Ancient Civilisations - The River Nile

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

Snaking across 4,000 miles and 11 African countries, the River Nile is perhaps the most famous river on planet earth. The 80 billion gallons of water that flow through its banks each day give life to countless animals and ecosystems - from crocodiles and hippos, to rare species of fish, plants, and people. But who has tried to harness the power of this river, and why have so many failed? What cultures have grown from the Nile’s waters? And why are emperors, prophets, writers, Kings and Queens, drawn to its famous banks? This is a Short History Of the River Nile. Written by Paul Kerensa. With thanks to Robert Twigger, author of Red Nile: A Biography of the World’s Greatest River. For ad-free listening, exclusive content, and early access to new episodes across the Noiser network, join ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Noiser+⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠noiser.com/subscriptions⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's the 3rd of August 8.58. British Army officer John Hannings Speak is pushing through a humid forest in what is now Tanzania, in Central Africa. It has been a hard, weeks-long hike through Arab trading posts and unfriendly territory. And it's not getting any easier. The incline makes each step tougher than the last, as he and his men march deep into the continent's high ground. Speak both looks and feels older than his 31.

years. Beneath his thick blonde beard and ragged clothing is a man barely surviving. He's exhausted, half-death from stabbing a beetle in his ear canal, and even his eyesight is faltering, a side effect of malaria, and yet he persists years into his overall mission. With local porters by his side, speak, brushes aside greenery, hoping with every step for a glimpse of the promised blue waters he's searching for. Emerging from the jungle into a plantation flattened by elephants, he pauses for a few moments. His ribs still ache from the 11 spears he received in Somaliland, in a camp attack that gave his fellow explorer Richard Francis Burton a cheek-to-cheek skewering. Burton is now out of action, 200 miles to the south, struck down with syphilis, after much local promiscuity. And deep down, speak is

glad to be the last man standing, because if his guides are correct, the waters should be right over the next hill. This moment belongs to him. After just a few minutes more walking, it comes into view, the blue blur of a vast ocean-like lake stretching right to the horizon as far as his poor eyes can see. And he instantly knows it. This is the source of the White Nile, pursued by Alexander the great Julius Caesar and Napoleon. but now found by John Haneing Speak alone. A hippopotamus bathes in the distance. A zebra wades into the shallows.

Speak leads his porters down the slope to the water's edge and tells them to enter the lake too, to shave their heads and soak, baptize even, in these holiest of waters. But the men don't speak English, and they loathe his arrogance, so they ignore him. But the only people whose respect he really cares, about, however, are those back in London. He needs to act fast. Just as his guide, Siddy

Mubarak Bombay orders men to explore the lake, Speak stops him and sends them instead to return south to tell Burton the old fool of their find. Bombay mumbles his descent, warning Speak not to be hasty. If this is the Nile's source, they must find the river leading out of it. But Speak has already made his decision. He didn't come all this way, charging ahead of his partner just to doodle once his great discovery was made. The way he sees it, this is the greatest river on earth, and his ticket into the history books. The longest river in Africa, and maybe the world, the Nile snakes across 4,000 miles through 11 African countries. Discharging 80 billion gallons of water daily, It supports animals from crocodiles to rhinos to hippos,

200 species of fish and a quarter of a billion people. In its development of ancient Egypt, this waterway was perhaps the birthplace of civilization itself. But how have humans tried to harness this river? And why have so many failed so bloodily? What of the religions and cultures that have grown from the Nile's waters? And how has it drawn empress, prophets, explorers and engineers to its banks, and to what end?

I'm John Hopkins, from Noiser, this is the River Nile. Tens of millions of years ago, the Earth's tectonic plates shift. Mountains are forced up, forming today's Ethiopian highlands in East Africa. In the north, the ground is pulled down. When the rains come, this vast channel fills, sending each drop of water on a three-month-long journey from mountain to sea. Unusually for a river, the Nile moves from south to north. But then again, the Nile is no ordinary river.

