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the Gift of the Nile
by Collins
IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE A FLOOD CREATING ANYTHING
— except maybe a soggy mess. Five thousand years ago along the Nile River in northeastern Africa, however, floods fostered a great civilisation. Swollen by rains in highlands far to the south, the Nile escaped its banks and soaked the surrounding fields every summer. When the water receded in October, it left rich black silt perfect for growing wheat to make bread and flax to spin linen for clothing. This annual guarantee of good farming attracted herdspeople from the nearby desert. Soon, villages sprang up along the narrow strip of floodplain on both sides of the river. They organised into districts split between two distinct regions — Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt — known simply as the ‘Two Lands’. Around 3100 BC, the Two Lands united into the kingdom of Egypt, one of the world’s first nations.
River Giver
The Nile delivered more than just fertile flood mud to the Egyptians. Its other gifts included:
BRICKS: Riverbank mud was baked into bricks for houses and walls. Modern Egyptians still make them.
PAPYRUS: This miracle reed was used in everything from paper to boats to sandals.
SEASONS: Annual changes in the Nile divided the Egyptian calendar into three seasons: inundation, planting and harvesting.
RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK: The Nile’s annual renewal of the land influenced the Ancient Egyptians’ views of life, death and the afterlife.
TRANSPORTATION: Invented in Egypt, ships ferried people, goods and building supplies throughout the kingdom.
Explorer’s Corner
The Ancient Egyptians drew maps just like we do, but the one seen here is special — it’s a treasure map! Part of a larger map now kept in an Italian museum, it shows the road from the Nile Valley through the eastern mountains to quarries and gold mines. There’s no X marking the spot, but the map does have lots of notes in Ancient Egyptian that highlight points of interest, such as ‘the mountains from which gold is taken’. The map was found in the tomb of the man who drew it. He was a scribe named Amennakht, and he lived around 1150 BC in the village of workers who built the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
