Ancient Egypt Geography

The lives of the ancient Egyptians and the landscape of Egypt are inseparable relationships. The natural resources are the origin of why Egypt became one of the first civilization in the history and the primitive conditions of ancient Egyptians’ living, ranged from food to even religion. Likewise, the Egyptians’ lives were also very closely entwined with their geographical conditions.

There are two main features in the landscape of the ancient Egypt: one is the Nile River, called “Black Land” meaning the fertile area beside the river and the other is the desert, called “Red Land” which area located to the both sides of the river. “Each of these geographic regions possessed unique physical and ecological characteristics and each influenced

the local inhabitants in different ways.” Simultaneously not only climate and but the seasonal agricultural cycles such as annual flood played significant roles in their lives in consonance with those two main characteristics of geography.

“The Nile was ancient Egypt’s most important natural resource.

Within the Nile Valley and Delta, with the adjacent low deserts, all of the basic resources that sustained human life were available — water, food and the raw materials for tools, clothing, and shelter.” As a food provider, the Nile made “the deep carpet of silt” which made up by the annual flood waters and eventually “gives the valley its astonishing fertility.” Across the river up to 25 kilometers, this broad area called floodplains, and it was the ideal place for “large-scale cereal cultivation.” The beer, one of the main staples of the ancient Egyptians, also made of barely which is the major cereal cultivated in the ancient Egypt near the Nile and it gave high nutrition including carbohydrates and B vitamins. “Cereal agriculture thrived in Egypt as nowhere else in the ancient world. What the farmers drew fed everyone else — not only the king and elite but also all of the full-time workers employed by the state, from bureaucrats to laborers who built the royal tombs and cult temples.” With natural levees that the Nile River made and the seasonal inundation, the area led a sedentary life of the ancient Egyptians according to archeological evidence from the Bavarian period that the people used to fish and grew various crops near the river. On the contrary to the hot and dry weather in the modern Egypt, the wetter climate before the late third millennium B.C.E. also made people easier for farming and settling

outside as collecting wild resources near the valley. The floodplain also provided the materials such as mud and clay for building houses as reflecting most ancient Egyptian lived in mud-brick houses during Dynastic times and it also a useful way for insulation. As another main area for using cultivation and shelter, the Delta, spread out into a huge triangle with multiple branches was located before the Nile River to the Mediterranean Sea. On the ground the sand ‘geziras’ which are the deposit of sand made up near the surrounding area, the Delta not only gave the suitable environment for habitation but also was used for animal grazing in pharaonic times. Although the major source of protein in the ancient Egypt was mostly fish, the animals had important two functions; as another source of protein and as the fertilizer for the soil with their droppings. Even during the dry season, the Nile Valley was important as water supplier since the Faiyum or “Southern Lake” (She-resy), a natural depression connected to the Nile, played a role as a reservoir where people used to save water. Another significant role that the Nile River played was as great means of transportation. The river contributes to the building of the temples and cemeteries, conveying the materials such as heavy stones and sculptures from the quarries.

The Desert, on the other hand, considered as an arid area under the harsh climatic condition, was the great source of not only providing necessary materials for tools and buildings but also supporting their economy foundation.

Although the area was hostile to any farming activity and herding of animals, the eastern desert had always been a great interest for the Egyptians because it gave valuable resources such as metals, including gold and hard stones. Stone was used for tools and limestone which was "excavated in the bedrock, or limestone plateaus, which provided a solid bedrock base for pyramid construction.” Gold excavated mainly in the region of the Wadi Hammamet and southward, was the integral resource for gold artifacts such as decorating King’s tomb and inner coffin. On the other side of the Eastern Desert, the Sinai Peninsula “was also an important source of raw materials, including turquoise used in jewelry from mines in the western Sinai.” While “the Nile River offered both an obvious means of mass transit and an easy way to move goods,” these natural resources became one of the important economic bases of the ancient Egypt through the trades with near close neighbors, for example, Nubia, in the Predynastic

period.

The association with their cultural aspects and the Nile is an important reflection of “the role that it played in religion and the myths that revolve around the river” with the ways in which the personification of the annual flood connected with fertility and regeneration. Thus, “the natural rhythms of nature - the cycle of the sun, the rise and fall of the Nile, the seasonal agricultural cycles - became a primary theme in theology.”

In summary, there is no wonder that why a number of gods exist in the ancient Egypt in that they seems to be endowed with everything that they needed for a living from the gifts which were the perfect natural conditions and their mutual harmony. Thus, as Brewer and Teeter says, “Egyptian history consists of the interaction of humans and nature, each leaving a deep impression on the other.”