Season 3 Episode 4: The Nile and Divinity

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This podcast aims to explore the intimate connections between divinity and the Nile during three specific time periods: that of Ancient Egypt, Greco-Roman exploration of Egypt, and the Renaissance into the Enlightenment Era. Through primary and secondary source research, it is evident that Ancient Egyptians turned to religion to explain the power and importance of the Nile in everyday life. By creating a sort of godly notion associated with the Nile, this divine allure and mythological lore surrounding the river drew in scholars, conquerors, and tourists to come to Egypt and explore the mysteries which it had to offer. Upon the arrival of foreigners in Egypt, the godly ideas associated with the Nile were then perpetuated through scholarly writings by the visitors which were brought back to their homelands. Thus, as a result, the association of the Nile with divinity permeated into foreign societies in order to provide an explanation for their lack of knowledge surrounding the patterns of the river. 

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Transcript:

Segment 1: Introduction (0:00 – 1:00)

Lainey: ***intro music*** Hello everyone and welcome to season 3 episode 4 of Now As Then! Today we are going to be diving into the Nile River and discussing the perceptions and associations of the Nile throughout time. The Nile’s impacts on ancient Egyptian society and other civilizations throughout the globe have been profound, so let’s get right into it! We are coming to you now from the AV Room of the Rockefeller Library at Brown University, my name is Lainey Lynott.

Helen: I’m Helen Primis

Maria: And I’m Maria Souza

Lainey: We’re all first years at Brown University aiming to explore the idea of how Ancient Egyptians turned to religion to explain the power and importance of the Nile in everyday life. Helen: During our research, we discovered that the divine allure of the Nile drew in scholars, conquerors, and tourists alike to explore ancient Egypt. 

Maria: These visitors to Egypt then continued to perpetuate the godly ideas associated with the Nile in their own societies in order to provide an explanation for their lack of knowledge surrounding the patterns of the river. ***trumpets**

Segment 2: Ancient Egyptian Perspective (1:05 – 5:16)

Maria: To start off, how exactly did the Ancient Egyptians interact with the Nile?

Lainey: Well, daily life in Egypt was deeply intertwined with the surrounding environment. And the importance of the environment in Ancient Egypt was manifested in the plethora of excavated religious objects, songs, prayers, and sculptures that celebrated the environment which enabled the Egyptian empire to thrive over millennia.

Helen: Yes, and the case is no different for the Nile – if anything it was the most celebrated aspect of the Egyptian environment. Since the predynastic period, the Nile served as the main source of water and food to feed the Ancient Egyptian population. 

Maria: The Nile had an annual inundation cycle during the summer caused by the heavy rainfall ***rain noises***in the Ethiopian highlands. During the flood, the river levels would rise and water the land of Egypt. 

Lainey: In the book, “Egyptomania: A History of Fascination, Obsession and Fantasy,” Ronald Fritze, an American historian, writes about how Egyptians referred to their homeland as Kmt, translating to “the black land,” after the dark soil that nurtured their civilization. 

Helen: Each year, the inundation was a long awaited moment for most of the population, as the empire’s farming population needed the flood to water the soil so their crops would grow. And as a way to highlight the Nile’s importance in Egyptian society, the god Hapi was originated, the god that personified the inundation of the Nile each year. 

Maria: In Egyptian Art, Hapi is illustrated as having a bulky, androgynous figure. Unlike other gods, Hapi has a big and visible belly and large breasts. 

Lainey: Yes, and they were specifically portrayed in a more feminine light to represent the fertility that the Nile offered from the inundation. Since the Nile was imperative to Egyptian life, Hapi was sighted as one of the most important Egyptian gods amongst Ancient Egyptians. 

Maria:  Hapi was also often referred to as the unifier of Lower and Upper Egypt. We looked at a sunk relief from the Great Temple at Abul Simbel on the West Bank of the Nile River to help illustrate Hapi’s prevalence in Egyptian society. 

