Ancient Egypt Author:George Rawlinson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE STORY OF ANCIENT EGYPT. THE LAND OF EGYPT. IN shape Egypt is like a lily with a crooked stem. A broad blossom terminates it at its upper end ; a button... more » of a bud projects from the stalk a little below the blossom, on the left-hand side. The broad blossom is the Delta, extending from Aboosir to Tineh, a direct distance of a hundred and eighty miles, which the projection of the coast—the graceful swll of the petals—enlarges to two hundred and thirty. The bud is the Fayoum, a natural depression in the hills that shut in the Nile valley on the west, which has been rendered cultivable for many thousands of year's by the introduction into it of the Nile water, through a canal known as the " Bahr Yousouf." The long stalk of the lily is the Nile valley itself, which is a ravine scooped in the rocky soil for seven hundred miles from the First Cataract to the apex of the Delta, sometimes not more than a mile broad, never more than eight or ten miles. No other country in the world is so strangelyshaped, so long compared to its width, so straggling, so hard to govern from a single centre. At the first glance, the country seems to divide itself into two strongly contrasted regions ; and this was the original impression which it made upon its inhabitants. The natives from a very early time designated their land as " the two lands," and represented it by a hieroglyph in which the form used to express " land " was doubled. The kings were called " chiefs of the Two Lands," and wore two crowns, as being kings of two countries. The Hebrews caught up the idea, and though they sometimes called Egypt " Mazor " in the singular number, preferred commonly to designate it by the dual form " Mizraim," which means " the two Mazors." These " two Mazors," " two Egypts," or " two lands," were, of co...« less