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One fact which I learnt of the priests is to me a strong evidence of
the origin of the country. They said that when Moeris was king, the
Nile overflowed all Egypt below Memphis, as soon as it rose so
little as eight cubits. Now Moeris had not been dead 900 years at
the time when I heard this of the priests; yet at the present day,
unless the river rise sixteen, or, at the very least, fifteen
cubits, it does not overflow the lands. It seems to me, therefore,
that if the land goes on rising and growing at this rate, the
Egyptians who dwell below Lake Moeris, in the Delta (as it is
called) and elsewhere, will one day, by the stoppage of the
inundations, suffer permanently the fate which they told me they
expected would some time or other befall the Greeks. On hearing that
the whole land of Greece is watered by rain from heaven, and not,
like their own, inundated by rivers, they observed - "Some day the
Greeks will be disappointed of their grand hope, and then they will be
wretchedly hungry"; which was as much as to say, "If God shall
some day see fit not to grant the Greeks rain, but shall afflict them
with a long drought, the Greeks will be swept away by a famine, since
they have nothing to rely on but rain from Jove, and have no other
resource for water."
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