Nile

The primary river of Egypt lorded over by the river god Neilos.

Approximately 3,405 miles (5,480 kilometers) in length, the Nile originates at Lake Victoria in the African interior and flows north to empty into the Mediterranean Sea.

The Nile was a well known river in ancient Greece and the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet, Delta, was used to describe the shape of the Nile’s intersection with the Mediterranean Sea.

The historian Herodotus (died 425? BCE) visited Egypt and recounted the size and shape of the river; Herodotus was not convinced when the Egyptian priests told him that the river’s annual floods were caused by snow melting in the distant mountains; Herodotus was sure that the priests were mistaken and carefully explained how the river must have been fed by rain and not by snow; apparently he could not imagine the length of the Nile or the immensity of the continent of Africa.

It’s also interesting to note that by the time of the poet Euripides, the matter of the source of the Nile’s waters had been resolved; the very first lines of Euripides’ play, Helen (produced in 412 BCE), has the main character saying that she is in Egypt, the land of the Nile, which gets its water, not from rain, but from melting snow.

The Nile river valley is divided into Upper Egypt (the southern Nile) and Lower Egypt (the northern Nile).

• Histories, book 2, chapters 19-27
• Theogony, line 338