UNWRITTEN HISTORY. 335 



accumulation of the shells and skeletons of its denizens gave rise to 

 the ooze, which has since hardened into chalk and nummulitic lime- 

 stone. And it is quite certain that the whole of the area now occupied 

 by Egypt, north of Esneh, and probably all that north of Assouan, 

 was covered by tolerably deep sea during the cretaceous epoch. It is 

 also certain that a great extent of dry land existed in South Africa at 

 a much earlier period. How far it extended to the north is unknown, 

 but it may well have covered the area now occupied by the great lakes 

 and the basins of the White and Blue Niles. And it is quite possible 

 that these rivers may have existed and may have poured their waters 

 into the Northern Ocean, before the elevatory movement possibly 

 connected with the outpour of the huge granitic masses of the Arabian 

 range and of Nubia commenced, which caused the calcareous mud 

 covering its bottom to become the dry land of what is now the south- 

 ern moiety of Upper Egypt, some time toward the end of the creta- 

 ceous epoch. Middle and Northern Egypt remained under water dur- 

 ing the eocene, and Northern Egypt during the commencement, at any 

 rat 2, of the miocene epoch ; so that the process of elevation seems to 

 have taken effect from south to north at an extremely slow rate. The 

 northward drainage of the equatorial catchment basin thus became cut 

 off from the sea by a constantly increasing plain sloping to the north. 

 And, as the plain gradually rose, the stream, always flowing north, 

 scooped the long valley of Nubia and of Egypt, and probably formed 

 a succession of deltas which have long since been washed away. At 

 last, probably in the middle, or the later part, of the miocene epoch, 

 the elevatory movement came to an end, and the gulf of the delta 

 began to be slowly and steadily filled up with its comparatively mod- 

 ern alluvium. 



Thus, paradoxical as the proposition may sound, the Nile is not 

 only older than its gift, the alluvial soil of Egypt, but it may be vastly 

 older than the whole land of Egypt ; and the river has shaped the 

 casket in which the gift lies out of materials laid by the sea at its feet 

 in the days of its youth. 



The fourth problem of Herodotus the origin and the antiquity of 

 the Egyptian people is much more difficult than the other three, and 

 I can not deal with it at the end of a discourse which has already ex- 

 tended to an undue length. 



But I may indicate a few cardinal facts which bear on the dis- 

 cussion. 



According to Figari Bey's investigations, a marine deposit, which 

 probably is of the same age as the miocene beaches of Cairo and Mem- 

 phis, f oi'ms the floor of the delta. Above this, come the layers of sand 

 with gravel already mentioned, as evidencing a former swifter flow of 

 the river : then follow beds of mud and sand ; and only above these, 

 at three distinct levels, evidences of human handiwork, the last and 

 latest of which belong to the age of Ramses II. 



