Antiquity of Irrigation 67 



the inundations of the Nile, with which it communi- 

 cated through a canal 12 miles long and 50 feet broad. 

 When the river rose to a height of 24 feet, and was 

 likely to be disastrous to crops, the sluices were opened 

 and the river relieved by sending the flood into this 

 lake, which modern travelers give a circumference of 

 50 miles ; but at times of low water, when drought 

 was threatened, the gates could be opened and the 

 volume of the stream reinforced by the water stored 

 in this reservoir. 



Sesostris, who reigned in Egypt in 1491 B. C., is 

 said to have had a great number of canals cut for the 

 purposes of trade and irrigation, and to have designed 

 the first canal to connect the Red Sea with the Medi- 

 terranean, which was continued by Darius but aban- 

 doned by him, and ultimately completed under the 

 Ptolemies. So numerous are the irrigation canals of 

 Egypt that it is estimated that not more than one- 

 tenth of the water which enters Egypt by the Nile 

 finds its way into the Mediterranean Sea. Fig. 13 

 shows Lower Egypt, with its extended system of canals 

 as they exist to-day. 



The Assyrians appear to have been equally re- 

 nowned with the Egyptians, from very ancient times, 

 for their skill and ingenuity in developing extended 

 irrigation systems, which converted the naturally ster- 

 ile valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris into the most 

 fertile of fields. We are told that the country below 

 Hit, on the Euphrates, and Samarra, on the Tigris, 

 was at one time intersected with numerous canals, one 

 of the most ancient of which was the Nahr Malikah, 



