed area where no such disturbing causes intervened." (pp. 38, 39.) It has been suggested, also, that these fragments may have fallen into wells, or into some of the innumerable fissures into which the soil is rent in the dry season, which are often very deep. The bed' of the Nile itself has often changed its site. "According to an ancient tradition (Herod. ii. 99), Menes, when he founded Memphis, is related to have diverted the course of the Nile, by a dam, about one hundred stadia (12 miles) south of the city, and thus to have dried up the old bed.”* "We know from the testimony of Makrizi, that less than a thousand years ago the Nile flowed close by the western. limits of Cairo, from which it is now separated by a plain extending to the width of more than a mile. In this plain, therefore, one might now dig to the depth of twenty feet or more, and find plenty of fragments of pottery and other remains, less than a thousand * Quarterly Rev., 1859, p. 420. |