Why Is Egypt Called Gift Of The Nile
Why Is Egypt Called Gift Of The Nile - 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 crucial to the rise of one of the world's earliest great civilizations. Flowing 4,160 miles north from East Central Africa to the Mediterranean, the Nile provided ancient Egypt with fertile soil and water for irrigation, as well as a means of transporting materials for construction projects.
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Why Is Egypt Called Gift Of The Nile
The vital waters allowed cities to arise in the middle of a desert. To take advantage of the Nile, people living along its banks had to figure out how to deal with the river's annual floods. They also developed new skills and technology, from agriculture to boat and ship building.
The Nile even played a role in the construction of the pyramids, the enormous wonders that are among the most recognizable reminders of their civilization. Beyond the practical, the great river greatly influenced the ancient Egyptians' view of themselves and their world, and shaped their religion and culture.
The Nile was "a critical lifeline that literally brought life to the desert," 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.
The Nile Was A Source Of Rich Farmland
The modern name of the Nile comes from Nelios, the Greek word for river valley. But the ancient Egyptians called it Ar or Aur, meaning "black," a reference to the rich, dark sediment that the Nile's waters carried north from the Horn of Africa and deposited in Egypt when the river flooded each year in late summer.
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ran over its banks. This surge of water and nutrients turned the Nile Valley into productive farmland and allowed the Egyptian civilization to develop in the middle of a desert. The thick silt of the Nile Valley "transformed what might have been a geological curiosity, a version of the Grand Canyon, into a densely populated agricultural country," explains Barry J. Kemp in Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization.
The Nile was such an important point to the ancient Egyptians that their calendar started the year with the first month of the flood. Egyptian religion even honored a deity of floods and fertility, Hapy, who was depicted as a plump 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 agriculture on a large scale, growing food crops such as wheat and barley as well as industrial crops such as flax for making clothing.
The River Served As A Vital Transportation Route
To make the most of the Nile's waters, ancient Egyptian farmers developed a system called basin irrigation. They built networks of earth banks to form basins and dug canals to channel the floodwater into the basins, where it would sit for a month until the soil was saturated and ready for planting.
Of course, it's a challenge when the land where you built your house and grow your food is flooded by a river every August and September, as the Nile used to do before the Aswan High Dam," explains Arthur Goldschmidt, Jr. retired professor of Middle Eastern history at Penn State University and author of A Brief History of Egypt.
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Creating dikes, canals and basins to move and store some of the Nile's waters required ingenuity and probably a lot of trial and error experimentation for the ancient Egyptians." To predict whether they would encounter dangerous floods or low water that could result in a poor harvest, the ancient Egyptians built nilometers – stone pillars with marks that could indicate the water level.
In addition to nurturing agriculture, the Nile provided the ancient Egyptians with a vital transportation route. As a result, they became skilled boat and ship builders, creating both large wooden vessels with sails and oars that could travel longer distances, and smaller slates made from papyrus reeds attached to wooden frames.
The River Served As A Vital Transportation Route
Artwork from the Old Kingdom, which existed from 2686 to 2181 BC, shows boats with 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 actual travel on the Nile.
According to Haney, the Nile influenced the way the Egyptians thought about the land they lived in. They divided their world into Kemet, the "black land" of the Nile Valley, where there was enough water and food for cities to thrive. The hot, dry desert areas, on the other hand, were Deshret, the "red land".
They associated the Nile Valley and oases in the desert regions with life and abundance, while the 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 carried the blocks through a canal system to the site where the pyramid was built.
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Patrick J. Kiger has written for GQ, the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, PBS NewsHour, and Military History Quarterly. He is the co-author (with Martin J. Smith) of Poplorica: A Popular History of the Fads, Mavericks, Inventions, and Lore that Shaped Modern America. We strive for accuracy and fairness.
The Nile Valley As Part Of Identity
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Skeptics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for scientific skepticism. It only takes a minute to sign up. Connect and share knowledge in one place that is structured and easy to search. Around 450 BCE, a Greek historian named Herodotus called Egypt the "Gift of the Nile" because Egyptian civilization depended on the resources of the great river.
Every spring the snow on the mountains melted. The Nile would overflow. It was a very good thing. When the floods receded, they left behind fertile soil. Crops could easily be grown on this black, rich soil. The ancient Egyptians called this land the "Gift of the Nile".
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