Ancient Egypt Environment

In todays world, we are well aware of the environments we live in and how they function. We can predict most storms, floods, and droughts, to a certain degree. We have taken precautions to be able to combat the unknown and have developed a society that can survive despite these variables. In the days of early civilizations, this was not the case. People of this time lived at the will of their environment and because of this, their civilizations developed around the specific climates and geographies of different regions. The environment affected every aspect of life for ancient civilizations as well as affected their actual development. It influenced religion, migrations, military tactics, and overall morale and strength of the people and

The geography of Egypt was crucial in the development of their society. Egyptians worshipped the Nile because of the ideal vegetation and easy transportation it made possible. Life in Egypt was luxurious compared to most early cities, and the people were generally happy. Egyptians were greatly aware of their dependency on their environment and they gave all the credit of their success and their comfortable lifestyle to this river and the gods that made it possible. An obvious example of this comes from the text “Hymn to the Nile”, where in the first line it says “Hail to thee, O Nile! Who manifests thyself over this land, and comes to give life to Egypt!”(Hymn to the nile, line 1). They believed that the gods were on their side. Ancient Egyptians also considered themselves to be better than other civilizations or, “The chosen ones”, because of their land. This mindset is illustrated in the Story of Sinuhe. In then end Sinuhe wishes to leave the “land of barbarians”, and return back to Egypt to die even though he has had a great life in Syria (Story of Sinuhe, line 158). He wishes to die respectfully in his home country because if he did not than he would not be received into the afterlife. Even after all of his years living outside of Egypt, he still thought of Egypt as superior to any other

Although these rivers brought much life and a surplus of food to the civilization, the rivers were unpredictable. Every so often they would violently and abruptly flood, destroying everything in their paths. Sumerians, having no other way to explain this, decided that this flooding was punishment from their gods for being too noisy. We can see this in the Story of the Flood when it says “The uproar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel." So the gods agreed to exterminate mankind.” (Epic of Gilgamesh). This idea that the gods were there to punish humans gave Sumerians a much bleaker view on life and on their religion. They lived at the will of the gods and believed that their gods were out to get them. We can see this view when Hammurabi states “If a man has given his field to a tenant for crop-rent, and receive the crop-rent of his field, and later Adad (i.e.,the storm god) inundate the field and carry away the produce, the loss falls on the tenant” (Code of Hammurabi #45). The Sumerians believed that these catastrophic floods were conscious decisions made by their gods to discipline