however, was throughout antiquity the chief product of Egypt, which was
reckoned the granary of the world, the refuge and resource of all the
neighbouring nations in time of dearth, and on which in the later
republican, and in the imperial times, Rome almost wholly depended for
her sustenance.

If the soil was thus all that could be wished, still more advantageous
was the situation. Egypt was the only nation of the ancient world which
had ready access to two seas, the Northern Sea, or "Sea of the Greeks,"
and the Eastern Sea, or "Sea of the Arabians and the Indians." Phœnicia
might carry her traffic by the painful travel of caravans across fifteen
degrees of desert from her cities on the Levantine coast to the inner
recess of the Persian Gulf, and thus get a share in the trade of the
East at a vast expenditure of time and trouble. Assyria and Babylonia
might for a time, when at the height of their dominion, obtain a
temporary hold on lands which were not their own, and boast that they
stretched from the "sea of the rising" to "that of the setting
sun"--from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean; but Egypt, at all
times and under all circumstances, commands by her geographic position
an access both to the Mediterranean and to the Indian Ocean by way of
the Red Sea, whereof nothing can deprive her. Suez must always be hers,
for the Isthmus is her natural boundary, and her water-system has been
connected with the head of the Arabian Gulf for more than three thousand
years; and, in the absence of any strong State in Arabia or Abyssinia,
the entire western coast of the Red Sea falls naturally under her
influence with its important roadsteads and harbours. Thus Egypt had two
great outlets for her productions, and two great inlets by which she
received the productions of other countries. Her ships could issue from
the Nilotic ports and trade with Phœnicia, or Carthage, or Italy, or
Greece, exchanging her corn and wine and glass and furniture and works