The Story of the Pharaohs A Short History of Ancient Egypt CHAPTER I THE LAND AND ITS EARLY INHABITANTS THE land of Egypt, the home of a civilization which, in many respects, is the most wonderful that the world has ever seen, itself presents characteristics which are sufficiently remarkable, and which account to some extent for the peculiar development of the great race which inhabited it in historic times. Like many lands which have played a great part in the world's history, Egypt is a comparatively small country. Its length, from the Mediterranean to the first cataract of the Nile at Aswan, where Egypt proper ends, covers about 7 degrees of latitude; but its breadth is altogether disproportionate. For the Egypt in which men can live and work is not the rectangular enclosure with which we are familiar in the maps of geographers; it is merely the narrow channel which the Nile has cleft for itself, during the course of ages, through the limestone rock which underlies the soil from a point a little north of the first cataract to the Delta. Egypt has been compared to a lily with a crooked stem; , and the comparison, while perhaps a little fanciful, is not altogether inapt. The crooked stem is the Nile, winding northward in the trench which it is ever digging through the alluvial deposit which it is as constantly renewing. This stem expands, at about a hundred miles from the sea, into the broad blossom of the Delta, which is simply a vast deposit of Nile mud with which the great river has filled up an ancient bay of the Mediterranean; while a little south of the Delta blossom the depression in the Libyan hills known as the Fayum forms a sort of bud upon the stem. From Aswan, where the river breaks through the most northerly of those rocky barriers which form the cataracts and obstruct its progress through Nubia, the Nile flows on, unbroken by either fall or rapid, in a deep and steady stream, whose maximum width is about 1,100 yards, and whose average speed is about three miles an hour. The valley which it has gradually excavated is narrow. At some points it contracts to a breadth of only a mile or two, while its greatest breadth does not exceed thirty miles. It is bordered on the west by the limestone plateau of Libya, from which the desert wastes of the Great Sahara roll away in endless waves of sand; while on the east another line of hills, more rugged and imposing, and rising at some points to a height of 5,000 or 6,000 feet, lies between the river and the Red Sea. This range is cleft by several ravines giving access to the Red Sea littoral, one of which, the Wady Hammamat, was in ancient times the great avenue of Egyptian trade to the south, while its rocky walls furnished one of the sources from which the Pharaohs drew the stone required for their vast building operations. By this pass, also, they obtained access to those parts of the eastern hills which yielded gold and other precious metals. The two ranges of hills terminate in escarpments, whose average height is from 600 to 1,000 feet; and between 2980 these rocky walls there lies on either side of the river the narrow strip of alluvial soil which is really the land of Egypt. Between the 29th and 30th degrees of north latitude the western wall recedes, forming the depression of the Fayum already mentioned; while a little above the 30th degree the mountains on both sides of the river terminate, and the broad expanse of the Delta begins. A sharp division is thus drawn between the two parts of the country. The narrow valley of Upper Egypt is quite distinct from the broad flats of the Delta, and this division was, as we shall see, reflected in the history of the nation from its earliest period, and has left its traces in the terms which the Egyptians applied to their country. The King of Egypt was 'Lord of the Two Lands,' Upper and Lower Egypt, the Nile Valley and the Delta. He wore at times the White Crown of Upper Egypt, and on other occasions the Red Crown of Lower Egypt; while, to complete the insignia of royalty, both were combined to form the curious double crown so often represented on the monuments. Thus, also, in the earlier history of the nation, each division had its own system of government, with its own Treasury department and staff-the Red House of the Treasury for the Delta, and the White House for Upper Egypt; and though this division passed away as the government became more centralized, the traces of it still lingered in the titles of some of the great officials. Owing to its peculiar configuration, the land of Egypt was singularly isolated. On the east and west the deserts practically cut it off from intercourse with other peoples. On the south, intercourse with the Nubian tribes, though practicable enough, was restricted in volume by the cataracts, and was always carefully regulated by the government. Only on the north-western and north-eastern ? edges of the Delta did there exist open channels of communication, with the Libyans on the one hand, and with the Semites of Syria on the other; and it was from these points that most of the outside influences which told upon the Egyptian nation were always exerted, and from them that war and conquest occasionally threatened the land. Further, the length and narrowness of the country tended to accentuate the individuality of the various districts. The inhabitants of any given district had neighbours only on two sides of them, and these the shortest boundaries of their territory. Accordingly, centralized government was always more or less difficult, and there was a constant tendency towards division into various petty principalities; while the seat of government repeatedly shifted as the chiefs of one or other of the principalities rose into power sufficient to enable them to assert a temporary dominion over the whole land. Thus Egypt had various capitals at various stages of her long history, the seat of government being now at Memphis, now at Thebes, or, again, at Sais; while her various dynasties were named by her historian, Manetho, after the towns or principalities from which they sprang. All this would appear to suggest a land naturally most unfitted to take a great place in the history of the world. But the disadvantages of Egypt's peculiar configuration were more than atoned for by her remarkable advantages. Of these, the chief were the extraordinary fertility of her soil and the equableness of her climate. Egypt is an almost rainless land. Rain, indeed, is not uncommon in the region of the Delta, and even in the upper valley occasional showers occur; but for by far the greater part of the year rain is unknown. This seeming disadvantage is, however, amply compensated by the annual inundation caused by the rising of the Nile. This great river receives during its long course of nearly 4,000 miles only two 2980 tributaries of any importance. The main stream, or White Nile, is joined at Khartum by the Blue Nile, while its volume is again increased somewhat further north by the influx of the Atbara. Swollen by the rains which fall in February in the lake district of the Equator, the volume of the main stream is further reinforced by the floods which the Blue Nile and the Atbara bring down from the melting snows of the Abyssinian hills; and these floods carry in suspension an enormous amount of earthy matter. The river begins to rise in June; by the middle of July it has reached flood-height; and whenever the depth of water is judged sufficient to submerge the land adequately, the sluices of the dykes which regulate the inundation are opened, and the water spreads over the low lands, gradually submerging them until it reaches the edge of the desert. Egypt is then one sheet of turbid water spreading between two lines of rock and sand, flecked with green and black spots where there are towns or where the ground rises, and divided into irregular compartments by raised roads connecting the villages.' In September the flood begins to subside, and though. there is sometimes a fresh rise in October, it does not last for long, and by December the river has once more resumed the limits of its natural channel. But in its fall it has left behind it the earthy deposit which its tributaries brought down from the Abyssinian hills, and the land, its surface thus annually renewed by the life-giving river, seems almost inexhaustible in its fertility. Egypt has thus, from time immemorial, been capable of supporting a population out of all proportion to its area. The habitable land of the country does not greatly exceed 10,000 square miles-a rather less area than that of Belgium; but at the present time it supports a population of about 9,000,000 souls, and even in Roman times the population was not less than 7,000,000-numbers which |