In its first high section, it is a tale of two rivers. The White Nile and the Blue Nile meet at what today is Khartoum, in the Northeast African nation of Sudan. The southern strand, the longer White Nile, gains its name from the pale clay sediment it brings from the Great Lakes. in the heart of Africa. This branch is a slow, steady river, but to the east, its wilder sibling, the blue Nile is narrower, faster, and carries 85% of the Nile's water

from Ethiopia's Lake Tana. Robert Twigger is author of 15 history in travel books, including Red Nile, the biography of the world's greatest river. The Nile is so important to our cultural history, but also, of course, it's physically extremely important to Africa. I mean, it drains about a quarter of Africa,

ends up eventually going down the Nile. So that's an incredible idea when you think of an entire continent. The Nile is crucial to the whole of its basin, but as the Greek scholar Herodotus, known as the father of history, puts it, Egypt is the gift of the Nile. Without the river, there is no ancient Egypt.

Tribes begin to settle around the Nile Delta many millennia BC and start to explore its action. agricultural opportunities. With a water supply to irrigate the land, hunter-gathering societies can develop a farming culture. It is even fertile enough here to produce a food surplus. And the climate is kind to North Africa too. At this point, the Sahara is green, lush, with lakes and woodlands, a far cry from the desert we know today. But its people are drawn to the river. Settlements become capitals that prosper on the river banks. like Memphis in the north, when the Nile opens out into a splay of wetlands that eventually meets the sea.

Later, Thebes becomes Egypt's capital, 500 miles to the south, on a sedimentary plain at a bend in the river. But the secret to Egypt's success lies at the opposite end of the Nile. Egypt's boom time in the few thousand years BC is down to the rainwater hurtling thousands of miles from the south. One of its most mysterious aspects, which the writers of antiquity all noted, was the Nile is in flood in the summer. It has heavier waters in the summer and it gets lower in the winter, which is the complete opposite of every other river that they'd experienced throughout Europe and pretty much throughout the world. Because what happens is the monsoon that comes into Ethiopia. That downpour creates the Blue Nile. These torrents shoot water down the Blue Nile with such velocity that when it meets the white Nile at Khartoum,

it can force the water of its southern twin upstream. Further north, the floods become oddly predictable. So, as the deserts dry out, the Egyptians become the first to try to tame the Nile, from around 4,000 BC. And in part, they succeed. Their system of basin irrigation uses dams and dikes, designed to to send the inevitable seasonal deluge where it's needed. The farmland is prepared in a web of man-made canals and ditches. Then, all the ancient Egyptians have to do is wait for the flood. And at some point, it became obvious that this flood that came in the summer

enabled you to harvest three crops a year, so suddenly you had a surfeit of food. They make lock gates for the canals, allowing release. when they want. Or for more directed irrigation, a bucket and pulley system known as a shadoof can lift water out of the canal and send it into the fields. The soil remains saturated long after the water would otherwise recede. And it's not just the water that makes the difference. The silt comes down the Nile every year, a huge amount of silt. So you've got a natural fertilizer going over your flooded fields, which as soon as they've dried, it lies on top of the field. You've really got the most perfect system for agriculture that you could imagine.

I mean, no carting of wheelbarrows of fertilizer and nonsense like that. Everything's done for you. And then you get a three-month break. When water is all flooded, you can sit back and relax and live off the surpluses that you have created through your three harvests. Thrive, from grains to beans to vegetables, and there is enough of them to feed between two and 12 million people a year. With an excess of crops comes a proliferation of trade, with locals dealing in wheat, flax and papyrus, and the area is no longer just a collection of smaller communities. It's a land united by its reliance on the river, the food it brings, the commerce and transport

that connects people into settlements and settlements into a country. By 3,000 BC, the Nile has made Egypt the world's first recognizable nation-state. The Egyptians build not just what they need, but what they want, to demonstrate their superiority and might. Near the city of Thebes, whose ruins can be found within the modern-day Luxor, is the Nile's Khufu branch. Now long since vanished, thanks to the shifting sands, and a current forceful enough to change its own course, the Kufu is crucial to the region's unique architecture. Because on this stretch of water, colossal stones and materials are sailed on barges to construct the pyramids that will far outlast the dynasties that rise and fall like the river itself.

