Conventional. The common lotus (Nymphaea), rising out of a clod of earth, represented the Upper country; the root of the papyrus, upon a clod, the Lower. Sebena was the goddess of the Upper, Neith of the Lower country. A white crown denoted the former, a red crown the latter; white and red crowns united composed the diadem of the king of all the land. The Upper country, however, was generally subdivided into two portions, (1) Upper Egypt Proper, or the Thebaid (ʼn Oncats, oi ăvw tóño), which extended from Syene to Hermopolis Magna, in lat. 28 N.: and (2) Middle Egypt, also called Heptanomis, or the Seven Cantons (n μeтagỳ xúρa: 'ETTaouis), which reached from the neighbourhood of Hermopolis to the apex of the Delta. This threefold partition has been adopted by the Arabs, who denominated Upper, Middle, and Lower Egypt respectively, Said, Wustani, and El-Rif.

The traveller who ascends the Nile from its mouths to Syene passes through seven degrees of latitude, and virtually surveys two distinct regions. Lower Egypt is an immense plain: Upper Egypt, a narrowing valley. The former, in the main, resembles the neighbouring coastland of Africa; the latter is more akin to Nubia, and its climate, its Fauna and its Flora, indicate the approaching tropic. The line of demarcation commences about the 27th degree of N. latitude. Rain rarely falls in the Thebaid: the sycamore and the acacia almost disappear; the river plants and mollusca assume new types: the Theban or Dhoum palm, with its divaricated branches, grows beside the date palm: the crocodile, the jackal, the river-horse, and hyena become more numerous.

We must now return to the general boundaries of Egypt which affected, in various degrees, the climate, the population, and the social and political character of the Nile-valley.

1. The Eastern boundary. In this region lay the principal mineral wealth of Egypt, including the quarries, which furnished materials for this land of monaments. Beginning with the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile, and along the frontier of Stony Arabia, we find the barren and level region of Casiotis, whose only elevation is the ridge or table land of Mt. Casins (ó Kários, Strab. pp. 38, 50, 55, 58, &c.; Mela, i. 10; Plin. v. 11, xii. 13; Lucan. viii. 539, x. 433). The Egyptian Casius (El Kas or El Katish) is, according to Strabo (xvi. 2), a round sandstone ridge (λópos Divádns). It contained the grave of Cn. Pompeius Magnus, and a temple of Zeus Casius. At a very early period the Egyptians established colonies upon the Idumaean and Arabian border. Copper, mixed with iron ore, and heaps of scoriae from Egyptian smelting-houses, are still found on the western flank of Mt. Sinai, and inscriptions at Wady-Magara in this district, and hieroglyphics and fragments of pottery at SurabitEl-Kadim, on the modern road from Suez to Sinai, attest the existence of settlements coeval with at least the 18th dynasty of kings. Ascending from the head of the Delta, and about 50 miles from the Arabian Sea, we come upon a range of tertiary himestone hills (Τρωικοῦ λίθου ὅμος, Ptol.; ἀλαCuoтpívou opos, id.) parallel with the Heptanomis, running north and south, and sloping westward to the Nile, and eastward to the Red Sea (opη Tà 'Apasará, Herod. ii. 8). A region of basalt and porphyry begins in the parallel of Antaeopolis, and extends to that of Tentyra or Coptos (Пoppupírov opos, id). This is again succeeded by limestone at Aias or Aeas (Aĭas, id.; Plin. vi. 29. § 33), |

and at Acabe ('Akásŋ, Ptol.), where, nearly opposite Latopolis, are vast quarries of white marble. From Mt. Smaragdus, which next follows, the Egyptians obtained the fine green breccia (Verde d Egitto), and emeralds in abundance. The breccia quarries, as inscriptions testify, were worked as far back as the 6th dynasty of kings (Manetho). The principal quarry was at Mount Zaburah. From Berenice southward are found, in various proportions, limestone and porphyry again. Mt. Basanites (Baravitov Aldov õpos, Ptol.), consisting of a species of hornblend, terminated the eastern boundary of the Nile-valley. Beyond this, and of uncertain extent, are the gold mines SE. of the Thebaid. They are about ten days' journey SE. from Apolli. nopolis Magna, in the present Bisháree desert. The process of gold-washing appears to be represented on tombs of the age of Osirtasen. Silver and lead were also found, and sulphur abounded in this mineral region.

