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



Another fragment of red brick was found by Linant Bey, 

 in a boring seventy-two feet deep, being two or three feet 

 below the level of the Mediterranean, in the parallel of 

 the apex of the delta, 200 metres distant from the river, 

 on the Libyan side of the Eosetta branch.* M. Eosiere, 

 in the great French work on Egypt, has estimated the 

 mean rate of deposit of sediment in the delta at two inches 

 and three lines in a century f ; were we to take two and a 

 half inches, a work of art seventy-two feet deep must have 

 been buried more than 30,000 years ago. But if the boring 

 of Linant Bey was made where an arm of the river had been 

 silted up at a time when the apex of the delta was somewhat 

 farther south, or more distant from the sea than now, the 

 brick in question might be comparatively very modern. 



The experiments instituted by Mr. Homer, in the hope of 

 obtaining an accurate chronometric scale for testing the age 

 of a given thickness of Nile sediment, are not considered by 

 experienced Egyptologists to have been satisfactory. The 

 point sought to be determined was the exact amount of Nile 

 mud which had accumulated in 3000 or more years, since the 

 time when certain ancient monuments, such as the obelisk 

 at Heliopolis, or the statue of king Eamesses at Memphis, 

 are supposed by some antiquaries to have been erected. 

 Could we have obtained possession of such a measure, 

 the rate of deposition might be judged of, approximately 

 at least, whenever similar mud was observed in other 

 places, or below the foundations of those same monu 

 ments. But the ancient Egyptians are known to have been 

 in the habit of enclosing with embankments, the areas on 

 which they erected temples, statues, and obelisks, so as to 

 exclude the waters of the Nile ; and the point of time to be 

 ascertained, in every case where we find a monument buried 



* Horner, Philosophical Transactions, 1858. 



f Description de 1'Egypte (Histoire Naturelle, torn. ii. p. 494). 



