[1]This legend is stated by Rohlfs, on Brugsch’s authority, to be recorded on the temple of Horus at Edfu.
[2]Reference to the plan showing the different roads and passes out of the oasis-depression will facilitate the perusal of the following pages.
[3]Since writing the above, I have read with much interest a paper on the South-West Desert of Egypt, in which my friend and former colleague, Dr. W. F. Hume, in a discussion of the formation of the oases-depressions, refers to the importance of soft and hard strata, and to the action of folding in exposing the former to the agents of denudation. This is striking confirmation of the views promulgated by me since my first acquaintance with the oases many years ago. Of great interest and value, being new, is the suggestion that the topography of the southern oases and surrounding desert may be, to a considerable extent, due to denudation acting on the country as it was in process of being elevated from the sea in which the deposits forming it had been laid down.
[4]The dates given in this chapter are those assigned by Professor Steindorff.
[5]Canon Rawlinson’s translation.
[6]That even occasional rains can effect a considerable amount of erosion of soft materials is shown by the present state of these domes, from which a skin of some thickness has been washed away, leaving the surfaces bristling with the sharp fragments of rock which were included in the original mixture of sand and clay from which the bricks were manufactured.
[7]The royal cubit was the chief unit of length, and measured 20·6 inches; 300 and 500 cubits would therefore be equivalent to 515 and 858 feet respectively.
[8]The Headquarters of the Corporation of Western Egypt, Limited (see map).
[9]I should like to record my indebtedness to Mr. Garsed, who, while in the oasis, undertook, at my request, a considerable amount of special analytical work, in addition to his regular duties.
[10]‘The Nile Flood and Rains of the Nile Basin, 1906,’ Survey Department, Cairo, 1907; ‘Some Geographical Aspects of the Nile,’ the Geographical Journal, November, 1908, vol. xxxii., No. 5.