14 THE REPTILES OF EGYPT. 
its habits, frequenting certain sand-islands and reaches of the river, as used to be the 
case 50 or 60 years ago, when it was generally to be observed at Beni Hassan, Assiut, 
Girgeh, Denderah, Thebes, Ombos, and Esneh, but it is more or less gregarious and 
is frequently found in small groups. It seldom goes any great distance from water, 
towards which its head is usually turned when it is basking in the sun ; but it is 
occasionally met with in unexpected places in the Upper Nile. Sir S. Baker 1 relates 
that in the neighbourhood of Soft, on the Atbara, he found a crocodile, about 6 feet 
long, lying on the dry summit of a hill far away from water. He supposed that 
the small stream into which the crocodile had wandered from the main river had 
become dry and that the animal had lost its way in quest of water. Schweinfurth 2 
also says it is astonishing in the dry season into what tiny pools and puddles the 
crocodile will make its way, and buried in the miry clay will find a sufficiently 
commodious abode. 
Abd-Allatif 3 states that the crocodile, in his day, was found among the rocks of the 
cataracts ; but, Pococke 4 in writing of those found at Silsileh, accounts for their being 
so numerous there during his time, by reason of the proximity of the cataracts, as he 
says they retire from places in which rocks occur. Burckhardt 5 , on the other hand, 
records the presence of crocodiles on some rocky islands at Wadi Lamoule ; and Sir 
Samuel Baker 6 observed a crocodile lying among rocks, and so well did it match them 
in colour that most probably a man would not have noticed it until too late. The 
crocodile, however, is undoubtedly most partial to the open reaches of the river with a 
sluggish current and numerous sandbanks. 
Recent writers 7 who were not aware of the fact that the crocodile, in early Egyptian 
times, was distributed over the Nile even into the delta, used to explain its rarity 
below Akbmin by the sparseness of islands and rapidity of the current. 
The monuments of the IVth Dynasty, which carry us back 6000 years — a long- 
period doubtless in the estimation of the unreflecting, but trivial in the extreme in the 
history of a species, — reveal the fact that the crocodile and hippopotamus afforded sport 
to those resident on the banks of the Nile immediately above Cairo. The proof of 
this is to be found depicted on the Mastaba of Urkhuu of the IVth Dynasty at Gizeh, 
and on the tomb of Ptah Hotep at Sakkarah. In the former, a scene represents 
Urkhuu, in his funeral bark, starting on his way to the next world, the inhabitants of 
the water being the crocodile and hippopotamus. They may have been introduced into 
this picture as being symbolical of Typho ; and, if so, very appropriately, because in 
the tomb of Ptah Hotep, of slightly more recent date, the hunting of these animals by 
the deceased, on the banks of the river at Sakkarah, is represented as one of his 
1 Op. cit. p. 224. 2 The Heart of Africa, ii. 1873, p. 336. 
3 Op. cit. p. 140. * Op. cit. vol. i. p. 114. 
' Travels in Nubia (1812-16), 4to, 1819, p. 48. " Op. cit. p. 177. 
7 Pococke, op. cit. vol. i. p. 203. 
