CHAP. m. BORINGS IN EGYPT IN 1851-1858. 37 



been stratified, and would not have corresponded so closely 

 with inundation mud. We learn from Captain Newbold that 

 he observed in some excavations in the great plain alternations 

 of sand and clay, such as are seen in the modern banks of the 

 Nile ; but in the borings made by Hekekyan Bey, such strati 

 fication seems scarcely in any ease to have been detected. 



The great aim of the criticisms above enumerated has been 

 to get rid of the supposed anomaly of finding burnt brick and 

 pottery at depths and places which would give them claim 

 to an antiquity far exceeding that of the Eoman domination 

 in Egypt. For until the time of the Eomans, it is said, no 

 clay was burnt into bricks in the valley of the Nile. But a 

 distinguished antiquary, Mr. S. Birch, assures me that this 

 notion is altogether erroneous, and that he has under his 

 charge in the British Museum, first, a small rectangular baked 

 brick, which came from a Theban tomb, which bears the 

 name of Thothmes, a superintendent of the granaries of the god 

 Amen Ea, the style of art, inscription, and name, showing that 

 it is as old as the 18th dynasty (about 1450 B.C.) ; secondly, 

 an arched brick, or one which with others made up an arch, 

 having an inscription, partly obliterated, but ending with the 

 words ' of the temple of Amen Ea.' This brick, decidedly 

 long anterior to the Eoman dominion, is referred conjec- 

 turally, by Mr. Birch, to the 19th dynasty, or 1300 B.C. 



M. Grirard, of the French expedition to Egypt, supposed 

 the average rate of the increase of Nile mud on the plain 

 between Asouan and Cairo to be five English inches in a 

 century. This conclusion, according to Mr. Horner, is very 

 vague, and founded on insufficient data; the amount of 

 matter thrown down by the waters in different parts of the 

 plain varying so much, that to strike an average with any 

 approach to accuracy must be most difficult. Were we to 

 assume six inches in a century, the burnt brick met with at a 

 depth of sixty feet would be 12,000 years old. 



