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Nile River, Impact on Human Health in Egypt from Pharaohs Until Now

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Nile River, Impact on Human Health in Egypt from Pharaohs Until Now Chapter 10 Nile River, Impact on Human Health in Egypt from Pharaohs Until Now Fathy Abdel-Ghaffar, Hassan M. Sobhy, Karim S. Metwaly, Sayed AbdEl- Monem, and Heinz Mehlhorn Abstract This chapter shows the tremendous influence of the Nile on human culture reaching until today. Keywords Egyptian health history · Waterborne diseases · Waterborne vectors · Malaria · Schistosomiasis 10.1 Introduction The Nile River has always been the lifeline of Egypt, which provides the country with almost all its water needs. The text of the Greek historian Herodotus (~490–430 BC), Egypt is a gift of the Nile, is a sign of the high importance of the Nile in the development of one of the most important civilizations in the history of the ancient world. The silt deposits, which had come and still come today every year in the flood season, formed a fertile soil suitable for the cultivation of many crops, which secured Egypt’s economic stability throughout the ancient and middle ages until today. Egypt covers a land area of approximately 1 million square kilometers; however 95% of the country is a sandy desert today. With an estimated population of 95 million people, the country accounts for one-fourth of the recent Arabic world’s population. More than 90% of the Egyptian population lives in only 10% of the entire region along the borders of the Nile River and in the Nile Delta in the northern part of the country. F. Abdel-Ghaffar (*) · S. AbdEl-Monem Faculty of Sciences, Department of Zoology, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt H. M. Sobhy · K. S. Metwaly Faculty of African Postgraduate Studies, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt H. Mehlhorn Parasitology Institute, Dusseldorf University, Düsseldorf, Germany © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 237 H. Mehlhorn, S. Klimpel (eds.), Parasite and Disease Spread by Major Rivers on Earth, Parasitology Research Monographs 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29061-0_10 238 F. Abdel-Ghaffar et al. 10.2 Nile River The Nile (Fig. 10.1) remains an integral part of the daily life of Egyptians playing an essential role in their habits, traditions, and commercial and economic activities. The Nile is one of the most important rivers in the world and especially in Northeast Africa covering a length of about 6650 km. Together with the Amazonas, it is the longest river on earth. The Nile Basin stretches from the heart of tropical forests in Central Africa to the harshest deserts of the world, covering an area of 3,400,000 km2 passing 11 countries (Wimberly and Midekisa 2014). The Nile has two main tributaries, the White Nile, which flows from the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, and the Blue Nile, which originates from the Lake Tana at the plateau of Ethiopia and is the source of most of the water of the final Nile and its amounts of transported silt (Dumont 2009). From there the river passes regions with a high diversity of environments along its journey from upstream to downstream offering life for a fabulous animal world and—in addition—is the basis of one of the world’s oldest civilizations: the ancient Egyptian civilization. On the other side many of the human diseases being associated with the river have been documented to have affected the Egyptian people through- out its history spanning more than 6000 years BC and do it even until today. 10.3 Nile River in Ancient Egypt Five million years ago, the Nile began to cross the Sahara Desert in North Africa, playing a vital role in the formation of Egypt and its societies. Beginning 6000 BC the settlements gradually spread along the river and in the delta, marking the beginning of the dawn of ancient Egyptian civilization, in the year 3150 BC, when Egypt became united as national state under a central government. At this time the King Narmer united Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt (Blaha and Blaha 2004). Although the Nile was the source of life for Egypt, the Egyptians did not worship it especially, but they were thankful to specific gods for blessing them by the Nile and its steady flowing waters. Since they had no name for the river, the Nile was called Hapy or Itrow, which just means “river” in the ancient Egyptian language (Fig. 10.2) (Hillel 2006). 