THE GRADUAL ELEVATION OF THE COUNTRY. 393 



did not consider himself justified in applying this estimate to 

 particular cases, even if he had been satisfied with the evidence 

 on which it rested. He preferred to examine the accumula- 

 tion which had taken place round monuments of known age, 

 and selected two namely, the obelisk at Heliopolis, and the 

 statue of Eameses II. in Memphis. " The obelisk is believed 

 to have been erected 2300 years B.C., and adding 1850, the 

 year when the observation was made (June 1851, i.e., before 

 the inundation of that year), we have 4150 years in which the 

 eleven feet of sediment were deposited, which is at the rate of 

 3 '18 inches in a century."* But Mr. Homer himself admits 

 that "entire reliance cannot be placed on this conclusion, 

 principally because it is possible that the site originally chosen 

 for the temple and city of Heliopolis was a portion of land 

 somewhat raised above the level of the rest of the desert." 

 He relies, therefore, principally on the evidence supplied by 

 the colossal statue in Memphis. In this case the present 

 surface is 10 feet 6f inches above the base of the platform on 

 which the statue stood. Assuming that the platform was 

 sunk 14f inches below the surface of the ground at the time 

 it was laid, we have a depth of sediment from the present 

 surface to that level of 9 feet 4 inches. Eameses is supposed 

 by Lepsius to have reigned between 1394 and 1328 B.C., which 

 would give an antiquity of 3215 years, and consequently a 

 mean increase of 3J inches in a century. Having thus ob- 

 tained an approximate measure of the rate of deposit in that 

 part of the Nile valley, Mr. Horner dug several pits to a con- 

 siderable depth, and in one of them, close to the statue and 

 at the depth of 39 feet, a piece of pottery was found, which 

 upon the above data would indicate an antiquity of about 

 13,000 years. 



In many other excavations pieces of pottery and other indi- 

 cations of man were found at even greater depths, but it must, 



* Horner, Phil. Trans. 1858, p. 73. 



