Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

The Nile, unlike any other river on our globe, for more than the last thousand miles of its course, the whole of which is through sandy wastes—the valley of Egypt being, in fact, only the river channel—is not joined by a single affluent. Nor, in this long reach through the desert, does it receive any considerable accessions from storm-water. From the beginning of its history—that is to say, for more than five thousand years, for so far back extend the contemporary records of its monuments—Egypt has been wondering, and, from the dawn of intelligent inquiry in Europe, all who heard of Egypt and of the Nile have been desiring to know what, and where, were the hidden sources of the strange and mighty river, which alone had made Egypt a country, and rendered it habitable.

Nowhere, in modern times, has so much interest been felt about this earliest, and latest, problem of physical geography as in England; and no people have contributed so much to its solution as Englishmen. At this moment the whole of the civilised world is concerned at the uncertainty which involves the fate of one of our countrymen, the greatest on the long roll of our African explorers, who has, now for some years, been lost to sight in the perplexing interior of this fantastic continent, while engaged in the investigation of its great and well-kept secret; but who, we are all hoping, may soon be restored to us, bringing with him, as the fruit of his long and difficult enterprise, its final and complete solution.[1] Thoughts of this kind do not stand only at the threshold of a tour in Egypt, as it were, inviting one to undertake it, but accompany one throughout it, deepening the varied interest there is so much everywhere in Egyptian objects to awaken.

One of the first questions to force itself on the attention of the traveller in Egypt is—How was the valley he is passing through formed?

This is a question that cannot be avoided. It was put to Herodotus, more than two thousand years ago, by the peculiarities of the scene. He answered it after his fashion, which was that of his time. It was, he said, originally an arm of the sea, corresponding to the Arabian Gulf, the Red Sea; and had been filled up with the mud of the Nile. Those were days when, as was done for many a day afterwards, the answers to physical questions were sought in metaphysical ideas. The one to which the simple-minded, incomparable, old Chronicler had recourse on this occasion was that of a supposed symmetrical fitness in nature. There is the Red Sea, a long narrow gulf, a very marked figure in the geography of the world, trending in from the south, on the east side of the Arabian Hills. There ought therefore to be on the west side of this range a corresponding gulf trending in from the north: otherwise the Arabian Gulf would be unbalanced. That compensatory gulf had been where Egypt now is. The demonstration was complete. Egypt must have been an arm of the sea, which had been gradually expelled by the deposit from the river. This argument, however, is not unassailable, even from the fitness-of-things point of view. Had the fitness-of-things been in this matter, and in this fashion, a real agent in nature, it should have made the valley of Egypt somewhat more like the Red Sea in width; and it should also have interdicted its being filled up with mud. It should have had the same reasons and power for maintaining it, which it had originally for making it. In this way, however, did men when they first began to look upon the marvels of Nature with inquiring interest, suppose that metaphysical conceptions, creatures of the brain, were entities in Nature, and would supply the keys that were to unlock her secrets.

‘Egypt is the gift of the Nile.’ But I believe that it is the gift of the Nile in a much larger sense than Herodotus had in his mind when he wrote these words. It is the gift of the Nile in a double sense. The Nile both cut out the valley, and also filled it up with alluvium. The valley filled with alluvium is Egypt. The excavation of the valley was the greater part of the work. That it was formed in this way was suggested to me by its resemblance to the valley of the Platte above Julesburg, as it may be seen even from a car of the Pacific Railway. You there have a wide valley, like Egypt, perfectly flat, bounded on either side by limestone bluffs, sometimes inclined at so precipitous an angle that nothing can grow upon them, excepting, here and there, a conifer or two; and sometimes at so obtuse an angle that the slopes are covered with grass. These varying inclinations reproduce themselves in the bounding ranges of the valley of Egypt. The Platte writhes, like a snake, from side to side of its flat valley, cutting away in one place the alluvium, all of which it had itself deposited, and transporting it to another. It is continually silting up its channel, first in one place, and then in another, with bars and banks, which oblige the stream to find itself a new channel to the right or left. The bluffs, though now generally at a considerable distance from the river, must have been formed by it, when it was working sometimes against one, and sometimes against the other side of the valley; and sometimes also for long periods leaving both, and running in a midway channel. Why should not the Nile have done the same?

