When the ancient race of the Ptolemies ended, a scene of war and confusion, and bad government at home, was succeeded by a worse under foreigners abroad. The number of its inhabitants was still greatly decreased, and the valley had yet a quantity of water enough to fit it for annual culture.
In the reign of the second emperor after the Roman conquest, Petronius Arbiter, a man well known for taste and learning, was governor of Egypt. He saw with regret the decay of the magnificent works of the ancient native Egyptian princes. His sagacity penetrated the usefulness and propriety of those works. He saw they had once made Egypt populous and flourishing. Like a good citizen and subject of the state he served, and from a humane and rational attachment to that which he governed, he hoped to make it again as flourishing under the new government as it had been under the old. Like a man of sense, and master of his subject, he laughed at the dastardly spirit of the modern Egyptians, anxious and trembling lest the Nile should not overflow land enough to give them bread, when they had the power in their hands to procure plenty in abundance for six times the number of the people then in Egypt. To shew them this, he repaired their ancient works, raised their banks, refitted their sluices, and by thus imprisoning, as I may say, the inundation at a proper time in the beginning, he overflowed all Egypt with 8 peeks of water, as fully, and as effectually, as to the purposes of agriculture, as before and since it hath been with 16; and did not open the sluices to allow the water to run and waste in the desert (where there was now no longer any inhabitants), till the land of the valley of Egypt had been so well watered as only to need that the inundation should retire in time to leave the farmer the ground firm enough for plowing and sowing.
Let any one read what I have already quoted from Strabo; it is just what I have here repeated, but in fewer words. Let him consider how fair an experiment this of Petronius was, that by re-establishing the works of Mæris, and putting the inundation to the same profit that Mæris did, he found the same quantity of water overflow the same quantity of ground, and consequently, that the land of Egypt had not been raised an inch from Mæris’s time to that of Petronius, above 1400 years.
Now the second part of the question comes, what difference of measure was made by the Saracens, and how does it now stand, after that period, as to the supposed rise of a foot in a hundred years? It is now above 1100 years since the[165] first of the Hegira, and near 900 years since the erection of the present Mikeas, which being equal to the period between Mæris and Herodotus, and again to that between Herodotus and Julian, we should begin to be certain if any such increase in the land has ever, from Mæris to the present time, been indicated by the Nilometer.
The reader will perhaps be surprised, at what I am going to advance, That those writers, as well as their supporters who have pronounced so positively on this subject, have not furnished themselves with the data which are absolutely necessary to solve this question. Quantity is only to be ascertained by measure, yet none of them have settled that only medium of judging. The Mikeas, or pillar, is the subject to be measured, and they are not yet agreed within 20 feet of its extreme height, nor about the division of any part of it. As this accusation appears to be a strong one, I shall set down the proof for the reader’s consideration, that it may not be supposed I mean to criticise improperly, or to do any author injustice.
And first of the Mikeas. Mr Thomas Humes, a gentleman quoted by[166] Dr Shaw, who had been a great many years a factor at Cairo, says, that the Mikeas is 58 feet English in height. Now, there is really no reason why such an enormous pillar should have been built, as the Nile would drown all Cairo before it was to rise to this height; accordingly, as we have seen, its height is not so much by near 22 feet. Dr Perry[167] next, who has wrote largely upon the subject, says, the Mikeas, or column, is divided into 24 peeks, and each peek or cubit is 24 inches nearly. Dr Pococke[168], who travelled at the same time, agrees in the division of 24 peeks, but says that these peeks are unequal. The 16 lower he supposes are 21 inches, the 4 next, 24 inches, and the uppermost, 22. So that one of these gentlemen makes the Mikeas 43 feet, which is above six feet more than the truth, and the other 48, which is above 11; besides the second error which Dr Pococke has committed, by saying the divisions are of three different dimensions, when they really are not any one of them what he conceives, nor is the Mikeas divided unequally.
As for Mr Humes, who had lived long at Cairo, I would by no means be thought to insinuate a doubt of his veracity: There may, in change of times, be occasions when Christians may be admitted to the Mikeas, and be allowed to measure exactly. This, however, must be with a long rod, divided and brought on purpose, with a high stool or scaffold, and this sort of preparation would be attended with much danger if seen in the hand of a Christian without, and much more if he was to attempt to apply it to the column within. At Cairo a man may see or hear any thing he desires, by the ordinary means of gold, which no Turk can withstand or refuse; but often one villain is paid for being your guide, and another villain, his brother, pays himself, by informing against you; the end is mischief to yourself, which, if you are a stranger, generally involves also your friends. You are asked, What did you at the Mikeas when you know it is forbidden? and your silence after that question is an acknowledgement of guilt; sentence immediately follows, whatever it may be, and execution upon it. I rather am inclined to think, that though several Christians have obtained admission to the Mikeas, very few have had the means or instruments, and fewer still the courage, to measure this column exactly; which leads me to believe, as Dr Shaw says, he procured the number of feet in a letter from Mr Humes, that the Doctor has mistaken 58 for 38, which, in a foreign hand, is very easily done; it would then be 38, instead of 58 English feet, and to that number it might approach near enough, and the difference be accounted for, from an aukward manner of measuring with a trembling hand, there being then only a little more than one foot of error.
From what I have just now mentioned, I hope it is sufficiently plain to the reader, that the length and division of the column in the Mikeas, by which the quantity of water, and consequently the increase of the soil, was to be determined, was utterly unknown to those travellers who had undertaken this mode of determining it.
I shall now inquire, whether they were better instructed in the length of that measure, which, after the Saracen conquest, was introduced into the Nilometer, of Geeza, where it has remained unaltered since the year 245? Dr Shaw introduces the consideration of this subject by an enumeration of many different peeks, seven of which he quotes from Arabian authors, as being then in use. First, the Homaræus 1-2/9 digit of the common cubit. 2. The Hasamean, or greater peek, of 24 digits. 3. The Belalæan, less than the Hasamean. 4. The black cubit less than the Belalean 2⅔ digits. 5. The Jossippæan ⅔ of a digit less than the black cubit. 6. The Chord, or Asaba, 1⅔ digit less than the black peek. 7. The Maharanius, 2⅔ digits less than the black cubit[169]. Now, I will appeal to any one to what all this information amounts, when I am not told the length of the common peek to which he refers the rest, as being 1½ digit, or 2 digits more or less. He himself thinks that the measuring peek is the Stambouline peek, but then, for computation’s sake, he takes a peek of his own invention, being a medium of 4 or 5 guesses, and fixes it at 25 inches, for which he has no authority but his own imagination.
I will not perplex the reader more with the different measures of these peeks, between the Hasamean and great peek of Kalkasendas, which is 18 inches, and the black peek, a model of which Dr Bernard[170] has given us from an Arabic MS. at Oxford, the difference is 10 inches. The first being 18 inches equal to the Samian peek, the other 28½ inches, and from this difference we may judge, joined to the uncertainties of the height and divisions of the Mikeas, how impossible it is for us to determine the increase of 12 inches in a hundred years.