The Nile

This posting is sent from the River Nile and I am overlooking one of it's branches in Cairo. We now know that one of the many tributaries which lead the Nile into the Mediterranean was probably where Moses escaped from the Pharoes when strong winds of around 65 miles per hour could have swept back the 6 foot deep waters for about 3 miles and allowed Moses to escape. The location is thought to be 65 miles north of Suez.

The Nile is over 6600 kilometres long and is the source of all the agriculture in most of Egypt. It powers the main hydro electric installation at Aswan providing much of Egypt's electricity. It does the same for Uganda at the hydro plant in Jinja which is still considered to be the source of the Nile. Recent thinking puts the source in Rwanda and actress Joanna Lumley went there for a BBC documentary. But surely any river entering Lake Victoria on it's southern banks could be called the source?

The Aswan Dams are really worth reading about and have successfully stopped the regular flooding of the Nile, created Lake Nasser which is now the largest source of fresh fish for Egypt but like many great projects it has brought some problems with silting up, water loss through evaporation and some new diseases to Egypt

Without the Nile we would not have had the Pyramids

Or the great Sphinx at Giza. How did she lose her nose? There are two theories. Wind and rain over a period of 6000 years is one. The other is the a religious zealot broke the nose because he was angry that local farmers were worshipping the Sphinx as a god and praying for rain. A bit like the Taliban blowing up Buddhist statues because they objected to their religion