When the Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the land of the ancient Egyptians was “given to them by the river,” he was referring to the Nile, whose waters were essential to the rise of one of the first great civilizations of the world.
The Nile, which flows north for 4,160 miles from east-central Africa to the Mediterranean, provided ancient Egypt with fertile soil and water for irrigation, as well as a way of transporting materials for construction projects. Its vital waters allowed cities to sprout in the middle of a desert.
In order to enjoy the Nile, the inhabitants of its banks had to find a way to cope with the annual flooding of the river. They have also developed new skills and technologies, from agriculture to boat and ship building. The Nile even played a role in the construction of the pyramids, the massive wonders that are among the most recognizable reminders of their civilization. Beyond practical matters, the vast river had a profound influence on the ancient Egyptians’ view of themselves and their world, and shaped their religion and culture.
The Nile was “an essential lifeline that literally brought the desert to life,” as Lisa Saladino Haney, assistant curator of Egypt at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, writes on the museum’s website. “Without the Nile, there would be no Egypt”, writes the Egyptologist in his 2012 book, The Nile.
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The Nile was a source of rich agricultural land
The modern name of the Nile comes from Nelios, the Greek word for the river valley. But the ancient Egyptians called it Ar or Aur, meaning “black,” a reference to the rich, dark sediments that the waters of the Nile carried from the Horn of Africa northward and deposited in Egypt when the river flooded its shores every year in late summer . This surge of water and nutrients transformed the Nile Valley into productive agricultural land and allowed Egyptian civilization to thrive in the middle of a desert.
The thick layer of silt in the Nile Valley “transformed what might have been a geological curiosity, a version of the Grand Canyon, into a densely populated agricultural country,” says Barry J. Kemp in Ancient Egypt: anatomy of a civilization.
The Nile was a focal point for the ancient Egyptians as their calendar began the year with the first month of the inundation. Egyptian religion even worshiped a flood and fertility deity, Hapy, who was portrayed as a chubby man with blue or green skin.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, ancient Egyptian farmers were one of the first groups to practice large-scale agriculture, growing food crops such as wheat and barley, as well as industrial crops such as flax for clothing. To get the most out of the Nile’s waters, ancient Egyptian farmers developed a system called basin irrigation. They built networks of earthen banks to form ponds and dug canals to direct the floodwaters into the ponds, where it would remain for a month until the soil was saturated and ready for planting.
“It’s obviously difficult if the land on which you built your house and grow your food is flooded by a river every August and September, like the Nile did before the Aswan High Dam,” explains Arthur Goldschmidt, Jr., a retired professor of Middle Eastern history at Penn State University and author of A brief history of Egypt. “Creating dikes, canals and basins to move and store some of the Nile’s water required ingenuity and probably a lot of trial and error experimentation for the ancient Egyptians. “
To predict whether they faced dangerous flooding or low water that could lead to a bad harvest, the ancient Egyptians built nilometers, stone columns with markings indicating the water level.
The river served as a vital transportation route
In addition to fueling agriculture, the Nile provided the ancient Egyptians with a vital transportation route. As a result, they became skilled boat and ship builders who created both large wooden craft with sails and oars, capable of traveling longer distances, and smaller craft made from papyrus reeds. attached to wooden frames.
Works of art from the Old Kingdom, which existed from 2686 to 2181 BC. AD, represent boats carrying cattle, vegetables, fish, bread and wood. Boats were so important to the Egyptians that they buried deceased kings and dignitaries with boats that were sometimes so well built that they could have been used for real trips on the Nile.
The Nile Valley as an element of identity
The Pyramids of Giza.
Nick Brundle Photography / Getty Images
The Nile influenced the way the Egyptians viewed the land they lived in, according to Haney. They divided their world into Kemet, the “black earth” of the Nile Valley, where there was enough water and food for the cities to thrive. In contrast, hot and dry desert areas were Deshret, the “red earth”. They connected the Nile Valley and oases in desert areas with life and abundance, while deserts were associated with death and chaos.
The Nile also played an important role in the creation of monumental tombs such as the Great Pyramid of Giza. An ancient papyrus diary of an official involved in the construction of the Great Pyramid describes how workers transported huge blocks of limestone on wooden boats along the Nile and then channeled the blocks through a system of canals to the site where the pyramid was being built.
