[Illustration: 353.jpg THE CHANNEL OF THE NILE BETWEEN THE TWO FORTRESSES OF SEMNEH AND KUMMEH]
Reproduction by Faucher-Gudin
of a sketch published by
Cailliaud, Voyage
a Meroe, Atlas, vol. ii. pl. xxx.
As long as the dominion of the Pharaohs reached no further than Philae, observations of the Nile were always taken at the first cataract; and it was from Elephantine that Egypt received the news of the first appearance and progress of the inundation. Amenemhait III. set up a new nilometer at the new frontier, and gave orders to his officers to observe the course of the flood. They obeyed him scrupulously, and every time that the inundation appeared to them to differ from the average of ordinary years, they marked its height on the rocks of Semneh and Kummeh, engraving side by side with the figure the name of the king and the date of the year. The custom was continued there under the XIIIth dynasty; afterwards, when the frontier was pushed further south, the nilometer accompanied it.
The country beyond Semneh was virgin territory, almost untouched and quite uninjured by previous wars. Its name now appears for the first time upon the monuments, in the form of Kaushu—the humbled Kush. It comprised the districts situated to the south within the immense loop described by the river between Dongola and Khartoum, those vast plains intersected by the windings of the White and Blue Niles, known as the regions of Kordofan and Darfur; it was bounded by the mountains of Abyssinia, the marshes of Lake Nu, and all those semi-fabulous countries to which were relegated the “Isles of the Manes” and the “Lands of Spirits.” It was separated from the