sensible change, how can it for a moment be supposed that a period of a thousand years, which elapsed between the Deluge and the early part of that king's reign, would suffice for the formation of the whole Delta? Remarks which apply with still greater force to Pelusium, Taposiris, and Canopus, which actually stood upon the sea shore: for, as the learned Bochart justly observes, since the Egyptians themselves reported the Tanitic Mouth, and the towns of Busiris, Taphosiris, Butus, and Pelusium, to have existed even in the early time of Osiris and Horus, they must have known them not to be of recent date; and Homer allows Menelaus to have come to Canopus. And that Tanis was already built in the age of Remeses the Great, we have evidence from the sculptured monuments now existing in its ruins, in addition to the positive authority of Scripture, Moses himself assuring us that it was founded long before the Exodus, seven years after the town of Hebron.†

It is, then, evident that neither was the period elapsed between the Deluge and the building of Tanis sufficient to form the Delta, nor the constant accumulation of the alluvial deposit of the Nile capable of making so perceptible a change in the extent of that district, as to authorise us to suppose the upper parts of the country peopled and civilised, while the Delta was a marsh; how

*Bochart's Sacra, lib. iv. c. 24.

+ Numbers, xiii. 22. 'Hebron was built seven years before Zoan.' It already existed in the days of Abraham. And Sarah died in Kirjatharba: the same is Hebron.' Gen. xxiii. 2. conf. Josh. xv. 13. and Judg. i. 10.

much less then can we suppose Ethiopia to have been already inhabited by the ancestors of the future colonisers of Egypt, while that part of the valley lying below the cataracts of Syene was undergoing its formation?

Much consequence has been attached to an expression of Homer, that "the distance from the Isle of Pharos to Ayurтos was as much as a vessel with a fair wind could perform in one day;" and this is constantly adduced as a decisive proof of the great accumulation of alluvial soil in the Delta", and of its rapid advances into the Mediterranean, since the era of the Trojan war. But a very imperfect acquaintance with the situation of the Isle of Pharos, and the nature of the ground on which Alexandria is built, ought to have prevented so erroneous a conclusion; and if we readily account for the misconstruction of the Αιγυπτου προπαροιθε τ of the poet, we are surprised at the notion which extends the river and its alluvial deposit over the space between the Canopic mouth and the Pharos, hitherto unwashed by the fertilising waters of the rising Nile. And if a certain deposit does take place in the harbour of Alexandria, it is very trifling, and by no means capable of having united Pharos to the shore, which was done artificially by means of the Heptastadium, whose increased breadth, owing to many subsequent additions, now forms the base of the chief part of the modern city.

Plutarch de Iside. s. 40.

Ancient

† Odyss. A. 355. By the harbour and fresh water at the I. of Pharos, Homer evidently alludes to the site of the modern Alexandria, close to the island.

Alexandria, the successor of the town of Racôtis stood on the rock of the Libyan desert, which is still beyond the reach and above the level of the inundation; and the distance from the line of the coast to Pharos is the same as in the days of Homer. The error respecting its having been a day's journey from Egypt originated in the misinterpretation of the word AyoTTos, which is used by the poet to designate both the Nile and Egypt; and that the river was so called in ancient times is testified by the authority of Diodorus, who states that Nileus, one of the early monarchs* of the country, transferred his name to the stream, "which previously bore that of Ægyptus."+ Arriant again justly observes, that "the river, now called by the Egyptians and others Nile, is shown by Homer to have been named Ægyptus, when he relates§ that Menelaus anchored his fleet at the mouth of the Ægyptus ;" and the bare inspection of the verse to which he alludes suffices to prove his remark to be correct. It is, then, to the Nile, not to the coast of Egypt, that Homer alludes: and thus the argument derived from his authority must cease to be brought forward in support of the great encroachments of the Delta, and

* Diodorus places him as the predecessor of Chembres, who erected the great pyramid.

Manetho says Egypt took its name from Sethosis, who was also called Ægyptus, and was brother of Armaïs. Josephus contra Ap. lib. i. c. 15. Aulus Gellius tells us Egypt was formerly named Aeria. (xiv. 6.) Arr. Exped. Alex. lib. v. and lib. vi.

Odyss. A. 477. and E. 257.:

• Πεμπταιοι δ' Αιγυπτον ευρῥει την ἱκόμεσθα,

Στησα δ' εν Αιγυπτῳ ποταμῳ νέας αμφιελισσας :

of the constant advance of the land into the receding sea.

To any person who has examined the levels of the alluvial deposit of the Nile in various parts of its course, as from the first cataract to its mouth at Rosetta*, it is well known that the perpendicular stratum of soil, if I may so call it, decreases in thickness as it approaches the sea; and thus at Elephantine the land has been raised about nine feet in 1700 years, at Thebes about seven, and so on, gradually diminishing to the mouth. There, indeed, the deposit is lessened in a very remarkable degree, much more than in the same decreasing ratio, in consequence of the greater extent of the land, east and west, over which the inundation spreads; so that, in a section representing the accumulated soil and the level of the low Nile, the angle of inclination would be much smaller from the fork of the Delta to the sea, than from the Thebaid to the Delta. And this is satisfactorily proved by the increase of the banks and the surface of the country at Elephantine, Thebes, Heliopolis, the vicinity of old Cairo, and other places, where the positions of ancient monuments attest the former levels of the land's surface, and enable us to ascertain the increase within a known period. Around the base of the obelisk at Heliopolis, erected by Osirtasen I. about 1700 years before our era, the alluvial soil has accumulated to the height of five feet ten

The banks during the low Nile are upwards of 30 feet high in parts of Nubia, in middle Egypt 20, and decrease as they are nearer the mouth.

inches*; and, comparing this with Elephantine, we shall find that a monument placed there at the same period would have been buried to the depth of about nineteen feet. Heliopolis stood to the south of the Delta; and the diminution northwards, for every mile, in an expanse of increasing breadth, must have been proportionably greater as it approached the sea, till at the shore it became almost imperceptible, even after the lapse of many ages.

Having endeavoured to show that no argument can be derived from the appearance of the Delta, to favour the supposition of this district having been formed at a period when the upper part of the country was already inhabited, it is necessary to observe that I limit my remarks exclusively to the Nile, whose nature is very different from that of most rivers, and particularly those whose deltas have been created and rapidly increased by materials brought down by their waters, and deposited at their mouths. These, consisting of trees and other vegetable productions, have tended to form here and there a nucleus for the construction of islands, afterwards connected with the mainland, and consolidated by alluvial deposit and fresh materials constantly adhering to them; but this peculiarity is totally unknown at the mouth of the Egyptian Nile.

It is not my present intention to enter into any speculation upon the formation of the alluvial land

In my Egypt and Thebes (p. 313.) I have said 'between seven and eight feet. This was from information I received at Cairo, and, suspecting it to be erroneous, I sent to have it ascertained, and found it to be as stated above.