With no Nile, these wonders of the world would simply not exist. And the river does rise each summer with the rain, peaking in September and receding in October. The nutrient-rich silt it leaves is the Egyptian economy's magic ingredient. The annual flood means three seasons each year, inundation, growth, and harvest. But that is when it goes to plan. It won't be until thousands of years later that the flow is truly tamed.

In the time of the pharaohs, too much water means whole villages are wiped out. Too little, though, spells famine, like the great megadrought of around 2,200 BC, which brings three centuries of food shortages. No wonder then that the Nile becomes the subject of myth built into the region's religion. Like all mythology, it's really an encoded explanation of the relationships and the importance of various elements in the life of ancient Egyptians.

So basically, the sort of desert god was set, and he was being dethroned as they moved more towards the Nile. And in his revenge, he constructs this lead coffin for a... party. It's a pretty crazy story, but all the other gods are asked to try the coffin for size. Of course, he's secretly got the measurements of Osiris, his brother, who he really dislikes. And Osiris perfectly fits the coffin, and being a lead coffin, set, shoves it straight into the Nile. And it sinks to the bottom and Osiris dies. And Isis, who is Osiris's wife, is so upset. She sheds a huge amount of tears, and those tears become the flood of the Nile.

Ultimately, wherever this water has come from, it is where it's going that matters. The floodwaters are measured using nilometers, vertical columns charting the water's depth. Priests are tasked with monitoring the levels and charting the data to predict the flood's arrival and announce it when it does come. So crucial is the quantity of water that taxes are set according to the amount of water expected. If a good harvest is coming, locals will be richer and therefore can withstand higher taxation. The nylometers don't just monitor the height of the water, but also its colour. Thanks to the silt, the river runs red, something that may be referenced in stories from another religion. One of the famous biblical plagues was that the Nile would become red with blood,

and this could be possibly a reference to that. people had observed the reddening of the Nile at the junction of the white and blue Nile. Moses of the Hebrew Bible, according to Josephus, his name, Mo, is a river and says means saved by. Moses was saved by the river. Like the infant Moses saved from Pharaoh's wrath, the infant Jesus and his family use the Nile as a means of escape. King Herod's massacre of the innocence is retold in the Nativity story, with the past. paranoid kings' plans to destroy the rumored Messiah. In this time of peril, Mary and Joseph journey through Egypt as refugees.

Their supposed stops along the Nile still form a pilgrimage route today. By the time of Christ, Rome is expanding. Keen to exploit the Nile and its agricultural benefits, Emperor Julius Caesar forges links with Egypt's equally famous ruler, Cleopatra. That's the connection to the modern era. because Julius Caesar by marrying Cleopatra becomes the ruler of Egypt. And at that time, Egypt was considered the prime colonial outpost of the Roman Empire because it had such a huge supply of grain.

It was because of the Nile, because of the flood and the several harvests. It was a great source of grain for the Roman Empire, which needed it to expand. And so that relationship with Cleopatra became very important. There are literally so many sort of mega stories, that are compacted into the single narrative of the Nile. It's rather amazing. Further south in the land of Nubia between Egypt and today's Sudan, water is more scarce and more crucial.

But great kingdoms have already been and gone beside the river here. The city-state of Kerma prospered in the few millennia before Christ. And the kingdom of Kush, sufficiently powerful to split from Egypt, extended 2,000 kilometers along the river, from the shallow, bolder-strewn cataracts of the Nile near Azwan, all the way to Khartoum. But though many crave ownership of the Nile, it is still too long for any one power to dominate. The mighty Romans may now control the northern Nile, but even such a great empire has its limits. It finds them further south, in the Asud, that names today's Sudan.