Helen:  This temple was erected for the worship of Pharaoh Ramesses II and the sunk relief has Hapi portrayed twice. On the left side we see him holding a lotus flower, the symbol for Upper Egypt, and then on the right holding stems of a Papyrus, the symbol for Lower Egypt. 

Lainey: Both Hapis are holding what is called a sema-tawy, which includes two tied plants meant to represent the eternal unification of both Lower and Upper Egypt.  

Helen: And aside from representing Hapi in art pieces and texts, Ancient Egyptians also conducted prayers, like the Hymn of the Nile, where they asked Hapi to bless them with the annual inundation: [transition to sound and more dramatic reading of the Hymn] 

Maria: ***water noises***“When you overflow, O Hapy, Sacrifice is made for you; Oxen are slaughtered for you, A great oblation is made to you, Fowl is fattened for you, Desert game snared for you, As one repays your bounty. One offers to all the gods of that which Hapy has provided, Choice incense, oxen goats, And birds in holocaust.” 

Helen: It is interesting to observe in this tune/text from the Middle Kingdom the tone of despair that underlies the words of the prayer. They expressed how prosperous the Nile is to Egypt, how much they needed that prosperity in their lives, and how everyone sacrificed everything for the inundation and for it to unleash its powers over the Egyptian grounds. This showcases how people explained and understood the Nile in terms of their own religion and godly perceptions, and in this case of the ancient Egyptian civilization itself. 

Lainey:At the same time the Nile was key for agriculture in Egypt, the river also served as the primary source of transportation to Ancient Egyptians. The direction of the river’s current flow and prevailing winds all favored an easy commute between different areas of Egypt, increasing communication between different people and facilitating trade. 

Helen: To express this importance, Egyptians placed models of Nile river boats in the deceased person’s tomb to guarantee them transportation for eternity. The Nile was a gift that Egyptians wanted to carry with them even in the afterlife. This demonstrates the societal draw to the Nile on a religious basis, as a key aspect of ancient Egyptian religion was the afterlife. 

Section 3: The Greco Roman Period: (5:20- 11:00)

Maria: ***Greek music*** To continue moving through our overarching timeline, we are now going to move from the Ancient Egyptian perspective and launch into ***drumroll*** the Greco-Roman Period! 

Helen: We start our journey in around 500 BCE when Greek historian Hecataeus of Miletus embarked on his visit to Egypt. Widely considered to be the first Greek on ground in Egypt and record his findings, the true tragedy of Hecateaus of Miletus’ time in Egypt is that no copies of his findings still exist today. 

Lainey: Moving on into the 450s BCE, we get our first Greek-recorded account of Egypt from Hecataeus’ successor, Herodotus. Herodotus’ compilation of writings are commonly known as The Persian Wars or The Histories. And he recounted his experiences in Egypt in Book 2 of his 9 book collection. 

Maria:  By sharing his works with the Greek public, Herodotus sparked an obsession with Egypt in Greece. Particularly Herodotus’ “Account of Egypt” served as the catalyst for Greek Egyptomania to take flight in Greek society and began a long line of academic, mythological, and personal writings of life in Egypt– particularly with questions and ideas surrounding the Nile. 

Helen: Herodotus recounted his experience witnessing the Nile’s yearly flood during his time in Egypt. He then raised a particular mysterious idea which enthralled the Greek intellectual community: “Of the sources of the Nile no one can give an account, for the part of Libya through which it flows is uninhabited and desert.”  ***trumpets*** 

Lainey:  Within Greek mythology, potamoi are specific river gods that correlate to given rivers around the world; and as Egyptomania became popularized in Greek society, Nilus emerged as the divine representative for the Nile in Greek religious practices. 

Helen: And then there are also naiads (which can be equated to the female versions of potamoi) that were also used to symbolize the inexplicable habits and actions of water, and the naiad associated with the Nile was Caliadne, a daughter of Nilus. 

