(First
in a series exploring the geography and ecology of Ancient Egypt and its
surroundings)
Egyptologists
have been telling us since the late 19th Century that the name
“Kemet” (the Black Land or “Black Earth”) was the name the Black People gave to
their country because of the rich, dark mud the Nile River left behind every
Inundation. The Nile River flooded every year before the Aswan High Dam was
built and Lake Nasser created in the 1960s. In the past, the soil was so
fertile that it is widely believed that it allowed the Ancient Egyptians two
and sometimes more harvests per year.
None of this is
controversial, of course. It’s easy to believe and quite credible that the
sediments carried by the Great River over the millennia from its east African
drainage basin, and possibly from the equatorial rain forests of central Africa,
brought with them nutrient-rich sediments northward with the flow of the Nile.
These then accumulated along the banks of the Great River and over the eons,
filled the Nile Delta. Thus the Delta grew into the Mediterranean like a
fan-shaped intrusion, resembling the blossoming petals of the lotus flower (the
water lily).
Recently I was
reading about “Black Earth” within a whole different context -- the Amazon
jungle of Mato Grosso (“thick bush” in Portuguese). Recent research in the area
has revealed some very interesting things -- from the “lost city” of El Dorado
to something a little more interesting even than that mirage -- namely “terra preta”
or “black earth” in Portuguese. This appears to be a purely anthropogenic soil
created by indigenous people during an estimated period ranging from hundreds to thousands of years.
Terra preta contains
high concentrations of low-temperature charcoal, high quantities of pottery shards,
organic matter (plant residues, animal faeces, fish and animal bones), and
nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, zinc, and manganese, among
other materials. High levels of micro-organic activity are evident in the soil
and the soil itself is less prone to nutrient leaching, which is a major
problem in most rain forests. This is rich, black soil with a high degree of
organic content. In other words, it appears as if the ancient people of the
Amazon basin were very active “composting” their waste to revitalize the soil
for many centuries. Something that we've dropped the ball on as a society since
the Hippies disappeared and Monsanto has taken over... in order to destroy our
soil and our agriculture.
It’d be an
interesting thing to study whether this kind of “terra preta” activity occurred
in Ancient Egypt also. Could the Black People have “composted” just as the
Amazonians certainly did? Perhaps. The Black People were not a wasteful people
and above all they were extremely practical. The question is: Under what ecological conditions did
the Ancient Egyptians actually live. I certainly find it hard to believe that
they lived in the desert that the modern Egyptian lives in. I’m of the opinion that
the desertification of the Sahara (the northward movement of the Sahara as a
desert) probably had a significant impact at the end of the Ancient Egyptian
civilization (let's say from the period beginning with the Persian invasion and rule around 525 to 332 B.C., with a brief interlude of independence, until Alexander the Great ended the Achaemenid reign in the Nile).
I can’t imagine
that 3,000 to 5,000 years ago the Nile Valley was just an oasis in the middle
of a desert, as it is today. My take is that it was probably, at worst, a
Savannah, and more than likely, a far wetter environment than what we find
today. From the research I’ve done on the Battle of Megiddo for “The Horizon
Keeper,” and especially on the Gaza Strip, which was the main fortification
line the Black People used as their “buffer zone” against the Red People
immediately to the north (the Palestinians, Mitanni, etc.) is that both the
Mediterranean and the Red Sea were much higher and therefore that isthmus was
far “narrower” than it appears on our maps today. I was able to determine that
along the Gaza Strip the sea receded and there was far more “fresh water”
available in lakes and lagoons than there is today.
In other words,
the Middle East has been suffering from an ongoing millennial process of
“desertification,” just as the Iberian Peninsula and southern Spain,
specifically, is undergoing today. Rainfall drops off, soil is depleted, and
rivers, channels, and ports are made useless under accumulating sediments and
human activity (including waste production). This ancient desertification is
not as evident on the littoral of the Mediterranean Basin as it is somewhat to
the south in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea.
For example, the
fortress city of Tjaru, the frontier of the Two Lands in 1457 B.C. and the
“Port Said” of the ancient world, was on the coast of the Mediterranean -- 47
kilometres from where Port Said is today. In other words, the Mediterranean Sea
has receded that far in 3,000 years (or at least, some approximation of that
distance).
Where the “Great
Bitter Lake” now breaks up the narrows of the Suez Canal, the whole area was
under the waters of the Gulf of Suez 3,500 years ago. Naturally, these are not
“earth-shaking” revelations. Nevertheless, more water where land now stands dry
is the product of desertification and that process does cause the climate to
change (if anything, simple Physics tells us that refraction and reflection of
sunlight from the ground alone warms up the air).
I don’t want to
turn this into a scientific treatise. The point I want to make is that it’s
easily conceivable that the Black People were aware that the Red Land (the
desert) was active and actually gaining on them. They may have implemented
strategies to ameliorate that undesired effect.