The word means barrier, and to the troops and tradespeople lost to its swamp. It truly earns its name. The marshes bar roam from pushing south, leaving the sud to local tribes, like the Dinka and Nour people, nomadic groups who live off the land. They treasure cattle above all else and lead them around the region to graze, while their warriors sometimes fight each other for territory. But though they struggle to find peace between themselves, they learn to live with the temperamental Nile. The Dinka people see the origin of humanity itself in this river. The first woman, they say, was impregnated by the river spirit, the singular ancestor. And thanks to the impassable terrain, there are few outside intruders.

But it's a different story in the north. Up in Nubia, Roman, then Christian, and Greek influences dominate from the fourth century. Further north, towards where the river empties into the Mediterranean, a new religion arrives in the 7th century. Urged on by power struggles and military activity, Bedouins from Arabia are drawn to the Niles banks. Their many dwellings pitched together become known as the metropolis of the tent near the Byzantine outpost of Cairo. Their arrival heralds the introduction here of Islam, and under their influence Cairo becomes a city of world-renown. In their occupation, they too look to the Nile, still rising, falling, flooding and watering the land. And around 1,000 AD, a new leader sets

his sights on damming the river. A dam, he believes, could offer greater control over agriculture, and the power to create an abundance of water when it's wanted and stop the flooding when it's not. One of the area's most notorious leaders, Khalif al-Hakim, starts reading up on how it can be done. He comes across an account by Ibn al-Haitam, one of the great Islamic geniuses, an expert in mathematics, engineering and astronomy. Unfortunately, one day this great polymath miss speaks, claiming that he could dam the Nile, theoretically unlocking the bountiful possibilities of irrigation for all of Egypt. But for the tyrant Khalif al-Hakim, a theory is as good as a promise. To build a dam that wide at the top, without any form of mechanical assistance,

Ibn Haightam did some back-of-the-envalet calculations to realise he needed a million men for 200 years. That's not the answer that a dictator wants to hear, you know. So he went back. And this is a sort of bizarre strategy, but it was correct. He didn't want to be killed, so he pretended that he'd gone mad. And Islam is particularly generous and charitable to people who are mad. you're not allowed to kill them for one thing. And so Hakeem had to hold back on executing Hibin Haitam.

So Hibnizam there had to continue his charade of madness for many years, in fact, 10 or 12 years. Locked up in a room, he then began to study optics, discovered the camera obscura, which may have been remarked upon before, but he was the first person to sort of describe it mathematically and really founded the subject of modern optics as we know it. So it's a really, really odd way in which the Nile ends up contributing to science. In the end, Al-Hakim dies,

and the Great River Nile remains undammed. Uncontrolled, the river keeps rolling, and sometimes plays a much more sinister part in the lives of those who live beside it. It is May the 2nd, 1250, and in a riverside palace by the Nile, a long table is heaped, with the finest delicacies Egypt has to offer.

The city's best musicians play as the feast gets underway, and the wine begins to flow. In the center of it all is the arrogant young Sultan Turansha. He has crushed the Crusades, imprisoned Louis VIII of France, and is throwing a celebration in his own honor. It's the end of his first six months of power, but it will also be his last. As women dance for him, Turan Shah throws him. food to his favorite slaves and punches to his least favorite. Nearby stand the men he is recently promoted to bodyguards or advisors. There are those who say he should instead have rewarded

the mercenary Mamluk clan, who helped him defeat the Crusaders. But Turansha does not like being told what to do. He bangs on the table to demand more wine, but just then a muffled scream comes from outside. At the open doorway stands one of Turansha's finest commanders, Baibas, destroyer of the Crusaders. But as the commotion outside grows, rather than rushing outside to defend his master, Baibaz fixes Turansha with a stare and draws his sword. Because he is an unrewarded Mamluk, just like those who pour in, unimpeded behind him, blades pointed. Furious, the Sultan gets to his feet as Baibars now approaches. Turanshah raises a hand to stop him,

but his trusted commander lunges over the table and impales it. Screaming in pain and disbelief, Turan Shah stares at his pierced hand, then of the onslaught of warriors and realizes this is an uprising he can't stop. So, grasping his bloody hand with the good one, he dodges the treacherous guard and runs for his life. Escaping with nothing, he needs swift sanctuary.

