Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 3.djvu/713

Rh

XVII.

The same Subject continued—Nilometer what. How divided and measured.

N the 7th century a revolution happened that stops our Grecian account from proceeding farther, Egypt was conquered by an ignorant and barbarous enemy, the Saracen, and Amru Ibn el Aas was governor of Egypt for Omar, the second Caliph after Mahomet. Omar was a foreigner, conqueror, bigot and a tyrant; he destroyed the Grecian Nilometer from motives of religion, the same which had before moved him to burn the library of Alexandria; and after, with the same degree of sound judgment, determined to establish his empire at Medina, in the middle of the peninsula of Arabia, a country without water, and surrounded on all sides with barren sands; but he was nevertheless desirous of feeding his famished Saracens with the wheat of Egypt, a province he had subdued; for this purpose he ordered Amru to begin a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, to carry the wheat to the