Maria: As we mentioned before, Hapi was the Egyptian god responsible for the inundation of the Nile each year. In Greek mythology, we see the Greeks use Nilus’ divine power as the explanation for the Nile’s flood each year just as the Egyptians did with Hapi. 

Helen: And Caliadne then was associated with the Nile’s fertile nature and how the flood each year brought the Egyptians a plethora of natural resources. We now see a sort of pattern between the two societies – the Greeks and the Egyptians – using gods to explain the habits of the Nile. 

Lainey: Moving further on into the Greco-Roman era, we now arrive at the Alexander the Great Era of Hellenistic Egyptomania. ***cheers and applause***

Helen:And Alexander was a Grade A example of falling susceptible to the Egyptomania perpetuated by his Greek predecessors. The writings and lore surrounding Ancient Egypt preached by Greek intellectuals preceding Alexander led him to want to explore and conquer Egypt in hopes of finding the origin of the Nile. 

Lainey: Yes exactly, so Alexander sent an expedition in 332 BCE to follow the length of the Nile and try to discover the origin and other realities behind some myths associated with the river that became common lore in European societies. 

Maria:  Then further compounding on the pattern of publishing writings for the public about the divine trials and tribulations of Greco-Roman adventures in Egypt, Alexander the Great’s time and conquest of Egypt was closely recounted by a plethora of scholars, including Greek historians Plutarch and Diodorus. 

Helen: In Diodorus’ Library of History, which was published in the 45-35 BCE range, he talks about Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Nile and his mission to dispel the mythology surrounding the Nile. Then in Plutarch’s Moralia published in the mid-1st century AD, we can see Plutarch project a sort of “savior complex” of sorts onto Alexander’s role as a “truth finder” amidst the lore surrounding Egypt.  

Lainey: Now to round out this era of Greco-Roman Egyptomania and the Nile, we are going to talk a bit more in depth about the Roman take on the Nile. ***Roman music*** In Plutarch’s Moralia, he had a whole book dedicated to the overlap between Greek and Roman mythology, including the permeation of Nilus into Roman mythology. 

Maria:We see this manifested in Roman artwork in particular; for example, a massive, larger than life statue was found in Rome in an ancient Temple of Isis in the 16th century, but dated it back to sometime in the 2nd-4th century. 

Helen: This statue, known as “The Vatican Nile,” portrays the river as a godly figure in a human form, which represents how the Nile itself had some semblance of agency and intelligence as a person would. And given that the statue was found in a temple of Isis in Rome, and that this is a deification of the Nile, this statue is truly the epitome of the intersection between Roman Egyptomania and the Nile being associated with divinity.

Lainey:  This association we see of the Nile with divinity in the Roman period comes from similar ideas found during the Hellenistic, Greek, and Egyptian periods of Egyptopmania which preceded it – and it did not stop here. 

Maria:  In the post Greco-Roman period, including the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and modern-era, we consistently discovered similar ties between the river and godly intervention as more and more people explored the allure of Egypt. ***Renaissance music***

Section 4: Renaissance/Enlightenment/Post-Greco-Roman Era: (11:00-20:30)

Lainey:  Let’s jump forward in time once again. As Helen mentioned earlier, finding the source of the Nile piqued the interest of many scholars. Well, in the nineteenth century, the sources of the Nile were actually discovered. 

Maria: Yes, exactly! Two sections of the Nile were identified as sources by a British explorer named John Hanning Speke in 1863; these were called the Blue Nile and the White Nile. 

Helen: And this discovery of the Nile took away a bit of the mystery surrounding it. But, it did open the door for even more divine claims to be made in relation to the river. The sources of the Nile were described as religious, filled with spirits sent from heavenly gods during the 19th century, by British explorers. 

