The Influence Of The Nile: Shaping Ancient Egypt

The Nile: Shaping Ancient Egypt The Nile, stretching over 4,000 miles from East Africa to the Mediterranean, is the longest river on Earth! Towards the Mediterranean Sea, the Nile splits off into two main branches, the Blue Nile and the White Nile. The Blue Nile begins in Lake Tana in the highlands of Ethiopia, and the White Nile begins with the waters that flow into and then out of Lake Victoria in Kenya. Branching off from the Blue and White Nile are tributaries, whose waters flow back into the “mother Nile”. This water then travels north into Egypt where water spills over its banks and cover the low-lying flood plain. Hugging the Nile is the Black land said to represent life, and just beyond it is a desert called the Red Land believed to mean danger. The Nile may seem like just a river, but it actually influenced many aspects of ancient Egyptian society, including its settlement distribution, ist agriculture system, and its spiritual life. One aspect of Egyptian society that was influenced by the Nile was population distribution. The Nile is Egypt’s highway, egyptians depended on the Nile for …show more content…
People depended on the yearly flood of the Nile to water crops. Fields in the Nile floodplain covered in water and fertilized by a new batch of silt, this season was Akhet, or the flood season. It lasted from mid-June to mid-October. The next season was Peret, the planting and growing season, which went from mid-October to mid-February. In this season waters receded, but the Nile was high enough to fill irrigation canals, and farmers started to plant and tend to crops. From mid-February to mid-June was Shemu, the harvest season, in which farmers harvested crops in the Lower Nile and sent them to markets. This lasted from mid-February to mid-June. These seasons were very important to the Egyptian society because when the Nile “failed” Egypt “failed”, and the crops were their food