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Jangan Sampai Menyesal Lindungi Keluarga Dan Generasi Penerus Bangsa Dari Gerakan Kebebasan Orientasi Dan Perilaku Seksual Menyimpang Euis Sunarti
Jangan Sampai Menyesal Lindungi Keluarga Dan Generasi Penerus Bangsa Dari Gerakan Kebebasan Orientasi Dan Perilaku Seksual Menyimpang Euis Sunarti
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terminated the old monarchy, and for four hundred years threw
everything into confusion. But, what we are concerned with, is the
fact that in the reign of this king and his successor, the Nile rose, on
an average, twenty-four feet above the level to which it rises now.
Here, then, are two witnesses, Nature and Man. The coincidence
of their testimony is as clear and complete as it is undesigned. It
may, therefore, be accepted as an undoubted fact, that the Nile is
now flowing from Semnéh to Silsiléh at a level lower by at least
twenty-four feet than it did at the date of the inscriptions. Nature says
there was a time when it rose at least twenty-seven feet higher than
at present, for at that height it deposited alluvium. There is no
discrepancy in these three additional feet, though there would have
been something like a discrepancy had Nature indicated three feet
less than the markings.
The only question for us to consider is, how this was brought
about. It could have been brought about only in one way, and that
was by the river deepening its channel. As far down as Silsiléh it had
been flowing at a higher level. Here there must have been a
cataract, or an actual cascade. Whatever the form of the obstruction,
the stream carried it away. And so, again and again, working
backwards, it ate out for itself a deeper channel all the way up to
Semnéh. This is just how the Niagara river is dealing with its
channel. It has undertaken the big job of deepening it, from Lake
Ontario to Lake Erie, down to the level of Ontario. The stone it has to
work in is very hard and compact. It has now done about half the
work, and every one sees that it will eventually complete it. All that is
required is time. The River Colorado, we are told, runs for six
hundred miles of its course in a canon, a mile in perpendicular depth,
all cut through rock, and some of it granitic.
This is what the Nile did in the historic period for at least two
hundred miles of its course. It planed down this part of its channel to
a lower level, to what may be called the level of Egypt. Why should it
not have done precisely the same work in the prehistoric period for,
in round numbers, the four hundred miles from Silsiléh to Cairo, that
is to say, for the whole valley of Egypt? That is just what I believe it
did. Of course, there were aboriginal facilities which decided it upon
taking that course. There may also have been greater depressions in
some places than in others. There was harder work here, and lighter
work there. The planing was carried on rapidly in one district, and
slowly in another. But I believe that, after making whatever
deductions may be thought proper for aboriginal depressions, it is
safe to conclude that the valley of Egypt was, in the main, cut out by
the Nile. It did not begin to obtain its abrading power after the reign
of Amenemha III.
There may have been a cataract once at Cairo. When this was
carried away, another must have been developed somewhere above
its site, and so on backwards all the way to Silsiléh, where we are
sure that there was once something of the kind. In a still remoter
past the river may not have come as far north as Cairo, but may
have passed through the Faioum, or by the Natron Lakes, into the
desert. This is a question which, to some degree, admits of
investigation.
The river would not always be bearing on the same side of the
valley. A little change in any part of the channel, and which might
result from any one of a variety of causes, would deflect its course. It
is so with all rivers. These causes are always everywhere at work.
The river would thus be always shifting from one side of the valley to
the other; and, impinging in turn on the opposite bounding hills,
would always be widening the valley.
The number of side canals, especially the Bahr Jusuf, which,
throughout almost the whole length of the valley, is a second Nile,
running parallel to the original river, must, during the historical
period, by lessening the volume of water in the main channel, have
very much lessened its power of shifting its course. But every one
who voyages on the Nile will become aware that this power is still
very great. He will often hear, and see, large portions of the
incoherent bank falling into the water. In many places he will observe
the fresh face of recent landslips. On the summit of these slips he
will occasionally have presented to him interior sections of some of
the houses of a village which is being carried away by the stream.
On the fresh faces of recent slips I often observed that the
stratification was unconformable, and irregular. This indicated that
the sand and mud out of which the alluvium had been formed, had
not been deposited at the bottom of a quiet lake-like inundation, but
must have been formed at the bottom of a running stream, precisely
in the same way as the sand-banks and mud-banks of the existing
channel are always at the present time being formed. This irregular
stratification is just what we might expect to find in the alluvium of a
valley through which runs a mighty river, always restlessly shifting its
channel to the right, or to the left.
To experts in geology there will be but little, or nothing, new in the
above given account of the process, by which the Nile formed Egypt.
All river valleys have been formed, more or less, by the action of
running water. It is, however, interesting both to those who are
familiar, and to those who are not, with such investigations, to trace
out the steps of the process, in such a manner as to be able to
construct a connected view of as many of its details as can be
recovered. In any case this would be interesting; but here it has an
exceptional, and quite peculiar, interest, for it enables us to picture to
the mind’s eye how the whole of the most historical country in the
world was formed by the most historical river in the world—a
physical operation, on which much that man has achieved, and,
indeed, on which what man is himself at this day, very largely
depended. Pictures of this kind are only one among the many helpful
contributions, which science can now make to history.
I was not in Egypt during the time of the inundation; I can,
therefore, only repeat on the authority of others, that for the first few
days it has a green tint. This is supposed to be caused by the first
rush of the descending torrents sweeping off a great deal of stagnant
water from the distant interior of Darfour. This green Nile is held to
be unwholesome, and the natives prepare themselves for it by
storing up, in anticipation, what water they will require for these few
days. The green is succeeded by a red tint. This is caused by the
surface washing of districts where the soil is red. The red water,
though heavily charged with soil, is not unwholesome. With respect
to the amount of red in the colour of the water of the inundation, I
found it stated in a work which is sometimes quoted as an authority
on Egyptian subjects, that it is so great that the water might be
mistaken for blood. This I do not understand, as the soil this water
leaves behind has in its colour no trace of red. By the time the water
of the inundation reaches the Delta, it has got rid of the greater part
of its impurities. This causes the rise of the land in the Delta to be far
slower than in Upper Egypt. In winter, when the inundation has
completely subsided, the water, though still charged with mud, in
which, however, there is no trace of red, is pleasant to drink, and
quite innocuous. The old Egyptians represented in their wall-
paintings these three conditions of the river by green, red, and blue
water.
For myriads of years this mighty river has been bringing down
from the highlands of Abyssinia and Central Africa its freight of fertile
soil, the sole means of life, and of all that embellished life, to those
who invented letters, and built Karnak. It is still as bountiful as ever it
was of old to the people who now dwell upon its banks; but to what
poor account do they turn its bounty! How great is the contrast
between the wretchedness this bounty now maintains, and the
splendour, the wealth, the arts, the intellectual and moral life it
maintained four and five thousand years ago!
The Egyptians have a saying, with which, I think, most of those
who have travelled in Egypt will agree, that he who has once drunk
the water of the Nile will wish to drink it again.
CHAPTER II.
HOW IN EGYPT NATURE AFFECTED MAN.