Lower Egypt

“ The world in which we live, holiness, has suffered great changes. In Egypt itself we find ruins of cities and temples hidden in the earth deeply. There was a time when that which is now Lower Egypt was an arm of the sea, and the Nile flowed through the whole width of our valley. Still earlier the sea was here, where this kingdom is now. Our ancestors inhabited the region which the western desert has taken. ”

“ This is less than half the extent of the land which is comprised within the confines of the desert; for many parts within the limits of the cultivable land are too high to be inundated, and consequently are not cultivated; and other parts, particularly in Lower Egypt, are occupied by lakes, or marshes, or drifted sand. Allowances also must be made for the space which is occupied by towns and villages, the river, canals, &c. Lower Egypt comprises about the same extent of cultivated land as the whole of Upper Egypt. ”

“ The people who dwell on the banks of the Lower Nile played a part in history corresponding with the geographical position of the land. Egypt is the first region of which there is any record in the annals of human culture. It already existed as a civilised power conscious of its own greatness at a period antecedent to the foundation of Babylon and Nineveh, and when the whole of Europe was still overrun Ly savage tribes that have left no record behind them. ”

“ Looking at this period of the history of Egypt as a whole, we can see its main characteristic to be that Egypt has now, instead of the comparatively homogeneous native population which it had under the old Pharaohs, two strata of population living together within its borders — the upper stratum constituted by a European ruling race and the lower stratum constituted by the great subject mass of Egyptians. ”

“ The Arabian or Coast Range. Here and there, from Assuan to Cairo, the banks of the Nile are commanded either by the slopes of mountains, or by the edges of plateaux, whose height ranges from 300 to 2,300 feet. From these heights a whole section of Egypt lies at the feet of the traveller, from the eastern to the western frontier, with all its villages, canals and cultivated lands. Lower down the yellow walls of the rocks in many places bear the aspect of quarries, whose cleared spaces are now laid out in garden-plots. ”

“ They silt up, close, open again, replace each other, and ramify in innumerable branches over the surface of the soil, spreading life and fertility on all sides. As the land rises towards the south, this web contracts and is less confused, while black mould and cultivation alike dwindle, and the fawn-coloured line of the desert comes into sight. The Libyan and Arabian hills appear above the plain, draw nearer to each other, and gradually shut in the horizon until it seems as though they would unite. And there the Delta ends, and Egypt proper has begun. ”

“ The relations with these nations continued to be pacific, and, with the exception of Sinai, Pharaoh had no desire to leave the Nile Valley and take long journeys to pillage or subjugate countries from whence came so much treasure. The desert and the sea which protected Egypt on the north and east from Asiatic cupidity, protected Asia with equal security from the greed of Egypt. ”

“ All that is characteristic of Egypt is in sight; to the west, the Libyan hills and the limitless stretch of yellow desert sand; to the north, desert also and the ruined pyramid of Abooroâsh; to the south, that long necropolis of the desert marked by the pyramids of Abooseér, Sakkarah, and Dashoor; on the east, the Nile and its broad meadows widening into the dim Delta northward, the white line of Cairo under the Mokattam hills, and the grey desert beyond. Egypt is a ribbon of green between two deserts. ”

“ But it is not only the fate of Egypt that is at stake, but in some degree of all the East. It is a strange comment on our ideas of the natural progress of society or of civilization, that the border-land between Asia and Africa, which had on either side of it the greatest empires of antiquity, is to this day overrun by half-savage tribes — true sons of Ishmael, whose hand is against every man, and every man's hand against them. ”

“ It is plain that the Valley of the Nile was once a part of this desert, but the river, with its tremendous volume, set to work to cut down its bed. The channel, so worn down, is the present valley. "Egypt is the temporarily uncovered bed of the Nile, which it reclaims and recovers during a portion of each year, when Egypt disappears from view, save where human labor has by mounds and embankments formed artificial islands that raise their heads above the waste of waters, for the most part crowned with buildings." ”

