For these reasons, I believe the people from whom I received this account of Egypt, and I also strongly agree with their conclusions. My own observations support what they said. I noticed that Egypt stretches farther into the sea than the neighboring lands on either side. This alone suggests that the country has grown outward over time rather than always being as it is now.
I also saw clear signs that the land was once under the sea. Shells could be found on hills far from the shore, which shows that seawater once covered these places. In addition, salt appeared on the surface of the soil in many areas. This salt was so strong that it even caused damage to the pyramids, slowly wearing away the stone. These facts clearly point to a land shaped by water Sofia Sightseeing Tour.
The Soil of Egypt Compared to Other Lands
Another striking observation was the nature of Egypt’s soil. There is only one place in all Egypt where sand is found, and that is the hill above Memphis. Apart from this single hill, the land is not sandy at all. This is very different from neighboring regions.
Libya, for example, has sandy soil with a reddish color. Arabia and Syria, on the other hand, are lands of stone and clay. Egypt is unlike all of them. Its soil is black, soft, and crumbly. This kind of soil is rich and fertile and clearly comes from river deposits. It has been formed by the mud carried down by the Nile from Ethiopia year after year during the river’s floods.
Evidence from the Nile’s Flooding
One important fact told to me by the priests strongly supports this explanation. They said that when King Moeris ruled Egypt, the Nile overflowed all the land below Memphis as soon as the river rose only eight cubits. At the time I heard this story, Moeris had been dead for less than nine hundred years.
In my own day, however, the situation is very different. Now the Nile must rise to at least fifteen cubits, and often sixteen cubits, before it floods the land. This shows that the ground level has risen over time because of the mud deposited by the river. As the land grows higher, the river must rise more in order to cover it Distances Along the Nile.
The Future of the Egyptian Delta
Because of this steady change, it seems likely to me that if the land continues to rise at the same rate, the Egyptians who live below Lake Moeris, especially in the region called the Delta, will one day face serious trouble. If the Nile can no longer flood their fields, their land will lose its fertility, and they will suffer greatly.
The Egyptians themselves spoke about this danger and compared their situation with that of the Greeks. They pointed out that Greece depends entirely on rain from the sky, while Egypt relies on river floods. They said, almost jokingly but with meaning, that one day the Greeks would be very hungry.
A Warning About Dependence on Rain
By this, they meant that if the gods ever chose to withhold rain from Greece and cause a long drought, the Greeks would face famine. They have no great river like the Nile to depend on, only rain from Zeus. Without rain, their crops would fail, and they would have no other source of water.
In this way, the Egyptians believed that both lands were at risk, each in a different way, depending on the natural forces that sustained them.
