ucceeded in doing this, they often preserved for the
new state thus created, the old name, slightly modified by the addition
of an epithet. The primitive territory of Siut was in this way divided
into three distinct communities; two, which remained faithful to the old
emblem of the tree--the Upper Terebinth, with Siut itself in the centre,
and the Lower Terebinth, with Kusit to the north; the third, in the
south and east, took as their totem the immortal serpent which dwelt in
their mountains, and called themselves the Serpent Mountain, whose
chief town was that of the Sparrow Hawk. The territory of the Oleander
produced by its dismemberment the principality of the Upper Oleander,
that of the Lower Oleander, and that of the Knife. The territory of
the Harpoon in the Delta divided itself into the Western and Eastern
Harpoon. The fission in most cases could not have been accomplished
without struggles; but it did take place, and all the principalities
having a domain of any considerable extent had to submit to it, however
they may have striven to avoid it. This parcelling out was continued as
circumstances afforded opportunity, until the whole of Egypt, except the
half desert districts about the cataract, became but an agglomeration of
petty states nearly equal in power and population.[*]

* Examples of the subdivision of ancient nomes and the
creation of fresh nomes are met with long after primitive
times. We find, for example, the nome of the Western Harpoon
divided under the Greeks and Romans into two districts--that
of the Harpoon proper, of which the chief town was Sonti-
nofir; and that of Ranunr, with the Onuphis of classical
geographers for its capital.

The Greeks called them nomes, and we have borrowed the word from them;
the natives named them in several ways, the most ancient term
being "nuit," which may be translated _domain_, and the most common
appellation in recent times being "hospu," which signifies _district_.
The number of the nomes varied considerably in the course of centuries:
the hieroglyphic monuments and classical authors fixed them sometimes at
thirty-six, sometimes at forty, sometimes at forty-four, or even fifty.
The little that we know of their history, up to the present time,
explains the reason of this variation. Ceaselessly quarrelled over by
the princely families who possessed them, the nomes were alternately
humbled and exalted by civil wars, marriages