This supposition is supported by the fact that when you have a soft cretaceous limestone, and rocks that may be easily worn away, the valley of Egypt is wide. When, as you ascend the stream, you pass at Silsiléh into the region of compact siliceous sandstone, the valley immediately narrows. And when you enter the granite region at Assouan, there ceases to be any valley at all. The river has not been able, in all the ages of its existence, to do more than cut itself an insufficient channel in this intractable rock. All this is just what you would expect on the supposition that it was the river that had cut out the valley.

We are sure, at all events, of one step in this process. For there is incontrovertible evidence that, in the historical period, the river flowed at a level twenty-seven feet higher than it does at present, as far down as Silsiléh. In several places, down to that point, may be found the Nile alluvium, deposited on the contiguous high ground at that height above the highest level the river now reaches in its annual inundations. There is, besides, the old deserted channel from a little below Philæ to Assouan, into which the river cannot now rise. Here, then, is the evidence of Nature.

We have also the testimony of man to the same fact, contemporary testimony inscribed on the granite. Herodotus tells us, that from the time of Mœris, the Egyptians had preserved an uninterrupted register of the annual risings of the Nile. This Mœris of the Greeks was Amenemha III., one of the last kings of the primæval monarchy, before the invasion of the Hyksos. This register was preserved both in a written record, in which the height of the inundation was given in figures for each year, (this is what Herodotus mentions,) and also in engraved markings on suitable river-side rocks. Of these markings, we, fortunately, have a series at Semnéh, in Nubia. Sesortesen II., the father of Amenemha III., had conquered Nubia. This event took place between two and three thousand years before our era. To secure his conquest, he built at Semnéh a strong castle on one of the perpendicular granite cliffs, between which the Nile had cut its channel. His son, not content with instituting the written register Herodotus mentions, ordered that the height of the inundation should, each year, be inscribed on the granite cliffs of Semnéh, which had been fortified by his father, and where an Egyptian garrison was kept. This castle, little injured by time, is still standing. Here was the most appropriate place for such a register. It was the actual bank of the river; it was perpendicular; it was indestructible; it measured all the water that came into Egypt. Amenemha must have been familiar with the place, for it was the custom of the princes to accompany the king in war. Now, there are thirteen of Amenemha’s inscriptions at this day on this cliff. Each gives a deeply-incised line for the height of the rising, and under it is an hieroglyphic inscription, informing us that that line indicates the height to which the river rose in such and such a year of Amenemha’s reign. In every instance the date is given. In the reign of Amenemha’s successor, the invasion of the Hyksos took place, terminated the old monarchy, and for four hundred years threw everything into confusion. But, what we are concerned with, is the fact that in the reign of this king and his successor, the Nile rose, on an average, twenty-four feet above the level to which it rises now.

Here, then, are two witnesses, Nature and Man. The coincidence of their testimony is as clear and complete as it is undesigned. It may, therefore, be accepted as an undoubted fact, that the Nile is now flowing from Semnéh to Silsiléh at a level lower by at least twenty-four feet than it did at the date of the inscriptions. Nature says there was a time when it rose at least twenty-seven feet higher than at present, for at that height it deposited alluvium. There is no discrepancy in these three additional feet, though there would have been something like a discrepancy had Nature indicated three feet less than the markings.

The only question for us to consider is, how this was brought about. It could have been brought about only in one way, and that was by the river deepening its channel. As far down as Silsiléh it had been flowing at a higher level. Here there must have been a cataract, or an actual cascade. Whatever the form of the obstruction, the stream carried it away. And so, again and again, working backwards, it ate out for itself a deeper channel all the way up to Semnéh. This is just how the Niagara river is dealing with its channel. It has undertaken the big job of deepening it, from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, down to the level of Ontario. The stone it has to work in is very hard and compact. It has now done about half the work, and every one sees that it will eventually complete it. All that is required is time. The River Colorado, we are told, runs for six hundred miles of its course in a canon, a mile in perpendicular depth, all cut through rock, and some of it granitic.