[Page 15;] the extent of the Oasis of Siwah, (as represented by Mr. Horneman) differs widely from that stated by every other writer ancient or modern.
[Page 23;] the admeasurements of the sacred Egyptian building appear to vary in every proportion from those given by a late traveller of allowed accuracy, Mr. Brown.
In the first instance, it is the purpose of the Annotator to ascertain the error, and to shew whence it has arisen.
In the second case, he will have to place the subject in a point of view, by which an apparent variation in the two accounts may not only be reconciled, but even matter of new and just inference, as to the ancient construction and purpose of the building in question, be shewn to arise, from the very elucidation which corrects and compares these differences.
[Page 15;] Mr. Horneman states “the principal and fertile territory of Siwah to be fifty miles in circuit:” in this he disagrees with every account given by the writers cited by Mr. Rennell, and with that latterly given by Mr. Brown, who, in conformity with the descriptions by other authors, states the extent of the Oasis, or fertile spot, to be six miles in length, and four miles and a half in breadth; not exceeding eighteen miles in circumference at the utmost. It will further appear that, in this respect, Horneman is not only at variance with the writings of others, but with his own, and that his own journal furnishes the strongest internal evidence in refutation of the fact he asserts.
Horneman names all the towns within the territory of Siwah,—Scharkie, Msellem, Menschie, Sbocka, and Barischa, and he places all these villages, or towns, within one or two miles of Siwah the capital, which proximity could not be the case, if the rich and fertile land extended each way sixteen miles in traverse, as a circle of fifty miles implies. On a small and most fertile tract of country, surrounded on all sides by barren and sandy deserts, the rich and productive soil infers a population commensurate with, and in proportion to, its extent. Diodorus Siculus tells us, that the ancient Ammonians dwelt κωμηδὸν, i. e. vicatìm. (Ed. Wesseling, Tom. II. p. 198.) And so too the people at present (on grounds probably of convenience and defence against the Arabs of the Desert) appear to live chiefly in towns; and hence those towns must have been more distant, as more widely diffused over so great a space of country from its very character and description, to be supposed in every part occupied and appropriate. Society must have gathered and increased till it fully covered a country of such exclusive fertility and means of subsistence. Generally, increase of population is to be measured by the means of subsistence; and in converse of the proposition, whatever of country was productive and habitable situated as the Oasis of Siwah, must be considered as inhabited and turned to account: the general reasoning and estimate of increase of people is further strengthened by the special argument of probable resort, from the barren yet partially inhabited districts which encompassed it.
Horneman’s description of the territory of Siwah tallies with, and confirms, the speculation: he represents the country as consisting of so many gardens walled or fenced on every side, and cultivated with so nice attention and labour, and with such care in irrigation, that the water directed in various cuts and channels from each spring, was in no case suffered to flow beyond the territory; but was made to lose and expend itself in the cultivated grounds of the Siwahans: and he describes the people as a swarm, and their residence as a crowded hive.
Let us now advert to his more particular enumeration of these Siwahans, and to the practicability of such number (as under any computation can be supposed labourers in the field) being competent to work the ground of fifty miles in circuit, with the nice agriculture he describes.
Horneman states 1500 warriors, or men bearing arms, as the data for estimating the population of the country: he must mean to say, men capable of bearing arms, or there are no data, and he means nothing. Calculate a population on the widest latitude from such data, and apply it to a well-cultivated district of 127,360 square acres, and there will not be more than one cultivator to at least 50 cultivated acres: for the women, our journalist has otherwise engaged. They (as he tells us,) are employed in manufacture, and chiefly in that of wicker-work and baskets, which they work with great neatness and ingenuity. These statements carry self-contradiction. These lands cannot be so extensive, or cannot be so cultivated.
Thus from Mr. Horneman’s own account, we may infer, that the rich spot of country termed the Oasis of Siwah, must be of much less extent indeed, than that which he directly states.