Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/55

Rh been stratified, and would not have corresponded so closely with inundation mud. We learn from Captain Newbold that he observed in some excavations in the great plain alternations of sand and clay, such as are seen in the modern banks of the Nile; but in the borings made by Hekekyan Bey, such stratification seems scarcely in any case to have been detected. The great aim of the criticisms above enumerated has been to get rid of the supposed anomaly of finding burnt brick and pottery at depths and places which would give them claim to an antiquity far exceeding that of the Roman domination in Egypt. For until the time of the Romans, it is said, no clay was burnt into bricks in the valley of the Nile. But a distinguished antiquary, Mr. S. Birch, assures me that this notion is altogether erroneous, and that he has under his charge in the British Museum, first, a small rectangular baked brick, which came from a Theban tomb, which bears the name of Thothmes, a superintendent of the granaries of the god Amen Ra, the style of art, inscription, and name, showing that it is as old as the 18th dynasty (about 1450 B.C.); secondly, an arched brick, or one which with others made up an arch, having an inscription, partly obliterated, but ending with the words 'of the temple of Amen Ra.' This brick, decidedly long anterior to the Roman dominion, is referred conjecturally, by Mr. Birch, to the 19th dynasty, or 1300 B.C.

M. Girard, of the French expedition to Egypt, supposed the average rate of the increase of Nile mud on the plain between Asouan and Cairo to be five English inches in a century. This conclusion, according to Mr. Horner, is very vague, and founded on insufficient data; the amount of matter thrown down by the waters in different parts of the plain varying so much, that to strike an average with any approach to accuracy must be most difficult. Were we to assume six inches in a century, the burnt brick met with at a depth of sixty feet would be 12,000 years old.