498 ANNUAL KEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1908. 



tion, no rainfall, a warm climate in which vegetation can grow 

 throughout the year if the necessary water is available, a rich 

 alluvial plain on which water channels can easily be formed ; to these 

 are to be added exceptional freedom from incursions of immigrant 

 races of greater power or higher organization. To the east and 

 west lie the deserts which throughout the historic period have pre- 

 sented a barrier which could be passed with difficulty by one or two 

 caravan routes. To the south the Nile Valley itself presented a 

 possible means of ingress, but one which could be closed, and was 

 only employed to a moderate extent. The marshes of the delta 

 restricted traffic on the north, and even the road along its eastern 

 margin to Syria, which has been trodden by numerous armies both 

 leaving and entering Egypt, did not offer exceptional facilities for a 

 ready entry into the country. Under these circumstances it is not 

 surprising to find that the Egyptians at a very early period settled 

 down to an agricultural mode of life ; that they early perfected the 

 ordinary operations which such a life required, and, having done so, 

 preserved them with but little change until very recent times. Simple 

 methods were well suited to the unvarying conditions among which 

 they lived, and there was no incentive or necessity which might com- 

 pel them to modify them. This people furnishes in a very marked 

 degree an example of an organism growing in an unvarying environ- 

 ment to which it had early adapted itself and its mode of life. 



To the geographer such a case is especially interesting, and during 

 recent years the archaeological exploration of the country has brought 

 to light a store of information concerning the ancient history of the 

 Egyptians, their customs, and their mode of life wdiich may be 

 profitably studied in relation to their jDhysical environment. But this 

 is a very wide subject, and I will only draw attention to a single 

 aspect of it which is directly connected with my own work in the 

 country — the measurement of the land. The annual flood, rising in 

 July within a few days of the same date year after year, and falling 

 in October with equal regularity, has, from the earliest times, caused 

 an invariability in the field seasons which must have reacted on the 

 character of the people. This unvarying cycle of their water supply, 

 of their agriculture, and consequently of their domestic life, combined 

 wdth the freedom from immigration which the deserts and the delta 

 swamps insured, laid the foundations of that conservatism of custom 

 and character which the Egyptian has alwaj^s displayed. Nor has 

 this greatly changed, and there exists to-day in every phase of 

 Egyptian life traits which have come down from early times almost 

 unaltered ; the examples furnished by the science of land measurement 

 are as striking as any that we know. 



As soon as any considerable tract of the country was occupied, 

 attempts would be made to control the river and its branches, and the 



