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Article: The Nile isn't just a river in Egypt; The 4,000-mile waterway that nurtured civilization.(FEATURES)(BOOKS)
- Article from:
- The Christian Science Monitor
- Article date:
- January 9, 2003
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Christian Science Publishing Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Robert I. Rotberg
The life-giving Nile of lower Egypt trickles first from two springs in Burundi and Rwanda and then meanders 4,238 miles as the White Nile through great equatorial lakes; loses itself in tangled and difficult swamps; tortuously emerges to run freely toward its confluence with the much more powerful, if shorter, Blue Nile from Ethiopia; and then flows over cataracts and dams through the great desert to the Mediterranean Sea.
Over five millenniums, the nutrient- and silt-laden Nile floodwaters enabled agriculture and civilization to flourish all along its lower reaches. When the annual summer flood failed, however, the northern ...