The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt: A 3,000-Year Epic

When the medieval Arab scholar Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi visited the pyramids of Giza around the year 1200 AD, the Great Pyramid had already stood for more than 3,700 years—the tallest man-made structure on Earth, a monument to a civilization that had long since vanished. "The construction of the pyramids was carried out according to a methodology remarkable in respect both to design and to precision of execution," he wrote. "This is what has enabled the pyramids to endure time's passing eras. Or rather, it has meant that time itself has had to endure the era of the pyramids."

The River That Made a Civilization

Egypt's entire existence depended on the Nile, the greatest watercourse of the Afro-Eurasian landmass, running 6,800 kilometers from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean. The country receives virtually no rainfall; every blade of grass, every animal, every person owed their life to the river's annual flood. Each year, monsoon rains in the Ethiopian highlands would swell the Nile around mid-August, and when the waters receded in autumn, they left behind rich black mud that made farming possible. The Egyptian year was divided into three seasons: the flood season, the growing season, and the harvest season. If the river flooded too little or too much, the results could be devastating.