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The Nile as Egypt’s Food System

النيل

Agricultural region

⚠ THE RIVER IS NOT SCENERY, IT IS THE AGRICULTURE. Egypt is a desert with a river through it: the inhabited country is the VALLEY and the DELTA, a few percent of the territory holding almost the whole population, and the food system is what the Nile waters. Until 1970 the river FLOODED annually, laying silt and defining a three-season calendar — akhet the inundation, peret the growing, shemu the harvest — which is documented from the pharaonic period onward and which basin irrigation was built around. ⚠ THE ASWAN HIGH DAM ENDED THE FLOOD, and that is the largest single change in Egyptian food history: perennial irrigation and two or three crops a year instead of one, but also no fresh silt — hence chemical fertiliser — rising soil salinity, a collapsed sardine fishery in the eastern Mediterranean where the nutrient plume had fed it, and the drowning of Nubia. WHEAT, MAIZE, RICE in the Delta, sugarcane in the south, berseem clover for the animals, vegetables, citrus, mango, date and the fisheries of the river, the lakes and the canals.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

Languages: Egyptian Arabic, Saidi Arabic

What is recorded

  • The Aswan High Dam is completed, ending the annual Nile flood — the largest single change in Egyptian food history. documented
  • The inhabited area of Egypt is the Nile valley and delta, a small proportion of the territory holding almost the whole population. Until 1970 the river flooded annually, depositing silt and defining a three-season agricultural calendar documented from the pharaonic period. The Aswan High Dam ended the flood: documented consequences include perennial irrigation and multiple annual crops, dependence on chemical fertiliser in place of silt, rising soil salinity, the decline of the eastern Mediterranean sardine fishery that the nutrient plume had supported, and the inundation of Nubia. documented

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