Note 577 — Chapter XX · EGYPTIANS.

Herod, i, 193. Παραγίνεται ὁ σῖτος (in Babylonia) οὐ, κατάπερ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ, αὐτοῦ τοῦ ποταμοῦ ἀναβαίνοντος ἐς τὰς ἀρούρας, ἀλλὰ χερσί τε καὶ κηλωνηΐοισι ἀρδόμενος· ἡ γὰρ Βαβυλωνίη χώρη πᾶσα, κατάπερ ἡ Αἰγυπτίη, κατατέτμηται ἐς διώρυχας, etc.

Herodotus was informed that the canals in Egypt had been dug by the labor of that host of prisoners whom the victorious Sesostris brought home from his conquests (ii, 108). The canals in Egypt served the purpose partly of communication between the different cities, partly of a constant supply of water to those towns which were not immediately on the Nile: “that vast river, so constantly at work,” (to use the language of Herodotus—ὑπὸ τοσούτου τε ποτάμου καὶ οὕτως ἐργατικοῦ, ii, 11), spared the Egyptians all the toil of irrigation which the Assyrian cultivator underwent (ii, 14).

Lower Egypt, as Herodotus saw it, though a continued flat, was unfit either for horse or car, from the number of intersecting canals,—ἄνιππος καὶ ἀναμάξευτος (ii, 108). But lower Egypt, as Volney saw it, was among the countries in the world best suited to the action of cavalry, so that he pronounces the native population of the country to have no chance of contending against the Mamelukes (Volney, Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol. i, ch. 12, sect. 2, p. 199). The country has reverted to the state in which it was (ἱππασίμη καὶ ἁμαξευομένη πᾶσα) before the canals were made,—one of the many striking illustrations of the difference between the Egypt which a modern traveller visits, and that which Herodotus and even Strabo saw,—ὅλην πλωτὴν διωρύγων ἐπὶ διώρυξι τμηθεισῶν (Strabo, xvii, p. 788).

Considering the early age of Herodotus, his remarks on the geological character of Egypt as a deposit of the accumulated mud by the Nile, appear to me most remarkable (ii, 8-14). Having no fixed number of years included in his religious belief as measuring the past existence of the earth, he carries his mind back without difficulty to what may have been effected by this river in ten or twenty thousand years, or “in the whole space of time elapsed before I was born,” (ii, 11).

About the lake of Mœris, see a note a little farther on.