Insight: Wildlife on the River Nile

Despite the ravages made on Egypt’s wildlife over the past hundred years, many of the creatures that the ancients revered are still found today

Before the building of the Aswan dams, the Nile flooded each year and its silt-rich water covered the valley. When the water subsided, the first creature that was seen to move was the scarabaeus, the dung beetle. This beetle laid its eggs in dung or in the corpses of other beetles. Egyptians called it Kheper, and used it to represent the essence of existence, the god Khepri. Scarab beetles can still be seen rolling their balls of dung, but many of the other animals that lived on land whose re-emergence the scarabaeus celebrated have long since disappeared.

Survivors

Egyptians used many living creatures to represent their gods, but where now are the Nile crocodile, the African elephant, the lions and ibises, green monkeys and baboons? Long since hunted out of existence or forced off the land as buildings gobbled it up.

Amongst the survivors that were common to the ancient Egyptians and are still found in Egypt today are the magnificent birds like the short-toed eagle, the long-legged buzzard, the hoopoe and the Egyptian vulture (all were used as hieroglyphics).

The Egyptians domesticated many animals including the cat, ox and cow, which feature on many tomb and temple decorations. In the river, grey mullet, catfish and Bulti fish would have been as familiar to the ancients as they are to Egyptians living by the Nile today.

Finally, while the scarab beetle reminds us of the eternal cycle that ancient Egyptians believed in, the pesky fly, also seen in hieroglyphics, reminds us that then, as now, there were trials and tribulations.

One of the great pleasures of wealthy Egyptians in antiquity was to go hunting in the papyrus marshes, particularly in the Delta. Egyptians hunted birds and other animals for sport, not to provide food, and scenes of hunting and fowling are frequently depicted in tomb paintings. The Tombs of the Nobles in Thebes have some of the best examples. This fine painting, from the tomb of Nebamun, can be seen in the British Museum in London.

The Gallery Collection/Corbis

Papyrus – The First Paper

The papyrus plant (Cyperus papyrus), a relative of sedge grasses, used to grow abundantly in Egypt, particularly in the marshy Delta. In antiquity Egyptians put papyrus to a number of uses. They wove it into mats, plaited it for ropes, bundled it together to form light rafts – perfect for fishing in the marshes – and pressed and wove it into a suitable medium on which to write. The creation of this technique was largely responsible for the explosion of literacy in Ancient Egypt. Until then stone had been the main means of conveying the written word.

Making papyrus sheets was time-consuming and labour-intensive, so even in antiquity they were reserved for writing that was intended to last, for religious texts and important legal works. More ephemeral information was put down on slates or on pottery shards.

Because of its proliferation and importance, the papyrus was one of the symbols of Upper Egypt, and its form was recreated in the shapes of pillars in several hypostyle halls.

Papyrus continued to be used for important texts into the 10th century, but the manufacturing technique was lost soon after paper was imported from the East, and wasn’t rediscovered until the 20th century, by which time papyrus had vanished from most of the country. Recently, there has been some replanting.

To see papyrus being made today, you can visit Dr Ragab’s Papyrus Institute in Cairo, which also sells a wide range of high-quality copies of famous papyrus scenes.