over the land on each side of its course and formed the land of Egypt. In truth, then, Egypt is the gift of the Bahr el-Azrak. The course of the Bahr el-Abyad was traced by Linant in 1827 for about 160 miles from its confluence with the Baḥr el-Azrak. At the point of confluence it measures about 600 yards across, a little farther up it is from three to four miles wide, and during the inundation the distance from side to side is twenty-one miles. In an ordinary season it is about 24 feet deep. The source of the Nile was not discovered by Bruce, but by Captains Grant and Speke and Sir Samuel Baker. Its parents are the Albert Nyanza and Victoria Nyanza Lakes. The fountain-head of the Nile, Victoria Nyanza, is a huge basin, far below the level of the country round about, into which several streams empty themselves. About 200 miles below Kharțûm the united river receives, on the east side, the waters of the Atbara, which rises in the mountains of Abyssinia, and from this point onwards to its embouchure, a distance of about 1,750 miles, the Nile receives no affluent whatever. From Kharțûm to Cairo the Nile falls about 400 yards; its width is about 1,100 yards in its widest part. The course of the Nile has been explored to a length of about 3,500 miles. At Abu Ḥammed the river turns suddenly to the south-west, and flows in this direction until it reaches Donkola, where it again curves to the north. The river enters Nubia, flowing over a ledge of granite rocks which form the third cataract. Under the 22nd parallel N. lat. is the second cataract, which ends a few miles above Wâdi Ḥalfah, and about 180 miles lower down is the first cataract, which ends at Aswân, or Syene, a little above the island of Elephantine. After entering Egypt, the Nile flows in a steady stream, always to the north, and deposits the mud which is the life of Egypt. The breadth of the Nile valley varies from four to ten miles in Nubia, and from fifteen to thirty in Egypt. The width of the strips of cultivated land on each bank of the river in Egypt together is never more than eight or nine miles. In ancient days the Nile poured its waters into the sea by seven mouths; those of Damietta and Rosetta* are now, however, the only two which remain. The Delta is, in its widest part, about ninety miles across from east to west, and the distance of the apex from the sea is also about ninety miles. Many attempts have been made to ascertain the age of Egypt by estimating the annual alluvial deposit; the results, however, cannot be implicitly relied on. The inundation is caused by the descent of the rain which falls on the Abyssinian mountains. The indications of the rise of the river may be seen at the cataracts as early as the beginning of June, and a steady increase goes on until the middle of July, when the increase of water becomes very great. The Nile continues to rise until the middle of September, when it remains stationary for a period of about three weeks, sometimes a little less. In October it rises again, and attains its highest level. From this period it begins to subside, and, though it rises yet once more, and reaches occasionally its former highest point, it sinks steadily until the month of June, when it is again at its lowest level. The modern ceremony of 'Cutting the Dam' of the river takes place generally in the second or third week of August at Fum el-Khalîg, at Cairo. In ancient days the ceremony of cutting the canals was accompanied with great festivities, and great attention was paid to the height of the river in various parts of Egypt, that the cutting might take place at the most favourable time. We learn, on the authority of Seneca, that offerings of gold and other gifts were thrown * The seven mouths were called the Pelusiac, Tanitic, Mendesian, Phatnitic, Sebennytic, Bolbitic, and the Canopic. into the Nile at Phile by the priests to propitiate the divinity of the river. If the height of the inundation is about forty-five feet the best results from agricultural labour are obtained; a couple of feet of water, more or less, is always attended with disastrous results either in the Delta or Upper Egypt. The dykes, or embankments, which kept the waters of the Nile in check, and regulated their distribution over the lands, were, in Pharaonic days, maintained in a state of efficiency by public funds, and, in the time of the Romans, any person found destroying a dyke was either condemned to hard labour in the public works or mines, or to be branded and sent to one of the Oases. If we accept the statements of Strabo, we may believe that the ancient system of irrigation was so perfect that the varying height of the inundation caused but little inconvenience to the inhabitants of Egypt, as far as the results of agricultural labours were concerned, though an unusually high Nile would, of course, wash away whole villages and drown much cattle. If the statements made by ancient writers be compared, it will be seen that the actual height of the inundation is the same now as it always was, and that it maintains the same proportion with the land it irrigates. According to Sir Gardner Wilkinson (Ancient Egypt, II., 431), the cubit measures of the Nilometers ought, after certain periods, to be raised proportionately if we wish to arrive at great accuracy in the measurement of the waters. The level of the land, which always keeps pace with that of the river, increases at the rate of six inches in a hundred years in some places, and in others less. The proof of this is that the highest scale in the Nilometer at the island of Elephantine, which served to measure the inundation in the reigns of the early Roman emperors, is now far below the level of the ordinary high Nile; and the obelisk of Heliopolis, the colossi at Thebes, and other similarly situated monuments, are now washed by the waters of the inundation and imbedded to a certain height in a stratum of alluvial soil which has been deposited around their base. The land about Elephantine and at Thebes has been raised about nine feet in 1,700 years. The usual rise of the river at Cairo is twenty-five feet, at Thebes thirty-eight feet, and at Aswân forty-five feet. The average rate of the current is about three miles per hour. As the river bed rises higher and higher the amount of land covered by the waters of the inundation grows more and more. It is estimated that, if all the land thus watered were thoroughly cultivated, Egypt would, for its size, be one of the richest countries in the world. The ancient Egyptians fully recognized how very much they owed to the Nile, and, in their hymns, they thank the Nile-god in appropriate and grateful terms. Statues of the god are painted green and red, which colours are supposed to represent 1. the colour of the river in June, when it is a bright green, before the inundation; and 2. the ruddy hue which its waters have when charged with the red mud brought down from the Abyssinian mountains. * It is greatly to be hoped that Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff will be enabled to increase the scope of the valuable work which he has done in the Irrigation Department, and to gradually carry out the works necessary to bring into cultivation those districts which are now a wilderness. E EGYPTIAN WRITING. The system of writing employed by the earliest inhabitants of the Valley of the Nile known to us was entirely pictorial, and had much in common with the pictorial writing of the Chinese and the ancient people who migrated into Babylonia from the East. There appears to be no inscription in which pictorial characters are used entirely, for the earliest inscriptions now known to us contain alphabetic characters. Inscriptions upon statues, coffins, tombs, temples, etc., in which figures or representations of objects are employed, are usually termed 'Hieroglyphic' (from the Greek iepoyupukos); for writing on papyri a cursive form of hieroglyphic called 'Hieratic' (from the Greek iepatikos), was employed by the priests, who, at times, also used hieroglyphic; a third kind of writing, consisting of purely conventional modifications of hieratic characters, which preserve little of the original form, was employed for social and business purposes; it is called demotic (from the Greek nuoTIRÓS). The following will show the different forms of the characters in the three styles of writing— |