Any assessment of the role of geography in the development of Egyptian civilization must necessarily begin with the Nile. This mighty river was truly the life’s blood of Egyptian civilization. Its predictable, relatively reliable, and above all fertile annual flooding ensured a sustainable level of agricultural wealth all out of proportion with the amount of land available for cultivation. Centuries later, even before Egypt became a part of the Roman Empire, its surpluses would be vital to the sustenance of Rome.
The Nile did far more than feed Egypt. It was also the dominant mode of transportation, and therefore, was a unifying force in both economic and cultural ties. Even in the Predynastic period, travel by boat was much faster and more efficient than travel by land. The wheel did not appear in Egypt prior to the Second Intermediate Period, but even then, its significance was primarily military; there was little use to carrying goods by ox-drawn cart. Once monumental architecture in stone became a defining characteristic of the Egyptian culture, boats became the only viable method of transporting the necessary stone. No cart ever made in the ancient world was capable of carrying the mighty obelisks! Thus, the quarrying and transportation of titanic stone blocks were made possible by the same river that enabled trade from Buto to Elephantine. At the same time, the Nile carried news from the capital to the rest of the country, and back.
This transportation of goods and ideas played an important role in the formation of the unified Egyptian state in the first place, and helped to define the boundaries of Egypt proper. While the Egyptian Empire would eventually extend as far south as Kerma in what is now Sudan, and as far east as the Euphrates, Egypt itself remained the land on either side of the Nile river, from the First Cataract in the south to the Mediterranean Sea. The First Cataract is a series of violent rapids that served to distinguish Egypt from Lower Nubia. This makes a great deal of sense when seen from the perspective of transportation; the Egyptians could navigate the entire river to the north of those rapids, but in order to cross the rapids, they would need to travel a bit overland, either carrying their boats or building new ones on the other side. It should therefore be no surprise that the entire extent of the Nile north of the First Cataract should have developed into a single cultural, linguistic, economic and political entity, while the land south of it would always remain distinct.
The Nile played an important part in how the Egyptians saw themselves. One of the terms they used to describe their country was ta Kemet, or “the black land,” as distinguished from ta Deshret, “the red land.” The English word “desert” comes, in fact, from Deshret through its Latin adaptation. Thus Kemet was the narrow band of cultivation to either side of the river from the First Cataract to the Mediterranean, and this territory alone was the domain of Horus, the original royal god; the red lands to either side were the realms of Set, and consequently dangerous land. It was important to exert control over the passages to the oases in the west and to the mineral-rich mountains of the east, but these lands were never really part of Egypt except for the largest and nearest oasis, the Faiyum, which was connected to the Nile by the channel now known as the Bahr Yussef.
An important side effect of the dichotomy of Black Land and Red Land is that all productive labor was done in the Black Land, and so the bulk of the population also lived there. No one would waste good arable land on burials, so the dead have always been buried in the desert. Not only did this enhance the difference between the Black Land as the land of the living, and the Red Land as the domain of the dead, but it also led to the natural mummification of Predynastic burials, and therefore served to lay the foundations of the entire funerary cult of Egypt, which soon became the basis for the entire society.
The Nile also gave the Egyptians their sense of direction. They shared with us the concepts of North and South, East and West, but for them, these were no mere abstractions. With the exception of a relatively short stretch of the Nile in the vicinity of Thebes, the Nile flows basically from south to north. Add to this the daily passage of the sun from east to west, and the four cardinal points were clearly and concretely mapped out for the Egyptians. The main difference between them and us is that to the Egyptian, south would have been “up” and north “down,” because the elevation of the land was higher in the south than it is in the north, hence the terms “Upper Egypt” and “Lower Egypt.”
While the Nile served in most respects to unify Egypt, the course of the Nile did serve to distinguish Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt in some respects, giving rise to the dualistic aspect of Egyptian self-conception: the Two Lands. The site of the old capital of Memphis, just a bit east and south of the Giza Plateau, served as the boundary between the two Lands of Egypt. Upper Egypt to its south was the Nile Valley, cut into ancient rock by thousands of years of erosion. Here the Black Land was truly just a narrow strip to either side of the river, and settlements could not afford to be self-sufficient. The process of integration seems to have been more rapid in the south than in the north, which may go a long way toward explaining the tradition that Egypt was unified under the aegis of the south. Certainly, the impulse toward unity came more strongly from the south. The area of the bend in the Nile cited above, generally from Abydos south to Hieraconpolis, has been particularly influential in every phase of Egyptian history. The first confederations appeared here in the Predynastic period, most notably the alliance of Abydos and Hieraconpolis that may have produced such protodynastic kings as Scorpion and Narmer; but it is also here, at Thebes, that strong local nobles succeeded in bringing unity back to Egypt after lengthy periods of fragmentation during the First and Second Intermediate periods.
Beginning with Memphis and traveling north is Lower Egypt, where the Nile soon fans out on its way to the sea. Today there are two branches that define the Delta; in the ancient world, there were numerous branches. Much of the Delta was marshland in ancient times, and opportunities for hunting supplemented the agricultural bounty. Like the river, the cities of the north too fanned out; they were less closely integrated with each other, but they were more likely than the southern cities to engage in direct trade with other lands, from Canaanite and Syrian cities, such as Byblos, to the Aegean. These cities tended to be wealthier and more culturally diverse than the cities of the south, and once Egypt had been unified, they served to enrich to whole Egyptian state. Throughout Egyptian history, it has been Lower Egypt which has generally been perceived as richer and more desirable than Upper Egypt. It is noteworthy that when the Hyksos came during the Second Intermediate Period, they only wished to conquer Lower Egypt outright, being satisfied with the subjection of Upper Egypt.
Egypt had easy access to most of the resources it needed for its own survival and success. Certainly, it had as solid an agricultural base as any ancient civilization. It had fairly good mineral resources in the mountains of the Eastern Desert and the Sinai, although iron was not among its gifts. Given that the Egyptians soon proved stronger than the Nubians to their south, Egypt had relatively easy access to extensive gold reserves. The one important resource that Egypt chronically lacked was a reliable supply of wood, especially of quality hardwoods. Fortunately, Egypt had developed a strong relationship with the city of Byblos in Lebanon very early in its history; in fact, the city of Buto in the Delta is known to have had ties with Byblos before Egyptian unification. Through Byblos, Egypt had good access to wood, including the famous cedar of Lebanon.
Finally, Egypt enjoyed a good location from a strategic point of view. The First Cataract served as a chokepoint in the south, especially from any incursion involving boats; the narrow coastal passage west of the Sinai peninsula created a similar chokepoint against land invasion out of Canaan. As long as the Egyptian state remained strong, and capable of mounting an organized defense, Egypt was never successfully invaded; indeed, Egypt was capable of mounting offensive expeditions with relative impunity, and in the New Kingdom it could create an extensive Empire. Only when the central government was weak could the defenses be penetrated.
Every civilization is a product of its physical environment in important ways. What distinguishes Egypt among its contemporaries is that we understand its culture and history so much better than the others. The points outlined above show many of the ways that this culture and history can be understood in the context of Egyptian geography.
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