In the Middle Ages, they were known as Beja, and convoyed pilgrims from the Nile valley to Aidhab, the port of embarkation for Jeddah.

From time immemorial, they have acted as guides to caravans through the Nubian desert and up the Nile valley as far as Sennar.

The distinctive black color of Anubis " did not have to do with the jackal se but with the color of rotting flesh and with the black soil of the Nile valley, symbolizing rebirth.

The city is along the Nile River, immediately south of the point where the river leaves its desert-bound valley and branches into the low-lying Nile Delta region.

Since construction of the Aswan Dam, agriculture in the Nile valley depends on irrigation.

North of Isna ( 160 km north of Aswan ), the plateau on both sides of the valley rises to as much as 550 m above sea level ; at Qina ( some 90 km north of Isna ) the 300-m limestone cliffs force the Nile to change course towards the southwest for about 60 km before it turns northwest for about 160 km to Asyut.

Soon after, the Nile River valley of ancient Egypt was unified under the Pharaohs in the 4th millennium BC, and civilization quickly spread through the Fertile Crescent to the east coast of the sea and throughout the Levant, which happens to make the Mediterranean countries of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel part of the cradle of civilization.

Of the three usual routes to Mecca, Ibn Battuta chose the least-travelled, which involved a journey up the Nile valley, then east to the Red Sea port of Aydhab, Upon approaching the town however, a local rebellion forced him to turn back.

The region was one of the four riverine civilizations where writing was invented ( it being the first ), along with the Nile valley in Egypt, the Indus Valley in the Indian subcontinent, and Yellow River valley in China ( although writing is also known to have arisen independently in Mesoamerica ).

The Tigris and Euphrates River valleys form the northeastern portion of the Fertile Crescent, which also included the Jordan River valley and that of the Nile.

Graeme Barker states " The first indisputable evidence for domestic plants and animals in the Nile valley is not until the early fifth millennium bc in northern Egypt and a thousand years later further south, in both cases as part of strategies that still relied heavily on fishing, hunting, and the gathering of wild plants " and suggests that these subsistence changes were not due to farmers migrating from the Near East but was an indigenous development, with cereals either indigenous or obtained through exchange.

Others suggest the technology moved west from the Nile Valley, although the Iron Age in the Niger River valley and the forest region appears to predate the introduction of metallurgy in the upper savanna by more than 800 years.

* Nile River valley and delta, Egypt, is claimed as the world's biggest oasis by the 2007 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records with a stated area of 22, 000 square kilometres.

Because of his death and resurrection, Osiris was associated with the flooding and retreating of the Nile and thus with the crops along the Nile valley.

In the words of J. Desmond Clark, " It was early realized that the threefold division of culture into Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages adopted in the nineteenth century for Europe had no validity in Africa outside the Nile valley.

Although different native acacias were used, as was the wood from the local sycamore and tamarisk trees, deforestation in the Nile valley resulted in the need for the importation of wood, notably cedar, but also Aleppo pine, boxwood and oak, starting from the Second Dynasty.

It ended the Neolithic Subpluvial and likely initiated the most recent desiccation of the Sahara desert, triggering migration to river valleys, such as from central North Africa to the Nile valley.

* Agriculture appears in the valley of the Nile.

A few centuries ago it was found in North Africa along the Nile valley up to Khartum and north of the Sahara.

Between the valley of the Upper Nile and Ethiopia's border with Eritrea is a region of elevated plateaus from which rise the various tablelands and mountains that constitute the Ethiopian Highlands.

Thus, the Maasai, according to their own oral history, migrated south from the lower Nile valley north of Lake Turkana in about the 15th century, arriving in a long trunk of land stretching from what is now northern Kenya to what is now central Tanzania during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Although the Cairo metropolis extends away from the Nile in all directions, the city of Cairo resides only on the east bank of the river and two islands within it on a total area of.

* Eastern Desert ( extends from the Nile Valley all the way to the Red Sea coast )

As a result of the dam's construction, the Nile actually begins its flow into Egypt as Lake Nasser, which extends southwards from the dam for 320 km to the border and for an additional 158 km within Sudan.

Upper Egypt ( Sa ' id Misr ) is the strip of land, on both sides of the Nile valley, that extends between Nubia, and downriver ( northwards ) to Lower Egypt.

Their territory which occupies both banks of the Somerset or Victoria Nile between Foweira and Magungo, extends eastwards beyond Unyoro proper to the valley of the Chol, one of the chief upper branches of the Sobat.

The rail line up the Nile was originally begun in 1897 to support this military buildup ; it extends, via Atbara, to El Obeid and beyond into southern and western Sudan.

The Nile crocodile's current range of distribution extends from the Senegal River, Lake Chad, Wadai and the Sudan to the Cunene and the Okavango Delta.

" Historian and novelist C. S. Forester, writing in 1929, compared the Nile to the great naval actions in history and concluded that " it still only stands rivalled by Tsu-Shima as an example of the annihilation of one fleet by another of approximately equal material force ".

The Nile Delta covers approximately 22, 000 km < sup > 2 </ sup > ( roughly equivalent in area to that of Massachusetts ).

In 1998 there was an estimated 16. 9 million hectares ( 41. 8 million acres ) of arable land and approximately 1. 9 million hectares ( 4. 7 million acres ) set aside for irrigation, primarily in the north of the country along the banks of the Nile and other rivers.

It is the largest city of the Gharbia Governorate and the second largest in the Nile Delta, with a population of approximately 442, 000 inhabitants ( 2001 statistics ).

In the wider sense, " White Nile " refers to the approximately of rivers draining from Lake Victoria into the White Nile proper.

Meroë ( also spelled Meroe ) ( Meroitic: Medewi or Bedewi ; Arabic: and Meruwi, Ancient Greek: Μερόη, Meròe ) is an ancient city on the east bank of the Nile about 6 km north-east of the Kabushiya station near Shendi, Sudan, approximately 200 km north-east of Khartoum.

Dahshur ( Arabic دهشور Dahšūr, in English often called Dashur ), is a royal necropolis located in the desert on the west bank of the Nile approximately 40 kilometres south of Cairo.

An enormous fragment of entablature, weighing approximately 100 tons and 34 m < sup > 3 </ sup > in volume ( the largest in Rome ), belongs to the original temple, as do the statues of the Nile and the Tiber, moved by Michelangelo to the Capitoline Hill in front of the Senate building.

The most extensive Nubian pyramid site is at Meroë, which is located between the fifth and sixth cataracts of the Nile, approximately one hundred kilometres north of Khartoum.

Nobiin is currently spoken along the banks of the Nile river in southern Egypt and northern Sudan by approximately 495, 000 Nubians.

The Nubian Desert (, ) is in the eastern region of the Sahara Desert, spanning approximately 400, 000 km² of northeastern Sudan between the Nile and the Red Sea.

Diaries of European missionaries in the region, indicate that in the market of Cairo ( Egypt ), the number of slaves to be sold to Europe from the White Nile area increased from 6, 000 between 1858 and 1862, to approximately 12, 000-15, 000 per annum.

Dar al-Manasir is covering a distance of approximately 130 km along the Nile with most villages lined up along the left river bank called " western side " (…).