Kitap 17
1.4
But at the time of the rising of the Nile, the whole country is covered, and resembles a sea, except the inhabited spots, which are situated upon natural hills or mounds ; and considerable cities and villages appear like islands in the distant prospect.
1.4
The water, after having continued on the ground more than forty days in summer, then subsides by degrees, in the same manner as it rose. In sixty days the plain is entirely exposed to view, and dries up. The sooner the land is dry, so much the sooner the ploughing and sowing are accomplished, and it dries earlier in those parts where the heat is greater.
1.4
The country above the Delta is irrigated in the same manner, except that the river flows in a straight line to the distance of about 4000 stadia in one channel, unless where some island intervenes, the most considerable of which comprises the Heracleiotic Nome; or, where it is diverted by a canal into a large lake, or a tract of country which it is capable of irrigating, as the lake Moeris and the Arsinoïte Nome, or where the canals discharge themselves into the Mareotis.
1.4
In short, Egypt, from the mountains of Ethiopia to the vertex of the Delta, is merely a river tract on each side of the Nile, and rarely if anywhere comprehends in one continued line a habitable territory of 300 stadia in breadth. It resembles, except the frequent diversions of its course, a bandage rolled out.In the text κειοͅίᾳ ψυχομένῃ ἐπὶ μῆκο, which is evidently corrupt. Kramer proposes to read ἀναπτυσσομένῃ or ἀνεπτυγμένῃ, and Groskurd reads αὐξομένῃ for ψυχομένῃ, lengthened out. Alii alia proposuerunt, infelicia omnia.
