516 DIKES OF THE NILE. 
Dikes of the Nile. 
“ History tells us,” says Mengotti, “that the Nile became 
terrible and destructive to ancient Egypt, in consequence of 
being confined within elevated dikes, from the borders of 
Nubia to the sea. It being impossible for these barriers to resist 
the pressure of its waters at such a height, its floods burst its 
ramparts, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, and 
deluged the plains, which lay far below the level of its current. 
In one of its formidable inundations the Nile over- 
whelmed and drowned a large part of the population. The 
Egyptians then perceived that they were struggling against 
nature in vain, and they resolved to remove the dikes, and per- 
mit the river to expand itself laterally and raise by its deposits 
the surface of the fields which border its channel.’’* 
The original texts of the passages cited by Mengotti, from 
Latin translations of Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch and from 
Pliny the Elder, do not by any means confirm this statement, 
though the most important of them, that from Diodorus Siculus, 
is, perhaps, not irreconcilable with it. Not one of them speaks 
of the removal of the dikes, and I understand them all as 
relating to the mixed system of embankments, reservoirs, 
and canals which have been employed in Egypt through the 
whole period concerning which we have clear information. I 
suppose that the disastrous inundations referred to by the 
authors in question were simply extraordinary floods of the 
same character as those which have been frequent at later 
periods of Egyptian history, and I find nothing in support of 
the proposition that continuous embankments along the banks 
of the Nile ever existed until such were constructed by Me- 
hemet Ali.t 
* Tdralica Fisica e Sperimentale. 2d edizione, vol. i., pp. 131, 133. 
+ The gradual elevation of the bed of the Nile from sedimentary deposit, 
from the prolongation of the Delta and consequent reduction of the inclination 
of the river-bed, or, as has been supposed by some, though without probability, 
