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Now, however, nine out of every ten people in Egypt are Mohammedans and, instead of building pyramids, they build beautiful mosques.
Close by these big pyramids is the Sphinx, a huge stone figure with the body of a lion and the head of one of the Egyptian kings. In Greece a sphinx was supposed to be an animal with a woman’s head that sat by the road and asked passers-by this riddle: “What is it that goes on four feet in the morning, two at midday, andthree at night?” If the traveler couldn’t tell the answer the sphinx devoured him. At last some one answered, “Man, because he crawls on all fours in the morning of his life, then walks on two feet, and finally ontwo feet and a cane.” The Greek sphinx was a “she”. But the Egyptian sphinx is a “he.” He has a man’s head and he asked no riddles. He was a god of the sun.
The Sphinx and pyramids are on the bank of the one and only great river of Egypt, called the Nile. Have you ever heard of crocodile tears? The crocodile is a big alligator-like animal that lives in the Nile, and people used to say that he would catch little Egyptian boys and while he was eating them he would weep as if hisheart would break. That’s why when you cry, though you don’t really mean it, we say you are shedding “crocodile tears”! The Nile splits into several branches before it empties into the Mediterranean Sea, and the land between the branches is called a delta, because it is shaped like the Greek letter “D,” which was called delta and shaped like a triangle.You see, people of long ago also called places after common things which they thought had the same shape.
Hardly any rain falls in northern Egypt, but in southern Egypt there are heavy rains in the summer. Then theNile overflows its banks and floods the country and leaves great quantities of mud.
