Formation of the Kingdom

Ancient man lived first by hunting and gathering wild foods. In the Nile Valley he learned very early to grow grain crops and to raise livestock. The Nile River overflowed its banks for about half of each year, leaving a deposit of fertile silt. There was little or no rain. To first drain the fields and to then irrigate them required men working together, and so the early Egyptians became organized into communities. Ancient Egyptian, the common language, was an Afro-Asiatic tongue related to the present-day Berber, Cushitic, and Coptic tongues. Racially, the Egyptians were a Mediterranaen subgroup of the Caucasoid race. They have traditionally been called Hamites, but the term is no longer used by most scholars.The country divided naturally into two parts. The south, from which the Nile flowed, was called Upper Egypt (because it was upriver). The north, consisting of the Delta, through which the Nile emptied [...]

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