The eastern frontier was mostly arid and barren, but neither uninhabited nor unfrequented by travellers. More than one caravan track, whose bearings are still marked by ruined cisterns and brick pyramids, followed the gorges of the hills; and occasional temples imply a settled population in towns or villages. The sides and passes of the mountains afforded also pasture for flocks and herds, and wild deer, wolves, &c. found here their abode. Two principal roads, diverging from Coptos on the Nile- the northern leading to Philoteras (Kosseir), lat. 26° 9', and Myos Hormos or Arsinoe; the southern to Berenice - penetrated the mountainbarrier, and connected the Nile-valley with the Red Sea. The population of this district was more Arabian than Coptic, and its physical characteristics were Arabian, not Libyan.

2. The Western boundary of Egypt is more particularly described under OASIS. The Libyan desert is not, as the ancients believed, merely an ocean of drifting sand, tenanted by serpents, and swept by pestilential blasts (Lucan, ix. 765): on the contrary, its gravelly surface presents considerable inequalities, and the blasts are noxious only in relaxing the human frame, or by obliterating the traveller's path with eddies of blinding sand. Everywhere this plateau rests upon a limestone basis, and descends in shelves to the Mediterranean.

3. The Northern boundary is the Mediterranean. From the western limit of Egypt to Pelusium the coast-line extends to about 180 geographical miles. and presents the convex form common to the allu vial deposits of great rivers. From the depression of its shore, the approach to Egypt is dangerous to the navigator. He finds himself in shallow water almost before he detects the low and sinuous mud banks which mask the land. Indeed, from Paraetonium in Libya to Joppa in Syria, Pharos afforded the only secure approach, and the only good anchorage (Diod. ii. 31). Nor is it probable that any considerable advance of the shore has taken place within historical times.

4. The Southern boundary is spoken of under Aethiopia.

II. Inhabitants.

The ancient Egyptians believed themselves to be autochthonous. This was no improbable conception in a land yearly covered with the life-teeming mud of the Nile. When the conquests of Alexander had rendered the Greeks acquainted with Western India,

they inferred, from certain similarities of doctrine and usages, that the Indians, Ethiopians or Nubians, and Egyptians were derived from the same stock (Arrian, Indic. vi. 9); and Diodorus, who had conversed with Aethiopian envoys in Egypt about B. C. 58, derives both the Egyptians and their civilisation from Meroë (iii. 11). Both opinions have found numerous supporters in ancient and modern times, and Heeren has constructed upon Diodorus a theory of a priestly colonisation of Egypt from Meroë, which is interesting without being convincing.