Maria: One specific source of the Blue Nile, Gish Abay, was a source of “holy water,” a divine river from heaven in Egypt and Ethiopia. Christians would actually pray to the flowing river and the spirits residing in that river. 

Lainey: And along with Christianity, Islamic scriptures also tie religion into the Nile sources. Egyptian Muslims saw the Nile as a gift from the god, Allah, and believed that Allah could cause the Nile sources to flow. 

Helen: There was actually some tension between Christians and Muslims over what religion was most dominant over the Nile, its sources, and flowing patterns. Thus, Christians and Muslims alike were drawn to the Nile to defend the upholdings of their respective divine gods in terms of placement with the Nile.

Maria: In other words, these examples prove our claim that the divinity of the Nile attracted people to the Nile. We see here both European Christians and Egyptian Muslims using godly association to explain the Nile’s patterns. 

Helen: In addition, during this modern period, travel along the Nile increased. Many members of European society traveled along the Nile in order to spread the word of Christianity. 

Lainey: Even before the source of the Nile was discovered, tourism along the Nile was huge around 1685 and onward. A common trip on the Nile river began in Alexandria and went through different Egyptian cities including Memphis, Thebes, through Cairo, and finally to Nubia.

Maria: This conversation brings us to our special collections object from the John Hay Library at Brown University, Cook’s Travel Handbook. Brown University’s Karen Bouchard, the Archaeology and the Ancient World specialist librarian, contextualized Cook’s Travel Book for us. 

Helen: We first asked her: why are primary sources, like Cook’s traveling handbook, so crucial in research projects? What insights can they provide us that secondary sources cannot? Here’s what she had to say:

Karen Bouchard: “Well, they give you the original, right, you’re getting it right from the horse’s mouth. If you go to a secondary source, those are still very valuable because you’re getting insight from scholars who are looking at those primary sources, but you’re not getting the actual first-hand knowledge yourself. You may learn something different from looking at the primary source that you may not have picked up by reading the secondary sources, and so seeing what the actual person in the nineteenth century wrote about Egypt tells you a lot more than just looking at it through somebody else’s eyes.”

Helen: To follow up, we asked Karen about her personal comments on Cook’s Handbook. Given that it was published in the late 19th century, what sort of influence does the era have on the source, Karen?

Karen Bouchard: “Well Thomas Cook, they did tours for people so that’s how they got started. They ran tours for, kind of, middle class people. So it was kind of the first time in the Victorian era that people who weren’t rich could go on these tours and guided tours, so that’s how it started in England. They put out these handbooks kind of as publicity for their tours, but you could buy a handbook and take it with you if you went on your own as well so that you wouldn’t miss any of the sites when you went to Egypt.”

Lainey: So as Karen referenced, Thomas Cook was an Englishman who traveled around the world, recorded important tourist information, and published his accounts for others to follow if they were to explore any of the regions he had encountered. 

Helen: We were actually able to examine this object hands-on at the John Hay Library, and it’s evident that this book, from its small size and organized chapters of accounts, was meant to be distributed to the public. Cook published this handbook for Egypt in 1897. 

Maria: While Cook mostly explains the Egyptian monuments, canals, and ports, he also discusses biblical associations with the Nile. Cook writes about how the Nile was mentioned in Biblical Scripture and even cites specific bible chapters from Amos and Jeremiah. In these scriptures, the annual inundation of Egypt is alluded to, and Cook explains the prophecy of Isaiah in which God dries and smites the Nile in response to sin. 

Lainey: This goes to show the use of religion, in this case Christianity, to explain Nile flooding as the surging and subsiding of the Nile was viewed as a result of mourning and sin. Now as I mentioned before this book was widely distributed to public populations. So it is interesting to note that Cook included biblical Nile accounts because they are unrelated to travel, which is the purpose of this book. By doing this every person who read Cook’s travel accounts, who were just reading for travel purposes, were exposed to Nile-Christian relationships. 

