Egyptian civilization originates in regions of East Africa along Nile River, isolated by desserts and water. In Egypt, the floods of Nile River were much more predicted and coincided with the growing season. Silt carried by the Nile fertilized the fields every year. The agriculture had spread along the Nile easily and formed a strong foundation of the civilization. The first royal dynasty to bring the city-states in Mesopotamia together was the kingdom of Akkadia, followed by a later kingdom of Babylonia.
I am a twenty-two year old slave from a British colony called Egypt. I was not always a slave though. I once lived a life being one with the land. She provided me with all the resources to live a healthy life. In chapter 17, Prelude to the European conquest of Africa, British abolitionists create a colony called Freetown were freed African slaves settled.
Eventually, under the leadership of ambitious chieftains or princes they seized control of the delta city of Avaris and turned into their stronghold. The Egyptians referred to these people as hikau-khoswet (rulers of foreign lands) and this is where the name Hyksos originated. For around 45 years they gained control over lower Egypt and in c. 1640, a Hyksos chieftain named Salatis forced the Egyptian ruler out of Memphis. For about 100 years, two dynasties of these foreign kings ( fifteenth and sixteenth) controlled Egypt as far south as Cusae. The seventeenth dynasty of Egyptians princes from Thebes continued to rule in semi-independence but paid allegiance and tribute to the Hyksos kings in the north.
Both Mesopotamia and Egypt had important rivers that benefited them. In Mesopotamia, many civilians relied on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. In Egypt, the population relied on the Nile. Although these rivers rose annually, they had different outcomes. While the Nile River was predictable and easier to deal with, the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers were unpredictable.
The Unique Culture of Egypt While the Sumerian civilization was developing, a similar process took place along the banks of the Nile River. Yet, the two civilization’s culture was very different. Egypt was united into a single kingdom, which allowed it to enjoy a high degree of unity, stability, and culture continuality over a period of 3,000 years. The geography, writing, architectural structures, society, and their process of mummification made the Egyptian culture unique compared to the other civilizations of the time. The Ancient Egyptians thought of Egypt as being divided into two types of land, the “black land” and the “red land.
Gift of the Nile In Egyptian civilization, the River Nile was the source of life for the early Egyptians. The Greek historian, Herodotus, in the fifth century B.C.E. called Egypt the “gift of the Nile.” The Nile river is located in Africa, the river is the longest river in the world. The early Egyptians had to rely on this river for irrigation and agriculture. Not only did they use the river for water and food, they also used the river for main transportation and trading goods.
The one factor that chiefly characterized Egypt's relationship with Nubia through most of their history was exploitation. Nubia's most important resource for Egypt was precious metal, including gold and electrum. The gold mines of Nubia were located in certain valleys and mountains on either side of the Nile River, although the most important mining center was located in the Wadi Allaqi. That valley extended eastward into the mountains near Qubban (about 107 km. south of Elephantine).
It has many tributaries but there are two main ones: the White Nile fed by lake Victoria and the Blue Nile coming from Ethiopian mountains. These two main branches join near Khartoum, the capital of Sudan and they continue together as Nile proper until meeting the Mediterranean Sea and forming the Nile delta in northern Egypt. Around 5000 BC, one of the first great civilizations developed in the northern Nile river valley dependent on agriculture in a land called Egypt. Water; Fertile soil; and river's flow north while prevailing wind blows south made the Nile the best transportation way, were examples of the Nile gifts. Another gift is that every year the flood came bringing disaster and famine due to destroying the crops and their villages.
Geography is unfair I agree with Ian Morris' idea that geography is the ultimate decisive power of human history. At the beginning of human history, the earliest man, homo sapiens, evolved in Africa between 200,000, then spread across the world in the last 60,000 years. This dispersal made humanity’s genes different, but some deeper parts of body did not change a lot (such as head shape or lactose tolerance). The western culture and eastern culture were not that big of a difference before the sixth century BC. Many western and eastern sages wrestled with much the same questions about life and society.
Access to commodities such as fabrics, spices, and gold motivated a European quest for a faster means to reach South Asia. It was this search that led the Portuguese down the coast of West Africa to Sierra Leone in 1460. Due to several technological and cultural advantages, Portugal dominated world trade for nearly 200 years, from the fifteenth to the sixteenth centuries. While, in the fifteenth century, the rest of Europe was decimated by the Black Plague, Portugal was protected by its physical isolation. Additionally, Portugal had an unusually strong national identity, due to its natural geographic borders, allowing the pooling of the considerable economic resources necessary to fund these ambitious explorations.