No nation has bequeathed to us so many or such accurate memorials of its formn, complexion, and physiognomy as the Egyptian. We have in its mummies portraits, and upon its tombs pictures of its people as they looked and lived, individually and socially. That the Egyptians were darker in hue than either the Greeks or even the neighbouring Asiatics, is shown by the terms in which Greek, Latin, and Hebrew writers mention them. Το their progenitor the Hebrews gave the name of Ham, or adust (Genes. x. 6): Herodotus, speaking of the Colchians, says that they were an Egyptian colony because they were black in complexion (ueλáyxpoes), and curly-haired (ouλótpixes, ii. 104): Lucian, in his Navigium (vol. viii. p. 155, | Bipont ed.), describes a young Egyptian mariner as like a negro: and Ammianus (xxii. 16. § 23) calls them subfusculi et atrati. But the Egyptians were not a negro race a supposition contradicted alike by osteology and by monumental paintings, where negroes often appear, but always either as tributaries or captives. It is probable, indeed, that the Nile-valley contained three races, with an admixture of a fourth. On the eastern frontier the Arabian type prevailed: on the western, the Libyan; while the fourth variety arose from intermarriages between the Egyptians Proper and the Nubians or Aethiopians of Meroë. The ruling caste, however, was an elder branch of the SyroArabian family, which in two separate divisions descended the Tigris and the Euphrates; and while the northern stream colonised the land of Canaan and the future empires of Babylon and Nineveh, the southern spread over Arabia Felix, and entered Egypt from the east. This supposition, and this alone, will account for the Caucasian type of the Coptic skull and facial outline, and corresponds with the Mosaic ethnology in the 10th chapter of Genesis, which derives the Egyptians from Ham. We may allow, too, for considerable admixture, even of the ruling castes, with the cognate races to the south and east; and hence, on the one hand, the fullness of lips, and, on the other, the elongated Nubian eye, need not compel us to define the inhabitants of the Nile-valley as an African rather than an Asiatic race. The Egyptians may be said to be intermediate between the Syro-Arabian and the Ethiopic type; and as at this day the Copt is at once recognised in Syria by his dark hue (un peau noirâtre, Volney, Voyage, vol. i. p. 114), the duskier complexion brown, with a tinge of red- - of the ancient Egyptians may be ascribed solely to their climate, and to those modifying causes which, in the course of generations, affect both the osteology and the physiology of long-settled races. Nor does their language contradict this statement, although the variations between the Coptic and Syro-Arabian idioms are more striking than those of form and colour. The Coptic, the language of the native Christian population of Egypt, is now universally acknowledged to be sub

stantially the same as the old Egyptian. It is imperfectly understood, since it has long ceased to be a living speech. Yet the ultimate analysis of its elements shows it to have been akin to the Semitic, and derived from a common source.

III. Population.

Many causes combined to give the Greek and Roman writers an exaggerated conception of the population of Egypt, the great works of masonry, the infinitesimal cultivation of the soil, and the fact that, the kings and higher order of priests excepted, every Egyptian was either a husbandman or a manufacturer. To these causes, implying a vast amount of disposable labour, yet arguing also a complete command of it by the government, must be added the cheapness of food, and the small quantity of it consumed by the people generally. Health and longevity were common in a land where the climate was salubrious, diet simple, and indolence almost unknown. The Egyptian women were unusually fruitful; though we can hardly give credence to the statements of ancient writers, that five children at a birth were common (Aristot. Hist. Anim. vii. 5), and that even seven were not reckoned prodigious (Plin. H. N. vii. 3; Strab. xvi. 605). Still there is reason to think that the population fell short of the estimates transmitted by ancient writers.

That a census was periodically taken, is probable from the fact that Sesostris caused the land to be accurately surveyed, and Amasis, towards the end of the monarchy, compelled every male to report to a magistrate his means of livelihood. (Herod. ii. 109, 177.) Herodotus, however, gives no estimate of the population, nor has any record of a census been hitherto discovered on the native monuments. Diodorus (i. 31) says that it amounted, in the Pharaonic era, to seven millions, and that it was not less in his own day (B. C. 58). Germanicus (Tac. Ann. ii. 60; compare Strab. p. 816) was informed, in A. D. 16, by the priests of Thebes, that Egypt, in the reign of Rameses Sesostris, contained 700,000 men of the military age. If that age, as at Athens, extended from eighteen to sixty, and be allowed for adults between those periods of life, the entire population (5 × 700,000) will amount to 3,500,000. Allow 500,000 for error, and add for slaves and casual residents, and 6,000,000 will be the maximum of the census of Egypt. In the Macedonian and Roman eras, 300,000 must be included for the fixed or floating population of Alexandria (Joseph. B. J. ii. 16). According to Herodotus (ii. 177), there were, in the reign of Amasis, 20,000 inhabited towns, and Diodorus (l. c.) says that 18,000 towns were entered on the register. Many of these, however, were probably little more than walled villages, nor have we any means of knowing their average area or population. Yet it should be remembered that, even allowing for the less perfect system of embankment and irrigation in modern times, the extent of productive soil has not decreased. Two centuries ago the population of modern Egypt was loosely estimated at 4 millions. During the French occupation of the country in 1798–1801, it was computed at 2 millions. Sir Gardner Wilkinson (Modern Egypt and Thebes, vol. i. p. 256) reduces it to 1 million.

