Nilus

, a king of Thebes, who gave his name to the river which flows through the middle of Egypt, and falls into the Mediterranean sea. The Nile, anciently called Ægyptus , is one of the most celebrated rivers in the world. Its sources were unknown to the ancients, and the moderns were till lately ignorant of their situation, whence an impo ibility is generally meant by the proverb of Nili caput quærere . It flows through the middle of Egypt in a northern direction, and when it comes to the town of Cercasorum, it then divides itself into several streams, and falls into the Mediterranean by seven mouths. The most eastern canal is called the Pelusian, and the most western is called the Canopic mouth. The other canals are the Sebennytican, that of Sais, the Men desi an, Bolbitinic, and Bucolic. They have all been formed by nature, except the two last, which have been dug by the labours of men. The island which the Nile forms by its division into several streams is called Delta , from its resemblance to the fourth letter in the Greek alphabet. The Nile yearly overflows the country, and it is to those regular inundations that the Egyptians are indebted for the fertile produce of their lands. It begins to rise in the month of May for 100 succe ive days, and then decreases gradually the same number of days. If it does not rise as high as 16 cubits, a famine is generally expected, but if it exceeds this by many cubits, it is of the most dangerous consequences; houses are overturned, the cattle are drowned, and a great number of insects are produced from the mud, which destroy the fruits of the earth. The river, therefore, proves a ble ing or a calamity to Egypt, and the prosperity of the nation depends so much upon it, that the tributes of the inhabitants were in ancient times, and are still under the present government, proportioned to the rise of the waters. The causes of the overflowings of the Nile, which remained unknown to the ancients, though searched with the greatest application, are owing to the heavy rains which regularly fall in Æthiopia, in the months of April and May, and which rush down like torrents upon the country, and lay it all under water. These causes, as some people suppose, were well known to Homer, as he seems to show it, by saying that the Nile flowed down from heaven. The inhabitants of Egypt, near the banks of the river, were called Niliaci , Niligenæ , . , and large canals were also from this river denominated Nili or Euripi . Cicero , De Legibus , bk. 2 , ch. 1 ; Letters to his brother Quintus , bk. 3 , ltr. 9 ; Letters to Atticus , bk. 11 , ltr. 12 .— Strabo , bk. 17 .— Ovid , Metamorphoses , bk. 5 , li. 187 ; bk. 15 , li. 753 .— Mela , bk. 1 , ch. 9 ; bk. 3 , ch. 9 .— Seneca , Quæstiones Natura les , bk. 4 .— Lucan , bks. 1, 2, . — Claudian , de Nilus .— Virgil , Georgics , bk. 4 , li. 288 ; Æneid , bk. 6 , li. 800 ; bk. 9 , li. 31 .— Diodorus , bk. 1 , . — Hero dot us , bk. 2 .— Lucretius , bk. 6 , li. 712 .— Ammianus , bk. 22 .— Pausanias , bk. 10 , ch. 32 .— Pliny , bk. 5 , ch. 10 .――One of the Greek fathers, who flourished A.D. 440. His works were edited at Rome, folio, 2  vols. , 1668 & 1678.