Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/540

 486 NORTH-EAST AFRICA. of an Asiatic origin. We know that the shell is not found in the MediteiTancan, but belongs to the fauna of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Specimens of it, similarly ornamented, have been found in Assyria, in Palestine, in Rhodes, and at Canino in Etruria. The discovery of a fragment at Naucratis adds one more link to the chain, and we can hardly resist the conclusion that all these shells were imported by the Phojnicians by the trade-routes of the Red Sea, and afterwards formed objects of barter in their traffic with the Greeks and Etruscans at least as early as COO h.c, or even earlier. " Next in order of interest are the figures in limestone, alabaster, and terra-cotta, some recalling Rhodes or Cyprus, others purely Greek, others again Grajco- Egyptian. Among the most noteworthy is a very beautiful headless figure of a girl, ornamented with flower- wreaths, which reminds us that the weaving of gar- lands was a well-known craft of Naucratis. It is hard to assign this work to a purely Egyptian or Greek origin. The age is probably about 500 B.C., and, but for the modelling of the bust, it might be assigned to the Saite school. On the other hand, in spite of a somewhat Greek treatment, there is nothing Greek which absolutely recalls it. We have here, as in the earlier fictile ware of Naucratis, an intermediate style, such as that already recognised in the vases of Kamiros, but in this case distinctly under Egyptian influence. The stamped handles of diotae are selections from a great series, surely indicating the trade-routes of this Greek emporium, while the Athenian tetradrachms equally witness to the intercourse with Greece. " These discoveries clearly point to commercial relations at a very early age with Miletus and other cities on the west coast of Asia Minor, and with the neighbour- ing islands, and confirm in the most striking manner the accounts we have from Herodotus and other ancient authors, of the establishment of Naucratis under the Saite kings as an emporium and centre of Hellenic trade. It is partly to the liberality of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies that the results at Naucratis are due, the work having been aided by a grant made by them for exca- vations on this site." * Agriculture. Egypt still derives its resources almost exclusively from its agriculture, as in the olden times when lean kine and fat kine were the respective sj'mbolic repre- sentations of the misery or prosperity of the land. The alluvial soil, which has an average depth of about 32 feet, might be rendered extremely productive. But its exhausted strength requires to be restored by manure, and in many places it becomes saturated with saline and nitrous particles, unless regularly washed by copious inundations. On the whole the cultivation of the land is still in a rudimentary condition. The badly harvested wheat crop of the Nile Valley is always largely mixed with clay, and so saturated with salt that it is very difficult to keep. Almost as soon as « Academy," May 30, 1885, No. 682.