the south of
Lake Mareotis, defended the approaches of the country from the attacks
of Asiatic Bedawins and of African nomads. The marshes of the interior
and the dunes of the littoral, were not conducive to the development of
any great industry or civilization. They only comprised tracts of thinly
populated country, like the principalities of the Harpoon and of the
Cow, and others whose limits varied from century to century with
the changing course of the river. The work of rendering the marshes
salubrious and of digging canals, which had been so successful in the
Nile Valley, was less efficacious in the Delta, and proceeded more
slowly. Here the embankments were not supported by a mountain chain:
they were continued at random across the marshes, cut at every turn to
admit the waters of a canal or of an arm of the river. The waters left
their usual bed at the least disturbing influence, and made a fresh
course for themselves across country. If the inundation were delayed,
the soft and badly drained soil again became a slough: should it last
but a few weeks longer than usual, the work of several generations was
for a long time undone. The Delta of one epoch rarely presented the same
aspect as that of previous periods, and Northern Egypt never became as
fully mistress of her soil as the Egypt of the south.

[Illustration: 099.jpg NOMES OF LOWER EGYPT]

These first principalities, however small they appear to us, were yet
too large to remain undivided. In those times of slow communication, the
strong attraction which a capital exercised over the provinces under its
authority did not extend over a wide radius. That part of the population
of the Terebinth, living sufficiently near to Siut to come into the town
for a few hours in the morning, returning in the evening to the villages
when business was done, would not feel any desire to withdraw from the
rule of the prince who governed there. On the other hand, those who
lived outside that restricted circle were forced to seek elsewhere some
places of assembly to attend the administration of justice, to sacrifice
in common to the national gods, and to exchange the produce of the
fields and of local manufactures. Those towns which had the good fortune
to become such rallying-points naturally played the part of rivals to
the capital, and their chiefs, with the district whose population, so
to speak, gravitated around them, tended to become independent of the
prince. When they s