History Of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria Volume 1 of 12

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.--THE NILE AND EGYPT The River and its Influence upon the
Formation of the Country--The Oldest Inhabitants of the Valley and its
First Political Organization

CHAPTER II.--THE GODS OF EGYPT Their Number and their Nature--The Feudal
Gods, Living and Dead--The Triads--Temples and Priests--The Cosmogonies
of the Delta--The Enneads of Heliopolis and of Hermopolis

CHAPTER III.--THE LEGENDARY HISTORY OF EGYPT The Divine Dynasties:
Râ, Shû, Osiris, Sit, Horus-Thot, and the Invention of Sciences and
Writing-Menes, and the Three First Human Dynasties

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CHAPTER I.--THE NILE AND EGYPT

_THE RIVER AND ITS INFLUENCE UPON THE FORMATION AND CHARACTER OF
THE COUNTRY--THE OLDEST INHABITANTS OF THE LAND--THE FIRST POLITICAL
ORGANIZATION OF THE VALLEY._

_The Delta: its gradual formation, its structure, its canals--The valley
of Egypt--The two arms of the river--The Eastern Nile--The appearance
of its hanks--The hills--The gorge of Gehel Silsileh--The cataracts: the
falls of Aswan--Nubia--The rapids of Wady Halfah--The Takazze--The Blue
Nile and the White Nile.

The sources of the Nile--The Egyptian cosmography--The four pillars
and the four upholding mountains--The celestial Nile the source of the
terrestial Nile--the Southern Sea and the islands of Spirits--The tears
of Isis--The rise of the Nile--The Green Nile and the Bed Nile--The
opening of the dykes---The fall of the Nile--The river at its lowest
ebb.

The alluvial deposits and the effects of the inundation upon the soil of
Egypt--Paucity of the flora: aquatic plants, the papyrus and the lotus;
the sycamore and the date-palm, the acacias, the dôm-palms--The fauna:
the domestic and wild animals; serpents, the urstus; the hippopotamus
and the crocodile; birds; fish, the fahaka.

The Nile god: his form and its varieties--The goddess Mirit--The
supposed sources of the Nile at Elephantine--The festivals of Gebel
Silsileh-Hymn to the Nile from papyri m the British Museum.

The names of the Nile and Egypt: Bomitu and Qimit--Antiquity of the
Egyptianpeople--Their first horizon--The hypothesis of their Asiatic
origin--The probability of their African origin--The language and its
Semitic affinities--The race and its principal types.

The primitive civilization of Egypt--Its survival into historic
times--The women of Amon--Marriage--Rights of women and
children--Houses--Furniture--Dress--Jewels--Wooden and metal
arms--Primitive life-Fishing and hunting--The lasso and "bolas"--The
domestication of animals--Plants used for food--The lotus--Cereals--The
hoe and the plough.

The conquest of the valley--Dykes--Basins--Irrigation--The princes--The
nomes--The first local principalities--Late organization of the
Delta--Character of its inhabitants--Gradual division of the
principalities and changes of then areas--The god of the city._

[Illustration: 003.jpg CHAPTER ONE]

THE NILE AND EGYPT

_The river and its influence upon the formation of the country--The
oldest inhabitants of the valley and its first political organization._

* The same expression has been attributed to Hecatseus of
Miletus. It has often been observed that this phrase seems
Egyptian on the face of it, and it certainly recalls such
forms of expression as the following, taken from a formula
frequently found on funerary "All things created by heaven,
given by earth, _brought by the Nile--from its mysterious
sources._" Nevertheless, up to the present time, the
hieroglyphic texts have yielded nothing altogether
corresponding to the exact terms of the Greek historians--
_gift_ of the Nile, or its natural _product_.

A long low, level shore, scarcely rising above the sea, a chain of
vaguely defined and ever-shifting lakes and marshes, then the triangular
plain beyond, whose apex is thrust thirty leagues into the land--this,
the Delta of Egypt, has gradually been acquired from the sea, and is
as it were the gift of the Nile. The Mediterranean once reached to the
foot of the sandy plateau on which stand the Pyramids, and formed a
wide gulf where now stretches plain beyond plain of the Delta. The
last undulations of the Arabian hills, from Gebel Mokattam to Gebel
Geneffeh, were its boundaries on the east, while a sinuous and shallow
channel running between Africa and Asia united the Mediterranean to
the Red Sea.

History Of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria Volume 1 of 12