[748] Od., IV. 477, and XVII. 448. In Th. 338 of Hesiod, who, though not a contemporary, flourished shortly after Homer, ὁ Νεῖλος first appears. The Egyptians called it Hapi, but in the vernacular language Yetor, or Ye-or = the River, or Yaro = the great River.
[749] Papyrus Sallier, II. On the other hand, another hymn speaks of the unkindness of the Nile in bringing about the destruction of fish, but it is the river at its lowest (first half of June) that is meant. See Records of the Past, being English translations of ancient monuments of Egypt and Western Asia (ed. S. Birch, vols. I.-XII. 1873-81), IV. 3, and ibid., new series (A. H. Sayce), III. 51.
[750] The yearly sacrifice of a virgin at Memphis may be doubted—at least for the Christian age of Egypt, to which Arab writers wish to attribute it.
[751] The Νειλῶα are described by Heliodorus, IX. 9.
[752] J. H Breasted, A History of the Ancient Egyptians, 1908, p. 47, declares that the Egyptians discovered true alphabetical letters 2500 years before any other people, and the calendar as early as 4241 b.c.
[753] P. E. Newberry, Beni Hasan (London, 1893), Plate XXIX. Cf. Lepsius, Denk. Abt., 2, Bl. 127; J. G. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1878), p. 116, pl. 371.
[754] Ibid., loc. cit., pl. 370.
[755] The Nile is the second longest river in the world (Perthes, Taschen Atlas). The Egyptians believed that it sprang from four sources at the twelfth gate of the nether world, at a place described in ch. 146 of the Book of the Dead, and that it came to light at the two whirlpools of the first cataract.
[756] Brugsch., Dict. Supplem., 1915. Cf. Stèle de l’an VIII. de Rameses II., by Ahmed Bey Kamal (Rec. trav., etc., vol. 30, pp. 216-217). The King, as an instance of how well his workmen are provided for, cites the fact that special fishermen are allotted to them.
[757] I. 36.