Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt as a general historical term broadly refers to the civilization of the Lower Nile Valley, between the First Cataract and the mouths of the Nile Delta, from circa 3200 BC until the conquest of Alexander the Great in 332 BC. As a civilization based on irrigation, it is the quintessential example of a hydraulic empire.

Geography

Most of the geography of Egypt is in North Africa, although the Sinai Peninsula is in Southwest Asia. The country has shorelines on the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea; it borders Libya to the west, Sudan to the south, and the Gaza Strip, Palestine and Israel to the east. Ancient Egypt was divided into two kingdoms, known as Upper and Lower Egypt. Somewhat counter-intuitively, Upper Egypt was in the south and Lower Egypt in the north, named according to the flow of the Nile. The Nile river flows northward from a southerly point to the Mediterranean rather than southward from a northerly point. The Nile river, around which much of the population of the country clusters, has been the lifeline for Egyptian culture since the Stone Age and Naqada cultures.

Related Topics:
Geography of Egypt - North Africa - Sinai Peninsula - Southwest Asia - Mediterranean Sea - Red Sea - Libya - Sudan - Gaza Strip - Palestine - Israel - Upper and Lower Egypt - Nile - Stone Age - Naqada

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Two Kingdoms formed Kemet ("the black"), the name for the dark soil deposited by the Nile floodwaters. The desert was called Deshret ("the red"), c.f. Herodotus: "Egypt is a land of black soil.... We know that Libya is a redder earth." (Histories, 2:12). However Champollion the Younger (who deciphered the Rossetta stone) in Expressions et Termes Particuliers (Expression of Particular Terms) wrote that Kmt did not actually refer to the soil but to a negroid population in the sense of a "Black Nation" (see Ancient Egyptian peoples below).

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