Note 11 — 1. Did the Nile, or a Branch of it, ever flow through the Libyan Desert to the Mediterranean?

Since the above was written, the Professor of Geography at the new University of Cairo, M. Lorin, has suggested that at a former geological epoch the Nile flowed through Siwa Oasis and thence westward so as to make Cyrenaica an island. (See ‘L’Egypte,’ published by the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, Cairo, in December 1926, p. 153.) M. Lorin does not give any grounds for this suggestion, and I know of no evidence that would justify its acceptance. As will be gathered from my remarks elsewhere in this paper, it seems to me far more likely that Siwa and the other northern depressions were in recent geological times regions of central drainage, than that they were local deepenings of a single channel; and in regard to earlier geological periods we possess too little information to form any conclusions as to drainage-lines.