85S 



. KNOWI.EDGE • 



[Oct. 



1882. 



and in t-ach of these tlie artist Las been careful to show the 

 winding of the stream, and the irregular outline of its 

 l.anks. But here the canal is drawn lietwcen two straight 

 and strictly parallel lines, each planted with a formal row 

 of trees. Nor is this all. Under the wheels of the royal 

 chariot, in a sliort hand stylo of landscape art which has 

 much to reconiinciid it, we see three pieces of water and 

 three little towers, each labelled with its name. These in- 

 dicate fortitietl places along the route. One piece of water 

 is enclosetl in a square basin surroundet} by walls; evidently 

 a reservoir. The two others, in marked contrast to both 

 the reservoir and the canal, are purposely irregular in form, 

 as would betit the representation of natural lakes or pools. 

 And so also, it must be noted, is part of the lioundary out- 

 line of the large basin into which the canal discharges its 

 waters on the Syrian side. 



But Professor Ebers, who has lately studied these sculp- 

 tures on the spot, places the (juestion beyond further 

 dispute. " The canal," he writes, " is defended by forti- 

 fu-ations and a gate, and bears in the inscription the name 

 of The Cutting."* The balance of opinion among Egypt- 

 ologists, it may be added, is altogether on this side ; in- 

 cluding, by the way, the opinion of so distinguished an 

 outsider as ^L de Lesseps, who acutely remarks that "the 

 basin into which the canal discharges its waters is, and can 

 only be, the lake which in our days bears the Arab name 

 of TimitaJi, signifying crocodile."^ And obviously, if Lake 

 Tiuisah ever merited its name, the crocodiles must have 

 fouiid their way thither from the Nile, by way of the 

 canal, it btiiig zoologicilli/ iinjjvssible (Itai t/fi/ nhuuUl have 

 come J rum ntti/ir/iere eUe. 



Moreover — and this is a curious fact which has escaped 

 M. de Lesseps, and which, so far as I know, has not been 

 remarked before — the ancient Egyptian name for crocodile 

 was " £mgith " : and Kmgiih is clearly the same word as 

 Timjiah, the consonants 7(i, *, h, being identical ; the vowels 

 in Egyptian and Arabic mutable ; and the initial T doubt- 

 less a later addition. Also, there being no crocodiles in 

 Arabia, the Arabs would naturally import the Egyptian 

 name into their language. Hence it is fair to conclude 

 that Ijikf Tiriisah, like so many other localities in this 

 Egypt of indelible memories, perpetuates a name which is 

 in itself a page of ancient history. 



Tlie channel of the canal of Seti I. was in the first in- 

 stance discovered by the French expedition in 1798 ; and 

 in lb.'»9-C0, when M. de Lesseps' engineers surveyed the 

 ground for the new Freshwater Canal, they not only re- 

 traced the course of that earliest work, but at various 

 points they actually found its steep banks lined with solid 

 niasonrj-. And so accurate was the original levelling, that 

 more than once tliey simply followed and reopened the 

 work of their Pharaonic predecessors. 



If further proof is needed to establish the identity of 

 thw ancient canal, further pr'Xjf is forthcoming. Herodotus, 

 Uiough mistaken in attributing the lirst design to Nekau, 

 states that it was " complet<-d by Darius " ; while Strabo, 

 who comes ntrarer the fact in ascribing its origin to 

 liameses II., stat'-s that "Darius succeeded to the com- 

 pletion of the undr-rtaking, but he dt.-sisted when it was 

 nrarly finished, inliuenced by an erroneous opinion that 

 the level of the lied Sea was higli<r than Egypt, and that 

 if the intervening isthmus were cut through, the country 

 would \xt overflowed V*y the sea." iJook XV'II., chap. '1T>. 

 Now whether Dariua completed the canal or did not com- 



• 8«« Etiera' "L'Kirvpte," French tranilation by O. Maiiiero. 

