SOS 



thereby prepared the land for that culture and tillage 

 which he is supposed to have invented. 



" But in process of time, the annual strata would 

 raise the country as high as C, D. Whereby the 

 ISile would not only be sufficiently confined within its 

 own banks, but the superfluous moisture, also, that 

 was left by the inundation, would be easily drained off. 



Agriculture therefore, and husbandry, would have 

 now their proper encouragement ; and in this condi- 

 tion we may conceive the country to have been at the 

 building of Thebes ; the parts where Memphis and 

 Zoan were afterwards founded, having not yet attain- 

 ed a sufficient depth of soil to bring down a colony to 



till it. 



* 



" Some centuries after, when Memphis and other 

 cities of the lower Egypt were built, the banks, to- 

 gether with the land on each side of them may be 

 supposed to be raised as high as E, F, whereby a 

 still greater height of water would be required to re- 

 fresh them ; which in the time of Herodotus, was six- 

 teen cubits. 



"Li this manner therefore, it may be presumed, that 

 the foundation of the land of Egypt was first laid 

 and afterwards augmented, the inundation bringing 

 along with it, every year, an addition of soil, where- 

 by, not only the land already made would be raised, 

 but the soil would be likewise extended to the very 

 skirts of the valley, the sea gradually excluded and 

 consequently a foundation laid for new plantations.^ 