Maria: A cycle was created from this in which biblical associations with the Nile were known and spread through travel accounts, and then more people were inspired to travel in order to experience said biblical associations.

Helen: Further than just discussion of Christian associations, Cook’s Travel Handbook also discussed actual travel along the Nile in terms of Christianity and Coptic Christianity. Cook explains his travels through Coptic Convents, villages of priests, Christian tombs, and Christian temples found along the Nile. 

Lainey:  Yes, for instance, Cook directly states:“the innumerable tombs, of which the Stabl Autar is the principal, are interesting from their Egyptian remains and also from their Christian associations, as being tenanted by monks and hermits.” Again, Cook draws specific attention to Christianity along the Nile for an audience that is European and Christian, increasing ties and incentive for European travel to Egypt. 

Helen: Thus, European societies held firm connections between their faith and the Nile from biblical citations and exploratory accounts, increasing attention to the Nile, and causing travel up and down the Nile. 

Maria: Let’s give a quick shout out to (Karen Bouchard) for helping us examine Cook’s Travel Handbook in the John Hay Library! ***applause*** Thank you so much for your help. 

Lainey: As we just discussed, in this age of European exploration, literature was a main source of distributing primary information regarding the Nile River. In travel accounts, the ways in which Egypt was written about contributed to the spread of Christian association with the Nile. Consequently, European interest in the Nile grew in conjunction with these Christian associations so that people could understand why and how the river flowed in their own beliefs.

Maria: Let’s consider some more sources. In an 1854 letter from the traveler Florence Nightingale, Nightingale illustrates that he felt a desire to experience the mysterious, spiritual Nile firsthand, and hence traveled to Egypt along the Nile. He also explains experiencing a supernatural and spiritual feeling while traveling along the river. 

Lainey: The portrayal of the Nile as “spiritual” reproduces the idea of the “divine Nile.” These accounts contributed to an increase in Egyptian exploration along the Nile to experience this broad sense of spirituality, which was applied to religions. Hence the draw of travelers to the Nile, to understand the Nile, was built upon the relationships between the Nile and religion. 

Helen: Let’s hone back in again on Christianity because after the fifteenth century European conquest in Egypt and the spread of European Christianity with the Nile was really huge. In the Renaissance period from 1450 to 1650, the Nile was endowed with especially divine connotations.

Maria: In Renaissance literature from European travelers, the Nile was described as “Earthly paradise” and “divine creation.” Travelers were fascinated and impressed by the Nile, and they actually related it to an expression of Christian divinity. 

Helen: To add onto that, many European scholars at the time, including Franciscan friar Suriano and Johann Michael Heberer directly associated the Nile with what they called “earthly paradise.” These scholars then wrote about their fascinations, spreading these wondrous associations with the public back in Renaissance Europe. 

Maria: Along with general wonder, scholars at this time were intrigued by the floods of the Nile. When explaining the Nile inundation, scholar and traveler Jean de Joinville stated “Nobody knows how these inundations occur, unless it be by God’s will.” 

Lainey: Thus, during this time, Christianity was used as an explanation for the patterns of the Nile in terms of flooding, proving our claim that religious allure drew people in to explore Egypt and perpetuate religious Nile concepts into their societies in order to understand the river. 

Segment 5: Counter (20:30- 23:21)

Lainey: So, as we’ve discussed, the associations of the Nile to religious affiliations emphasizes the Nile’s relationships with divinity, life, and spirituality. However, there are multiple sides to this discussion, and we’ve found that in addition to the “holy” Nile perceptions which attracted travelers, the Nile also had some associations with death. ***gasp*** 

Maria: During the Napoleonic Era in the eighteenth century, death was highly associated with the Nile due to the fact that the French Conquest of Egypt took place during maritime warfare. There were actually battles on the Nile during this time, and because of this many soldiers as well as Egyptian, French, and British citizens drowned in the Nile during wartime. 