IV. The Nomes.

The Nile-valley was parcelled out into a number of cantons, varying in size and number. Each of

No nation has bequeathed to us so many or such accurate memorials of its form, complexion, and physiognomy as the Egyptian. We have in its mummies portraits, and upon its tombs pictures of its people as they looked and lived, individually and socially. That the Egyptians were darker in hue than either the Greeks or even the neighbouring Asiatics, is shown by the terms in which Greek, Latin, and Hebrew writers mention them. To their progenitor the Hebrews gave the name of Ham, or adust (Genes. x. 6): Herodotus, speaking of the Colchians, says that they were an Egyptian colony because they were black in complexion (ueλdyXpoes), and curly-haired (ouxXóтpixes, ii. 104): Lucian, in his Navigium (vol. viii. p. 155, Bipont ed.), describes a young Egyptian mariner as like a negro: and Ammianus (xxii. 16. § 23) calls them subfusculi et atrati. But the Egyptians were not a negro race a supposition contradicted alike by osteology and by monumental paintings, where negroes often appear, but always either as tributaries or captives. It is probable, indeed, that the Nile-valley contained three races, with an admixture of a fourth. On the eastern frontier the Arabian type prevailed: on the western, the Libyan; while the fourth variety arose from intermarriages between the Egyptians Proper and the Nubians or Aethiopians of Meroë. The ruling caste, however, was an elder branch of the SyroArabian family, which in two separate divisions descended the Tigris and the Euphrates; and while the northern stream colonised the land of Canaan and the future empires of Babylon and Nineveh, the southern spread over Arabia Felix, and entered Egypt from the east. This supposition, and this alone, will account for the Caucasian type of the Coptic skull and facial outline, and corresponds with the Mosaic ethnology in the 10th chapter of Genesis, which derives the Egyptians from Ham. We may allow, too, for considerable admixture, even of the ruling castes, with the cognate races to the south and east; and hence, on the one hand, the fullness of lips, and, on the other, the elongated Nubian eye, need not compel us to define the inhabitants of the Nile-valley as an African rather than an Asiatic

race.

The Egyptians may be said to be intermediate between the Syro-Arabian and the Ethiopic type; and as at this day the Copt is at once recognised in Syria by his dark hue (un peau noirâtre, Volney, Voyage, vol. i. p. 114), the duskier complexion brown, with a tinge of red- of the ancient Egyptians may be ascribed solely to their climate, and to those modifying causes which, in the course of generations, affect both the osteology and the physiology of long-settled races. Nor does their language contradict this statement, although the variations between the Coptic and Syro-Arabian idioms are more striking than those of form and colour. The Coptic, the language of the native Christian population of Egypt, is now universally acknowledged to be sub

III. Population.

Many causes combined to give the Greek and Roman writers an exaggerated conception of the population of Egypt, - the great works of masonry, the infinitesimal cultivation of the soil, and the fact that, the kings and higher order of priests excepted, every Egyptian was either a husbandman or a manufacturer. To these causes, implying a vast amount of disposable labour, yet arguing also a complete command of it by the government, must be added the cheapness of food, and the small quantity of it consumed by the people generally. Health and longevity were common in a land where the climate was salubrious, diet simple, and indolence almost unknown. The Egyptian women were unusually fruitful; though we can hardly give credence to the statements of ancient writers, that five children at a birth were common (Aristot. Hist. Anim. vii. 5), and that even seven were not reckoned prodigious (Plin. H. N. vii. 3; Strab. xvi. 605). Still there is reason to think that the population fell short of the estimates transmitted by ancient writers.

