Читать книгу A History of Ancient Egypt - Marc Van De Mieroop - Страница 19

The Nile dictates how we can study the ancient Egyptians, and in many other respects the river shapes Egypt. Running through the eastern end of the Sahara desert, it essentially forms a long oasis. Wherever its water reaches the soil can be farmed, where it does not reach the earth is parched and it is impossible to grow anything on it. The contrast is so stark that one can stand with one foot in lush greenery and with the other in lifeless desert. The ancient Egyptians called the fertile area “the black land” (kemet), the desert “the red land” (deshret).

The Nile is the longest river on earth: some of its sources are located south of the Equator and it runs for more than 4000 miles (6500 kilometers) northward to empty into the Mediterranean Sea. In Egypt it has two distinct parts. The upstream part in the south, Upper Egypt, flows through a valley between 5 and 10 miles wide that is lined by cliffs restricting its course. Upper Egypt stretches for some 600 miles from modern Aswan, located at a natural obstruction in the river that we call the 1st cataract, to Cairo. There are six numbered cataracts on the Nile, one in modern Egypt and five in modern Sudan. Cataracts are where the river is very shallow and rocky islands and boulders obstruct the water flow. These zones of narrow channels and rapids make navigation difficult and dangerous, and consequently they constitute clear natural boundaries. Throughout ancient history the northernmost 1st cataract made up the southern border of Egypt’s heartland, and anything south of it was usually considered a different country. South of Aswan the Nile Valley is very narrow and it is only upstream of the 3rd cataract that it is broad enough to include fields that allow sufficient farming to support substantial settled communities.

North of Cairo, the river’s course is radically different. No longer enclosed by cliffs, it spreads out into a huge triangle, which we call the Delta, with multiple branches. Because of its location downstream, the region is called Lower Egypt, bordering the Mediterranean Sea. The eastern‐ and western‐most points of the Delta are 150 miles (250 kilometers) apart, and the shortest distance between Cairo and the sea is 100 miles (160 kilometers).

All agricultural land in Egypt is made up of silt that the river annually deposited during its flood, before the building of the High Aswan Dam. The river’s water derives from three main sources. The White Nile, which originates in Central Africa, is most constant in its flow and does not carry much silt. But two tributary rivers, the Blue Nile and the Atbara that stem from the Ethiopian highlands, bring a sudden influx of water from heavy summer rains and both carry lots of silt. In Egypt the Nile is at its lowest level in the months of May and June and starts to rise in July because of rain in Ethiopia. It reaches its highest point in mid‐September and recedes by mid‐October (Figure 1.5). Its timing is in perfect harmony with the agricultural cycle, which makes farming in Egypt much less complex than in nearby regions and almost always guarantees that the population’s needs are satisfied.

Figure 1.5 Before the building of the Aswan dams the height of the Nile River’s flooding was of great importance as it determined how much agricultural land received water. At times the flood was so high, however, that its inundation caused destruction. The photograph here shows the Nile in flood near the Giza pyramids on October 31, 1927. Photograph by Mohammedani Ibrahim, Harvard University – Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition. Photograph © 2010 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Source: Giza Archives

At one point in Upper Egypt the river water escapes the valley to flow into a large natural depression to its west, the Fayyum. From early prehistory on, the accumulated water allowed for farming along the edges, and starting in the early 2nd millennium BC, state initiatives tried to extend the agricultural zone by diverting the water into canals and controlling its flow. In the Ptolemaic and Roman periods these projects were very successful, and the Fayyum became the breadbasket for Egypt and beyond.