214 Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson on the Nile, and 



foot nearer to the island, nor was any alluvial deposit the 

 cause of the channel between them being closed. And now, 

 having shewn that the deposit of the Nile had no power 

 to advance the shore towards the Isle of Pharos, I beg to 

 exculpate the poet from the imputation of a gross error, which 

 might otherwise attach to his assertion, by observing, that he 

 uses the word ^gyptus to signify the Nile, as well as the land 

 of Egypt, which is fully explained by Diodorus*, who says that 

 Nileus, one of the early monarchs, transferred his name to the 

 stream, which previously bore that of J^gyptus ; and Arriant 

 observes that " the river, now called by the ^Egj^ptians and 

 others Nile, is shewn by Homer to have been named ^gyptus, 

 when he relates that Menelaus anchored his fleet at the mouth 

 of the ^gyptus.":]: It is, then, to the Nile, and not to the 

 coast of Egypt, that the poet refers, when he spealis of the dis- 

 tance from Pharos to ^^gj^tus. 



The opinion of Herodotus and others, that the constant ele- 

 vation of the land by the alluvial deposit would eventually pre- 

 vent the inundation covering the lands, has been repeated even 

 to a late time ; and some have thought, that all the predictions 

 of famine made by the historian were on the eve of theu' ful- 

 filment. The Nile, they say, formerly rose so high above 

 the land, that Herodotus saw the villages during the inunda- 

 tion, like the islands in the ^gean Sea. This ceases to be 

 the case at present, and, after some years, it will no longer 

 inundate the country at all. But this opinion is maintained 

 by its authors merely from their not having visited Egypt dur- 

 ing a great rise of the river ; while, from my own experience, 

 and that of others, I can attest that the same happens at the 

 present day as in ancient times, whenever the inundation is of 

 a certain height ; for it is well known, that, in every age, the 

 Nile varied in its rise, and the deficiencies of one or two sea- 

 sons were counterbalanced by a plentiful supply of w£j,er in 

 another year. Writers, who held this argument and foretold 

 such dreadful calamities to the unsixspecting inhabitants of 

 Egj'pt, forgot to observe that the bed of the Nile always keeps 

 pace with the elevation of the soil, and the proportion of wa- 



* Diodor. i. 63. 



t Anian, Exped. Alex, 5 and »>, T Odyss. A, 477; and S, 257. 



