The Historians' History of the World 01

Wonderful as this labyrinth is, the Lake Mœris, near which it stands, is still more extraordinary: the circumference of this is three thousand six hundred stadia, or sixty schæni, which is the length of Egypt about the coast. This lake stretches itself from north to south, and in its deepest parts is two hundred cubits; it is entirely the produce of human industry, which indeed the work itself testifies, for in its centre may be seen two pyramids, each of which is two hundred cubits above and as many beneath the water: upon the summit of each is a colossal statue of marble, in a sitting attitude. The precise altitude of these pyramids is consequently four hundred cubits; these four hundred cubits, or one hundred orgyiæ, are adapted to a stadium of six hundred feet; an orgyia is six feet, or four cubits, for a foot is four palms, and a cubit six.

The waters of the lake are not supplied by springs; the ground which it occupies is of itself remarkably dry, but it communicates by a secret channel with the Nile; for six months the lake empties itself into the Nile, and the remaining six the Nile supplies the lake. During the six months in which the waters of the lake ebb, the fishery which is here carried on furnishes the royal treasury with a talent of silver every day; but as soon as the Nile begins to pour its waters into the lake, it produces no more than twenty minæ.

[The silver which the fishery of this lake produced was, says Larcher, appropriated to find the queen with clothes and perfume.]

The inhabitants affirm of this lake, that it has a subterraneous passage inclining inland towards the west, to the mountains above Memphis, where it discharges itself into the Libyan sands. I was anxious to know what became of the earth, which must somewhere have necessarily been heaped up in digging this lake; as my search after it was fruitless, I made inquiries concerning it of those who lived nearer the lake. I was the more willing to believe them, when they told me where it was carried, as I had before heard of a similar expedient used at Nineveh, an Assyrian city. Some robbers, who were solicitous to get possession of the immense treasures of Sardanapalus, King of Nineveh, which were deposited in subterraneous apartments, began from the place where they lived to dig under ground, in a direction towards them. Having taken the most accurate measurement, they continued their mine to the palace of the king; as night approached they regularly emptied the earth into the Tigris, which flows near Nineveh, and at length accomplished their purpose. A plan entirely similar was executed in Egypt, except that the work was here carried on not by night but by day; the Egyptians threw the earth into the Nile, as they dug it from the trench; thus it was regularly dispersed, and this, as they told me, was the process of the lake’s formation.d

Thus Herodotus explains what he but faintly understood; his translator William Beloe has added the following commentary:a

Herodotus, Diodorus, and Pomponius Mela differ but little in opinion concerning its extent. The design of it was probably to hinder the Nile from overflowing the country too much, which was effected by drawing off such a quantity of water, when it was apprehended that there might be an inundation sufficient to hurt the land. [The regulation of the Nile floods has been accomplished in the latter part of the nineteenth century, by dams elsewhere described.] The water, Pococke observes, is of a disagreeable muddy taste, and almost as salt as the sea, which quality it probably contracts from the nitre that is in the earth, and the salt which is every year left in the mud. The circumference of the lake at present is no more than fifty leagues. Larcher says we must distinguish betwixt the lake itself, and the canal of communication from the Nile; that the former was the work of nature, the latter of art. This canal, a most stupendous effort of art, is still entire; it is called Bahr Yusuf, the canal of Joseph. According to Savary it is forty leagues in length.

There were two other canals with sluices at their mouths, from the lake to the river, which were alternately shut and opened when the Nile increased or decreased. This work united every advantage, and supplied the deficiencies of a low inundation, by retaining water which would uselessly have been expended in the sea. It was still more beneficial when the increase of the Nile was too great, by receiving that superfluity which would have prevented seed-time. Were the canal of Joseph cleansed, the ancient mounds repaired, and the sluices restored, this lake might again serve the same purposes. The pyramids described by Herodotus no longer exist, neither are they mentioned by Strabo.