river

Nile

• Today Nile River

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History

The Nile flows some 6,650 km from the lakes of East Africa to the Mediterranean and is usually counted the longest river in the world. The White Nile comes from Lake Victoria, the Blue Nile from Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and the two join at Khartoum; it is the Blue Nile and the Atbara, fed by the Ethiopian summer rains, that brought the yearly flood. Between Aswan, the ancient Syene at the First Cataract, and Cairo the river runs through a narrow valley, and then spreads into the Delta, whose seven mouths the ancients counted and Isaiah seems to recall. Herodotus called Egypt the gift of the river.

Egypt lived by the inundation: from July to October the river covered the fields and left its silt, and the height of the flood, read on nilometers, foretold plenty or famine; Pharaoh's dream of seven fat and seven lean kine coming "up out of the river" belongs to this world. The Hebrew word for the Nile, ye'or, is borrowed from Egyptian; the King James Version renders it simply "the river". The Bible also knows Shihor, usually taken for the easternmost branch of the Delta, and "the river of Egypt" at the border of the promised land, which most identify with the Wadi el-Arish rather than the Nile.

Pharaoh ordered every Hebrew son cast "into the river", and Moses was laid in an ark of bulrushes "in the flags by the river's brink", where Pharaoh's daughter found him. The first plague turned the waters of the river to blood so that "the fish that was in the river died", and the second brought frogs out of it. Isaiah foretells that "the river shall be wasted and dried up" and the fishers mourn; Jeremiah pictures Egypt rising "like a flood"; Ezekiel's Pharaoh is "the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers" and boasts, "My river is mine own"; Amos likens the trembling earth to the flood of Egypt; Nahum recalls Thebes "situate among the rivers".

The Nile remained Egypt's road and lifeline through the Greek, Roman and Arab periods, and Alexandria near its western mouth was one of the greatest ports of the ancient world. The Aswan Low Dam of 1902 and the High Dam, completed in 1970, ended the annual flood and created Lake Nasser; the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile, built from 2011 and inaugurated in 2025, has set Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt at odds over the river's water. The valley and the Delta hold nearly all of Egypt's more than a hundred million people.

Scripture: Gen 15:18; Gen 41:1–3; Exod 1:22; Exod 2:3–5; Exod 7:17–21; Exod 8:3; Josh 13:3; Isa 11:15; Isa 19:5–8; Isa 23:3; Jer 2:18; Jer 46:7–8; Ezek 29:3; Ezek 29:9–10; Amos 8:8; Amos 9:5; Nah 3:8; Zech 10:11

Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.

Verses (45)

Gen 41:1

And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh dreamed: and, behold, he stood by the river.

Gen 41:2

And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well favoured kine and fatfleshed; and they fed in a meadow.

Gen 41:3

And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill favoured and leanfleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the brink of the river.

Gen 41:17

And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, In my dream, behold, I stood upon the bank of the river:

Gen 41:18

And, behold, there came up out of the river seven kine, fatfleshed and well favoured; and they fed in a meadow:

Gen 41:19

And, behold, seven other kine came up after them, poor and very ill favoured and leanfleshed, such as I never saw in all the land of Egypt for badness:

Exod 1:22

And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.

Exod 2:3

And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.

Exod 2:5

And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.

Exod 4:9

And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe also these two signs, neither hearken unto thy voice, that thou shalt take of the water of the river, and pour it upon the dry land: and the water which thou takest out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land.

Exod 7:15

Get thee unto Pharaoh in the morning; lo, he goeth out unto the water; and thou shalt stand by the river’s brink against he come; and the rod which was turned to a serpent shalt thou take in thine hand.

Exod 7:17

Thus saith the LORD, In this thou shalt know that I am the LORD: behold, I will smite with the rod that is in mine hand upon the waters which are in the river, and they shall be turned to blood.

Exod 7:18

And the fish that is in the river shall die, and the river shall stink; and the Egyptians shall lothe to drink of the water of the river.

Exod 7:20

And Moses and Aaron did so, as the LORD commanded; and he lifted up the rod, and smote the waters that were in the river, in the sight of Pharaoh, and in the sight of his servants; and all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood.

Exod 7:21

And the fish that was in the river died; and the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink of the water of the river; and there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt.

Exod 7:24

And all the Egyptians digged round about the river for water to drink; for they could not drink of the water of the river.

Exod 7:25

And seven days were fulfilled, after that the LORD had smitten the river.

Exod 8:3

And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneadingtroughs:

Exod 8:9

And Moses said unto Pharaoh, Glory over me: when shall I intreat for thee, and for thy servants, and for thy people, to destroy the frogs from thee and thy houses, that they may remain in the river only?

Exod 8:11

And the frogs shall depart from thee, and from thy houses, and from thy servants, and from thy people; they shall remain in the river only.

Exod 17:5

And the LORD said unto Moses, Go on before the people, and take with thee of the elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine hand, and go.

Isa 7:18

And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.

Isa 18:1

Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia:

Isa 18:2

That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying, Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled!

Isa 19:5

And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and dried up.

Isa 19:6

And they shall turn the rivers far away; and the brooks of defence shall be emptied and dried up: the reeds and flags shall wither.

Isa 19:7

The paper reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks, and every thing sown by the brooks, shall wither, be driven away, and be no more.

Isa 19:8

The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle into the brooks shall lament, and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish.

Isa 23:3

And by great waters the seed of Sihor, the harvest of the river, is her revenue; and she is a mart of nations.

Isa 23:10

Pass through thy land as a river, O daughter of Tarshish: there is no more strength.

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King James Version