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Egypt is the Gift of the Nile (Herodotus, 5th cent. BC) Welcome to the whispering world of water. Welcome on a journey down the longest river on Earth and down millennia of history.At the dawn of history, the Nile shaped the fate of humankind People lived in what is now Egypt for countless generations. Once environmental change bound their fates to the river Nile, a civilization was born that was crucial to the history of humankind.How Ancient Egyptians saw their world: deadly fertile barren habitable dangerous bountiful inhospitable: life-giving: Deshret – Red Land Kemet – Black Land DESERT NILE VALLEY Egypt He spreads himself over Egypt, filling the granaries… (Hymn to the Nile, c. 2000 BC)Waters of the Nile supported some of the earliest agricultural communities in the world. Throughout history, the fertile soil granted to Egypt by the Nile floods and their life-giving water allowed agriculture to bring about Egypt's prosperity and power.All is changed for mankind when He comes… (Hymn to the Nile, c. 2000 BC)Collaborative effort necessary to control distribution of Nile water by building dams, reservoirs, and canals was instrumental in the creation of organized human society. In this way, we are all still the children of the Nile.He brings the offerings, as chief of provisioning… (Hymn to the Nile, c. 2000 BC)The Nile provided the Egyptians with an excellent waterway on which people and goods could move. Stone for building great temples, timber, and all sorts of goods traveled on the river, bringing the people of Egypt together.He causes all his servants to exist, all writings and divine words… (Hymn to the Nile, c. 2000 BC)Managing and distributing Nile water for agriculture helped create structured society and central power, and with them came the need for new ways of recording and transmitting information. The invention of writing added a whole new dimension to human existence.He brings again his lordly bark…where misery was before, there is joy. (Hymn to the Nile, c. 2000 BC)Joyful celebrations marked Ancient Egyptian religious festivals. Egyptian religion was inextricably connected to the Nile. In every temple, a sacred bark was kept, on which god impersonated in a statue sailed on the Nile during these festivities.When you shine in the royal city … everything produced is of the choicest… (Hymn to the Nile, c. 2000 BC)Provided for by the generous Nile, the Ancient Egyptians could develop a culture that created magnificent works of art. Their achievements in architecture, sculpture, painting, music and literature, as well as in science and medicine were original, pioneering efforts that set directions for universal human culture.Mysterious is your issuing forth from the darkness… (Hymn to the Nile, c. 2000 BC)Flowing from the barren desert, its source “beyond all known horizons”, every summer swelling with the flood when all other rivers were drying up, the Nile remained a mystery for the Ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans, throughout the Middle Ages, and later in the 19th century.You are present bringing the mortals full baskets (Hymn to the Nile, c. 300 AD)When Egypt became part of the Roman Empire, it was put under direct personal control of the Emperor, because of its extreme importance: Egypt was the bread-basket of the Empire. Every year, enormous amounts of grain nourished by Egypt’s fertile soil and by the Nile water were exported for sustenance of people in Rome and in the provinces.You sailors…who sail in happy course upon the laughing waters, tell us friends about the sea and the fruitful Nile.(A poem in Greek from an Egyptian papyrus, ca 200 AD)
Greek and Roman rulers of Egypt, with their eyes on trans-Mediterranean contacts, resided in Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great where a branch of the Nile Delta reached the sea. The Arabs, more concerned with overland routes within the new Islamic empire, settled at the site of today’s Cairo, the strategically important crossing where the Nile branched into the Delta.Muslims and Christians by hundreds of thousands crowded the Nile…all eager for pleasure. Music played all about, with singing and dancing… (Historian al-Mas’idi describing the feast of Epiphany on 10 January 942)Festivities associated with the Nile and its annual flood did not disappear in Christian Egypt, or when the country embraced Islam. Well into the nineteenth century, the beginning of the flood was marked with a huge festival, celebrated with fireworks, parades and general reveling.There are twelve thousands water-carriers in Cairo who transport water on camels… (Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta, 14th century)Cairo, one of the biggest cities of the mediaeval world, required constant labor of thousands of water-carriers to provide the inhabitants with drinking water from the Nile, as water in the wells in the city was salty. “The water of the Nile is remarkably good”, observed the traveler E. W. Lane in 1836.When the Prophet was asked what the most praiseworthy deed was, he answered, ‘To give water to drink’. (The Hadith – collected sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad)By the beginning of the 19th century, Cairo had more than 300 sabeels – buildings erected specially to offer free drinking water from their huge underground cisterns as charity. They were often magnificently decorated. It was unique to Cairo to join these charities in a single building with free elementary schools.This governor, his generosity as large as the ocean, a man of words and actions inspired by God… (A poem on the façade of Muhammad ‘Ali’s sabeell in Cairo, 1820)Ever since the time of the Pharaohs, each great ruler of Egypt marked his reign with grand public works designed to make the best use of the precious Nile water. Muhammad ‘Ali, often described as the founder of Modern Egypt, in the early 19th century increased the arable land by 20% by building new canals, dams and dikes.He is the creator of all good things, as master of energy… (Hymn to the Nile, c. 2000 BC)The High Dam in Aswan, completed in 1971, stopped the annual floods. Electric energy from the dam’s powerful generators transformed the Egyptian countryside forever. For the first time in history, Egypt has full control over the 55 billions cubic meters of Nile water that flow into it annually. The challenge for the 21st century is to efficiently control the environmental impact of the taming of the Nile.The Egyptian Nile surpasses all rivers on the Earth in sweetness of taste, breadth of channel, and magnitude of utility. (Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta, 14th century)As Egypt progresses into the 21st century, new large-scale hydrological projects turn ever more desert into agricultural land, so that the Nile can keep feeding Egypt’s growing population. Equally important are sewage and draining networks and processing plants that assure that wastewater does not pollute the river, but is recycled for agricultural use.Whatever changes come with the modern times, the mighty Nile keeps bringing life to Egypt, as majestic and as beautiful as when the Pharaohs drank from it.
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