THE PHARAOH AND THE PRIEST INTRODUCTION In the northeastern corner of Africa lies Egypt, that land of most ancient civilization. Three, four, and even five thousand years ago, when the savages of Central Europe wore untanned skins for clothing and were cave-dwellers, Egypt had a high social organization, agriculture, crafts, and literature. Above all, it carried out engineering works and reared immense buildings, the remnants of which rouse admiration in specialists of our day. Egypt is that rich ravine between the Libyan sands and the Arabian desert. Its depth is several hundred metres, its length six hundred and fifty miles, its average width barely five. On the west the gently sloping but naked Libyan hills, on the east the steep and broken cliffs of Arabia form the sides of a corridor on the bottom of which flows the river Nile. With the course of the river northward the walls of the corridor decrease in height, while a hundred and twenty-five miles from the sea they expand on a sudden, and the river, instead of flowing through a narrow passage, spreads in various arms over a broad level plain which is shaped like a triangle. This triangle, called the Delta of the Nile, has for its base the shore of the Mediterranean; at its apex, where the river issues from the corridor, stands the city of Cairo, and near by are the ruins of Memphis, the ancient capital. Could a man rise one hundred miles in the air and gaze thence upon Egypt, he would see the strange outlines of that country and the peculiar changes in its color. From that elevation, on the background of white and orange colored sands, Egypt would look like a serpent pushing with energetic twists through a desert to the sea, in which it has dipped already its triangular head, which has two eyes,--the left Alexandria, the right Damietta. In October, when the Nile inundates Egypt, that long serpent would be blue, like water. In February, when spring vegetation takes the place of the decreasing river, the serpent would be green, with a blue line along its body and a multitude of blue veins on its head; these are canals which cut through the Delta. In March the blue line would be narrower, and the body of the serpent, because of ripening grain, would seem golden. Finally, in the first days of June the line of the Nile would be very narrow and the serpent's body gray from dust and drought. The chief climatic feature in Egypt is heat. During January it is 57° above zero, in July 99½°; sometimes the heat reaches 149° which answers to the temperature of a Roman bath. Moreover, in the neighborhood of the Mediterranean, on the Delta, rain falls barely ten times a year; in Upper Egypt it falls once during ten years.