{"id":14725,"date":"2024-02-07T03:15:57","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T02:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aboutriver.com\/?p=14725"},"modified":"2024-02-07T03:15:57","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T02:15:57","slug":"when-was-the-nile-river-built","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aboutriver.com\/when-was-the-nile-river-built\/","title":{"rendered":"When Was The Nile River Built"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When Was the Nile River Built?<\/h2>\n

The Nile River has served as one of the world’s most prominent and important waterways for thousands of years. Human life, commerce, and politics have been built on its banks since ancient times. From its headwaters in the tropical highlands of East Africa to its Mediterranean delta, it is the longest river in the world, running through 11 countries and over 6,500 kilometers in length.<\/p>\n

Egyptians have been living off the bounty of the Nile for centuries, and it is believed to be the source of the world’s oldest cities. The river’s famous annual flooding began roughly 5,000 to 6,000 years ago and provided the foundation for the country’s ancient agricultural system. Although the Egyptians did not actually build the Nile, they left an indelible mark on it with their extensive infrastructure and engineering feats.<\/p>\n

The river’s earliest known inhabitants, the Nubians, date back some 5,000 years. As these people settled along the banks, so did heavy farming, fishing, and animal husbandry. They constructed the first known dams and irrigation canals, and by the sixth century B.C. the Nile had become a critical factor in the formation of the Egyptian kingdom. The pharaohs of that time strove to control the flows by imposing a wide variety of taxes, and by building canals and other large-scale engineering works.<\/p>\n

The Aswan Low Dam was the first major effort to rein in the Nile, built on the orders of the Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1960s. Though much smaller than its successor, the Aswan High Dam, it was a revolutionary engineering feat that ended the periodic flooding the area had suffered for centuries.<\/p>\n