Page:Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians Volume 1.djvu/54

6 b THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. CHAP. I,

sensible change, how can it for a moment be sup- posed that a period of a thousand years, which elapsed between the Deluge and the early part of that king's reign, would suffice for the formation of the icJiole Delta ? Remarks which apply with still greater force to Pelusinm, Taposiris, and Canopus, which actually stood upon the sea shore : for, as the learned Bochart justly observes, since the Egyptians themselves reported the Tanitic Mouth, and the towns of Busiris, Taphosiris, Butus, and Pelusium, to have existed even in the early time of Osiris and Horus, they must have known them not to be of recent date ; and Homer allows Me- nelaus to have come to Canopus.* And that Tanis was already built in the age of Remeses the Great, we have evidence from the scul})tured monuments now existing in its ruins, in addition to the positive authority of Scripture, Moses him- self assuring us that it was founded long before the Exodus, seven years after the town of Hebron. t

It is, then, evident that neither was the period claj)sed between the Deluge and the building of Tanis sufficient to form the Delta, nor the con- stant accumulation of the alluvial deposit of the Nile capable of making so })erceptible a change in the extent of that district, as to authorise us to su])])ose the up])er parts of the country })eopled and civilised, wiiile the Delta was a marsh ; how


 * Botliart's Sacra, lib, iv. c. 24.

•j- NiimlicTs, xiii. 22. ' n(l)r<»n was l)uilt seven years hefore Zoaii.' Il ali'e;i(ly existed in the ilas of Ahriihani. 'And Sarali died in Kirjath- arlia : the same is Hebron.' (Jen. xxiii. 2. eonf. Josli. xv. I.'J. and Judg. i. 10.