Outside the palace, he quickly chooses one tent in a long row standing alongside the Nile and bursts in. The trader inside barely has time to recognize this uninvited guest before he sees the mess his dripping wound is making. Turanshah follows his gaze to the red streaks behind him. A blood trail to lead his pursuers to him. He can't stay here. So Turenshaw flees further down the Nile's path. slipping on stones that drop down to the river. He can hear the mum looks close behind.

He's not going to be able to outrun them. Can he reason with them, after all? Overlooking the river looms a stone watchtower. Could this be a hiding place? Or maybe there will be some friendlier guards here, men whom he could persuade to see reason. Faint now from the blood loss, he staggers towards it and climbs one-handed up the ladder.

But on reaching the top, there is an unnatural warmth. And then he sees the flames. They've set the tower on fire. He must escape again. Scalded, he scrambles back down. His pursuers mere yards behind him now. He stumbles to the river, desperate for water to cool his burns.

He's still on the shore when a new agony rips through him. A thrown spear piercing his ribs. He lurches forward, drops to his knees, and he's in the water. Then the arrows begin. He is struck. And again, deeper he wades. He shouts an offer to resign, hands raised, blood streaming down one arm. But when he sees Baibah's enter the water, drawing his knife, Turan Shah knows it's over.

Mamluk soldiers join them knee-deep, and as the blades connect, the red, silted Nile becomes redder. Turan Shah's heart is taken as a gift to the imprisoned King Louis VIII. The rest of him is a banquet for the River Nile's in the river. insatiable crocodiles. Thanks to their uprising, the Mamlux go on to rule Egypt for 300 years, overseeing a period of cultural growth and centralization around the Lower Nile. But they are ultimately defeated by Ottoman Turks and absorbed into their empire. And other powers thirst for the Nile's waters too. Like the Roman Emperor's centuries earlier, in the late 18th century, Napoleon Bonaparte is obsessed with the Nile, its source.

and the ancient history of the regions it flows through. His passion combines with a desire to disrupt the British and ultimately drive them out of India. But if he wants to do that, he has to control Egypt. Napoleon arrives in Egypt, but he doesn't just want to conquer the country economically or politically. He also wants to learn from Egypt. And this is really the beginning of the European fascination for ancient Egypt.

His fate is sealed with the Battle of the Nile, which is at the headwaters of the Nile, Nelson arrives and defeats the French very quickly. The battle is the culmination of a Mediterranean cat and mouse game between British and French fleets. And Nelson's victory sees him given the title Baron of the Nile. But while Napoleon is defeated, he leaves many scholars in Egypt, busily researching and excavating, starting a new field of study, Egyptology. While reinforcing a fort during the conflict with the British a few miles from the Nile, a French soldier makes a crucial discovery. The Rosetta Stone is an ancient slab that helps unlock the mysteries of hieroglyphics, intensifying Western interest in Africa's hidden treasures.

Control of the river remains centre stage. But the first serious attempt to damn the Nile comes from Egypt's energetic new leader, Muhammad Ali in the 1830s. He plans for a barrier to slow the flow at Cairo, retaining water to allow year-round irrigation, limiting famine and flood. But the question is, where will you find the stone to build it? Easy, he thinks, demolish a pyramid.

Fortunately, the plan becomes too expensive, and the last surviving wonder of the world is saved. But halfway down the continent at the other end, of the Nile, the British are coming. Amazingly, by the mid-19th century, the river's source remains uncharted. Many have tried to find it and failed, halted by the unpassable marsh of the Sud. Maps of the time show a mystical mountain range in the heart of Africa, snow-capped high ground, that surely sends water down the White Nile. But finding the real source becomes increasingly appealing to Westerners with eyes on Africa's money-making opportunity.

is. Whoever finds the source can perhaps control the water, control the commerce, and grow an empire. To avoid the marshland, European explorers now enter from the east coast, but find no such mountain range. There are individual mountains, but no signs that the Nile begins there. What they do find are rumours of great lakes. So attention shifts to this new theory. Could a central lake be the river's source. And if so, where? It falls to a former soldier of the British East India Company to find out. The first real expedition is Burton, who's this incredible Victorian explorer, a polymath, multilingual. He'd been involved in various attempts to go to forbidden cities. He went to Mecca. He was the first Britain to go to Mecca in disguise. He also went to the forbidden city of Hurrah.

