Note 54 — Chapter II

Abd-Allatif, who was in Egypt early in the thirteenth century, gives an interesting account of the rising of the Nile, to which Egypt owes its fertility. Abd-Allatif, Relation de l'Egypte, pp. 329–340, 374–376, and Appendix, p. 504. See also on these periodical inundations. Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, vol. iv. pp. 101–104; and on the half-astronomical half theological notions connected with them, pp. 372–377, vol. v. pp. 291, 292. Compare on the religious importance of the Nile Bunsen's Egypt, vol. i. p. 409. The expression, therefore, of Herodotus (book ii. chap. v. vol. i. p. 484), δῶρον τοῦ ποταμοῦ is true in a much larger sense than he intended; since to the Nile Egypt owes all the physical peculiarities which distinguish it from Arabia and the great African desert. Compare Heeren's African Nations, vol. ii. p. 58; Reynier, Economie des Arabes, p. 3; Postan's on the Nile and Indus, in Journal of Asiatic Society, vol. vii. p. 275; and on the difference between the soil of the Nile and that of the surrounding desert, see Volney, Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte, vol. i. p. 14.