ÀҾ˹éÒ˹ѧÊ×Í
PDF
ePub

from death, which most plainly shows what Egypt would be without the peculiar influence of the river. Rain in middle and lower Egypt seldom falls, and the soil owes all its vegetative power to the waters of the Nile.*

At the middle of June is seen the first slight rise of the stream, and the current gradually swells till August, when the high banks are overflowed. The waters begin to retire in September, and ordinarily so slowly that it is late in October before they have returned to their usual channel.

The first tokens of the coming flood are hailed with universal joy. The husbandman hourly turns his eye to the stream, and with anxiety and earnest hope measures the inches of its progress. Nor is he alone concerned. The yearly revenue of the government, the materials of the artizan, the gains of the merchant, and the daily beans of the beggar, all depend on the sometimes capricious deity of the Nile. "On account of the solicitude," says Diodorus,† "which is connected with the rise of the river, a Niloscope has been constructed, by the kings, in Memphis. By this, those who have the charge of this business, having accurately measured the ascent, send abroad letters through the cities, informing them minutely how many cubits or fingers the river has risen, and when it begins to subside. By this means it has a long subsequent course over a country of an opposite kind, whence its source cannot be in the mountains of the Moon, at least not in the place where they are marked in our maps. Besides all which, another remarkable fact seems to me to prove indubitably that it comes from a system of lakes, namely the prodigious quantity of fish which arrive with the freshets at their first appearance, for these fish can only come from lakes where they are imprisoned when the waters are low and escape when the inundation takes place." Still later Ibrahim Kashef, an officer in the service of the viceroy of Egypt, led a military slaving party up the banks of the Bahr Abiad, (reaching nearly 20o E. and 10° N.) for thirty-five days from its junction with the B. Azrek. His direction for the last twelve days was nearly west. "The river was then shallow, full of islands, six hours in breadth, and there were no mountains in sight."-Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. ii. pp. 186, 7, and p. 26. If the prediction of Ammianus Marcellinus may be trusted there is little hope that future ages will be wiser than we are. "Origines fontium Nili, ut mihi quidem videri solet, sicut adhuc factum est, posterae quoque aetates ignorabunt," xxii. 15.

* Nilus ibi coloni vice fungens. Pliny Hist. Nat. xvii. 47. + I. 36.

the whole people is relieved of its agony, learning the change of the swell to its opposite; and all immediately know the amount of the future crop, as such observations have been exactly recorded by the Egyptians for many years."* During the forty days in which the inundation is at its height, the country presents an unique and remarkable spectacle. The valley is almost entirely under water, and the cities and frequent villages lie upon the surface like islands on the sea. The labors of the field and of the shop are suspended, and the sallow priest, the gay courtier, and the honest villager, in the hilarity of the season give themselves without restraints to pastimes and merry-making. The surface of the wide waters, in ancient no less than in modern times, was alive with loaded boats of villagers passing on visits to their neighbors, with streamers flying and every sign of gladness, or the more solemn processions of the priestly and devout, who brought out their offering and paid their thanksgiving with the rising or the setting sun. In the calm air and under the pure bright sky of evening, too, might be heard from boat to boat, the shout of revelry or of derision, mingled with the laughter of the unthinking and mirthful, and the music of the guitar and the drum. In the palaces of the great was a festivity not less riotous or glad. Their haughty inmates, crowned with the lotus, and anointed with precious ointments, and reclining on luxurious ottomans, or at the table loaded with gold and the costliest dainties and served by dwarfs and Abyssinian youths, dipping their finger tips in scented waters, and

* Strabo iii. 464, speaks of a Nilometer at Elephantine as well as of that at Memphis. Of the former he says it is a well sunken in the bank of the Nine, and lined with stone, in which the water rises and falls on the same level as in the river; and that on the sides of the well are marks denoting the highest, lowest, and medium inundations. The information sent out by those who watched the Nilometer, was of great use to the agriculturist, by guiding his discretion in the use of the water. Wilkinson, Thebes, p. 462, says of the same, that "it contains inscriptions recording several of the inundations from the reign of Augustus to that of L. Septimus Severus." Of another in the island of Roda, near Cairo, p. 311. "It consists of a square well or chamber, in the centre of which is a graduated pillar, for the purpose of ascertaining the daily rise of the Nile. This is proclaimed every morning in the streets of the capital by four criers, to each of whom a particular part of the city is assigned.”

† Herod. ii. 60.

breathing an air odorous with the richest perfumes, shared and gave token of their sharing in the simple and universal satisfaction.*

The effects of too high an inundation are not less disastrous than those of an ordinary rise are beneficial. The river when two or three feet above the level of its ordinary flood, bears away on its broad and impetuous current, flocks and herds, the hopes and habitations of the husbandman. Nor does it regard human more than brute life, and sometimes families are swept away, or driven to the roofs of their solitary dwellings, or clinging to the few tree tops, that rise above the mass of waters, are left beyond the reach of help, to perish by famine.† The river, in these overflowings, deposites a large quantity of fat slimy mud, which imparts a wonderful fertility to every spot on which it rests. Hardly in any country have such enormous crops

These allusions to the luxurious habits of the rich, apart from the historical evidence, are fully sustained by the paintings which remain in the temples and sepulchres in Thebes and elsewhere. Those who are fond of such knowledge are referred to Wilkinson's Thebes, where much curious and minute information is given on these subjects.

† See Belzoni. Strabo iii. 417. Pliny Hist. Nat. xviii. 47. The lowest inundation is reckoned at eighteen cubits, nineteen is tolerable (monáseb), twenty good, twenty-one sufficient, twenty-two fills every canal and is termed perfect, (temám); but twenty-four would overwhelm every thing, and do great injury to the country. Wilk. p. 315.

