into the
river itself.

[Illustration: 091.jpg BOATMEN FIGHTING ON A CANAL COMMUNICATING WITH
THE NILE. 1]

1 Bas-relief from the tomb of Ti; drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a photograph by E. Brugsch-Bey.

History has left us no account of the vicissitudes of the struggle in
which the Egyptians were engaged with the Nile, nor of the time expended
in bringing it to a successful issue. Legend attributes the idea of the
system and its partial working out to the god Osiris: then Menes, the
first mortal king, is said to have made the dyke of Qosheish, on which
depends the prosperity of the Delta and Middle Egypt, and the fabulous
Mceris is supposed to have extended the blessings of the irrigation to
the Fayum. In reality, the regulation of the inundation and the making
of cultivable land are the work of unrecorded generations who peopled
the valley. The kings of the historic period had only to maintain and
develop certain points of what had already been done, and Upper Egypt
is to this day chequered by the network of waterways with which its
earliest inhabitants covered it. The work must have begun simultaneously
at several points, without previous agreement, and, as it were,
instinctively. A dyke protecting a village, a canal draining or watering
some small province, demanded the efforts of but few individuals; then
the dykes would join one another, the canals would be prolonged till
they met others, and the work undertaken by chance would be improved,
and would spread with the concurrence of an ever-increasing population.
What happened at the end of last century, shows us that the system grew
and was developed at the expense of considerable quarrels and bloodshed.
The inhabitants of each district carried out the part of the work most
conducive to their own interest, seizing the supply of water, keeping
it and discharging it at pleasure, without considering whether they
were injuring their neighbours by depriving them of their supply or
by flooding them; hence arose perpetual strife and fighting. It became
imperative that the rights of the weaker should be respected, and that
the system of distribution should be co-ordinated, for the country to
accept a beginning at least of social organization analogous to that
which it acquired later: the Nile thus determined the political as well
as the physical constitution of Egypt.

[Illustration: 092.jpg A GREAT EGYPTIAN LORD, TI, AND HIS WIFE. 1]

1 Drawn by F