Ancient Egypt

The Importance of the River Nile

The development of Egyptian society was a complex process that involved the interaction of diverse people, but that was initially favored by the distinctive isolation afforded by the geographical location of the Nile valley. Surrounded by the Sahara Desert, the plain of the Nile valley was preserved for many centuries by outside influence and enjoyed a lasting period of continuous development. The two different geographical features of Egypt, the fertile plain and the unwelcoming desert, were respectively referred to by the ancient inhabitants as “the black land” and “the red land.” The Nile valley was difficult to reach; however, because of its fertility, it increasingly attracted immigrants even before the establishment of urban areas between 3100 and 3000 B.C.E. The majority of immigrants came from the Sahara regions, which had been fertile in the past, but climatic changes were gradually drying it out. Thus, the peoples who came to form ancient Egypt were of varied ethnic descent such as Semitic, Berber, Ethiopian and Somali, Greek, and Nubian. The Nubians lived in an area that corresponds to today's southern Egypt and northern Sudan.

The social networks that soon coalesced into a state arose because of the necessity to efficiently control the floods of the Nile and to prepare the land in time to fully exploit the river overflow. A strong central government was necessary to make sure that floodwater and dams would be used proficiently to provide irrigation for agriculture. Networks of farmers began to settle in the valley and worked to create basin irrigation, draining water from the fields after it had flooded them. This was necessary to carry the salt of the river Nile back to the sea and avoided the accumulation of salt in the fields that eventually made Sumerian land infertile. Thanks to this system, by 1000 B.C.E. the population had grown to three or four million. Because the desert protected Egyptians from foreign invasion until at least 1500 B.C.E., the inhabitants of the Nile valley thought of themselves as unique and representing the center of the world.

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