In 100 parts, the slime of the Nile contains 11 of water, 9 carbon, 6 oxide of iron, 4 silver, 4 carbonate of magnesia, 18 carbonate of lime, and 48 alumine. Regnault, in Memoires sur l'Egypte. The banks of the river are generally higher than the land behind them, so that the latter are first overflowed. This circumstance and other inequalities of the surface, gave rise to various devices for artificial irrigation. Allusion is made to this practice, by a passage which also proves its high antiquity, in Deut. 11: 10, "not as the land of Egypt, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs." Diodorus i. 34, says in his time the Egyptians used for this purpose a machine invented by Archimedes of Syracuse, which received its name (xoxhias) from its shape. This is supposed to be the Persian wheel. Shaw, Travels in Barbary and the Levant, 11, 267 says the sakiah, a hydraulic engine for watering rice fields, was the Persian wheel. The same is described as still in use by Mad. Minutoli, p. 190. Pococke, Egypt i. 201, fol. gives an account of another instrument, ruder and more primitive. "When the water

been produced with so little labor and expense of the cultivator. The whole process of culture consists in cutting a shallow furrow with a plough, and scattering and covering the seed. The covering of the seed we are assured by Diodorus, was done by herds of cattle who were let loose upon it, and trod it in.*

Among the more important vegetable productions of Egypt, flax deserves the foremost mention. It was cultivated very extensively both for the oil which was expressed from it, and for the manufacture of linen. It is mentioned Ex. 9: 31, as one of the large and important crops smitten down by the plague of hail. "And the flax and the barley were smitten, for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was bolled." The manufacture of it is referred to in Ex. 20: 6, 36, and in other passages, in the phrase "fine twined linen." Also in Isaiah 19: 9, "Moreover they that work in fine flax, and they that weave net works shall be confounded." It was also an article of foreign commerce. Solomon made large and regular importations of it, 1 Kings 10: 28, "And Solomon had horses brought out of Egypt, and linen yarn; the king's merchants received the linen yarn at a price." So Prov. 7: 16, " fine linen of Egypt." Ezekiel speaks of it as imported by the Tyrians and commonly used by them, 27: 7, "Fine linen with bordered work from Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be thy sail." The manufacture was of a very early date, and the wearing of it a matter of courtly use and luxury in the days of

is deep, they put a cord round the wheel, which reaches down to the water; to it they tie earthen jars, which fill with water as it goes round, and empty themselves at the top in the same manner, being turned by oxen. When the banks are high, the most common way is to make a basin in the side of them, and fixing a pole with an axle on another forked pole, they tie a pole at the end of that, and at the end again of this which is next the river a leather bucket, and a stone being tied to the other end, two men draw the bucket down into the water and the weight brings it up, the men directing it, and turning the water into the basin, whence it is raised in like manner; and so I have seen five one over another in the upper part of Egypt, which is a great labor.”

66

* I. 36. Herodotus, ii. 14, says that swine were employed in this labor : ἐπεᾶν δέ καταπατήσῃ τῇσι ὑσὶ τὸ σπέρμα ; and Pliny, mox sues impellere vestigiis semina deprimentes in madido solo; et credo antiquitus factitatum." The plough must have been used very early by the Egyptians, as it is found on the old monuments.

Joseph. Herodotus says the weaving was performed by men,t and as these cities are mentioned as residences of workers in linen, we may conclude that the manufacture was carried on in large establishments. No people understood the policy of a subdivision of labor better than the Egyptians. Heeren has a passage on this subject which we cannot forbear to insert.§ "Both in the engravings of the work upon Egypt, of the royal tombs of Belzoni, and in those of Minutoli, we see these garments in their splendid colors as fresh as ever. They are so different and various that a difference in the stuffs cannot be questioned. Many of them are so fine that the limbs shine through; others on the contrary are coarser. Many of them are white, and many white and striped; others are starred or flowered, and many exhibit the most splendid colors of the East. The fine garments involuntarily remind us of the Indian muslins; in the dazzling glitter of others, silk stuffs seem to be represented."

Cotton also was grown and woven in Egypt.|| The bodies of the dead were swathed in both cotton and linen,¶ and the robes of the priesthood were made of cotton, which was a favorite material for dress with the wealthier classes in general.

The vine was cultivated in Egypt from the earliest times. The butler was an officer of distinct and prescribed duties in the household of the Pharaohs.** Immense quantities of wine we are told, were consumed by the multitudes assembled at Bubastis on the festival of Artemis.†† Pliny commends the Sebennytic. In training the vine, and in the mode of preparing and preserving the wine, the Egyptians very much resembled the Romans.

[blocks in formation]

3 Lycopolis, Aphroditopolis and Panopolis, Strabo iii. 457. § Africa vol. ii. p. 361, English translation.

Pococke i. 205. Pliny xix. 2. § 3, mentions four kinds of linen, and adds, "superior pars Ægypti Arabiam vergens gignit fruticem, quem aliqui gossipion vocant, plures xylon, et ideo lina inde facta xylina. Parvus est, similemque barbatae nucis defert fructum, cujus ex interiore bombyce lanugo netur. Nec ulla sunt eis candore mollitiave praeferenda. Vestes inde sacerdotibus Ægypti gratissimae. ¶ Herod. ii. 81, and compare § 105. ** Gen. xl.

tt Herod. ii. 60.

Pliny xiv. 9. Herodotus says a sort of wine made of barley, probably resembling our ale, was the common drink of the people of VOL. X. No. 27.

6

« ¡è͹˹éÒ´Óà¹Ô¹¡ÒõèÍ
 »