Helen: The traveler and scholar Vivant Devon actually wrote about his experience in Egypt during the time of the French Conquest and exemplified the deaths in the Nile during combat in attempts at battle through his writings.

Lainey: This alternate portrayal of the Nile is completely different from aspects of our claim that Nile intrigue and travel increased on the backbone of religious purposes. These darker Nile accounts don’t discredit what we’ve proven regarding the perpetuation of godly associations with the Nile for different societies, rather this demonstrates a different side of the coin representing a draw to the Nile. 

Maria: To add on, while the Nile has been mostly portrayed as a blessing so far, this body of water has also been represented as frightening and destructive. Although the flooding provided the water needed to fertilize the Egyptian soil, when the river inundated beyond the expected, it washed away and destroyed everything in its wake. 

Helen: To understand this flip side of the coin, we can use John Robert Huddlestun comparative study of the River Nile in Ancient Egypt and The Hebrew Bible. In religious books, the Nile was described as a violent sea with a deadly inundation cycle in this particular context. In Bible chapters of Amos, the cycle of flooding and sinking was referred to as a destructive pattern of building and torring, connecting it to effects of an Earthquake. 

Lainey: In Isaiah 19:5-10, the river is shown to be a destroyer of temples and explicitly states that everything that was previously sown by the Nile would eventually disappear. Exodus shares how the River turned into blood and thus portraying it as part of the plague against Egypt (Exod 7:14-25). 

Helen: We bring this information to light because religion is a multifaceted concept. Most of what we have found highlights positive perspectives on the Nile and the ways in which divinity drew people in. But at the same time, more negative, dangerous aspects of divinity existed and created a sense of caution towards the Nile throughout time. And the caution toward the Nile was merited given just how powerful the river was. Still, this caution caused an increase in attention to the Nile, supporting our notion that generally speaking, whether positive or negative,  religion proliferated the understanding of the Nile in multiple societies. ***trumpets***

Segment 6: Conclusion (23:24 – 24:49)

Maria: So, what’s the point of what we’re getting at? Why exactly do we care about the divine nature of the Nile? 

Helen: As we discussed in the very beginning of this podcast, the Nile was the very lifeblood of Egypt. To pay respect to and try and explain the patterns of the Nile, the Egyptians turned to divinity. 

Lainey: But what is really interesting and important about the divine association with the Nile was how it successfully made its way into other powerful dynasties outside of Egypt. 

Maria: Yes, exactly, it was a way in which other intellectuals and historians from foreign empires paid a mutual respect to the empire which the Egyptians built around the miraculous patterns of the Nile. 

Lainey: We’ve had so much fun in the process of making this podcast and we hope that you had fun over the last 30 minutes with us. 

Helen: Thank you so much to everyone who has helped make this episode possible: special shoutout to our wonderful professor Dr. Robyn Price for her work in this seminar, all of the librarians at Brown University who have helped us put this episode together including Laura Stokes, Izzy Ulasz, and Karen Bouchard, and then lastly Director of Museum Academic Programming at RISD Art Museum, Alexandra Poterack.

Lainey: This has been Lainey,

Helen: Helen,

Maria:  And Maria, and thank you for listening to Now As Then. ***outro music*** 

Exhibits

Exhibit A:

Relief of Hapi from the Great Temple at Abu Simbel. (c.1279-1213 BCE). From the colossal statues of Ramesses II, Abu Simbel, Egypt. Link.

Exhibit B:

Model of a River Boat. (c.2046-1794 BCE). Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States. Link.

Exhibit C:

Dore, Gustave. “The Child Moses on the Nile.” Exodus 2:1-4, illustration from Dore’s ‘The Holy Bible’, engraved by H.Pisan. 1866. The Bridgeman Art Library. https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6MzI0NTgxMA== 

Exhibit D:

Fragment with Personifications of Victory and the Nile. (6th Century). Byzantine. Object number: 1971.49.1.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York. Link.