Richard Francis Burton once met is not easily forgotten. Described by the writer Bram Stoker as a steely-looking gentleman, Burton is nonetheless a worldly, knowledgeable man, skilled in 29 languages and fascinated by each culture he encounters. His employer is the Royal Geographical Society, but ultimately he only ever works for himself, and the world is his workplace. On his quest for the Niles source, Burton takes a younger explorer, John Hanging Speake,

a blonde devil-may-care aristocrat. The pair set out as allies, but unbeknownst to Burton, as the years of their expedition go by, Speak begins to see him as a rival. Burton, unfortunately, was sick. I mean, this is a sort of a kind of morality tale. Don't get ill when you're on an expedition if your number two is more ambitious than you are. So his number two was this character called Speak, who was nothing like as talented as Burton couldn't speak any foreign languages, hadn't really travelled many places apart from India and England, but Speak was healthy and strong and he pushed further north and found Lake Victoria. Speak leaves Burton to recover from his latest illness and travels north with their guide Sidy Muburik Bombay.

He is led to the vast body of water and knows that he's done it. The high ground and size of the lake is all he needs to determine that this is where the Nile begins. Speak is imperialistic and brash, lacking Burton's instinct to gather evidence and appease locals. And, though it's known here as Nainza Namloiwe and others, Speak is unimpeded by the absent Burton, who tends to respect and retain local names. So he renames it Lake Victoria, after his queen. then rushes back to tell the older, wiser, and now furious and envious, Burton. The senior explorer plays down, speaks accomplishment, and chooses not to visit the lake.

But while Burton stays on to explore the East Coast, Speak hurriedly books an early boat back to Britain. The pair had agreed to present the Royal Geographical Society together, but Speak rose back on that, telling anyone who will listen that he has found the Nile Source in Lake Victoria. And while the Royal Geographical Society request further exploration for more evidence, they largely believe him. Burton arrives home incensed. When Speak decided to betray him and sort of turn against him, Burton really gave him both barrels in terms of debate.

And Speak was feeling a bit guilty because he, of course, he knew that he had made this agreement and that he really did owe all his prominence to being selected by Burton for the expedition. So when they came to debate, Speak was really quaking in his boots. In 1864, in Bath, Burton and Speak agree to settle the matter in a public discussion. Their preliminary meeting is uneasy. Speaks backers perhaps have been encouraging his blinkered attitude. But faced with his old ally, its possible remorse creeps in at last. Out shooting one afternoon ahead of the debate, he is seen to disappear behind.

and a stone wall. There is a single shot and speak. Survivor of countless attacks, diseases, and perilous adventures dies at his own hand. There's a lot of sort of controversy about whether he committed suicide because he was just so ashamed at having to face and really lie about what had really gone on between him and Burton because Burton had kept records of the letters and so on, or whether it was a sort of willed suicide in the sense he was so down. He really wasn't paying attention because he was known to be an extremely good shot. And Burton, of course, to his credit, was absolutely distraught because even though he was a ferocious man in the debating chamber, he was really rather a softy and you felt terribly,

terribly guilty that possibly he contributed to the death of speak. The explorations continue into the 1860s and 70s, with notable British explorers David Livingstone, then Henry Morton Stanley, finally proving speak right. or near enough. Lake Victoria, or a feeder river into it, is considered the source of the White Nile. But to many, it's Burton, who is most deserving of recognition. History has looked favourably on Speak,

and slightly neglected Burton. Burton was a great writer, and his book, the Lake Regions of Central Africa, became a handbook for later explorers. So really Burton was a key figure there. Burton and Speaks guide, Bombay, is recognised by London's Royal Geographical Society for trekking the African continent from east to west, and assists Stanley in his search for the missing Dr. Livingstone. From source to mouth, Britain's interests soon dominate the Nile.

