It is estimated that the alluvium brought down by these great rivers has encroached upon the Persian Gulf by the formation of land about sixty feet annually, creating a delta at the head of the gulf of ninety miles in three thousand years.
These deposits have been more rapid in later times than anciently. The great cause of the difference between ancient and modern Chaldea is the neglect of the water courses. In ancient times, a well arranged system of embankments and irrigating canals held these great rivers in their courses by distributing the superabundant waters of the great flood times to all parts of the country, thus enriching the soil with abundant water supply at all seasons.
In the present neglected condition of this region the floods as they come down from the mountain sources of the Euphrates are liable to wash away the banks, sometimes changing the course of the river, and overflowing large tracts at slightly lower levels, which have become unwholesome marshes, while other large tracts which are never inundated, in the fierce heats become parched and desolate sand wastes. It is said that such is the spread and waste of the Euphrates in its lower course, that, except in flood time, but a small proportion of this great volume of water reaches the sea.
These conditions do not so seriously affect the Tigris, which for the greater part of its course flows over a rocky bed, between high embankments, and which, though a narrower, is a deeper and swifter stream than the Euphrates.
Within historic times, the Tigris and Euphrates entered the sea by separate channels nearly thirty miles apart. At the present time, and for many centuries, these two rivers have been united, forming the great river, the Shat-el-Arab, through which, in a course of about one hundred and twenty miles, their united waters reach the sea.
HIEROGLYPHIC TEXT AND TRANSLATION.
Hieroglyphic Transcription.
A free Translation of the above.