The pharaoh’s stately barge glided smoothly down the Nile, rowed by dozens of strong oarsmen.  Fishermen in small papyrus boats paused to watch their king go by.  The great river was like a highway, with Egyptians of all classes traveling upon it.

The Nile River 
The Black Land and Red Land 
The Overflowing Nile 
The Nile Today 
How Do We Know That?

The Nile River provided the Egyptians with a valuable natural resource and a means of transportation.  Herodotus, a 5th Century Greek historian, called Egypt "the gift of the Nile." If it weren't for the Nile River, the Egyptians could not have settled in this otherwise desert region.

The Nile River
The Nile is the longest river in the world, stretching 4,187 miles (6,500 km).  It flows from south to north through Eastern Africa and Egypt before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea.  The White Nile, Blue Nile and Ataba are the three major tributaries of the Nile.
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The Black Land and Red Land
In ancient times, the land around the Nile was referred to as the Black Land and Red Land. The delta region and a narrow strip along the Nile were fertile lands. They were annually covered with a black mud left by the floodwaters.  The ancient Egyptians called these floodplains, which were good places for growing crops, the Black Land.

The Red Land was located in Upper Egypt.  It was the desert land beyond the floodplain which contained dry riverbeds called wadis.  After a flood, the wadis would sometimes fill. When they were full, the Egyptians used the wadis as a trade route to the Red Sea.
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The Overflowing Nile
The yearly flooding, also called inundation, was important to the Egyptians.  The Nile floods occurred from June to October.  The Egyptians dug irrigation canals which carried floodwater further inland so that more crops could be grown. 

Sometimes the floods were low.  This meant the canals did not fill with water and the crops dried up.  Other times the floods were high.  The crops would get too much water and villages would be flooded.

Floods were measured with nilometers.  These were flights of steps built on the riverbank.  The level of a flood could be judged by counting the number of steps that were covered in water.
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The Nile Today
Today, the Nile is still the lifeline of the Egyptian civilization, but the Egyptians no longer need to depend on the Nile's natural flooding for irrigation.  In 1861, the Egyptians built a diversion dam to raise water levels for irrigation and navigation of the river.

How Do We Know That?
The creation of Lake Nasser threatened to flood many ancient Egyptian monuments.  In order to save them, teams of builders and archaeologists took down these monuments and rebuilt them in safer places.  One of the ancient buildings, the temple of Dendur, was actually rebuilt in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, USA.
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