Читать книгу Art History For Dummies - Jesse Bryant Wilder - Страница 101

The Nile River was the lifeline of Ancient Egypt. Without it, the most durable civilization in history couldn’t have survived. Herodotus said Egypt is “the gift of the river.” He was right. The Nile’s annual summer floods fertilize the land around it, which otherwise would be desert. Most Egyptian cities and tombs hug the banks of the Nile like children clinging to their mother. If you venture too far from the river, you end up in the desert like Moses did.

The ancient Egyptians believed the Nile’s life-giving floods, which occur during the hottest and driest part of summer, were the gods’ gift because they didn’t appear to be caused by the weather. The rain that swells the Nile actually falls hundreds of miles away in Ethiopia in the tributary called the Blue Nile, but before the advent of the Weather Channel, the floods in Egypt appeared to arrive miraculously.