422 



NORTH-EAST AFRICA. 



tlie rmns of three temples ; and here have been discovered columns, obelisks, and 

 the remarkable sphinxes which represent the type of the Hyksos, with their broad 

 features, large nose, and prominent cheek-bones. 



All these monuments were executed in materials far more costly than similar 

 works in Upper Egypt. The building- stone for the temples was brought by 

 Ramses II., not from the nummulitic or sandstone rocks lying nearest to the delta, 

 but from the pink granite quarries of Assuan, on the southern frontier of the 

 empire. But of these sumptuous edifices, whose remains lie strewn over the mound 

 at San, nothing was respected by subsequent generations of builders, whether 

 Romans, monks. Christians, or Arabs. Not one of the fourteen obelisks, the largest 

 in all Egypt, has survived ; while the colossi have been broken into small fragments 

 and even ground to dust. Amongst the ruins, however, has been discovered the 

 precious " Stone of San," a tri-lingual stele which might have revealed the mystery 



Fig. 131.— The San Morass. 

 Scale 1 : 460,000. 



,TANlS"-:r_ 



'i [ San) _..;-r=£=l -r^,,. ;••■ =p.7^^-j^ 



Ti// S/ai/e^ 



af Greenwich 3 



Flooded for eight or nine months. 



Flooded during the rising of the Nile. 

 9 Miles. 



of the hieroglyphics, had not Champollion and Young already found a clue to their 

 interpretation in the " Rosetta Stone." 



The enclosure surrounding the great temple is no less than 80 feet thick,* and 

 the modern observer may well ask how such a metropolis could have been raised in 

 the midst of these half- submerged lands, these swamps, and quagmires, and saline 

 depressions now skirting Lake Menzaleh. But the district seems to have un- 

 doubtedly undergone vast changes since the oldest recorded times, changes which 

 should probably be attributed to local subsidence. 



Although the less copious of the two Nilotic branches enclosing the delta, that 

 of Damietta is utilised to a far greater extent for irrigation purposes, thanks to the 

 higher level of its bed. Along its course are situated some large towns, while in 

 many places numerous villages form an almost continuous city. Benha-V-Asml, or 

 the " City of Honey," which supplies the inhabitants of Cairo with considerable 



* Flinders Pétrie, Times, April 24, 1884. 



