Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/380

 EGYPT

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EGYPT

ence between the highest and lowest stages of the river is 2L feet at Kliartiim, 20 feet at Wadi Haifa, 23 feet at Assuan, 22 feet at Assiiit, and 22 feet at Minieh. Below the last-named point controlling works now prevent the normal rise of the river. (Baedeker, Egypt, p. xlvi.) At Cairo to-day the aver- age rise is 16 feet. Some twenty-five years ago it used to be 25 feet at Cairo, 24 feet at Rosetta. When stated generally the height of the inundation must be understood as the height of the nilometre on the island of Rodah, near Cairo (close by the ancient Babylon). Formerly a rise of 18 to 20 feet was poor, 20 to 24 insufficient, 24 to 27 good, 27 and above too much. For seven years, a. h. 457—464 (a. d. 1065- 1072) the inundation failed altogether. The long duration of the overflow is due to the fact that it is controlled by artificial means without which it would undoubtedly prove as detrimental as it is beneficial. The only part left to nature is the process of infiltra- tion which is due to the pressure of the water on the banks and is favoured by the porous nature of the soil, also by the fact that the subsoil, like the surface of the valley, gently slopes down to the mountains. It is only when this natural process is completed that the river is ready to overflow its banks, and then begins man's work. The sluices of the canals are opened, and the waters are led first to the higher level lands nearer the banks, then to the lower lands, for in its general configuration the soil to be submerged, as the subsoil, is conve.K — not concave, as in the case of ordinary rivers. This is brought about by building earthen dykes across the canals and the fields; the dykes are removed when the preceding tract has been sufficiently irrigated. The reverse is done when the river begins to fall, and the waters are kept in the re- motest parts of the valley as high as possible above the level of the river, and they are let out slowly, so as to secure irrigation for the low-water months, March to June. This process, however, is not always possi- ble, either because the inundation is insufficient or because the canals and sluices are not kept in good condition. The fellaheen (tillers of the soil) then have to raise the water from the river, the canals, or the numerous wells fed by natural infiltration, so as to water their fields.

Two machines chiefly are used for this purpose: the s6kijeh and the shddHj. The sakyeh consists of two cog-wheels working at right angles to one another. The perpendicular wheel carries an endless chain to which are attached leathern, wooden, or clay buckets. As the wheel turns the buckets are dipped in the water and filled, when they are lifted and emptied into a channel which carries the water to the fields. These machines are worked by asses or buffaloes in Egypt antl by camels in Nubia. The shadi'if is a roughly made pair of gigantic scales in which the trays are re- placed by a bucket at one end and a stone on the other, the stone being a little more than the weight of the bucket when filled. A man stands on the bank and, pulling on the rope to which the bucket is at- tached, submerges the latter, then letting go, the weight of the stone lifts the bucket out, when it can be emptied into the proper channel. In the Lower Delta, where the level of the water in the canals re- mains nearly the same, they use a wooden wheel called l/ibM, which raises the water by means of nu- merous compartments in the hollow felloes. Such methods, however, while absorbing all the energies of the population for most of the year, are far from ex- hausting the irrigation power supplied by the Nile during inundation, nine-twelfths of the annual out- pour being contributed tluring the three months of maximum rise. It allows one crop only for the irri- gated lands, and leaves many districts desert-like for lack of water. The pharaohs of the twelfth dynasty, it .seems, tried partly to obviate these defects by using the natural lake of the Fayiim as a reservoir where the

surplus of the inundation waters were stored during their highest rise, which allowed them to double the volume of the river below the Faj^iim during the three months of low Nile. The immense waterworks neces- sitated by this undertaking, at the point where the lake was most commonly visited by foreigners, gave the impression that the lake itself was an artificial excavation, as reported by classic geographers and travellers.

This great enterprise was not resumed until the close of the last century, when a series of gigantic dams at different points on the Nile was planned by the Egyptian Government; these, in part at least, have been completed. The Barrage du Nil (about twelve miles below Cairo) was completed in 1890. It extends across the Rosetta and Damietta branches and two of the principal canals of the Delta, thus en- suring constant navigation on the Rosetta branch and perennial irrigation through most of the Delta. The dam of Assiut, constructed 1898-1902, regulates the amount of water in the Ibrahimieh Canal and thus en- sures the irrigation of the provinces of Assiut, Minieh, Beni-Suef (10 miles east of Heracleopolis Magna), and, through Bahr-Yusef, of the Fayum. Finally the dam of Assuan, also completed in 1902, below the island of Phila?, maintains such a supply of water in the canals of Lower and Middle Egj'pt that upwards of 500,000 acres have been added to the area of cultivable land in the summer. This dam, the largest structure of the kind in the world, rises 130 feet above the foundation, and dams up the water of the Nile to a height of 83 feet, thus forming a lake of 234,- 000,000,000 gallons. Its length is 2150 yards; its width 98 feet at the bottom, and 23 feet at the top. The Egyptian Government has lately decitled to raise it 23 feet, which will more than double the huge reser- voir's capacity and will afford irrigation for about 930,000 acres of land now lying waste in Upper Egj'pt (Baedeker, Egypt, p. 365). In addition to these gi- gantic waterworks, the number and capacity of the canals have been considerably increased, thus allow- ing the inundation waters to reach farther on the out- skirts of the desert ; to this, probably, is due the fact that the average level of high waters is lower than it used to be — 25 feet at Assuan instead of 40, although for the region below Minieh this change is also to be explained by the manipulation of the controlling waterworks (Baedeker, Egypt, p. xlvi).

Reclus, Nouvetle gcographie univcrselle (Paris. 18S5), X; tr. of same, The Earth and Its Inhabitants; Baedeker. Egypt and Sudan (Leipzig, 1908): Clot-Bey. Aper^u general sur I'Egypte (2 vols., Paris, 1840); Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in the Years 1768-1773 (7 vols., London and Edinburgh, 1813); Burckhardt. Travels in Nubia (London, 1819); Cailuaud, Voyage h Mtroe. . . .1819-18SS (Paris, 1826-1828); Drovetti, Voyage d VOasis de Dakel (Paris, 1S21); Champollion, Leitres ^crites d'Egypte et de Nubie (Paris, 1833); Russegger, Reisen in Europa, Asien und Afrika, ISSS bis 181,1 (Stuttgart, 1841), II; Lepsios, Dis- coveries in Egypt, Ethiopia and the Peninsula of Sinai in the Years ISI^-ISUS (London, 1852; 2d ed., 1853); In., tr. Horner, Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia and Sinai (London, 1S53); Brugsch, Die Geographic des alien Aegypten (Leipzig, 1857); Brown, The Fayum and Lake Moeris (London, 1892); Lyons, The Physiography of the River Nile and its Basin (Lon- don, 1906); Ebers, Egypt, Descriptive, Historical, Picturesque (London, 1881).

II. Ancient Egyptian History. — Chronohgt/. — The ancient Egyptians practically had only one kind of year: a vague year consisting of 12 months, each of 30 days, and Ssupplementary days which wereintcrcalated between the 30th day of the last month of the year just elapsed and the first day of the first month of the follow- ing year. Technically, those five daj's iliil not lielongtc the year; the Egyptians always said the "year and the five days to be foimd thereon". The five extra year days were sacred to Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis, and Nephthys. They were days of bad omen. The year was divided into three periods, or seasons, of four months each: the inundation (Egyptian Echut, or Echel), the sowing-time {Proyet), and the harvest