Egypt's extraordinary civilization is impossible to understand without understanding the Nile. The river was not merely a geographical feature of the Egyptian landscape. It was the organizing principle around which every aspect of Egyptian life revolved, from agriculture and architecture to religion, politics, and the Egyptian understanding of time itself. The Nile did not just sustain Egyptian civilization. In a very real sense, it created it. The annual flood cycle was the foundation of everything. Each summer, monsoon rains in the Ethiopian highlands sent a massive pulse of water northward through Sudan and into Egypt, where the river overflowed its banks and deposited a thick layer of rich black silt across the floodplain. This natural fertilization cycle made Egyptian agriculture astonishingly productive without the elaborate irrigation system ...