The ancient Greeks saw Egypt as a gift of the Nile. It starts in south (Upper) Egypt and ends at the country's northern border with the Mediterranean Sea (Lower Egypt). The river comes from the meeting of three rivers from Sudan, Uganda and Ethiopia. Big shifts in climate led to the change from the nomadic way of life to one of settled farming communities. The earliest inhabitants of this region were Stone-Age hunter-gatherers who found the area rich in wildlife. People had always built their homes in towns and cities along the banks of the Nile. Yearly flooding of the Nile nourished the dry surrounding farms. The Nile provided a communication and trade route across a huge and harsh land.
The Nile River was very important to Egyptian civilisation. The ancient Egyptian civilisation grew for thousands of years intact because the Nile River Valley and Mediterranean and Red Sea border kept foreigners and their ideas away.
