TOPOGEAPHY— MAHATTA— PHILiE. 373 



with the Canal. Article 13 provides for the Sultan's rights, and, finally, the con- 

 cluding article is to the effect that the Powers will communicate the treaty to those 

 States which have not signed it, and will invite them to endorse it." 



Topography. 



While new towns are springing up in Egypt, the ancient cities are crumbling 

 to dust. Most of the larger centres of population stand at some distance from the 

 ruins marking the sites of former capitals. But these ruins, far more interesting 

 than most of the modern towns, still relate the history of Egyptian culture. In 

 many places the hovels of the fellahin, small cubical blocks of brick or mud covered 

 with a reed roof or a terrace of beaten earth, are almost lost in the shade of mighty 

 gateways and peristyles of temples. Since the scientific exploration of Egypt has 

 been actively begun, fine monuments have been rescued from the sands in which 

 they had long been buried ; but many others have disappeared for ever. The salt- 

 petre with which the sands and alluvial dusts are impregnated gradually corrodes 

 the hardest stones of these buildings ; treasure- seekers demolish their walls ; while 

 still greater destruction is caused by the peasantry, who make the sehakh, an 

 excellent composition, by mixing the dust of the ruins with earth. The limekilns 

 have consumed layer after layer of the temples built with limestone, so that the 

 monuments of sandstone, which can scarcely be utilised for modern structures, have 

 suffered least from these destructive processes. 



The Egyptian villages bear the most diverse names, according to the origin of 

 their inhabitants, or the tenure of the soil. Thus occur such names as Nohich, Kafr, 

 Ezbehy Nag, Ahadieh, Menshat, and Nazleh, this last term, which means "settlement " 

 or " colony," being applied to villages built by Arab nomads who have become culti- 

 vators. The villages also frequently shift their sites, owing to the inundations, or 

 the opening of some fresh canal. In the same way their names often become 

 changed, according to the social status of the proprietors by whom they are pur- 

 chased. Yet in these villages are still to be read the records of ancient Egypt. 

 The country has been compared to a palimpsest or mediaeval parchment, on which 

 the Bible has been written above Herodotus, and the Koran above the Bible. In 

 the towns the Koran is the most legible, while in the rural districts Herodotus 

 reappears.* 



Mahatta — Phil^. 



Classical Egypt begins at the First Cataract, at the spot where the Nile craft 

 from Nubia still land their cargoes of gums, ivory, and ebony, in the shade of the 

 palms and sycamores fringing the Mahatta beach. At Mahatta, which stands on 

 the right bank, the river is still smooth as a lake ; but towards the north we already 

 perceive the black reefs, amid which wind the foaming currents of the rapids. But 

 before plunging into this labyrinth of falls, the sluggish waters wash the shores of 

 a cluster of verdant isles, one of which is the famous Philœ, the Ilak of the 

 * Lucy Duff Gordon, " Letters from Egypt." 



