Edgar Cayce's Tales of Ancient Egypt. John Van Auken

       The Nile

      The Greek historian Herodotus wrote, “Egypt was the gift of the Nile.” Three tributaries created this amazing river. The first is the White Nile, a long gentle river flowing from Lake Victoria—a high mountain lake bordered by Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. This tributary joins with the shorter but more voluminous and nutrient-richer Blue Nile, springing from Lake Tana in Ethiopia. And in ancient times, a third tributary joined these two, the Yellow Nile flowing from the eastern highlands of Chad. The Yellow Nile is now dry but was once a part of this trinity of rivers creating the ancient Nile.

      Each year during the rainy season, the ancient Nile River would overflow its banks and inundate Egypt; as it retreated, it left behind nutrient-rich black silt that made Egypt one of the most fertile lands in recorded history. Today, two dams now control the Nile—there is no flooding and no rich silt fertilizer.

      Around this river of life-giving water grew one of the greatest cultures on the planet. The ancient Egyptians called the river Iteru, meaning “Great River”; the modern name comes from the Greek Neilos (Nilus in Latin), transliterated to Nile.

      The Edfu Text, found in the Horus Temple in Edfu, and the Papyrus of Hunefer tell the story of a “hill people” who became the first settlers in this region. “We came from the beginning of the Nile where god Hapi dwells at the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon.” The Mountains of the Moon are likely those that contain Lake Tana in ancient Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia), the origin of the Blue Nile. This name may be traced back to a Greek ruler of late Egypt, Ptolemy, and the use of the name “Mountains of Selene,” the moon goddess of the Greeks.

      Cayce’s readings confirm the idea that hill people first came down out of the mountains along the Nile into the lower lands of Egypt today from ancient Abyssinia (Ethiopia). He also tells of the ancient lands of Nubia and their role in early Egypt. Nubia means “Land of Gold,” and much of the gold in Egypt came from the Nubian mountains. Much of Nubia today is under Lake Nasser, a result of the high dam, but portions remain in southern Egypt and northern Sudan. Upper Egypt is the mountain areas from Kom Ombo to Sudan. Lower Egypt is the delta region opening to the Mediterranean Sea.