By Prof. W. T. HARRIS.
V.—EGYPT, PHŒNICIA, JUDEA.
Egypt.—According to Bunsen, Egypt is the middle place in the world’s history. It is connected directly with the West or Europe, and as directly with the East or Asia.
It is the only country in the great continent of Africa that forms a link in the history of the world. What education is to be found in the other parts of Africa, we have seen in our first chapter on education in the savage tribe. Of course we reckon the Abyssinian Christians, loosely, in this designation of Egypt, and consider Carthage as a part of Phœnician civilization.
Egypt is properly a link in the chain of Asiatic civilization, although geographically located in Africa. Its history is full of interaction with the Semitic peoples of Western Asia, and we find it often in relation with the Hebrews, the Arabians, and the Phœnicians, and even with the far-off nations of the Euphrates and Tigris. Finally the Persians conquer the country under Cambyses, and Egypt is henceforth Persian, then Macedonian, then Roman, then Saracen, and finally a Turkish dependency.
The river Nile is the essential feature of Egypt, more particularly the circumstance of its annual overflow and subsidence. There is little or no rain in Egypt in all the region from the mouth of the Nile up to the last tributary it receives on its way down from the highlands of Abyssinia. Northward from that branch (the Atbara) the Nile valley is eight hundred miles long, and the Nile itself with all its windings flows 1,300 miles, to its mouth.
The copious rains and snows in the mountainous countries at the south supply fertility by the annual inundation, which begins in June, attains its greatest height in September, and then subsides so that the farmers of Egypt can sow their grain on the waters in October, and by November, when the waters have subsided, the green blades of wheat are seen everywhere sprouting through the slimy deposit left by the river. In March there is an abundant harvest. Living was so cheap in Egypt that the cost of bringing up a human being to his twentieth year was not more than four dollars.
The Egyptian finds it possible to conquer nature and make it serve him. He builds canals and dykes and regulates the overflow of the Nile so as to get the utmost service from the fertilizing power of the rich soil that the Nile brings down to him. Observation of nature necessary for the purpose of utilizing the rise of the Nile, leads him to a knowledge of astronomy, the construction of calendars, and hydraulic engineering. He understands irrigation, the construction of canals, dams and reservoirs. He invents the science of geometry because he has to use the art of surveying in order to recover his farm after the inundation, and fix its boundaries. Difficulties that occur in locating farms that are liable to be washed away by new channels cut through by freshets, as well as by the covering up and destruction of old landmarks, lead to a more careful system of laws on the subject of landed property, as well as rights and privileges appertaining to its use, than we can find elsewhere in ancient times.