d to its usual size before the winds cease.
Anaxagoras, who was followed by Euripides, the poet, thought that the
large supply of water came from the melting of snow in Ethiopia. Ephorus
thought that there were deep springs in the river's bed, which gushed
forth with greater force in summer than in winter. Herodotus and
OEnopides both thought that the river was in its natural state when
the country was overflowed; and the former said that its waters were
lessened in winter by the attraction of the sun, then over Southern
Ethiopia; and the latter said that, as the earth grew cool, the waters
were sucked into its pores. The sources of the Nile were hidden by the
barbarism of the tribes on its banks; but by this time travellers had
reached the region of tropical rains; and Agatharcides said that the
overflow in Egypt arose from the rains in Upper Ethiopia. But the
Abyssinian rains begin to fall at midsummer, too late to cause the
inundation in Egypt; and therefore the truth seemed after all to lie
with the priests of Memphis, who said the Nile rises on the other side
of the equator, and the rain falling in what was winter on that side of
the globe made the Nile overflow in the Egyptian summer.

From the very earliest times, says Ebers, the Pharaohs had understood
the necessity of measuring exactly the amount or deficiency of the
inundations of the Nile, and Nilometers are preserved which were erected
high up the river in Nubia by kings of the Old Empire, by princes, that
is to say, who reigned before the invasion of the Hyksos. Herodotus
tells us that the river must rise sixteen ells for the inundation to be
considered a favourable one. If it remained below this mark, the higher
fields failed in obtaining a due supply of water, and a dearth was the
result. If it greatly exceeded it, it broke down the dykes, damaged the
villages, and had not retired into its bed by the time for sowing the
seed. Thus the peasant, who could expect no rain, and was threatened
neither by frosts nor storms, could have his prospects of a good or bad
harvest read off by the priests with perfect certainty by the scale of
the Nilometer, and not by the servants of the divinities only, but by
the officers of the realm, who calculated the amount of taxes to be paid
to them in proportion to the rising of the river.

[Illustration: 254.jpg NILOMETER AT RHODHA]

The standard was protected by the magic power of unapproachable
sanctity, and the husbandman