DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5538#0028
8 PHARAOHS, FELLAHS, AXD EXPLORERS.
ages this mud has driven the sea back inch by inch, foot by
foot, for a distance of more than one hundred miles. These
sand-hills, which were formerly under the sea, are called by
the Arabs " Gezireh," or islands; and they were naturally
resorted to by the earliest nomadic tribes as places of refuge
for themselves and their flocks during the season of the
inundation. For the same reason, they became the sites of
the first settlements. Every ancient ruin, every mound, every
modern town and village in the Delta rests on a sandy emi-
nence which once upon a time was covered by the blue
waters of the Mediterranean.
Here, then, on an irregular platform of yellow sand sur-
rounded bj' rich pastures in winter and summer, and by tur-
bid floods in autumn, a few half-barbarous shepherds erect
their primitive huts of wattle and daub; and here they set
up a rude altar, consisting probably of a single upright
stone brought with much labor and difficulty from the near-
est point of the eastern or western cliffs. By-and-by, they
or their descendants enclose that altar in a little mud-built
shrine roofed over with palm branches, and wall in a sur-
rounding space of holy ground.
As the centuries roll on, this first rude sanctuary gives
place to a more ambitious structure built of stone; and to
this structure successive generations add court-yards, porti-
cos, colonnades, gate-ways, obelisks, and statues in such num-
ber that by the time of the Nineteenth Dynasty—that is to
say, about the time of the Oppression and the Exodus—the
temple covers an area as large as St. Peter's at Rome. In
the meanwhile, the level of the inhabited parts of the town
has been steadily rising, and the crude-brick dwellings of
the townsfolk—upraised like a coral-reef by the perpetual
deposition of building-rubbish—have attained so great an
elevation that the temple actually stands in a deep hollow
in the middle of the city, as if erected in the crater of an ex-
tinct volcano. Such was the condition of the great Temple of
Bubastis when visited by Herodotus in the fifth century before
Christ; and such, to this day, is the condition of the magnifi-
ages this mud has driven the sea back inch by inch, foot by
foot, for a distance of more than one hundred miles. These
sand-hills, which were formerly under the sea, are called by
the Arabs " Gezireh," or islands; and they were naturally
resorted to by the earliest nomadic tribes as places of refuge
for themselves and their flocks during the season of the
inundation. For the same reason, they became the sites of
the first settlements. Every ancient ruin, every mound, every
modern town and village in the Delta rests on a sandy emi-
nence which once upon a time was covered by the blue
waters of the Mediterranean.
Here, then, on an irregular platform of yellow sand sur-
rounded bj' rich pastures in winter and summer, and by tur-
bid floods in autumn, a few half-barbarous shepherds erect
their primitive huts of wattle and daub; and here they set
up a rude altar, consisting probably of a single upright
stone brought with much labor and difficulty from the near-
est point of the eastern or western cliffs. By-and-by, they
or their descendants enclose that altar in a little mud-built
shrine roofed over with palm branches, and wall in a sur-
rounding space of holy ground.
As the centuries roll on, this first rude sanctuary gives
place to a more ambitious structure built of stone; and to
this structure successive generations add court-yards, porti-
cos, colonnades, gate-ways, obelisks, and statues in such num-
ber that by the time of the Nineteenth Dynasty—that is to
say, about the time of the Oppression and the Exodus—the
temple covers an area as large as St. Peter's at Rome. In
the meanwhile, the level of the inhabited parts of the town
has been steadily rising, and the crude-brick dwellings of
the townsfolk—upraised like a coral-reef by the perpetual
deposition of building-rubbish—have attained so great an
elevation that the temple actually stands in a deep hollow
in the middle of the city, as if erected in the crater of an ex-
tinct volcano. Such was the condition of the great Temple of
Bubastis when visited by Herodotus in the fifth century before
Christ; and such, to this day, is the condition of the magnifi-