Читать книгу The Climate City - Группа авторов - Страница 38

The Greek historian Herodotus once said, “Egypt is the gift of the Nile”, a saying that describes just how much Egypt relies, and still relies, on the Nile. Since the days of the Pharaohs, the Nile has been the main source of Egypt’s water for agriculture. The yearly flooding of the Nile was an important factor in ensuring a good harvest. The river was also an important trade route and mode of transport.

It can therefore be seen that Egyptian civilization developed along the river. The majority of Egyptian cities were located on the east side of the river, whilst the tombs and pyramids were built on the west side, mirroring the life and death cycle of the sun’s daily route. All cities and settlements were built on the edge of the desert, with relative distance to the river so they would remain dry during the yearly floods. The land close to the Nile was considered too precious to build upon and remained the place for valuable crops to be grown and harvested.

Egypt’s first Pharaoh, Menses, the source of many legends, unified Upper and Lower Egypt and established his capital just a few kilometres to the southwest of modern Cairo. Not wanting to favour Upper or Lower Egypt, Menses decided to build the new capital on the border between the two. The city was called Men-nefer, or, as the Greeks later called it, Memphis.

Memphis was one of the largest and most important cities of its day, with archaeologists predicting that as many as 100,000 people may have lived in it at the height of its power.¹⁰ As the capital, it was also the seat in which Menses ordered Egypt’s first irrigation system to be built in 3100 BCE.¹¹ The unpredictability of the Nile caused problems ranging from excessive flooding to droughts, but it did, however, also lead to the invention of water dams – one of ancient Egypt’s greatest archaeological feats, with the foundations of this technology still in practice to this day. This allowed water from the Nile to be diverted into canals and lakes, considerably reducing the chance for water-related disasters.

The invention of water dams provided an infrastructure within the cities, such as Memphis, that lined the river’s edges that faced a high environmental disaster risk and made them more resilient, whilst also ensuring the safety and welfare of its citizens. It is an excellent lesson of cities investing in resilience and an act of quick and decisive leadership and governance.