But the people know when the overflow is coming and they are glad for it to come, so they put banks around some of it so that it is stored up for watering the land during the rest of the year when there is no rain. After most of the water has dried up, it has left a layer of rich, dark, moist earth over the whole country. In this earth it is easy to grow dates, wheat, and other things which are good for food.
Menes, 3400 B. C.
If it were not for this yearly overflow of the Nile, the country of Egypt would be a sandy desert in which no plant or living thing would grow—for all plants as well as animals must have water and will die without it. Egypt, without water, would be like the great Sahara Desert, which is not far away. It is the Nile, therefore, that makes the land so rich and Egypt such an easy and cheap country to live in, for food grows with little or no labor and costs almost nothing. Besides this, the climate is so warm that people need little clothing and do not have to buy coal or make fires to heat their houses. So it was to this country that the Hamites at last came, finally settled down, and were thereafter called Egyptians.
The first Egyptian king whose name we know was Menes, but we do not know much about him. We believe he built some kind of waterworks so that the people might better use the water of the Nile, and he probably lived about 3400 B. C. He may have lived either earlier or later, but as this is an easy date to remember, we shall take it for a starting-point. You might remember it by supposing it is a telephone number of a person you wanted to call up:
Menes, First Egyptian king . . 3400 B.C.
6
The Puzzle-Writers
People of the Stone Age had learned how to talk to each other, but they could not write, for there was no such thing as an alphabet or written words, and so they could not send notes or messages to one another or write stories. The Egyptians were the first people to think of a way to write what they wanted to say.