καὶ οὐκ ἥκιστα Ἀχελῴου, ὃς ῥέων δι’ Ἀκαρνανίης καὶ ἐξιεὶς ἐς θάλασσαν τῶν Ἐχινάδων νήσων τὰς ἡμισέας ἤδη ἤπειρον πεποίκε.
Of the rivers that have deposited these lands, none is worthy of being compared for greatness with even one of the mouths of the Nile, which has five. But there are other rivers, none as enormous as the Nile, which have displayed great works (erga apodexamenoi megala). I could recite the names of others, but not least of these is the Achelōos, which flowing through Akarnania and terminating in the sea has already made half of the Echinades islands into mainland. (Hdt. 2.10.2–3)
While the Nile is preeminent in its benefaction, rivers characteristically act on and create the lands that Greeks are used to taking for granted. This process is ongoing and, Herodotus argues, historically significant. By calling the actions of even these minor rivers erga megala, Herodotus ties them explicitly to the erga megala he sets out to record in the proem and correlates the “displays” (1.1: apodechthenta; 2.10: apodexamenoi) of both humans and rivers. Rivers are agents who can “will” (2.11: ethelēsei) and “work hard” (2.11: ergatikou), and whose erga are worthy of the historian’s attention.53
In Diodorus, the Nile has even greater powers. Diodorus’s Egyptian informants say:
κατὰ τὴν ἐξ ἀρχῆς τῶν ὅλων γένεσιν πρώτους ἀνθρώπους γενέσθαι κατὰ τὴν Αἴγυπτον διά τε τὴν εὐκρασίαν τῆς χώρας καὶ διὰ τὴν φύσιν τοῦ Νείλου. τοῦτον γὰρ πολύγονον ὄντα καὶ τὰς τροφὰς αὐτοφυεῖς παρεχόμενον ῥᾳδίως ἐκτρέφειν τὰ ζωογονηθέντα· τήν τε γὰρ τοῦ καλάμου ῥίζαν καὶ τὸν λωτόν, ἔτι δὲ τὸν Αἰγύπτιον κύαμον καὶ τὸ καλούμενον κορσαῖον καὶ πολλὰ τοιαῦθ’ ἕτερα τροφὴν ἑτοίμην παρέχεσθαι τῷ γένει.
In the beginning, during the creation of the universe, human beings first came into existence in Egypt because of the mildness and nature (physis) of the Nile. For being very productive and providing nourishment on its own, it easily supported the creatures that had come to be. For the root of the reed and the lotus, and the Egyptian bean and the korsaion, as it is called, and many other plants such as these provide nourishment to the race of human beings. (Diod. Sic. 1.10.1)
This passage ties human beings to other animals and elevates the importance of the Nile to human life. Building on the Egyptians’ cosmology, Diodorus puts the Nile in parallel with human heroes, like Isis, Osiris, and Heracles, later immortalized for their great gifts to humankind. The Nile, Diodorus says, “in general surpasses all other rivers in the world in providing benefits to human beings.”54 Like human rulers in the Library, Diodorus’s rivers compete with one another in benefaction and surpass those that, as we have seen, extract human labor without providing sufficient reward.55 As one of the best benefactors, the Nile provides both “ease in toil” (tois men ergois eukopian) and “profit” (1.36.4: lusiteleian).
Yet like a human being, the Nile can also make mistakes. Although the land the Nile provides and irrigates is a great gift, Herodotus observes that this very beneficence may one day be the Egyptians’ undoing:
Εἴ σφι θέλοι, ὡς καὶ πρότερον εἶπον, ἡ χώρη ἡ ἔνερθε Μέμφιος (αὕτη γάρ ἐστι ἡ αὐξανομένη) κατὰ λόγον τοῦ παροιχομένου χρόνου ἐς ὕψος αὐξάνεσθαι, ἄλλο τι ἢ οἱ ταύτῃ οἰκέοντες Αἰγυπτίων πεινήσουσι, εἰ μήτε γε ὕσεταί σφι ἡ χώρη μήτε ὁ ποταμὸς οἷός τε ἔσται ἐς τὰς ἀρούρας ὑπερβαίνειν.
If, as I have said before, the land below Memphis (which is now increasing) should rise at the same rate as in the past, how could those living in Egypt not starve, provided that the land is not watered by rain nor the river able to irrigate the fields? (Hdt. 2.14)
The Nile’s best feature, its ability to provide land and irrigate it, will one day (Herodotus surmises) lead the Nile to create more land than it can water, causing drought and famine. Unlike animals in the Histories, rivers are not automatically regulated by the gods (7.10, 3.108).56 Instead, they are judged by their effects on the human community; human well-being determines whether the Nile has crossed natural boundaries.
When rivers transgress, human beings are responsible for taming their excesses. Min, Egypt’s first king, dams and diverts the Nile to protect Memphis from being overwatered (Hdt. 2.99). When the river “steals” (Hdt. 2.109.2: pareloito; cf. Diod. Sic. 1.81.2) someone’s allotted land, the Egyptians respond by inventing the art of land surveying (Hdt. 2.109.3: geōmetriē). Should the Nile create more land than it can irrigate, as Herodotus fears, perhaps a ruler will build erga to keep the Nile within bounds. Diodorus reports this very eventuality: Uchoreus, Egyptian king and founder of Memphis, builds lakes and mounds to protect the people and their livestock from the Nile’s floods (1.50.5) and digs canals to increase the Nile’s “usefulness” (1.63.1: euchrēstian). There is no neutral “background” in which only human beings “artificially” intervene. Instead, the tug of war between humans and the Nile is ongoing, producing works upon works for the historian and the human community.
Both Herodotus and Diodorus highlight rivers, especially the Nile, in their accounts of the making of the world. In one sense, this is not surprising. The Greeks considered rivers divine, although evidence for cult activity is scarce.57 As Brooke Holmes has shown, the river Scamander in Homer’s Iliad is a powerful force, a model to which Herodotus and Diodorus may have looked in their representations of the Nile. Egyptian informants also may have shaped Greek writers’ understanding of rivers.58 Until Roman conquest, the Egyptians did not worship the river itself but rather its inundation, Hapi.59 In Egyptian theology, human kings joined Hapi in the regular re-creation of the world by building temples, which represented earth.60 Although primordial waters are common images in world cultures, kings’ and the Nile’s ongoing participation in creation offered Herodotus and Diodorus a model for describing how humans and rivers interact.61
Egyptian texts like the Hymn to the Nile, in circulation at least by the New Kingdom period (1550–1069 BCE), credit the river with both Egypt’s natural abundance and cultural achievements.62 Without Hapi, the god of the Nile flood, there are
No raw goods for finishing handwork,
no cloth for fashioning clothes,
No decking out offspring of rich men,
no shadowing beautiful eyes,
For lack of him, the trees all in ruins
—no
