Cha?. II.
EGYPTIAN.
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L'pon the other side, Carthage has been a loser by the encroachment of the sea, a corsider-aide tract that was land being now under water. The traces of Cotlion, though scarcely ahundred yards square, may be yet seen. Along the shore the openings of the commonsewers remain; and also, at a short distance, the great reservoirs and aqueduct, near the"astern wall of the city. There are more than twenty of these water-cisterns, each a1'undred feet in length, and thirty in breadth, and the water was conveyed to them throughe arthen pipes, still visible.
CHAP. II.
EGYPTIAN ENGINEERING.
Egypt boasts of as great antiquity as any other nation of the earth. It may be"ailed the cradle in which the sciences were first nursed, and the source from whence theGreeks, in after times, drew their knowledge; and we must admit that a great portion of°ur modern skill, particularly in engineering, had its rise on the hanks of the Nile . 'Ibis"ountry is bounded on the east by the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea , on the south by■Nubia, on the west by Libya , and on the north by the Mediterranean; its lengthfrom north to south is about 500 miles, its greatest breadth 250, while at some parts it isVe ry much less. It lies between the twenty-first and thirty-first degrees of north latitude.
I he waters of the Nile which pass through it, have their rise in the Gebel Alcomri, andIhe course of this noble river measures upwards of 2000 miles, whilst its breadth seldomexceeds the third of a mile, or its depth twelve feet.
The Delta , which is a luxuriant district, is composed of pure black unctuous mould,and for the purpose of vegetation needs no manure; it is entirely alluvial, and formed bydeposition of matter brought down by the waters of the Nile . This delta is not whollycovered by the inundation of the Nile , though throughout the habitations are built uponmounds raised considerably above the level of the standing water; and it is from the formationof these earthworks, and the cutting of canals for the irrigation of the land, that the rudi-ments of civil engineering may have had their origin.
The Nile was perhaps one of the earliest rivers devoted to the purpose of inland naviga-tion; and, according to Gibbon, “ the servitude of rivers is the noblest and most importantvictory which man has obtained over the licentiousness of natureand, without doubt,agriculture would first derive advantage from their subjection, occasioning them to beconfined within certain limits by artificial embankments. The earliest cities were founded0I > the banks of rivers; and the first operation performed by their inhabitants, both forsalubrity and convenience, would be the cutting of dikes, for the purposes of drainage andoccasional irrigation. In Egypt , before the time of Menes ( Herodotus , lib. ii. c. 99.),w ho lived 2320 years before the Christian era, the Nile continued its course along thesandy mountain on the side of Libya ; but this king, by constructing a bank at the distance
a hundred stadia from Memphis towards the south, diverted the course of the river, and ledll > by means of a new canal, through the middle of the valley ; and it seems that in the days°f the historian, during the time of the Persian dominion, this artificial canal was annuallyrepaired and maintained. At the period referred to, the whole of Egypt , with the exception°f Thebes , was an extensive marsh ; and to Menes is attributed the forming of water-courses, by cuttinn- and embanking, for carrying off the superfluous waters. Herodotus ('ib. ii. cap. 137.)°further states, that when Sabacus, the king of Ethiopia , governed Egypt ,,le made it a rule not to punish any crime with death ; but, according to the magnitude ofthe offence, he condemned the criminal to raise the ground near the place to which hebelonged, by which means the situation of the different cities became more and moreelevated: they were somewhat raised under the reign of Sesostris, about 1659 years a. c.joy the digging of the canals, but they became still more so, under the reign of the Ethi-°P'an. To prevent the water of the Nile from continually overflowing the country, andto maintain a supply for the purposes of irrigation, the lake Moeris was formed, which,ac cording to Herodotus , was 450 miles in circumference (lib. ii. cap. 149.), and was termi-Pated about 1385 years b. c. By some authors it is said to have been in places 300 feet“cep; for s i x months in the year the Nile supplied this lake with water, by means of a canal,w hich during the remaining portion of the year returned to the river. This canal, a stu-pendous effort of art, is still entire; and, according to Savary, is forty leagues in length :mere were two others, with sluices at their mouths, from the lake to the river, whichw ere alternately shut and opened, as the Nile increased or decreased : thus the water,w hich would have been carried off to the sea, was retained for the moistening the earth? f ter seed-time. Diodorus Siculus (lib. i. cap. 4.) states the canal to have been 80 furlongsln length, and 300 feet in breadth, and that the sluices were of such a nature that theycould not be opened or shut at a less charge than 50 talents (12,9161. 13s. 4d.); and ina, l probability it was necessary to cut through the embankments to attain the object desired.
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