2010 Americans-- what would have similar impact on us?
To understand how distressing this was for the Egyptians, one has to
appreciate how dependent they were on the Nile. The river was their
lifeblood, the basis for their entire civilization. The Egyptians used the Nile
for almost everything, and without it, their land would have become a desert.
The river provided the transportation system that helped them move goods
from place to place. It formed the irrigation system that enabled them to grow
their crops. It was their water supply, and also their food supply, because
fish was one of the staples of the Egyptian diet. The river's annual floods
set their calendar and gave them fertile topsoil. In short, the land of Egypt
was the gift of the Nile. The Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484-c. 425 B.C.)
claimed that "even though a man has not before been told, he can at once see,
if he have sense, that that Egypt to which Greeks sail is land acquired by
the Egyptians, given them by the river."
--Phil Ryken
