Overview
In practical reality, Egypt is a narrow
ribbon of life, across a vast hostile desert. The ribbon is the valley created
and nurtured by the Nile River, 600 miles long but only a few miles wide. The
Valley, carved out over eons by the river on its northward run to the
Mediterranean, contains nearly all the fertile land and all the population.
To the Egyptians, their country was the Two Lands, Upper
Egypt, ta-shema, land of the shema-reed or sedge, the Valley, and
Lower Egypt, ta-mehu, land of the papyrus, the Delta. From the Middle
Kingdom, texts refer to it as ta-meri, the cultivated land. The River is
identified in texts merely as iteru or iteru aa, the great river.
The name for Nile is from a Greek word Neilos but it is not known from
whence that word comes.
The Nile is the longest river in the world, and flows
from south to north. 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.
During antiquity, “Libya” was the term used for the
entire region west of the Nile Valley. There were several major oases of the
Western desert, which comprised about 2/3 of Egypt. These oases formed an
Egyptian outpost against the Libyans. The Faiyum was the largest oasis, created
by the branch of the Nile called the Bahr Yusef. This branch veers west into the
desert and becomes a lake.
The Bahriya oasis is now famous for the many sarcophagi
of the Graeco-Roman period, the so-called Golden Mummies, have been found.
Kharga and Dakhla were known for their excellent wines. During the Middle and
New Kingdoms, people fled from justice or from persecution to Kharga and Dakhla
oases, and in the 21st Dynasty, the Third Intermediate Period,
political opponents were banished there.
The most westerly of the oases was Siwa, which the
Persian overlord Cambyses unsuccessfully attempted to gain, and 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 dynastic times for
its rich minerals. The northernmost region here was the Sinai peninsula, from
where the Egyptians mined turquoise dating back at least to the 3rd
Dynasty through the end of the New Kingdom, and copper, from the 18th-20th
Dynasties, the New Kingdom. The eastern desert also yielded stones for building
as well as for statuary, such as calcite or Egyptian alabaster, and greywacke,
as well as semiprecious stones such as gold.
Most of Egypt is and has been a desert for more than
30,000 years, preserving almost anything buried within it, but allowing almost
nothing to grow there. The ancients called this hostile area Deshret, the
“Red Land.” The desert was broken only by occasional oases, and by the Nile
River, with its Valley. With its desolate regions of plains and mountains,
sand-dunes, rocks and boulders, and extremes of hot and cold, the desert served
as the ancient hunting ground, its quarries providing hard stones for statuary
and monumental architecture, and its fringes serving as cemeteries.
While a few people lived in the desert, most of the
ancient Egyptians, like their modern descendants, lived alongside the river,
nourished by its water and, after its annual flooding, the fertile soil it would
leave behind.
The Nile River over the millennia created the Nile
Valley, with its fertile black silt giving the name Kemet, the “Black
Land.” Where the river enters the Mediterranean Sea, the sediments have made a
delta, a huge fan-shaped plain of black silt, more than 100 miles long and
nearly 200 miles across, sloping down some fifty feet as it nears the sea. The
lotus plant with its long thin stem and fronds of leaves evoke the Nile and
Delta. The Delta had seven mouths of the Nile in ancient times, though now it
has only two, the Damietta and the Rosetta. In between the main branches ran
streams, canals and lakes.
The Valley itself is a great sheltered oasis, some 625
miles long from the ancient southern border to the beginnings of the Delta
itself, close by what is now the city of Cairo. Beyond the cataracts at Aswan
lay the Sudan and sub-Saharan Africa.
Every year, the Nile flooded the valley, as summer
monsoons from the Indian Ocean dumped water into the tributaries in the southern
highlands of ancient Abyssinia, and swelled the Nile, causing it to overflow its
banks and cover the fields. The fertile silt spread over the limestone of the
valley floor. The great flood gave Egypt its three seasons: Inundation or Akhet,
Seedtime or Peret, and Harvest or Shomu. When the fields were
flooded, the large labor force could be used on building projects.
The place-names familiar to anyone reading history of
ancient Egypt lay along the Nile River in its valley. Cities in the Delta and in
Upper Egypt were important, and already ancient, when the kings began to rule.
There was Buto in the western Delta, northern capital, deep within the marshes
with its titulary goddess Wadjet. South of Buto was Sais, home of the goddess
Nit, or Neith. Farther east was Busiris, where Wesir or Osiris had lived before
he moved south to Abydos in Upper Egypt. Bubastis was southeast of Busiris,
where the goddess Bast had her chief shrine. Northeast of Bubastis lay Mendes,
home of the god Khnum.
In Upper Egypt, there were the ancient cities of Nekhen,
later called Hierakonpolis, home of the falcon-god Heru or Horus, and Nekheb,
later called el-Kab, home of the titulary goddess Nekhbet of Upper Egypt. There
was Abydos or Abdju, the ancient cemetery for the chieftains and kings who may
have ruled vast portions of Upper Egypt and even Lower Egypt prior to the
unification.
Other cities now famous from the histories grew up
later. The city of Memphis, or Mennefer, was rumored to have been founded in
Lower Egypt by Menes, also known as either Nrmr, or Aha, the first king of
unified Egypt. It became the capital of Egypt during the Old Kingdom into the
early Middle Kingdom. The city lay near what is now modern Cairo, and included
the necropolis of Saqqara and the pyramid complexes of Giza and Dahshur.
Thebes, with its great temple complexes of Karnak and
Luxor, sits in Upper Egypt. For most of the New Kingdom it served as the
political and religious center of Egypt.
Egypt also included small villages and towns such as the
workers’ villages of Kahun and Deir el-Medina, border fortresses such as that
of Buhen in Lower Nubia, and temple complexes such as that of King Seti I at
Abydos, or Ramesses III at Medinet Habu.
There may still be more to discover in the sands of the
desert and below the water table of the Nile itself. Even the places now
familiar continue to provide new wonders to those who want to know more about
the ancient Egyptians.
Sources: Red Land, Black Land by Barbara Mertz
The Egyptians by Cyril Aldred
Cultural Atlas of Ancient Egypt by John Baines and Jaromir Malek
People of the Nile by John Romer