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The Greek name, Neilos, and the Hebrew, Sichor, are thought to embody this
attribute of the mighty river, and to mean "dark blue" or "blue-black," terms
sufficiently expressive of the stream's ordinary colour.
Moreover, the Nile is too wide to be picturesque. It is seldom less than a
mile broad from the point where it enters Egypt, and running generally between
flat shores it scarcely reflects anything, unless it be the grey-blue sky
overhead, or the sails of a passing pleasure boat. |
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Read more... [Size of Egypt]
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Though thus useful, beneficent, and indeed essential to the existence of
Egypt, the Nile can scarcely be said to add much to the variety of the landscape
or to the beauty of the scenery. It is something, no doubt, to have the sight of
water in a land where the sun beats down all day long with unremitting force
till the earth is like a furnace of iron beneath a sky of molten brass. |
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Read more... [The Nile not Beautiful]
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all good things, and especially of the fruits of the earth. They said—
"Hail to thee, O Nile!
Thou showest thyself in this land,
Coming in
peace, giving life to Egypt;
O Ammon, thou leadest night unto day,
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Read more... [Egyptian speculations concerning the Nile]
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The Fayoum is no part of the natural bed of the Nile, and has not been scooped out by its energy. It is a natural depression in the western desert, separated off from the Nile valley by a range of limestone hills from two hundred to five hundred feet in height, and, apart from the activity of man, would have been arid, treeless, and waterless. |
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Read more... [The Fayoum]
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If, then, the true Egypt be the tract that we have described—the Nile valley, with the Fayoum and the Delta—the lily stalk, the bud, and the blossom—we can well understand how it came to be said of old, that "Egypt was the gift of the river." Not that the lively Greek, who first used the expression, divined exactly the scientific truth of the matter.
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Read more... [Egypt, "the gift of the river," in what sense]
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Ancient Egypt History 
