=119.= The soil of Egypt was called by its inhabitants the “Gift of the Nile.” In a climate almost without rain, this country without its river would, indeed, have been only a ravine in the rocky and sandy desert; as barren as Sahara itself. The prosperity of the year was, from the earliest times, accurately measured by the Nilometers at Mem´phis and Elephan´tine. If the water rose less than eighteen feet, famine ensued; a rise of from eighteen to twenty-four feet betokened moderate harvests; twenty-seven feet were considered “a good Nile;” a flood of thirty feet was ruinous, for, in such a case, houses were undermined, cattle swept away, the land rendered too spongy for the following seed-time, the labor of the farmer was delayed, and often fevers were bred by the stagnant and lingering waters. Usually, however, the Nile was the great benefactor of the Egyptians, and was considered a fit emblem of the creating and preserving Osi´ris. Its waters were carefully distributed by canals and regulated by dykes. During the inundation, the country appeared like a great inland lake girdled by mountains. Lower Egypt, or the Delta, was compared by Herodotus to the Grecian Archipelago, dotted with villages which appeared like white islands above the expanse of waters. =120.= Lower Egypt is a vast plain; Upper Egypt a narrowing valley. The fertile portion of the latter occupies only a part of the space between the Lib´yan Desert and the sea. In its widest part it is less than eleven, in its narrowest only five miles in width; and in some places the granite or limestone cliff springs directly from the river. Being so well fitted to support a numerous people, the whole valley of the Nile, through Nubia and Abyssinia as well as Egypt, was very early colonized from the opposite shores of Asia. The hair, features, and form of the skull represented in the human figures on the monuments, prove the dominant race in these countries to have been of the same great family with the people on the neighboring peninsula of Arabia. =121.= Before the conquests of the Persians, Northern Africa was divided between five nations: the Egyptians, Ethiopians, Phœnicians, Libyans, and Greeks. =122.= The ETHIOPIANS occupied the Nile Valley above Egypt, including what is now known as Abyssinia. The great plateau between the headwaters of the Nile and the Red Sea is rendered fertile by frequent and abundant rains; and the many streams which descend from it to the Nile cause in part the yearly overflow which fertilizes Egypt. Mer´oë was the chief city of the Ethiopians. Some learned men have supposed its monuments of architecture and sculpture to be even older than those of Egypt.