The High Desert

The High Desert (Eastern Desert)

The fourth geographic feature was the high desert, a barren area that was crossed only by trade caravans or organized groups searching for stone and unstructured resources, such as calcite, gold, copper, amethyst, carnelian, and diorite. Individual oases excavated in the high desert were cultivated to grow valuable crops like grapes and dates. These areas were essential links in trade with more last areas and were as well used as properties to house exiled captives.



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Egypt, the Gift of the Nile
The Low Desert

The Low Desert

The Nile and the Western and Eastern Desert

The third geographic feature was a strip of higher land, located on either side of the floodplain, which was not laced by the River Nile. This was the low desert, a zone of little flora. It was a place where men hunted animals such as antelope, hares, and lions. Because the broken desert was dry and could not be farmed, the Egyptians settled their cemeteries there. Through the Predynastic Period (4500-3100 B.C.), they buried the passed straight in the sands, which saved their bodies naturally. Start with the Early Dynastic Period (3100-2750 B.C.), however, the Egyptians began to wrap the deceased in tombs, losing the preservative rewards of the desert sand. Because they thought the body had to be canned to assure an afterlife, they were drawn to develop an artificial technique of preserving the body, a outgrowth we call mummification.

Egypt, the Gift of the Nile

Egypt, the Gift of the Nile

Then, the true Egypt be the tract that we have discovered the Nile valley, with the Faiyum and the Delta the lily stalk, the bud, and the flower we can well see how it came to be said of old, that "Egypt was the gift of the river." Not that the lively Greek, who first used the construction, divined precisely the scientific truth of the matter. The figure of Herodotus saw Africa, to begin with, doubly severed from Asia by two parallel fjords, one running inland northwards from the Indian Ocean, as the Red Sea does to this day, and the other understanding inland souths from the Mediterranean Sea to an equal or greater distance! The Nile, he said, pouring itself into this latter fjord, had by degrees filled it up, and had then gone on and by further deposits turned into land a great piece of the "sea of the Greeks," as was broad from the expulsion of the shore of the Delta beyond the general coast of Africa eastward and western; and, he brought, "I am sure, for my personal part, that if the Nile should please to amuse his waters from their show bed to the Red Sea, he would fill it up and turn it into strong land in the space of 20000 years, or perchance in half that time for he is a mighty river and a most energetic one." Here, in this last expression, he is exhaustively right, though the method of the Nile's energy has been other than he reckoned. The Nile, working from its extended sources in the tropical regions, has gradually trumped itself out a deep bed in the sand and rock of the desert, which must have originally great across the whole of northern Africa from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Having outdone itself out this bed to a depth, in places, of three hundred feet from the desert level, it has then proceeded partially to fill it up with its own deposits. Occupying, when it is at its height, the entire bed, and presenting at that time the visual aspect of a vast lake, or successiveness of lakes, it deposes every day a part of sediment over the whole space which it continues: then, cutting gradually, it leaves at the base of the hills, on both sides, or at any rate on one, a strip of land fresh dressed with mud, which gets wider daily as the waters still retire, until yards grow into furlongs, and furlongs into mis, and at last the withered stream is content with a close channel a few hundred yards in width, and results the rest of its bed to the embraces of sun and air, and, if he so wills, to the industry of man. The land thus left open is Egypt is the temporarily nude bed of the Nile, which it tames and recovers during a portion of each year, when Egypt goes away from view, save where human labour has by heaps and embankments worked artificial islands that put up their heads above the blow of waters, for the nearly part crowned with constructions.

There is one elision to this broad and wide statement. The Faiyum is no part of the natural bed of the Nile, and has not been trumped out by its energy. It is a natural imprint in the western desert, separated off from the Nile valley by a wind of limestone hills from 200 to 500 feet in height, and, separated from the natural process of man, would have been arid, treeless, and waterless. Still, it hails from the Nile all its value, all its magnificence, all its fertility. Human energy at some unlikely period inserted into the low tract through an artificial channel from the Nile, cut in some places through the rock, the life-giving fluid; and this fluid, bearing the idolized Nile sediment, has sufficed to spread fertility over the entire neighborhood, and to make the desert bloom like a garden.

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The Nile in Ancient Egypt

The Nile

The most great geographic hold is the Nile River itself. It was the lifeblood of ancient Egypt, and still gets life achievable in the otherwise barren desert of Egypt. The lengthiest river in the world (over 4,000 miles), the Nile is formed by the union in Khartoum, Sudan, of the "White Nile" from Victoria Lake in Uganda and the "Blue Nile" from the deals of Ethiopia. The only other fast is the Atbara, which flows into the Nile in southeastern Sudan. Between Khartoum and Aswan, the Nile has six cataracts that disrupt its course, making seafaring difficult. Between Aswan (ancient Elephantine) and the Mediterranean Sea, the Nile is clear of cataracts and was the essential means of travel for the people of ancient Egypt. Distinct types of boats, including load, passenger, funerary, and naval vases, traveled on the river. Because the Nile flows from south to north, contrary to most rivers, a boat tripping north used oars aided by the current. The hieroglyph for "to go north" was a boat without a sail. The enduring winds of Egypt blow from the north, so a boat travel south could use cruises. The hieroglyph for "to go south" was a boat with a sail.

The Nile also served as a source of food for the people of ancient Egypt. The river streamed with different types of fish, for example, catfish, mullet, bolti, and rods. Although certain species of fish were prohibited from consumption in areas of Egypt because of local superstitions, fishing was experienced as both an industry and a sport. A wide change of wild birds, admitting fourteen coinages of wild ducks and geese as well as herons, pelicans, and cranes, were hunted in the marshes along the Nile. Organized hunting down expeditions used cats to flush the birds from the marshes and then lassos, weighted ropes, bows and arrows, and throw sticks to bring them down. There were also crocodiles and hippopotamuses in the Nile, but the Egyptians hunted them only for sport. The Nile served other designs as well. It was the major source of water for bathing and drinking. Water was taken straight from the Nile or from one of the canals the Egyptians built to connect with it, although some wells did exist in towns not relocated directly on the river. Mud deposited by the Nile was used to make bricks for reconstructing houses, granaries, and enclosing walls around buildings.

The Nile was also great for farming because it left a stratum of nutrient-bearing silt when the waters of the annual inundation receded, and it also provided water for irrigation. Those gardens based around villages and country houses of the wealthy had to be watered regularly because of their position above the range of the Nile's flood waters and because of the typecasts of crops grown there (including lettuce, onion plants, figs, peas, vetch, beans, and grapes). After the New Kingdom, the ancient Egyptians used shadufs to bring up water from the canals to the gardens. Because the shaduf had to be worked by hand, this method acting of irrigation was very labor strong.

Without the River Nile, agriculture and, thus, life in ancient Egypt would have been unthinkable. The river was a regular and inevitable source of water. Because the flood was an event that annually revitalized the floodplain with water and new soil, it symbolized rebirth for the ancient Egyptians. The flood created a need for resurveying property lines and for dredging the canals. Because working in the domains was not possible during the months of the flood, many farmers helped to manufacture temples, royal tombs, and palaces during those times. For their functions, they were paid in food and other material commodities. The second geographic hold of Egypt was the flood plain. This was the low strip of fertile land based on either side of the Nile River that flooded during the annual deluge. Most ancient villages were based on the highest ground of this zone. In addition, most of the farming came here. The agricultural year began in September or October, when the flood subsided leaving the earth soaked and overlain with a fresh layer of black silt. The outstanding crops of ancient Egypt were emmer (a type of wheat), barley, and flax. Cattle and poultry were multiplied, not only for food but also for religious rituals.


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