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ON EGYPT: Chapter One Pre- History of the Nile Valley

October 22, 2022October 22, 2022By Vicmas Sankara
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ON EGYPT: Chapter One Pre- History of the Nile Valley

Geography of the Nile Basin 

The Nile valley is a region in North-East Africa that runs from the sources of River Nile in the great lakes region of East Africa northwards as the source of the White Nile and the Ethiopian Highlands which are the sources of the Blue Nile. The white Nile is the longest and it’s considered the headwaters  of the Nile, however the White Nile looses most of its water through precipitation in the Sudd, a swamp where the white Nile loses half of its water through evapotranspiration. The Blue Nile on the other hand is well watered by the Ethiopian Highlands and contributes 80% of the water. The two rivers join just north of modern day Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. 

The river continues with it’s course northwards now as a single great river for some distance before making the famous “S” shaped bend making it the only section of the river flowing southwards. From Khartoum to Aswan, the river passes through six major cataracts before heading smoothly into lower Egypt. Here the river is now in its old stage and its characterized by its slow speed, wide valley and its loaded with silt. Before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea at Alexandria, the Nile splits into a delta. 

As we all know, the Nile river flows from South to North, and just like any river, the Nile flows by gravity. Therefore the south is the upper part and the north will be the lower part. This will be a very important thing to note as we shall be discussing Upper Egypt to mean areas close to the source of the Nile whereas Lower Egypt would definitely mean those areas close to the mouth of the river in the Mediterranean. 

The settlement of the Nile valley
As early as 10000 BC during the upper paleolithic era, man not only occupied the Nile valley but the surrounding areas as this area’s climatic conditions were not as they are right now. Archaeological evidence shows us that the Sahara Desert formed around 2000BC when global temperatures rose sharply. Because the earth is tilted at 66 degrees on its axis, that area between the latitudes 18 degrees North and 30 degrees North bore the biggest brunt of that rise in temperature.
Before the desiccation of the Sahara, it was a lush grassland just like the savannah of East Africa and it supported a range of flora and fauna on which man depended on for his survival. Wild grasses and fruits were gathered as wild game was hunted to supplement their food needs.
Man did not move into the Nile valley at once but gradually in the course of thousands of years, as the very density of the human groups or the variations in climate forced him to seek additional resources for greater security. So it was not just one population that moved to the Nile valley but people of different African ethnicities escaping the drying grassland that became the Sahara desert.
Map of the Nile valley showing Neolithic settlements
The peoples that first settled in the Nile valley has always been a bone of contention but new studies of DNA and fossils point to a distinct race with African features who were darker in the south( Upper Nile) and lighter Skinned (Lower Nile). Though lighter skinned than those in upper Nile, they are in general darker than in the rest of the Mediterranean basin, including North Africa. The hair is black and curly and the face, rather round and hairless, is in the Old Kingdom sometimes adorned with a moustache.
Relatively slim as a rule, it is this human type that frescoes, bas-reliefs and statues of the Pharaohs have made familiar to us; and we must not forget that these were portraits, as Egyptian funerary beliefs demanded, since it was the individual himself, not an abstract notion, that survived beyond the tomb.
Just like the modern African, the Ancient Nile valley dwellers came in different complexions ranging from lighter skinned like the current Tigray of Ethiopia to Jet black like the Dinka of South Sudan. This is because they did not all come from the same ethnicity but from diverse African ethnicities. It was like the capital of the African world, Spiritual, political and economic capital for that case.
Archaeological data shows that the first settlements during the Neolithic period first occurred in Upper Nile before migrating northwards into lower Nile. A pointer that civilization went downstream the Nile as opposed to the misleading notion that knowledge started from the North and moved upstream.

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