As all the Avcalth of the country maj^ be said to de- pend on the inundation of the river, which Herodotus has condensed in this terse definition, "Egj'pt is the gift of the Nile," it is of the utmost importance to the inhabitants to register the periodical rise and fall of the overflow. This has been done for ages by means of an instrument termed a "Nilometer," or "Niloscope." Several Arabian authors mention that this was original- ly set up by Joseph during his regency in Egypt. The measure of this instrument was sixteen cubits, that be- ing the height of the increase of the Nile necessary to the fruitfulness of the country. Herodotus mentions a column in a point of the Delta, Avhich served in his time as a nilometer, and there is still one of the same kind in a mosque at the same place. In the Biblio- theque Imperiale at Paris there is an Arabic treatise on nilometers, entitled Neil fi alnal al Nil, in which all the inundations of the Nile are described, from the first year of the Hegira to the 87oth (A.D. C20-1495). " On the point of the island of Rhoda," observes Mr. Bruce, "between Ghizeh and Cairo, near the middle of the river, is a round tower enclosing a neat well or cistern lined with marble. The bottom of this well is on the same level with the bottom of the Nile, which has free access to it through a large opening like an embrasure. In the middle of the well rises a thin column of eight faces of blue and white marble, of which the foot is on the same plane with the bottom of the river. This pillar is divided into twenty peeks of twenty-two inches each. Of these peeks the two lower- most are left without any division, to stand for the quantit}' of sludge which the water deposits there. Two peeks are then divided, on the right hand, into twenty-four digits each ; then on the left, four peeks are divided into twenty-four digits ; then on the right four, and on the left another four; again four on the right, which completes the number of eighteen peeks
NILE
102
NILE
from the first division marked on the pillar, each peek being twenty-two inches. Thus the whole, marked and unmarked, amounts to something more than thirt}-- six feet English." As soon as the inhabitants at Cairo perceive the mixture of the rain-water from the tropics with the Nile at that city, they begin to announce the rise of the river, liaving then five peeks of water mark- ed on the nilometer. When the whole eighteen peeks are filled, all the land of Egypt is fit for cultivation.
Section of the Xilomcter uu tlie Islaml of Uhoda.
Several canals are then opened, which convey the water to the desert, and hinder any further stagnation in the fields. Prof. Lepsius has discovered some inscriptions in a temple at Semne, near the Second Cataract, which record the mode by which the ancient Egyptians were accustomed to register the annual overflow. Writing to Ehrenberg and Biickh of Berlin from Philie, he ob- serves: "The highest rise of the Nile in each year at Semne was registered by a mark, indicating the year of the king's reign, cut in the granite, either on one of the blocks forming the foundation of the temple, or on the cliff, and particularly on the east or right bank, as best adapted for the purpose. Of these markings eighteen still remain, thirteen of them having been made in the reign of Mceris [a Pharaoh of the twelfth dynasty, according to Lepsius, who lived between the times of Abraham and Joseph], and five in the time of his next two successors. . . . The record is almost always in the same terms, short and simple: Ra en Hapi em rempe, signifying 'mouth or gate of the Nile in the year' . . . And then follows the year of the reign, and the name of the king. It is written in a horizontal row of hieroglyphics, included within two lines, the upper line indicating the particular height of the water, as is often specially stated. The earliest date preserved is that of the sixth year of the king's reign, and he reigned forty-two years and some months. The next following dates are the years 9, 14, 15, 20, 22, 23, 24, 30, 32, 37, 40, 41, and 43^ Of the remain- ing dates, that only of his two successors is available ; all the others which are on the left bank of the river have been moved from their original place by the rapid floods which have overthrown and carried forward vast masses of rock. The mean rise of the river recorded by the marks on the cast bank during the reign of Mceris is sixty-two feet six inches (English) above the
lowest level of the water in the present day, which, according to the statements of the most experienced boatmen, does not change from year to year, and there- fore represents the actual level of the Nile, indepen- dently of its increase by the falls of rain in the moun- tains in which its sources are situated. The mean rise above the lowest level at the present time is thirtj'-eight feet eight inches; and therefore in the time of Moeris (nearly 2000 years B.C.) the mean height of the river at the cataract of Semne, during the inundation of the Nile, was twenty-three feet ten inches above the mean level in the present day'' {Verhandluiu/en chr Konvjl. Preuss. Akad. der Wissenschafien, 1844). The inun- dations of the Nile are very various, and when deficient or excessive b}^ even a few feet cause great damage and distress. The rise of the river during a good in- undation is about forty feet at the First Cataract, about thirty-six at Thebes, gradually decreasing until at the se\eral mouths it does not reach above four feet. If the river at Cairo attain to no greater height than eighteen or twentj' feet, the rise is scant}' ; if only to t>\o or four more, insufficient; if to twenty-four feet or more, up to twenty-seven, good ; if to a greater height, it causes a flood. Sometimes the inundation has failed altogether, as was doubtless the case in the seven years' famine during the viceroyalty of Joseph. A hieroglyphic record of a famine in Egypt prior to the descent of the Israelites has been discovered on a tomb at Thebes, and deciphered by Dr. Birch of the British Museum. The person entombed states that he was governor of a district in Upper Egypt, and is repre- sented as saying, " ^^'hen in the time of Sesertesen I the great famine prevailed in all the other districts of Egypt, there was corn in mine." Bunsen supposes that this is a record of the " seven years' famine ;" but, independent of the reign of Sesertesen I not agreeing with the time of Joseph's vdceroyalty according to Biblical chronology, the fact of there being corn in Upper Eg3'pt during "the great famine" sufficiently disproves its identity with that memorable "dearth" recorded in Scripture, which "was in all lands, and over all the face of the earth, while in all the land of Egypt there was bread." There is mention in the Chinese annals of a famine which "lasted seven j'ears," during the reign of the emperor Ching-tang, who was on the throne at the time of the descent of the Israel- ites to Egypt, and which very probablj- refers to the " seven years' " famine mentioned in Scripture {History of China, hy Martinus, Couplet, and Du Ilalde). There is a record also of a "seven years'" famine in Egypt during Saracenic times, in the reign of the Fiitiml Khalifeh El-JIustansir billah, when the rise of the Nile was not sufficient to produce the crops of the countrj'. It was probably to the inundations of the river that the Egyptian priest referred in his conversation with Solon when he told him that " there had been many inunda- tions before" the one special deluge of which Solon had made mention (Plato, Timans, ch. v).