Occupying Egypt in 1882, then Uganda and Sudan in the mid-1890s, the entire river is now controlled for the first and only time by one nation. With that control comes the trade, irrigation and power that has flowed down the dynasties for centuries. Yet, truly harnessing the power of the water itself remains elusive. From then on, it's a case of a sort of mounting interest in damning the Nile. Once the British arrive, basically because the cost of building the Suez Canal is so great, it more or less bankrupts Egypt, and Britain uses that as a method of stepping in and taking control of Egypt.

And once the British are there, they become very keen on improving the efficiency of agriculture and all of these things. And you've got all these engineers who've been busy draining and damming parts of India, who suddenly think, oh, we can do the same thing here. And so that's really the start of this push to finally dam the Nile. In 1902, the dream becomes a reality with the opening of the first Aswan Dam. Devised by British engineer Sir William Wilcox, this modern wonder of the world is completed in just four years, a full year ahead of schedule. It is the largest masonry dam on the planet,

and it helps feed and water Egypt's booming population, thanks to year-round irrigation. The flood can be controlled, and the dry season is no longer dry. And though it comes at a high price with the submersion of an ancient kingdom, it brings with it a new industry. Tourism. It's a warm winter's day in early 1933, and the luxurious steamer SS Sudan is chugging up river from Luxor. Its captain, an elderly Egyptian, gently steers the ship's wheel to circle a 3,000-year-old temple one more time.

He is rewarded with cries of delight from the wealthy Europeans on board. As they escape their cold season for a month or more, they are here to savor Egyptian culture, the most fashionable on the planet. A decade since Tutankhamun's tomb was opened, the Tamed Nile welcomes Western wallets at a sedate five miles an hour. The era of the cruise has begun. But the captain knows they will only see half the story, because beneath the ripples lie statues, kingdoms, and lost deities.

They finally chug on from one temple in search of another. Beneath this water lies the legendary resting place of Osiris, ancient god of agriculture, so feared that it was said fish would never swim near his temple. Now they swim in it. The new dam is here, but the old gods are gone. Up ahead the vast man-made Aswan Dam comes into view to the astonishment of the passengers. This new temple of modern ingenuity is being built still taller. One traveller, an archaeologist explains to another that not enough water is being retained,

so the level will rise even higher, swallowing with it even more of the old world. As they sail on, the captain's favorite passenger approaches. The wife of the archaeologist, one misses Agatha Christopher. She asks him question after question about the landscape here and what lies beneath the surface. Research, she tells him, for a book she's writing. The conversation is interrupted by the passing of a tugboat, carrying crates of cargo. The captain calls out a greeting and explains to the writer it's destined for one of the luxury hotels cropping up on the Niles banks. A waiter comes along now with drinks for the tourists.

After taking a glass for herself, the writer points excitedly at the bank, spotting a hippo, and then a graceful pair of white crane-like eagrots standing in the shallows. Silently, the Egyptian captain and the English writer observe the wildlife and what's left of the historic views. Soon her novel about this place will send even more tourists here. But happily, despite the rivers sometimes bloody past, the deaths on her Nile are fictional. If the first Aswan Dam is brought about by the arrival of the British, the second Aswan Dam, half a century later, is inspired by their departure. After 1952's Egyptian Revolution, its new leader Gamal Abdel Nasser looks for concrete ways

to signal the country's bright future. And while the old Aswan Dam sought merely to slow and gain greater control over the Nile, his newly independent Egypt needs bolder plans. Once the British were kicked out in 1952, NASA, who was the new leader, any ideas that were unpopular to the British were naturally going to be more popular with him. And he was looking around for a big, big project. The high Aswan dam certainly fits the bill. Intended to replace the earlier dam, which doesn't retain enough water,

