Note 22 — Chapter IX

Agatharchides of Gnidos (Diod. lib. i.), and others in the time of the Ptolemies, seem to have divined the cause; and Homer (vide Odyssey, book iv. ver. 581.), when he describes the Nile as descending from heaven, apparently alludes to the rain in Ethiopia; but at the time of Herodotus it is certain that the Egyptians were not acquainted with the true cause; and Moses, in describing the promised land (Deut. ch. xi. ver. 10.), “not as the land of Egypt, but as a land of hills and valleys, which drinketh water of the rain of heaven,” that is, owed its fertility to the rain that fell from the clouds, would not have used those expressions, had he been exhorting a people aware that the rain in Ethiopia was the cause of the rising of the Nile; the source of the productiveness of the two countries being the same, although in the one more immediate, and therefore more apparent.