Social life in ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie.

  • Flinders Petrie
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Social life in ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    important service during high Nile; guards watched them, and on the most important, such as the great Fayum dyke, a continuous line of guards, within call one of another, kept a look¬ out day and night, with supplies of beams and ropes to deal with any leak. In Roman times, any one spoiling a dyke was sent to hard labour or exiled to the Oasis : I have seen a man soundly bastinadoed for stealing materials from the dyke guard. During ages past, many breaks have occurred ; and as it is essential to patch a break upstream, for securing the patch, so each break is marked by a bend. Many dykes, there¬ fore, wind about in a serpentine fashion, for no one thinks of changing the repair to a straight line. The Nile canal to the Red Sea has an uncer¬ tain history. Whether the ships of Hatshepsut could come through from Punt up to Thebes has not been settled. The vessels’ “ going to Thebes ” does not prove more than their depar¬ ture, and the water on which they sail is repre¬ sented as having the same Red Sea fishes as in the scene of arrival at Punt. That there was a Nile canal far to the east is certain, as Sety I. is shown crossing a canal swarming with crocodiles, over which was a bridge, guarded by fortified gates, on the road to Syria. If a canal reached Hero-opolis, west of the present Lake Timsah, at
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