On
an area, as big as the Holland, most of the country's 60 million inhabitants cling
to the artery 
that
made one of the world's oldest cultures possible: the life giving Nile River. The
people who don't live along the river live at the coast. The Nile Valley is in fact
one long oasis in a deadly desert. Everything else in Egypt is desert and drought.
The desert obtains 96 percent of the country's area.The
Greek traveller Herodotus said 2000 years ago: "Egypt
is
a gift from the Nile." For thousands of years people have lived by the river.
The farming, the fishing and the water supply were as important in the days of the
Pharaohs as today. There is no other place that I know of where time has chosen to
halt in the same way as along the Nile.The
dense and luxuriant vegetation of the Nile Valley is completely tied to the river.
The arable earth varies in distance from a few meters to a couple of km from the
water. Beyond this the barren desert begins. The contrast between the fertile land
of the river valley and the surrounding desert is almost painful.
First published: Monday 20th May, 1996.
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