Page:Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians Volume 1.djvu/53

Rh HAP. I. SLOW PROGRESS OF THE DELTA. 5

may be adduced as an argument in favour of this opinion. But the period at which this civilisation commenced is not within the Hmits of history ; and neither this nor its gradual descent north- wards are subjects on which we can speculate with certainty or satisfaction. And, indeed, if we listen to Herodotus, and other writers who main- tain that the Delta is of recent date, we are led to the necessity of allowing an immeasurable time for the total formation of that space, which to judge from the very little accumulation of its soil, and the small distance it has encroached on the sea, since the erection of the ancient cities within it, would require numerous ages, and throw back its origin far beyond the Deluge, or even the Mosaic era of the Creation.

Tanis, now San, and in Hebrew Zan or Tzan (Zoan), at a very remote period of Egyptian his- tory was already founded upon a plain or *' field*," at some distance from the sea shore ; and the ves- tiges of its ruins are still traced within a few miles of the coast.t The lapse of 3190 years, from the days of the great Remeses, has neither made any sensible alteration in the circumjacent levels, nor protruded the land to any distance beyond it into the sea ; and if in such a length of time the allu- vial deposit of the Nile has been unable to work a


 * Psalm Ixxviii. 12. and 43. ' In the field of Zoan,' ]2?:2 ni©3.

■f That is, of the lake Menzaleh. Thenesus (Thennesi) stood in that lake, or marsh, and consequently much nearer the sea. Again, Canopus, and many other towns and buildings of which vestiges remain, were, as at present, immediately on the sea shore, in the time of the Ptolemies and Pharaohs, upwards of 2000 years ago.

B 3