Note 1119 — Chapter XIII

The Egyptians themselves had a tradition that when Menes moved north he found the delta still under water. The sea reached almost as far as the Fayum, and the whole valley, except the Thebais, was a malarious swamp (Herod. II. 4). Thus late into historic times memories still survived that the delta was of relatively recent formation, and that the Retu (Romitu of the Pyramid texts, later Rotu, Romi, etc.) had already developed their social system before the Lower Nile valley was inhabitable. Hence whether the Nile took 20,000 years (Schweinfurth) or over 70,000, as others hold, to fill in its estuary, the beginning of the Egyptian prehistoric period must still be set back many millenniums before the new era. "Ce que nous savons du Sahara, lui-même alors sillonné de rivières, atteste qu'il [the delta] ne devait pas être habitable, pas être constitué à l'époque quaternaire" (M. Zaborowski, Bul. Soc. d'Anthrop. 1896, p. 655).