Beyond Egypt: The Nile Route and the African Kingdom of Meroe

The wealth of Egypt was crucial for sustaining Roman prosperity and the lands beyond its borders were of great importance to the ancient economy. The Sahara Desert covered North Africa with a belt of barren land almost 3,000 miles wide stretching from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. It extended nearly a thousand miles from north to south with an expanse larger than the entire landmass of the Roman Empire. The desert contained vast dune fields, stone plateaus, gravel plains, salt flats and arid valleys swept by severe sand-storms. In the ancient past, Berber caravans with knowledge of wells and oasis stations were able to cross this landscape, but the extreme conditions of the area confined the Roman Empire to the Mediterranean seaboard fringe of North Africa.

The land of Egypt was the exception and offered the Romans an important route into inner Africa. The Nile River flowed from sources deep within the continent northwards into the Mediterranean Sea, creating a strip of fertile terrain in an otherwise barren land. The White Nile begins in Tanzania nearly 4,000 miles from the Mediterranean coast of Egypt and the soil-rich Blue Nile emerges in Ethiopia to join with the White Nile in the Sudan. From there the river flows through desert landscapes towards the ancient city of Syene (Aswan) which stood on the frontiers of Egypt. Beyond Syrene, the Nile flood waters fertilised broad field systems with the rich soil deposits it carried into Egypt. Pliny describes how ‘for a certain part of the year the volume of the Nile greatly increases and it flows over the whole of Egypt, inundating the land with a fertilising flood’.1 Most ancient Egyptian towns and cities were therefore positioned near the flood plain of the Nile Valley to exploit this resource in a landscape that would otherwise have been a bare wilderness.

From very ancient times, the river was a conduit that allowed extraordinary goods to be brought into Egypt. It was almost 600 miles from Syene to the coast and the Nile formed a major route for travel and communication as it flowed north into a broad delta that discharged into the Mediterranean Sea. Most of the Egyptian Nile was safe for riverine travel, except for seasonal surges in the volume of water coming downriver from distant sources in Sub-Saharan Africa. African goods entering Egypt passed Syene and the neighbouring temple-site of Elephantine which was located on an island in the Nile. Elephantine Island could have received its name from the import of ivory, or because the large boulders found on its shores resemble the hunched-shape of crouching elephants.

Between Syene and the confluence of the White and Blue Nile in Sudan there were Six Cataracts that impeded upstream travel. Some of these cataracts contained multiple rapids that stretched for miles, or resembled waterfalls when the river cascaded down a steep descent. Boats on the Egyptian Nile did not sail beyond the frontier city of Syene because of a dangerous series of rapids called the First Cataract. This First Cataract had shallow waters with protruding rocks that would puncture hulls, and turbulent fast-flowing currents that could overturn fragile river-craft. Ancient travellers therefore disembarked near Syene and followed the banks of the Nile to bypass these rapids. On the far side they boarded other vessels to sail south to the Second Cataract. It was just over 200 miles between the First and Second Cataract and the journey was also made by using pack-animals that followed caravan trails flanking the river. South of the Second Cataract it was advisable to travel entirely by land, rather than continue the journey by boarding further river-craft. Beyond the Second Cataract fixed trails followed the curving route of the Nile, occasionally branching off to connect with distant oasis sites in the surrounding desert landscape.