GEOGRAPHICAL ASPECTS OF THE NILE LYONS. 499 



natural spills and backwaters would be improved to form canals for 

 the purpose of leading the flood waters wherever they were required; 

 thus the water would be supplied along certain lines to the land under 

 cultivation, and this, as well as the convenience in plowing, would 

 quickly lead to the development of the long, narrow holding, in order 

 that the owners of small areas should have direct access to the water 

 channel which served them ; the definition of the unit of area as being 

 1 cubit by 100 cubits shows this. 



The geographical factors of the valley determined once and for all 

 a state of things which the surveyor, consciously or unconsciously, had 

 to take into account if his work was to be satisfactory, and it may be 

 summarized as a narrow belt of country where holdings are unusually 

 small and the land is of high value, being capable of supporting a 

 dense population, but only in so far as the water of the Nile is readily 

 accessible. 



The method, once decided upon, would be rapidly improved and 

 developed by constant practice, since the land had to be remeasured 

 annually after the waters of the inundation had receded; for the 

 whole country was at first under a more or less primitive form of 

 basin irrigation, and only the banks of the river would be sufficiently 

 high to be cultivated during the flood season. 



As early as the first dynasty (3400 B. C.) the measures of length 

 were in regular use, for on the Palermo stone we have the height 

 reached each jeRV by the Nile flood recorded in cubits and fractions 

 of a cubit, while the stretching of the (measuring) cord at the founda- 

 tion of a temple is mentioned. Every two years, a " numbering " of 

 the royal possessions was made throughout the land by the officials of 

 the treasury, and this would be a sort of verifying survey. 



About 3000 B. C. the property of a high official, Methen, was 

 recorded on the walls of his tomb at Saqqara as having been duly 

 registered to him in the royal archives or registry. 



Another of the tombs at Saqqara, that of a certain Mes, furnishes 

 us with information of exceptional interest. Certain lands near 

 Memphis, which the Pharaoh Amosis (1580 B. C.) had conferred on 

 an ancestor of Mes named Neshi, were, during the minority of Mes, 

 claimed by a certain Khay as his property. A lawsuit followed, in 

 which Khay produced false title deeds, whereupon Nubnofret, tl)e 

 mother of Mes, appealed to the official registers, saying, " Let there 

 be brought to me the registers from the treasury and likewise from 

 the department of the granary of Pharaoh." 



In later times, about 900 or 850 B. C., the register of the lands and 

 springs in the oasis of Dakhla is referred to in an inscription which 

 tells of a lawsuit concerning the ownership of a spring ; nineteen years 

 elapsed before a decision was obtained. Thus the owner's name, the 

 area of the property, its position, and the tax due from it were regu- 