“ The modern mind, no long terrified by speed, to which it has grown contemptuously accustomed, yet shrinks a little before this display of titanic and bewildering size, Egypt makes it realise that it has no handy stand of measurement. It listens to words that are are meaningless. The vast proportions uplift, then stupefy. The girth of the Pyramids, the height of the Colossi, the cubic content of the granite columns and the visage of the Sphinx expressed in yards⁠—these convey as little truth as the numbered leagues of the frightening desert or the length of that weary and interminable Nile. ”

“ The only difference between Nubian Egypt and Egypt proper lay in the greater heat and smaller wealth of the former, where the narrower, less fertile, and less well-watered land supported a smaller population and yielded less abundant revenues.
The Pharaoh kept the charge of the more important strategical points in his own hands. Strongholds placed at bends of the river and at the mouths of ravines leading into the desert, secured freedom of navigation, and kept off the pillaging nomads. ”

“ Egypt is all that country which is inhabited by Egyptians, even as Cilicia and Assyria are the countries inhabited by Cilicians and Assyrians severally; and we know of no frontier (rightly so called) below Asia and Libya save only the borders of the Egyptians. But if we follow the belief of the Greeks, we shall consider all Egypt, down from the Cataracts and the city Elephantine, to be divided into two parts, and to claim both the names, the one part belonging to Libya and the other to Asia. For the Nile, beginning from the Cataracts, divides Egypt into two parts as it flows to the sea. ”

“ During these remote ages, too, Egypt was, as now, the land of perpetual fertility and abundance. There would always be corn in Egypt, wherever else famine might rage. The neighboring nations and tribes in Arabia, Palestine, and Syria, found their way to it, accordingly, across the deserts on the eastern side, when driven by want, and thus opened a way of communication. At length the Persian monarchs, after extending their empire westward to the Mediterranean, found access by the same road to Pelusium, and thence overran and conquered the country. ”

“ Henceforth Egyptian civilization runs an uninspired and undeveloping course till the days of the Saïtes and the Ptolemies. This point in the history of Egypt, therefore, forms a convenient stopping-place at which to pause, while we turn once more to Western Asia, and ascertain to what extent recent excavations and research have thrown new light upon the problems connected with the rise and history of the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires. ”

“ Apart from its wonderful river, the country itself has no very striking features. It is rather a monotonous land—a long ribbon of green running through a great waste of yellow desert and barren hills. But the great charm that draws people's minds to Egypt, and gives the old land a never-failing interest, is its great story of the past, and all the relics of that story which are still to be seen. ”

“ But with all that is dark in the present state of this country, and sad in the condition of its people, I believe that Egypt has a great future before it; that it is to rise to a new life, and become a prosperous State of the modern world. The Nile valley has a great part yet to play in the future civilization of Africa, as an avenue of access to the interior—to those central highlands where are the Great Lakes, which are the long-sought sources of the Nile; and from which travellers and explorers, merchants and missionaries, may descend on the one hand to the Niger, and to the Western Coast ”

“ The composition, unlike so many other triumphal inscriptions, is not a mere piece of official rhetoric, in which the poverty of the subject is concealed by a multitude of common-places whether historical or mythological. Egypt indeed ruled the world, either directly or through her vassals, and from the mountains of Abyssinia to those of Cilicia her armies held the nations in awe with the threat of the Pharaoh. ”

“ Theban Egypt was, before all things, a community recognizing a theocratic government, in which the kingly office was merged in that of the high priest. Separated from Asia by the length of the Delta, it turned its attention, like the Pharaohs of the VIth and XIIth dynasties, to Ethiopia, and owing to its distance from the Mediterranean, and from the new civilization developed on its shores, it became more and more isolated, till at length it was reduced to a purely African state. Northern Egypt, on the contrary, maintained contact with European and Asiatic nations ”

