ABSTRACT
No country in the East has its boundaries so definitely fixed by nature as Egypt. In the north is the Mediterranean; east and west are the Arabian and Libyan deserts; in the south are the cataracts of the Nile. These were hard barriers to pass, and behind them the oldest known civilization found, in the lower valley of the Nile, a very safe refuge. As Diodorus says (i, 30-1), “Egypt is fortified on all sides by nature.”
