their victorious
armies follow the Nile for months together as they pursued the
tribes who dwelt upon its banks, only to find it as wide, as full, as
irresistible in its progress as ever. It was a fresh-water sea, and
sea--_iauma, ioma_--was the name by which they called it.

The Egyptians therefore never sought its source. They imagined the whole
universe to be a large box, nearly rectangular in form, whose greatest
diameter was from south to north, and its least from east to west. The
earth, with its alternate continents and seas, formed the bottom of the
box; it was a narrow, oblong, and slightly concave floor, with Egypt
in its centre. The sky stretched over it like an iron ceiling, flat
according to some, vaulted according to others. Its earthward face was
capriciously sprinkled with lamps hung from strong cables, and which,
extinguished or unperceived by day, were lighted, or became visible to
our eyes, at night.

[Illustration: 022.jpg AN ATTEMPT TO REPRESENT THE EGYPTIAN UNIVERSE.2]

2 Section taken at Hermopolis. To the left, is the bark of
the sun on the celestial river.

Since this ceiling could not remain in mid-air without support, four
columns, or rather four forked trunks of trees, similar to those which
maintained the primitive house, were supposed to uphold it. But it was
doubtless feared lest some tempest should overturn them, for they were
superseded by four lofty peaks, rising at the four cardinal points, and
connected by a continuous chain of mountains. The Egyptians knew little
of the northern peak: the Mediterranean, the "Very Green," interposed
between it and Egypt, and prevented their coming near enough to see it.
The southern peak was named Apit the Horn of the Earth; that on the east
was called Bakhu, the Mountain of Birth; and the western peak was known
as Manu, sometimes as Onkhit, the Region of Life.

[Illustration: 023.jpg FOOTNOTES WITH GRAPHICS]

Bakhu was not a fictitious mountain, but the highest of those distant
summits seen from the Nile in looking towards the red Sea. In the same
way, Manu answered to some hill of the Libyan desert, whose summit
closed the horizon. When it was discovered that neither Bakhu nor Manu
were the limits of the world, the notion of upholding the celestial roof
was not on that account given up. It was only necessary to withdraw the
pillars from sight, and imagine fabulous peaks, invested with familiar
names. These were not supposed to form