 VoLII..p.2C. 



t " Conferenren nor Ici Trmraux de I'lithmc do KncJi." l>e 

 , Parin, IHCa. 



plete it, is nothing to the present inquiry. All we need 

 ascertain is the fact of his having put his hand to it ; and 

 this fact was proved as long since as 1798, when M. de 

 Koziere discovered, at a. spot near the southern end of the 

 Bitter Lakes, a broken statue of the " Great King of 

 Kings," and some red granite blocks carved with a 

 polyglot inscrijition in Persian, Median, Assyrian, and 

 Egyptian characters, which has bten translated by M. 

 Oppert : — 



" A great God is Aurama:;da, who created heaven ; who 

 created earth ; who created man ; who gave to man a will; 

 who established Darius as King ; who committed to King 

 Darius so great and so glorious an empire. I am Darius, 

 King of Kings ; King of lands of many tongues ; King of 

 this great earth far and near ; son of Hystaspes, the 

 Acluemenide. Says Darius the King :^I am a Persian. 

 With the power of Persia, I coniiuered Egypt I ordered 

 this canal to be dug from the river called Pirava (Nile), 

 which (lows in Egypt, to the sea which comes out of PiTsia. 

 This canal was dug there as I commanded. Afterwards I 

 said : — Go and destroy half of the canal from Bira to the 

 coast For such was my will.''* 



I venture now to assume that the identity of the ancient 

 Pharaonic canal is suHiciently jiroven, and that it is shown 

 to have been carried at least as far as Lake Timsah by 

 Seti I. 



SouTiiwAiiK .\Ni) Elkctiuc LifiHTiNo. — The Vestry of 

 St George-the-Martyr, Southwark, took an important 

 step at a recent meeting, with regard to tlio electric 

 lighting question generally. It was resolved to oppose tho 

 application of all companies for licenses, under the third 

 section of the Electric Lighting Act, unless they were pro- 

 pared to guarantee to the Vestry that, after paying a divi- 

 dend of 7J per cent, one-half of all profits accruing b<>yond 

 should be handed over to the Vestry towards the reduction 

 of the local rates, in consideration of the concession granted 

 for the laying down of the nece.ssary works. This is looking 

 forward with a vengeance. 



Infant FEEDiNfi. — At a recent meeting of the Paris 

 Academy of Medicine, M. Tarnier read a paper on this 

 su bject He began by stating that he much preferred cup 

 or spoon feeding to a nipple-bottle when the child cannot 

 be fed on mother's milk. Although condensed milk may 

 be wholesome for adults, M. Tarniei- declares that it is 

 quite useless for young children ; and he considers that 

 nothing can be compared with the mother's milk, which is 

 well known to be the lirst of all foods for infants. Arti- 

 ficial feeding has been tried in Paris with very disastrous 

 results, as may be seen by the following statistics, drawn 

 up by M. Bertillon :— In 18K1, C0,H.5G children were born 

 in Paris, of whom M,ri71 were sent away to be nursed, 

 while AC>,1xr> remained in the city. Of th.^ latter number, 

 10,180 died, being a mortality of L'2 per cent, while ■0,202 

 (more than half) of the former died of athrepsy — that is to 

 say, bad feeding. Of these 5,202 infants, 3,007 were fed 

 with a nipple feeding-bottle. — Medical i'rcM. 



I 



• The above Eni^liHh verBion of M. Oppert'n French translntioB 

 JR from tho pen of Sir EraHmus Wiliton (nee " The Epfj-pt of tho 

 I'liHt," chap, viii., p. 481. Second edition. 1882.) TliiH curioua 

 moniimont wnii lirHt pabliiiliod by M. Oppert in tho " Itapporta de 

 I'Kxyptf et de rAsHyrie," p. 12.'j. The thrco cuneiform inHcriptiona 

 were cnjfravod on ono side, and thc! liieroKlyiJiic text on. tlio other. 

 Unfortunately, it waH much injured by tho workmen employed on 

 the Hurz Canal -. tho Amiyrian text being, according to M. Opport, 

 " entirely annihilated," and thc Median nearly ko. 



I 