the new construction would be built for Egyptians by Egyptians. But when American and British money dries up, NASA turns to the Soviet Union for funds. After its completion in 1970, Egypt gains year-round irrigation, hydroelectric power, and finally, an end to the annual flooding cycle. But it comes at the cost of Nubian heritage, as tens of thousands of people are relocated to create Lake Nasser, one of the world's largest reservoirs, and the holding back of the Nile's nutrient-rich silt leads to coastal erosion further north and a disruption of the ecosystem. Elsewhere in the 1970s, the Nile's darker history gains another chapter in Uganda,

where dictator Idi Amin uses the river's crocodiles to dispose of his enemies. The 20th century ends with the ambitions of Egypt's new president Mubarak to divert the Nile through Egypt's desert. The hope is that the desert will bloom again, as it did thousands of years previously. So that fantasy of diverting the Nile is pursued by Mubarak in the 80s and 90s, and it's called the Toshka Project. And right up until the late 90s, the idea was to drain late NASA into this sort of second river, and it would bring life and a new vitality to Egypt. But, you know, you start building canals in the desert, and you get massive evaporation. And the irrigation is going through areas that can be up to 40 degrees in the summer.

And then it just fizzles out, you know, and we hear nothing more of it until the Egyptian Revolution 2011. When Mubarak is all his dreams of power are ended. And again, the river triumphs. You can mess with it to a certain extent, but beyond that, at your peril, try to interfere with the Nile. You come to a sticky end. But the large-scale projects continue.

Ethiopia's Tekezaid Dan. of 2009 and its Grand Renaissance Dam, still under construction, raise the possibility of international disputes. What happens to your neighbour when you turn off the taps? To this day, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia argue about the filling of reservoirs, the damming of the Nile and the future of how to live sustainably alongside the river. It's definitely an instructive parable in living with nature. I think in the past, people had a greater awareness and acceptance of man's limitations. Then in the 20th century, hubristically, we could ignore it because we were able to interfere. I mean, Churchill famously said, wouldn't it be fun to send a Nile diving into some engine turbines as it leaves Lake Victoria?

You know, that's a thought that fills most people with horror now, the idea that the most interesting thing you can do to a river is chuck it through a power turbine. So now we've got a much greater ecological understanding of the river. The more you mess around with it, the more you realize interconnected It is. For centuries, the Nile has been believed to be the world's longest river, although recent re-measuring of the Amazon may put it into second place. But the precise length doesn't matter so much as what the river brings and has brought for thousands of years. But of course, the Amazon is not as culturally significant to us.

If you think about Egypt as the cradle of civilization along with the Tigris, Euphrates, and then every subsequent cultural innovation, if you like, through religion and science and literature and so on, they all have referenced or been connected to the Nile in some way. So it's really a sort of a mains cable of our history in some curious way. Today, satellite images of Africa at night demonstrate the extent of human reliance on the river, a line of electric light illuminating the Egyptian Nile

in a region otherwise dark. Settlers are still drawn to it, like moths to a flame. As to its future and our changing relationship with our environment, only time will tell. For now, the unstoppable Nile rolls on, from Africa's heart through swamp and floodplains, past cities, tents and temples, before finding freedom at last in the sea. If there is a message or metaphor, it is as a sort of, parallel to our greater understanding of how we fit into the world, you know, and how the river itself might even be thought of as an organism in its own right. And we finally maybe are

respecting that and at least understanding it much better than we did before. Next time, we'll bring you Polynesian exploration. You sort of have to imagine what it's like to be people who have for thousands of years sailed from one island to another, move, from one island to another. You would know, you would believe, you would imagine that there was always another island, that an island would rise from the sea, which is the way it's phrased,

that an island would rise from the sea as you voyage toward it. I think must have been deep in the imagination of the people. Basically, one of the things you have to do to understand this story is you have to imagine a people who are at home on the sea. That's next time.