Behind the eastern range the desert spreads to the Red Sea; behind the
western it stretches without limit, into infinity. In the belief of the
Egyptians beyond it lay the region of the dead.

Between these two ranges of hills, which serve as walls or ramparts to
keep back the desert-sand, flows the fresh and bounteous Nile, bestowing
blessing and abundance; at once the father and the cradle of millions of
beings. On each shore spreads the wide plain of black and fruitful soil,
and in the depths many-shaped creatures, in coats of mail or scales,
swarm and find subsistence.

The lotos floats on the mirror of the waters, and among the papyrus reeds
by the shore water-fowl innumerable build their nests. Between the river
and the mountain-range lie fields, which after the seed-time are of a
shining blue-green, and towards the time of harvest glow like gold. Near
the brooks and water-wheels here and there stands a shady sycamore; and
date-palms, carefully tended, group themselves in groves. The fruitful
plain, watered and manured every year by the inundation, lies at the foot
of the sandy desert-hills behind it, and stands out like a garden flower-
bed from the gravel-path.

In the fourteenth century before Christ--for to so remote a date we must
direct the thoughts of the reader--impassable limits had been set by the
hand of man, in many places in Thebes, to the inroads of the water; high
dykes of stone and embankments protected the streets and squares, the
temples and the palaces, from the overflow.

Canals that could be tightly closed up led from the dykes to the land
within, and smaller branch-cuttings to the gardens of Thebes.