The Gift of the Nile
Egypt gets very little rain, yet thousands of years ago it fed a large population. The reason was the Nile River. The Greek historian Herodotus called Egypt 'the gift of the Nile.'
Every summer, heavy rains fell far to the south in the highlands of Ethiopia. The water flowed north, and the Nile rose until it spilled over its banks. When the flood went down in autumn, it left a layer of dark, rich silt on the fields. Egyptians called their land Kemet, 'the black land,' after this soil, and the desert beyond it Deshret, 'the red land.'
Farmers planted wheat and barley in the damp silt and harvested them in spring. Because the flood came at about the same time each year, Egyptians kept a calendar of 365 days. Officials measured the river's height with stone gauges called nilometers to predict the harvest and decide how much tax to collect.