That a census was periodically taken, is probable from the fact that Sesostris caused the land to be accurately surveyed, and Amasis, towards the end of the monarchy, compelled every male to report to a magistrate his means of livelihood. (Herod. ii. 109, 177.) Herodotus, however, gives no estimate of the population, nor has any record of a census been hitherto discovered on the native monuments. Diodorus (i. 31) says that it amounted, in the Pharaonic era, to seven millions, and that it was not less in his own day (B. c. 58). Germanicus (Tac. Ann. ii. 60; compare Strab. p. 816) was informed, in A. D. 16, by the priests of Thebes, that Egypt, in the reign of Rameses Sesostris, contained 700,000 men of the military age. If that age, as at Athens, extended from eighteen to sixty, and be allowed for adults between those periods of life, the entire population (5 x 700,000) will amount to 3,500,000. Allow 500,000 for error, and add for slaves and casual residents, and 6,000,000 will be the maximum of the census of Egypt. In the Macedonian and Roman eras, 300,000 must be included for the fixed or floating population of Alexandria (Joseph. B. J. ii. 16). According to Herodotus (ii. 177), there were, in the reign of Amasis, 20,000 inhabited towns, and Diodorus (1. c.) says that 18,000 towns were entered on the register. Many of these, however, were probably little more than walled villages, nor have we any means of knowing their average area or population. Yet it should be remembered that, even allowing for the less perfect system of embankment and irrigation in modern times, the extent of productive soil has not decreased. centuries ago the population of modern Egypt was loosely estimated at 4 millions. During the French occupation of the country in 1798-1801, it was computed at 2 millions. Sir Gardner Wilkinson (Modern Egypt and Thebes, vol. i. p. 256) reduces it to 1 million.

IV. The Nomes.

Two

The Nile-valley was parcelled out into a number of cantons, varying in size and number. Each of

these cantons was called a nome (vóuos) by the Greeks, praefectura oppidorum by the Romans. Fach had its civil governor, the Nomarch (vóμapxos), who collected the crown revenues, and presided in the local capital and chief court of justice. Each nome, too, had its separate priesthood, its temple, chief and inferior towns, its magistrates, registration and peculiar creed, ceremonies, and customs, and each was apparently independent of every other поте. At certain seasons delegates from the various cantons met in the palace of the Labyrinth for consultation on public affairs (Strab. p. 811). According to Diodorus (i. 54), the nomes date from Sesostris. But they did not originate with that monarch, but emanated probably from the distinctions of animal worship; and the extent of the local worship probably determined the boundary of the nome. Thus in the nome of Thebais, where the ramheaded deity was worshipped, the sheep was sacred, the goat was eaten and sacrificed: in that of Mendes, where the goat was worshipped, the sheep was a victim and an article of food. Again, in the nome of Ombos, divine honours were paid to the crocodile: in that of Tentyra, it was hunted and abominated; and between Ombos and Tentyra there existed an internecine feud. (Juv. Sat. xv.) The extent and number of the nomes cannot be ascertained. They probably varied with the political state of Egypt. Under a dynasty of conquerors, they would extend eastward and westward to the Red Sea and Libyan deserts: under the Hyksos, the Aethiopian conquest, and the times of anarchy subsequent to the Persian invasion, they would shrink within the Nile-valley. The kingdoms of Sais and Xois and the foundation of Alexandria probably multiplied the Deltaic cantons: and generally, commerce, or the residence of the military caste, would attract the nomes to Lower Egypt. According to Strabo (pp. 787, 811), the Labyrinth, or hall of the Nomarchs, contained 27 chambers, and thus, at one period, the nomes must have been 27 in number, 10 in the Thebaid, 10 in the Delta, and 7, as its name implies, in the Heptanomis. But the Heptanomis, at another period, contained 16 nomes, and the sum of these cantons is variously given. From the dodecarchy or government of 12 kings, and from Herodotus' assertion (ii. 148) that there were only 12 halls in the Labyrinth, we are disposed to infer, that at one time there were only 12 of these cantons, and that there were always 12 larger or preponderating nomes. According to the lists given by Pliny (v. 9. § 9) and Ptolemy, there must have been at least 45 nomes; but each of these writers gives several names not found in the other, and if we should add the variations of the one list to the other, the sum would be much greater.

