The Nile is the longest river in the world, stretching north for approximately 4,000 miles from East Africa to the Mediterranean. Studies have shown that the River (Iteru, meaning, simply, River, as the Egyptians called it) gradually changed its location and size over millions of years. The Nile flows from the mountains in the south to the Mediterranean in the north. Egyptians traveling to other lands would comment on the "wrong" flow of other rivers. For example, a text of Tuthmosis Iin Nubia describes the great Euphrates river as the "inverted water that goes downstream in going upstream."
Three rivers flowed into the Nile from the south and thus served as its sources: the Blue Nile, the White Nile and the Arbara. Within the southern section between Aswan and Khartoum, land which was called Nubia, the River passes through formations of hard igneous rock, resulting in a series of rapids, or cataracts, which form a natural boundary to the south. Between the first and second cataracts lay Lower Nubia, and between the second and sixth cataracts lay upper Nubia.
Along most of its length through Egypt, the Nile has scoured a deep, wide gorge in the desert plateau. At Aswan North of the first cataract the Nile is deeper and its surface smoother. Downstream from Aswan the Nile flows northerly to Armant before taking a sharp bend, called the Qena. From Armant to Hu, the River extends about 180 kilometers and divides the narrow southern valley from the wider northern valley.
Southern Egypt, thus being upstream, is called Upper Egypt, and northern Egypt, being downstream and the Delta, is called Lower Egypt. In addition to the Valley and the Delta, the Nile also divided Egypt into the Eastern and Western Deserts.
The Nile Valley is a canyon running 660 miles long with a floodplain occupying 4,250 square miles. The Delta spans some 8,500 square miles and is fringed in its coastal regions by lagoons, wetlands, lakes and sand dunes.
The Delta represented 63 percent of the inhabited area of Egypt, extending about 200 kilometers from south to north and roughly 400 kilometers from east to west. While today the Nile flows through the Delta in only two principal branches, the Damietta and the Rosetta, in ancient times there were three principal channels, known as the water of Pre, the water of Ptah and the water of Amun. In classical or Graeco-Roman times, these were called the Pelusiac, the Sebennytic, and the Canopic branches. There were additionally subsidiary branches or artificially cut channels.
The most dominant features of the Delta as the sandy mounds of clay and silt that appear as islands rising 1-12 meters above the surrounding area. Since these mounds would not be submerged by the inundation, they were ideal sites for Predynastic and Early Dynastic settlements, and indeed evidence of human habitation have been found. Perhaps these mounds rising above the water table inspired the ancient belief of creation as having begun on a mound of earth that emerged from the primordial waters of Nun (Pyramid Text 600).
There were several major oases of the Western desert, which comprised about 2/3 of Egypt: the Fayoum, where during the Middle Kingdomperiod the capital of all Egypt was situated, and which increasingly became one of the most densely populated and agriculturally productive area in Egypt, the Bahriya, where many sarcophagi of the Graeco-Roman period have been found, the so-called Golden Mummies, Kharga andDakhla, which were known for their excellent wines, and Siwa, whose Oracle of Amun was consulted by Alexander the Great to demonstrate that he was the true successor to the kingship of Egypt.
The Eastern Desert was exploited in Pharaonic times for its rich minerals.
The mere mention of the name of the Nile evokes for modern man images of Pyramids, great temples, fantastic tales of mummies, and wondrous treasures. But the Nile represents life itself to the people of Egypt, ancient and modern. In fact, for thousands of years, the River has made life possible for hundreds of thousands of people and animals, and has shaped the culture we today are only beginning to truly understand.
The River filled all areas of life with symbolism. In religion, for example, the creator sun-god Ra (Re) was believed to be ferried across the sky daily in a boat (compare that to the Greeks and Romans whose non-creator sun-god rode across the sky in a chariot driven by fiery horses, and Hymns to Hapy (Hapi), the deity personifying the Nile, praise his bounty and offerings were left to him, and the creation myths, as mentioned earlier, revolve around the primordial mound rising from the floodwaters surrounding it; in ritual where Nile creatures such as the hippopotamus, whose shape the goddess Tawaret took, or the crocodile, called Sobek, or Heket (Heqet), the frog, deities deemed powerful in the processes of childbirth and fertility, were revered, in writing, where floral signs such as the lotus and papyrus figured prominently, in architecture, where the very structure of temples emulated the mounds of the Nile and its waves, from the bottom to the top of capital columns and the trim on walls, and in travel, where models of boats have been found dating from the fifth millennium BCE.
