The Egyptians benefited from the crops and animals that were domesticated during the Neolithic period and from technologies such as cuneiform writing, the wheel, and large-scale irrigation that were first developed in Mesopotamia. As in Mesopotamia, in Egypt the presence of a large river and the technology of irrigation made it possible for farmers to produce large amounts of food. The food supply was large enough to feed a large population of farmers and beyond that, through a surplus, to support non-farming specialists, including a ruling class. This surplus enabled the Egyptians to build one of the world’s first civilizations. Herodotus, a famous Greek historian, described Egypt as “the gift of the Nile,” and after studying ancient Egypt, students should understand the way that the geography and the resources of the world’s largest river drove the development of this amazing civilization. They should also come to understand how, as technology and travel improved, the civilization eventually fell into decline. The Egyptians relied on the Nile as their source of life. The rich soil left behind after the river flooded each year allowed the Egyptians to grow crops and sustain their existence along the riverbanks. The regular cycle of the Nile fostered a feeling of cyclical stability among the Egyptian people. The river and landscape also initially inhibited them from traveling freely. As a result, they valued structure and regularity and avoided new ideas and change. 

Their reliance on the geography led to the development of their religious beliefs. The Egyptians developed stories to explain natural events, such as the rising of the sun and the flooding of the Nile. They were in awe of the creatures of the river valley and believed that immortal spirits inhabited the bodies of these creatures and saw the sun as the most important deity, Ra. The pharaoh’s (or god-king’s) main duty was to appeal to the gods responsible for different natural events, such as the flood, on which the people depended. 

The cycle of the river symbolized life, death and rebirth, and the Egyptians believed that, like the sun and the crops, they too could return to life after death. As a result, the Egyptians developed rituals, traditions and technologies that supported their belief in life after death. This drove their interests in engineering and mathematics (to build tombs, monuments and pyramids), learning about the human body (to preserve the body through mummification), and language (to record the stories of the gods and their own journeys into the afterlife with hieroglyphics).