India than the corresponding edifices in the lower parts of the country, while they exhibit the undoubted marks of a more remote antiquity. The same conclusion is farther supported by the celebrity which the Ethiopians had acquired in the earliest age that tradition or poetry has revealed to us.. The annals of the Egyptian priests were full of them. The nations of Asia, in like manner, on the Tigris and Euphrates, mingled Ethiopian legends with the songs which commemorated the exploits of their own heroes. At a time, too, when the Greeks scarcely knew Italy or Sicily by name, the virtues, the civilization, and the mythology, of the Ethiopians, supplied to their poets a subject of lofty description. Homer, both in the Iliad and Odyssey, relates that Jupiter, at a certain season of the year, departed from his chosen seat on Olympus to visit this remote and accomplished people. For twelve days the god was absent in their pious and hospitable region. It is probable that some annual procession of the priests of Ammon up the Nile, to the primitive scene of their worship, was the ground-work of this legend adopted into the popular creed of the older Greeks. Diodorus himself expresses a similar opinion, when he states that the Ethiopians were said to be the inventors of pomps, sacrifices, solemn assemblies, and other honours paid to the gods; that is, that they were the religious parents of the Egyptians, to whom the countrymen of Homer and Hesiod looked up as to their instructors in sacred things as well as in the principles of civil polity. It has therefore been thought probable that ancient Meröe was the original seat of the religion, the political institutions, the arts, and the letters, which

afterwards shed so bright a lustre on the kingdom of the Pharaohs.*

There is nothing more remarkable in the history of Egypt than that the same people who distinguished themselves by an early progress in civilization, and who erected works which have survived the conquests of Persia, the triumphs of Roman art, and all the architectural labours of Christianity, should have degraded their fine genius by the worship of four-footed beasts, and even of disgusting reptiles. The world does not present a more humbling contrast between the natural powers of intellect and the debasing effect of superstition. Among the Jews, on the other hand,-a people much less elevated by science and mechanical knowledge,— we find a sublime system of theology, and a ritual which, if not strictly entitled to the appellation of a reasonable service, was yet comparatively pure in its ordinances, and still farther refined by a lofty and spiritual import. It has been said of the Hebrews, that they were men in religion, and children in every thing else. This observation may be reversed in the case of the Egyptians; for, while in the greater number of those pursuits which give dignity to the human mind, and perpetuate the glories of civilized life, they made a progress which set all rivalry at defiance, in their notions and adoration of the invisible Powers who preside over the destinies of man, they manifested the imbecility, the ignorance, and the credulity of childhood.

In reviewing the annals of the great nations of

* Heeren's Ideas on the Politics and Commerce of Ancient Nations.

antiquity, it is interesting to observe that nearly all the knowledge we possess of their manners and institutions may be attributed to a circumstance so very trivial as the choice which they made of their materials for building. As the rise of Egyptian power and wisdom preceded a long time the era of letters, the history of the more ancient kings, like that of the Babylonians and Assyrians, must have been lost, had the architectural monuments of the former people not been constructed of more imperishable substances than were to be found in the alluvial plains of Mesopotamia. In connexion with these reflections, we are naturally led to remark that the recent discoveries in hieroglyphics justify the hope that the darkness, which has so long hung over the annals and chronology of Egypt, will be at length so far dispelled as to enable the historian to ascertain at least the order of events and the succession of monarchs.

CHAPTER II.

Physical Properties and Geographical Distribution of Egypt.

General Description of Egypt-Origin of the Name— Opinions of the Ancients-Egypt the Gift of the NileDepth of the Soil-Attempts to ascertain the mean Rate of Deposition-Opinions of Shaw, Savary, Volney, and Bruce-Speculations of the French Philosophers-Proof that Egypt has acquired an Elevation of Surface-Fear of Dr Shaw in Regard to the eventual Sterility of the Land-Constancy of the Inundations-Frauds by the Government-Qualities of the Water-Analysis of the Mud-Accident witnessed by Belzoni-Seasons in Egypt -Heat-Infrequency of Rain-The Winds, SimoomThe Political Geography of Egypt-Mouths of the Nile -Natron Lakes-Waterless River.

THE physical qualities of Egypt are not less remarkable than its stupendous works of art and its early civilization. It presents itself to the eye of the traveller as an immense valley, extending nearly 600 miles in length, and hemmed in, on either side, by a ridge of hills and a vast expanse of desert. Viewed as an alluvial basin, it owes its existence entirely to the Nile, which flows through it from south to north, conveying annually to the inhabitants the main source of their agricultural wealth, salubrity

to their climate, and beauty to their landscape. The breadth of the cultivable soil varies, of course, according to the direction of the rocky barriers by which its limits are determined,-spreading, at some parts, into a spacious plain, while, at others, it contracts its dimensions to less than two leagues. The mean width has been estimated at about nine miles; and hence, including the whole area from the shores of the Delta to the first cataract, the extent of land capable of bearing crops has been reckoned to contain ten millions of acres.

The learning of geographers has long been employed in the intricate field of etymology to discover the origin of the term by which Egypt is known among the moderns. It is asserted, by the Greeks, that a celebrated king of this name bequeathed it to his dominions, which had formerly passed under the appellation of Aëria, or the land of heat and blackness. In the sacred writings of the Hebrews it is called Mizraim, evidently the plural form of the oriental noun Mizr, the name which is applied to Egypt by the Arabs of the present day. The Copts retain the native word Chemia, which, perhaps, has some relation to Cham, the son of Noah; or, as Plutarch insinuates, may only denote that darkness of colour which appears in a rich soil or in the human eye. Mizraim, it ought also to be observed, was one of the children of Cham; and it is therefore not improbable that the epithet applied to his inheritance may have arisen from the respect usually paid to the founders of nations. Bruce remarks that Y Gypt, the term used by the Ethiopians when they speak of Egypt, means the country of canals,-a description very suitable to the improved condition of that singu