There was, under the Macedonian kings, a subdivision of the nomes into toparchies, which was probably an arrangement to meet the fiscal system of the Greeks. (Herod. ii. 164; Diod. i. 54; Strab. xvii; Cyrill. Alex. ad Isaiam, xix. 2; Epiphan Hueres. 24. §7.)

The following list of the principal Nomes will illustrate the variety of these territorial subdivisions as regards religious worship.

2. The Andropolite; chief town Andropolis. 3. The Sebennytic; capital Pachnamunis (Ptol.), worshipped Latona.

4. The Chemmite (Herod. ii. 165); capital Buto. Its deity was also called Buto, whom the Greeks identified with Leto. Ptolemy calls this canton evórηs, and Pliny (v. 9) Ptenetha.

5. The Onuphite; chief town Onuphis. (Herod. ii. 166.)

6. The Phthemphuthite; capital Tava. (Þ0€μpovel vouós, Ptol.; Phthempha, Plin. v. 9.)

7. The Saite; chief city Sais, worshipped Neith or Athene, and contained a tomb and a sanctuary of Osiris. (Herod. ii. 170; Strab. p. 802.) Under the dynasty of the Saitic Kings this was the principal of the Deltaic cantons.

8. The Busirite; capital Busiris, worshipped Isis, and at one epoch, according to Hellenic tradition at least, sacrificed the red-coloured men who came over the sea, i. e. the nomades of Syria and Arabia (Herod. i. 59, 33, 165; Strab. p. 802; Plut. de Is. et Os. p. 30.)

9. The Thmuite; chief town Thmuis (Herod. ii. 168), afterwards incorporated with the following:

10. The Mendesian; capital Mendes (Herod. ii. 42, 46; Diod. i. 84), worshipped the goat Mendes, or the horned Pan.

11. The Tanite; chief town Tanis. (Herod. ii. 166; Strab. p. 802.) In this nome tradition affirmed that the Hebrew legislator was born and educated.

12. The Bubastite; capital Bubastus, contained a noble temple of Bubastis or Artemis. (Herod. ii. 59, 67, 137.)

13. The Athribite; capital Athribis, where the shrewmouse and crocodile were held in reverence.

14. The Heliopolite, west of the Delta, and sacred to the sun, from whom its capital Heliopolis (On) derived its name. (Herod. ii. 9; Diod. v. 56; Joseph. Ant. ii. 3.)

15. The Heroopolite; chief town Heroopolis, a principal seat of the worship of Typhon, the evil or destroying genius.

Besides these the Delta contained other less important nomes,- -the Nitriote, where the Natron Lakes, Nitrariae (Plin. v. 9) were situated; the Letopolite (Strab. p. 807); the Prosopite; the Leontopolite; the Mentelite; the Pharbaethite; and the Sethraite.

B. NOMES OF THE HEPTANOMIS. The most important were :

1. The Memphite, whose chief city Memphis was the capital of Egypt, and the residence of the Pharaohs, who succeeded Psammetichus B. C. 616. The Memphite Nome rose into importance on the decline of the kingdom of Thebais, and was itself in turn eclipsed by the Hellenic kingdom of Alexandria. [MEMPHIS.]

2. The Aphroditopolite; chief town Aphroditopolis, was dedicated to Athor or Aphrodite.

3. The Arsinoite, the Fayoom, celebrated for its worship of the crocodile, from which its capital Crocodilopolis, afterwards Arsinoe, derived its name. [ARSINOE.] The Labyrinth and the Lake of Moeris were in this canton.

4. The Heracleote, in which the chneumon was worshipped. Its principal town was Heracleopolis

5. The Hermopolite, the border nome between Middle and Upper Egypt. This was at a very early period a flourishing canton. Its chief city Hermopolis stood near the frontiers of the Hepta.

CLASS

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