The state of distress, which these troubles prolonged through a series of years, must have produced, may probably thereupon have brought to an outbreak, the only revolution that can be shown to have arisen in Egypt.[225] Under the government of Diocletian, we do not know why or wherefore, as well the native Egyptians as the burgesses of Alexandria rose in revolt against the existing government. Lucius Domitius Domitianus and Achilleus were set up as opposition-emperors, unless possibly the two names denote the same person; the revolt lasted from three to four years, the towns Busiris in the Delta and Coptos not far from Thebes were destroyed by the troops of the government, and ultimately under the leading of Diocletian in person in the spring of 297 the capital was reduced after an eight months’ siege. Nothing testifies so clearly to the decline of the land, rich, but thoroughly dependent on inward and outward peace, as the edict issued in the year 302 by the same Diocletian, that a portion of the Egyptian grain hitherto sent to Rome should for the future go to the benefit of the Alexandrian burgesses.[226] This was certainly among the measures which aimed at the decapitalising of Rome; but the supply would not have been directed towards the Alexandrians, whom this emperor had truly no cause to favour, unless they had urgently needed it. [Sidenote: Agriculture.] Economically Egypt, as is well-known, is above all the land of agriculture. It is true that the “black earth”--that is the meaning of the native name for the country, Chemi--is only a narrow stripe on either side of the mighty Nile flowing from the last rapids near Syene, the southern limit of Egypt proper, for 550 miles in a copious stream, through the yellow desert extending right and left, to the Mediterranean Sea; only at its lower end the “gift of the river,” the Nile-delta, spreads itself out on both sides between the manifold arms of its mouth. The produce of these tracts depends year by year on the Nile and on the sixteen cubits of its flood-mark--the sixteen children playing round their father, as the art of the Greeks represented the river-god; with good reason the Arabs designate the low cubits by the name of the angels of death, for, if the river does not reach its full height, famine and destruction come upon the whole land of Egypt. But in general Egypt--where the expenses of cultivation are singularly low, wheat bears an hundred fold, and the culture of vegetables, of the vine, of trees, particularly the date-palm, as well as the rearing of cattle, yield good produce--is able not merely to feed a dense population, but also to send corn in large quantity abroad. This led to the result that, after the installation of the foreign rule, not much of its riches was left to the land itself. The Nile rose at that time nearly as in the Persian period and as it does to-day, and the Egyptian toiled chiefly for other lands; and thereby in the first