“ The country geographically belongs to Egypt, ethnologically to Arabia. It falls into three regions.
In the north, following the coast line of the Mediterranean, lies a zone of drift sand, narrowest near Rafa on the borders of Palestine, widening as it is prolonged in a westerly direction [2] towards Egypt, where it is conterminous with the present Suez Canal. This desert was known in Biblical days as Shur (the wall) of Egypt. “And Saul smote the Amalekites from Havilah (north Arabia) , until thou comest to Shur that is over against Egypt” (1 Sam. xv. 7) . ”

“ In comparison with its extent of arable land, Egypt possesses one of the densest populations in the world. Indeed, Egypt proper consists entirely of lowlands which could be brought within the zone of irrigation. The rocky or sandy tracts which stretch beyond the valley of the Nile form a portion of Libya on the west, or of "Arabia," as it is called, on the east. ”

“ People round us were going to Sakkhâra and the Pyramids, to see the Sphinx by moonlight, to dream at Edfu and at Denderah. Others described their journeys to Assouan, Khartoum and Abou Simbel, and gave details of their encampments in the desert. Wind, wind, wind! The winds of Egypt blew and sang and sighed. From the White Nile came the travellers, and from the Blue Nile, from the Fayum, and from nameless excavations without end. ”

“ Egypt was from the first disposed to peace, from having resources within itself, and because it was difficult of access to strangers. It was also protected on the north by a harbourless coast and the Egyptian Sea; on the east and west by the desert mountains of Libya and Arabia, as I have said before.892 The remaining parts towards the south are occupied by Troglodytæ, Blemmyes, Nubæ, and Megabari, Ethiopians above Syene. These are nomades, and not numerous nor warlike, but accounted so by the ancients, because [Pg 267] frequently, like robbers, they attacked defenceless persons. ”

“ Egypt was populous, rich, well organized, with a surplus of wealth, productivity and man-power that could be used outside of its own frontiers. Some of the surplus was used outside--to the south, into Central Africa, to the west into North Africa, to the north into Eastern Europe and Western Asia, inaugurating the second phase of Egyptian development. ”

“ We shall know one of these days whether, as scholars suspect, out of Arabia and across the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, where, at the southern end of the Red Sea, Africa almost touches Asia, there came that mighty flood of more forceful men, bred in the deserts and hills, who, passing down the Nile, first brought history to Egypt; and whether it was this same Semitic people, as scholars suspect again, that spread resistlessly eastward to the Euphrates valley, and did an equal service in conquering and assimilating the black aborigines of these swamps and lagoons. ”

“ Egypt lay round him, motionless, a vast grey web. His feet were caught in it. It quivered. The silvery meshes in the moonlight announced the fact from Memphis up to Thebes, across the Nile, from underground Sakkhâra to the Valley of the Kings. A tremor ran over the entire desert, and again, as in the dining-room, the leagues of sand went rustling. ”

“ Egypt Becomes a Centre of Civilization.—The men of Egypt are supposed to be related racially to the Caucasian people who dwelt in the northern part of Africa, from whom they separated at a very early period, and went into the Nile valley to settle. Their present racial connection makes them related to the well-known Berber type, which has a wide range in northern Africa. Some time after the departure of the Hamitic branch of the Caucasian race into Egypt, it is supposed that another people passed on beyond, entering Arabia, later spreading over Assyria, Babylon, Palestine, and Phoenicia. ”

“ If that note-book of his had been the drowned book of Prospero, or the magical Papyrus of Thoth fished up anew from the bottom of the Nile, we could not have regarded it with a respect more nearly bordering upon awe.
Though there exists no boundary line to mark where Egypt ends and Nubia begins, the nationality of the races dwelling on either side of that invisible barrier is as sharply defined as though an ocean divided them. Among the shellalee, or cataract villagers, one comes suddenly into the midst of a people that have apparently nothing in common with the population of Egypt. ”