INTRODUCTION. 
xxviii 
From the Persian conquest to the present day, 
although the scene of continual strife, Egypt has been 
an example of almost uninterrupted productiveness. Its 
geographical position afforded peculiar advantages for 
commercial enterprise. Bounded on the east by the Red 
Sea, on the north by the Mediterranean, while the 
fertilizing Nile afforded inland communication, Egypt 
became the most prosperous and civilized country of 
the earth. Egypt was not only created by the Nile, 
but the very existence of its inhabitants depended upon 
the annual inundation of that river : thus all that 
related to the Nile was of vital importance to the 
people ; it was the hand that fed them. 
Egypt depending so entirely upon the river, it was 
natural that the origin of those mysterious waters 
should have absorbed the attention of thinking men. It 
O 
was unlike all other rivers. In July and August, when 
European streams were at their lowest in the summer 
heat, the Nile was at the flood! In Egypt there 
was no rainfall—not even a drop of dew in those 
parched deserts through which, for 860 miles of lati¬ 
tude, the glorious river flowed without a tributary. 
Licked up by the burning sun, and gulped by the 
