d the
exploration of its sources is only just completed. It flows
through a limestone country over which, save for its beneficent
action, would drive the parched sands of the Libyan desert. Its
periodic inundations, with their rich deposits of alluvial soil,
repel the encroaching wastes, and solve the problem of the food
supply. Egypt has with good reason been called "the gift of the
Nile."

This river therefore possesses in a marked degree all the mystic
influences of moving water, and emphasises them by physical
and historical features of exceptional import. What wonder that
it has had so direct a bearing on the spiritual development of the
people on its banks, and that it entered into the very texture of
their lives! It was, for the Egyptian, pre-eminently the sacred
river--deemed to be one of the primitive essences--ranked with
those highest deities who were not visible objects of adoration.
As a form of God "he cannot (says an ancient hymnist) be
figured in stone; he is not to be seen in the sculptured images
upon which men place the united crowns of the North and the
South, furnished with uraei." The honour thus conferred was but
commensurate with the blessings he brought. For in what would
have been a valley of death he was the sole source and sustainer
of life. A further quotation from the beautiful hymn just
mentioned will indicate the affection and mystic emotion he
inspired. "Homage to thee, O Hapi! (i.e. the Nile). Thou comest
forth in this land, and dost come in peace to make Egypt to live,
O thou hidden one, thou guide of the darkness whensoever it is
thy pleasure to be its guide. Thou waterest the fields which Ra
hath created, thou makest all animals to live, thou makest the
land to drink without ceasing; thou descendest the path of
heaven, thou art the friend of meat and drink, thou art the giver
of the grain, and thou makest every place of work to flourish, O
Ptah! . . . If thou wert to be overcome in heaven the gods would
fall down headlong, and mankind would perish."

In this passage the mystic observes how the natural power of
running water to suggest spontaneous movement, and therefore
life, is accentuated and denned by the actual results of the river's
beneficent overflow. And a further step is taken when Hapi is
addressed by the names of Ptah (as above) and Khnemu; for he
is not thus confused with the gods so named, but being the great
life-supplier for the land, he is, like them, regarded as