| | | Flooding of The Nile
Every year in mid-July, the Nile River would rise and flood Egypt. The flood was so consistent that the ancient Egyptians knew when it would come and their prosperity depended on when the flood would come, and how much water it would yield (Feeney, 2006). They developed a system of storing grain during years of prosperity to safeguard against the years when the floodwater did not rise high enough and they would experience a famine (Feeney, 2006). The flooding of the Nile was just an ordinary event in ancient Egyptian life.
The flooding of the Nile has been blamed for the sinking of two ancient cities, Eastern Canopus and Herakleion, although some argue that an earthquake was the culprit (Stanley, 2001). The cities were discovered in 1999 and 2000 during a diving exploration in Egypt’s Abu Qir Bay 1, and excavation has revealed bases of temples, columns, and statues; and Stanley (2001) points to records of Nile flow in Cairo as evidence that the cities were buried in a flood somewhere around 1,250 years ago. However, not everyone thinks the Nile is responsible. In an article Did Nile flooding sink two ancient cities?, Rushi Said (2002) argues with Stanley’s view, saying that the Canopic branch of the Nile, had dried out 200 years before the cities disappeared. Said (2002) points out that the Nile’s flooding was a welcome event, and that no cities would have been caught so suddenly.
If the Nile River used to consistently flood, one might ask what happened? No, the floods did not stop coming. The people found a way to harness nature in the 19th century by beginning to build dams to control the flooding – at the price of the rich deposits of soil they replace with fertilizer (Hoyt, 2008). The Egyptians are thriving, but what is the cost of their control of the river to the other countries that the Nile effects?
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