There is no doubt that the dates of the rise of these rivers not only influenced the national life, but even the religions of the dwellers on their banks. The Euphrates and Tigris rise at the Spring Equinox--the religion was equinoxial, the temples were directed to the east. The Nile rises at a solstice--the religion was solstitial and the solar temples were directed no longer to the east. To the Egyptians the coming of the river to the parched land was as the sunrise chasing the darkness of the night; the sun-god of day conquering the star-gods of night; or again the victorious king of the land slaughtering his enemies. Egypt, in the words of Amru, first appears like a dusty plain, then as a fresh sea, and finally as a bed of flowers. It might be imagined at first sight that as the year was thus determined, so to speak, by natural local causes, the divisions or seasons would be the same as those which Nature has given _us_. This is not so. The river and land conditions are so widely different. By no one, perhaps, have the actual facts been so truly and poetically described as by Osborn, who thus pictures the low Nile[65]:-- "The Nile has shrunk within its banks until its stream is contracted to half its ordinary dimensions, and its turbid, slimy, stagnant waters scarcely seem to flow in any direction. Broad flats or steep banks of black, sun-baked Nile mud, form both the shores of the river. All beyond them is sand and sterility; for the hamseen, or sand-wind of fifty days' duration, has scarcely yet ceased to blow. The trunks and branches of trees may be seen here and there through the dusty, hazy, burning atmosphere, but so entirely are their leaves coated with dust that at a distance they are not distinguishable from the desert sand that surrounds them. It is only by the most painful and laborious operation of watering that any tint approximating to greenness can be preserved at this season even in the pleasure-gardens of the Pacha. The first symptom of the termination of this most terrible season is the rising of the north wind (the Etesian wind of the Greeks), blowing briskly, often fiercely, during the whole of the day. The foliage of the groves that cover Lower Egypt is soon disencumbered by it of the dust, and resumes its verdure. The fierce fervours of the sun, then at its highest ascension, are also most seasonably mitigated by the same powerful agency, which prevails for this and the three following months throughout the entire land of Egypt." Then comes the inundation:--