March i6, 1893] 



NATURE 



465 



desert, the plains being broken by the remains of the 

 ancient canals. 



What more natural than that Euphrates, Tigris and 

 Nile were looked upon as deities ; that the Gods of 

 the Nile valley on the one hand, and of the region 

 watered by the Euphrates and Tigris on the other, 

 were gods to swear by ; that they were worshipped 

 in order that their benign influences might be secured, 

 and that they had their local shrines and special cults. 



The god sacred to the Euphrates and Tigris was called 

 Ea. The god sacred to the Nile was called Hapi. 



The name Hapi is the same as that of the bull 

 Apis, the worship of which was attributed to Mena.^ 

 Certainly Mena, Mini, or Menes, as he is variously 

 called, was fully justified in founding the cult of the river 

 god, for he first among men appears to have had just 

 ideas of irrigation ; and I have heard the distin- 

 guished officers who have lately been responsible for 

 the irrigation system of to-day speaking with admira- 

 tion of the ideas and works of Menes. 



Whether the Tigris had a Menes in an equally early 

 time is a point on which history is silent ; but, according to 

 the accounts of travellers, the Tigris in flood is even more 

 majestic than the Nile, and yet the latter river in flood is 

 a sight to see— a whole fertile plain turned into, as it 

 were, an arm of the sea, with here and there an island, 

 which on inspection turns out to be a village, the mud 

 houses of which too often are undermined by the lapping 

 of the waves in the strong north wind. 



There is no doubt that the dates of the rise of these 

 rivers not only influenced the national life but even the 

 religions of the dwellers on their banks. The Euphrates 

 and Tigris rise about the time of the spring equinox— the 

 religion was equinoxial, the temples were directed to the 

 east. The Nile rises at a solstice— the religion wassolsti- 

 calandthe solar temples were directed no longer to the 

 east. To the Egyptians the coming of the river to the 

 parched land was as the sunrise chasing the darkness 

 of the night ; the sun-god of day conquering the star- 

 gods of night ; or again the victorious king of the land 

 slaughtering his enemies. 



By no one, perhaps, have the impressions produced by 

 the various phases of the river been so poetically described 

 as by Osburn, a writer of vivid imagination, but it must be 

 added that the facts detailed in his description are not ex- 

 actly capable of being verified by engineering science. 

 Osburn thus describes the low Nile : 



" The Nile has shrunk within its banks until its 

 stream is contracted to half its ordinary dimensions, and 

 its turbid, slimy, stagnant waters scarcely seem to flow in 

 any direction. Broad flats or steep banks of black, sun- 

 baked Nile mud, form both the shores of the river. All 

 beyond them is sand and sterility; for the hamseen, or 

 sand-wind of fifty days' duration, has scarcely yet ceased 

 to blow. The trunks and branches of trees may be seen 

 here and there through the dusty, hazy, burning, atmos- 

 phere, but so entirely are their leaves coated with dust, 

 that at a distance they are not distinguishable from the 

 desert sand that surrounds them. It is only by the most 

 painful and laborious operation of watering that any tint 

 approximating to greenness can be preserved at this 

 season even in the pleasure-gardens of the Pacha. The 

 first symptom of the termination of this most terrible 

 season is the rising of the north wind (the Etesian wind 

 of the Greeks), blowing briskly, often fiercely during the 

 whole of the day. The foliage of the groves that cover 

 Lower Egypt is soon disencumbered by it of the dust, and 

 resumes its verdure. The fierce fervours of the sun, then 

 at his highest ascension, are also most seasonably miti- 

 gated by the same powerful agency, which prevails for 

 this and the three following months throughout the entire 

 land of Egypt." 



■ Maspero, ".Hist. Anc." xi. lo. 



NO. 1220, VOL. 47] 



Then at last comes the inundation : — 



" Perhaps there is not in Nature a more exhilarating 

 sight, or one more strongly exciting to confidence in God, 

 than the rise of the Nile. Daybyday and night by night, its 

 turbid tide sweeps onward majestically over the parched 

 sands of the waste, howling wilderness. Almost hourly, 

 as we slowly ascended it before the Etesian wind, we 

 heard the thundering fall of some mud-bank, and saw by 

 the rush of all animated Nature to the spot, that the Nile 

 had overleapt another obstruction, and that its bounding 

 waters were diffusing life and joy through another desert. 

 There are few impressions I ever received upon the 

 remembrance of which I dwell with more pleasure than 

 that of seeing the first burst of the Nile into one of the 

 great channels of its annual overflow. All Nature shouts 

 for joy. The men, the children, the buffaloes, gambol in 

 its refreshing waters, the broad waves sparkle with shoals 

 of fish, and fowl of every wing flutter over them in clouds. 

 Nor is this jubilee of Nature confined to the higher orders 

 of creation. The moment the sand becomes moistened 

 by the approach of the fertilising waters, it is literally 

 alive with insects innumerable. It is impossible to stand 

 by the side of one of these noble streams, to see it every 

 moment sweeping away some obstruction to its majestic 

 course, and widening as it flows, without feeling the heart 

 to expand with love and joy and confidence in the 

 great Author of this annual miracle of mercy." 



The effects of the inundation, as Osburn shows in 

 another place, " exhibit themselves in a scene of fertility 

 and beauty such as will scarcely be found in another 

 country at any season of the year. The vivid green of 

 the springing corn, the groves of pomegranate trees 

 ablaze with the rich scarlet of their blossoms, the fresh 

 breeze laden with the perfumes of gardens of roses and 

 orange thickets, every tree and every shrub covered with 

 sweet-scented flowers. These are a few of the natural 

 beauties that welcome the stranger to the land of Ham. 

 There is considerable sameness in them, it is true, for he 

 would observe little variety in the trees and plants, 

 whether he first entered Egypt by the gardens of Alex- 

 andria o.- the plain of Assouan. Yet is it the same every- 

 where, only because it would be impossible to make any 

 addition to the sweetness of the odours, the brilliancy of 

 the colours, or the exquisite beauty of the many forms of 

 vegetable life, in the midst of which he wanders. It is 

 monotonous, but it is the monotony of Paradise." 



"The flood reaches Cairo on a day closely approxi- 

 mating to that of the summer solstice. It attains its 

 greatest height, and begins to decline near the autumnal 

 equinox. By the winter solstice the Nile has again sub- 

 sided within its banks and resumed its blue colour. 

 Seed-time has occurred in this interval. The year in 

 Egypt divides itself into three seasons — four months of 

 sowing and growth, corresponding nearly with our 

 November, December, January, and February ; four 

 months of harvest from March to June ; the four months 

 of the inundation completing the cycle." 



In order to show how the astronomy of the ancient 

 Egyptians — to deal specially with them — was to a large 

 extent concerned with the annual flood and all that 

 depended upon that flood, and how the first solar year 

 used on this planet, so far as we know, was established, 

 it is important to study the actual facts of the rise some- 

 what closely, not only for Egypt generally, but for several 

 points in the line some thousand miles in extent, along 

 which in the earliest times cities and shrines were 

 dotted here and there. 



Time out of mind the fluctuations in the height of the 

 river have been carefully recorded at different points 

 along the river. In the "Description del'Egypt" we 

 find a full description of the so-called nilometer at Assuan 

 (First Cataract) which dates from a remote period, 

 perhaps as early as the 5th Dynasty. 



In Ebers' delightful book on Egypt space is given to- 