10.4 Etymology of the Word Nile, Origin and Meaning The English name Nile and the Arabic names en-Nîl and an-Nîl are derived from the Latin term Nilus and the Ancient Greek term Neilos “Νεῖλoς” which came from the word “river valley.” Hesiod at his Theogony (700 BC) refers that Nilus (Νεῖλoς) was one of the Potamoi (river gods) and the son of Oceanus and Tethys. Another 10 Nile River, Impact on Human Health in Egypt from Pharaohs Until Now 239 Fig. 10.1 Map of the Nile River basin 240 F. Abdel-Ghaffar et al. Fig. 10.2 Names of Nile in old Egyptian letters derivation of Nile might be related to the term Nil (Sanskrit: नील, translit. nila; which refers to Indigofera tinctoria, one of the original ,(ﻥﻱﻝﺓ :Egyptian Arabic sources of indigo dye. In Coptic, the words piaro (Sahidic) or phiaro (Bohairic) meaning “the river” (lit. p(h).iar-o “the.canal-great”) come from the same ancient name. In the Odyssey, the epic poem written by the Greek poet Homer (seventh century BC), Aigyptos is the name of the Nile (masculine) as well as that of the country of Egypt (feminine) through which it flows. The Nile in Egypt and Sudan is now called Al-Nīl, Al-Baḥr, and Baḥr Al-Nīl or Nahr Al-Nīl (Smith et al. 1999). 10.5 Nile River in the Life of the Ancient Egyptians Further on the Nile played an important role in the religious life of the ancient Egyptians: the annual flood god (Hapi or Hapy) was called (translated in English) “Lord of the Fish and Birds of the Marshes” and “Lord of the River Bringing Vegetation” (Fig. 10.3). Since he appeared in the shape of a person with a large belly and two large breasts, he was a symbol of fertility. Hapi did not have temples, but the population celebrated him during the flood season by offering sacrifices and singing hymns, since its water gave new life for plants, animals, and also humans. The god Osiris was also closely related to the Nile and the fertility of the landscape. Ancient Egyptians believed that the Nile was the road to life after death on earth. There was a belief that a person would not survive in the “afterlife,” if he/she had polluted the waters of the Nile during life on earth (Wilkinson 2003). Thus the Nile was the source of life for the ancient Egyptians, since they settled and planted along its banks and in the delta different crops such as wheat, flax, papyrus, and others. The Nile was also an important source of fish and various aquatic birds. The Nile was also the most important pathway of transportation of goods for the trade with the different nations living south of Egypt. 10 Nile River, Impact on Human Health in Egypt from Pharaohs Until Now 241 Fig. 10.3 Dual depiction of Hapy, the ancient Egyptian god of the Nile and its flood The ancient year calendar was linked to the three Nile cycles, each of which lasted four months. These seasons were called Akhet,aflood season; Peret, the growth season; and Shemu, the harvest season (Porceddu et al. 2008). The ancient Egyptians were the first (known) people to practice agriculture on a wide professional scale (Fig. 10.4). There are several clear indications that the beginning of agriculture in Egypt started around 8000 BC, when—depending on the Nile flood—people managed to develop the basic irrigation amazingly, enabling them to grow many different agricultural crops all over the year. This was only possible when the ancient Egyptians had developed a complex of intersecting networks of channels to hold back floodwater to irrigate large amounts of fields (Postel 1999). In addition, the ancient Egyptians managed it to cultivate orchards, fruit gardens, vineyards, vegetables, medicinal plants, aromatic plants, and various herbs all over the year. This was only possible by permanent irrigation due to the transfer of water throughout the year originating from water wells or directly from the Nile (Wetterstrom and Murray 2001). 242 F. Abdel-Ghaffar et al. Fig. 10.4 (a) Plowing with a yoke of horned cattle in ancient Egypt. Painting from the burial chamber of Sennedjem, c. 1200 BC. (b) Night hunting and fishing. (c) Scene of gardener using a Shaduf, Tomb of Ipuy at Deir el-Medina, west bank of Thebes, TT217. (d) Nakht (TT 52), deceased and wife offering, agriculture Most of the ancient Egyptians worked in agriculture, digging trenches from the Nile to agricultural fields using draw wells and the “Shaduf” (Fig. 10.4c), a primitive machine that lifts water from the Nile to the canals (Postel 1999). 10 Nile River, Impact on Human Health in Egypt from Pharaohs Until Now 243 Preservation of the water of the canals was one of the holy activities in ancient Egyptian life. The confession of the dead person to have done it was recognized as declaration of innocence in the courtroom in the afterlife. To have done it is declared within the confession No. 35, in which the dead person admits that he has never obstructed the flow of water in the neighbor’s canal. Sophisticated hydraulic means had been developed in the Middle Kingdom (2040–1782 BC) to transport efficiently and to discharge water across the fields (Budge 2016).
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