Exhibit E

Swetnam-Burland, Molly. Egypt Embodied: The Vatican Nile. American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 113. The University of Chicago Press, 2009, pp. 439-457, Link . 

Works Cited

Blanford Edward, Amelia Ann. “A Thousand Miles up the Nile.” London, George Routledge and Sons, 1889, Gale Primary Sources, Link. 

Denon, Vivant. Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, during the campaigns of General Bonaparte. 1802. F. Cundee, for B. Crosby and Co. (London), Volume 1, Gale Primary Sources, Link. 

Diodorus. Library of History: Vol 1 and Vol 17. Loeb Classical Library Ebook, (Link). 

Erlikh, Ḥagai and Israel Gershoni. The Nile: Histories, Cultures, and Myths. 2000. Boulder, Lynne Rienner Publishers, eBook, EbscoHost, Link. 

Firew, Gedef Abawa and Terje Oestigaard. The Source of the Blue Nile: Water Rituals and Traditions in the Lake Tana Region. 2014. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, eBook, Google Books, Link. 

Fritze, Ronald H.. Egyptomania : A History of Fascination, Obsession and Fantasy. Reaktion Books, 2016, pp. 71-107. ProQuest Ebook, Link. 

Hard, Robin. The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Eighth Edition. Taylor and Francis Group, 2020, Ebook, Link. 

Herodotus. The Persian Wars: Book 2 (An Account of Egypt). Translated by George Rawlinson. Introduction by Francis R. B. Godolphin. New York: Modern Library, 1947. Link.

John Robert Huddlestun. Who is this that Rises like the Nile? A Comparative Study of the River Nile in Ancient Egypt and the Hebrew Bible. University of Michigan ProQuest (1996). Dissertations Publishing. Link. 

Lurker, Manfred. The Routledge Dictionary of Gods, Goddesses, Devils, and Demons. Taylor and Francis Group, 1984, ProQuest Ebook, Link.  

Minutoli, Wolfradine. Women travelers on the Nile. 1827. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, Gale Primary Sources, Link. 

Moorehead, Alan. The White Nile. 1960. Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1960. 

Nightingale, Florence. Letters From Egypt. 1854. Printed by A. & G. A. Spottiswoode (London), Gale Primary Sources, Link. 

Oestigaard, Terje. The Religious Nile : Water, Ritual and Society since Ancient Egypt, I. B. Tauris & Company, ProQuest EBook, 2018, Link. 

Oliver J. Thatcher. Vol. I: The Ancient World. Milwaukee University Research Extension Co., 1907, pp. 79-83, Link.  

Peck, W. (2013). Transportation. In The Material World of Ancient Egypt (pp. 162-170). 

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139034296.014. Link. 

Plutarch. Moralia: Parallels between Greek and Roman Stories, On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander the Great, and Isis and Osiris. Loeb Classical Library Ebook, Link. 

Seneca the Younger. Natural Questions. Loeb Classical Library Ebook, Link. 

Swetnam-Burland, Molly. Egypt Embodied: The Vatican Nile. American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 113. The University of Chicago Press, 2009, pp. 439-457, Link . 

Thomas Cook (firm). Cook’s Tourists’ Handbook for Egypt, the Nile, and the Desert. T. Cook & Son, 1897.

Vasunia, Phiroze. The Gift of the Nile : Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, Ebook, Link.

Wilkinson, Richard, H. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson, 2017. 

Bell, B. (1971). The Dark Ages in Ancient History. I. The First Dark Age in Egypt. American Journal of Archaeology, 75(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.2307/503678

Lichtheim, M. (Ed.). (2019). Two Pseudepigrapha. In Ancient Egyptian Literature (1st ed., pp. 691–705). University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvqc6j1s.41   Lichtheim, M. (Ed.). (2019). Songs and Hymns. In Ancient Egyptian Literature (1st ed., pp. 240–259). University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvqc6j1s.19