ANCIENT EGYPT. I 5 



The English intervention in the affairs of Egypt has been 

 wholly beneficient; it has rescued the country from the hands 

 of the spoiler, and put a new heart into the people, beginning, 

 let us hope, one more period of renaissance. Some of the 

 works recently completed are on a truly pharaonic scale of 

 magnitude and engineering skill. The new barrage, at the 

 first cataract, is a mile and a quarter long, 130 feet high, with 

 a capacity of something like 25,000,000 cubic feet. It is 

 pierced by 180 sluices, through which 15,000 tons of water 

 can pass in a second. Like the obelisk of Hatasoo, it is 

 built of the rose granite of Syene, about a million tons having 

 been used for the purpose. The upper strata of the river bed 

 were of too friable a nature for a foundation, and in one place 

 a depth of 140 feet had to be cut down to before the hard 

 diorite was reached. A navigable canal, with three locks, has 

 been constructed for the shipping. The work is a triumph of 

 science over the forces of nature, and the seven lean years 

 should now be a thing of the past in Egypt. I have been 

 much interested in this work, more especially as I bore some 

 part in the discussions and negotiations that took place with 

 a view to the saving of the temple of Philae. The earlier 

 plans prepared and approved of by the authorities would have 

 submerged it, and the original height specified for the dam 

 was reduced so as to preserve it. 



A question will naturally occur to you as to the means by 

 which the chronology of Ancient Egypt has been, to a great 

 extent, determined. The most important source of informa- 

 tion is Manetho's list, a record written in Greek, compiled 

 from the archives of the temples about B.C. 286 by an 

 Egyptian priest, under the auspices of Ptolemy Philadelphus. 

 The original has been lost, and we have to rely mainly on a 

 copy from a Byzantine source of the eighth century of our 

 era. This, doubtless the descendant of many copies, gives 

 the names of the kings incorrectly and illegibly, leaving gaps 

 of names not filled in, and showing signs of manipulation atid 

 even of interpolation, for such things were unhappily rife 

 during the most controversial periods of the early Christian 

 church. 



