River+Nile

  [|**Flood of the Nile River**] Imagine living right next to a river that flooded every year? What would you do? Every year you would have to leave your home and almost all of your belongings behind. When you return to your home later, you would come back and find a pile of rubble where your house used to be. The Ancient Egyptians that lived in the flood area of the Nile River had to do this every year.

 **THE NILE RIVER** No other civilization in the time of the pharaohs could compete with Egypt's magnificent buildings, its wealth, or its long centuries of peace. To a large extent, this is because other civilizations did not have Egypt's main advantage -- its great river. For tens of thousands of years the focal point of Egyptian life has been the River Nile. Egypt is correctly said to be the gift of the Nile and Egypt's two most important areas are the Delta and the Nile Valley. The Nile Delta is the heartland of Egypt. The ancient Egyptians believed that the waters of the Nile came from a "mysterious heaven of plenty". All of Egypt depended on the Nile for water, food, and transportation. The need to maintain irrigation channels as well as the convenient transportation that the river provided were some of the reasons Egypt was the first country in the world to have a national government. The availability of this unlimited supply of water allowed the creation of a society which produced the wonders of ancient Egypt.