Agriculture developed in Egypt about 5000 BC, perhaps under the influence of Mesopotamia and Syria. Subsequently, the need to take maximum advantage of the flood for land fertilization and irrigation led naturally to the organization of human resources for this purpose. Flood risk on the Nile is less than on the Euphrates and Yellow Rivers. The Nile has a relatively regular annual flood cycle, but still has sufficient variability, from one year to the next, to cause plenty or famine. The importance of the use of the flood in Egypt appears in numerous texts. In the Book of the Dead, in the heart of a long litany in which a person, embarking on a final voyage, proclaims his (or her) purity, are the following verses:
“I have not stopped water when it should flow. I have not made a cutting in a canal of running water.”[19] [20] [21]
or again, from the Book of the Dead:
“O Osiris I am your son Horus and I come to work your fields for you.
“O Osiris I am your son Horus and I come to irrigate your land”
“O Osiris I am your son Horus and I come to work the land according to your intention”
20
“O Osiris I am your son Horus and I come to dig canals for you”
One can see in this hymn to the Nile, dating from about 1365 BC, a rather moving parallel between the blessings of the flood in Egypt and the benefits of the rain in other lands:
“Thou createst the Nile in the nether world below, and thou bringest it at thy will to provide life to the men of Egypt, the men thou created for thyself. […] Thou also giveth life to the most distant foreign lands, for thou givest them the Nile descending from the heavens (i. e. rain). […] The Nile in the heavens is for the foreigners, and for all animals of foreign lands who walk on their feet. The Nile that comes from the world below belongs to the beloved Land.”^1
