Nile valley

93:5.7Not long af­ter they had es­tab­lished them­selves near Salem, Abra­ham and Lot jour­neyed to the val­ley of the Nile to ob­tain food sup­plies as there was then a drought in Pales­tine. Dur­ing his brief so­journ in Egypt Abra­ham found a dis­tant rel­a­tive on the Egyp­tian throne, and he served as the com­man­der of two very suc­cess­ful mil­i­tary ex­pe­di­tions for this king. Dur­ing the lat­ter part of his so­journ on the Nile he and his wife, Sarah, lived at court, and when leav­ing Egypt, he was given a share of the spoils of his mil­i­tary cam­paigns.

78:3.2Some of the Adamites early jour­neyed west­ward to the val­ley of the Nile; oth­ers pen­e­trated east­ward into Asia, but these were a mi­nor­ity. The mass move­ment of the later days was ex­ten­sively north­ward and thence west­ward. It was, in the main, a grad­ual but un­remit­ting north­ward push, the greater num­ber mak­ing their way north and then cir­cling west­ward around the Caspian Sea into Eu­rope.

78:5.5The And­ites not only mi­grated to Eu­rope but to north­ern China and In­dia, while many groups pen­e­trated to the ends of the earth as mis­sion­ar­ies, teach­ers, and traders. They con­tributed con­sid­er­ably to the north­ern groups of the Sa­ha­ran San­gik peo­ples. But only a few teach­ers and traders ever pen­e­trated far­ther south in Africa than the head­wa­ters of the Nile. Later on, mixed And­ites and Egyp­tians fol­lowed down both the east and west coasts of Africa well be­low the equa­tor, but they did not reach Mada­gas­car.

78:6.8The cul­tural age of the sec­ond gar­den was ter­mi­nated by the in­creas­ing in­fil­tra­tion of the sur­round­ing in­fe­rior stocks. Civ­i­liza­tion moved west­ward to the Nile and the Med­i­ter­ra­nean is­lands, where it con­tin­ued to thrive and ad­vance long af­ter its foun­tain­head in Mes­o­po­ta­mia had de­te­ri­o­rated. And this unchecked in­flux of in­fe­rior peo­ples pre­pared the way for the later con­quest of all Mes­o­po­ta­mia by the north­ern bar­bar­ians who drove out the resid­ual strains of abil­ity. Even in later years the cul­tured residue still re­sented the pres­ence of these ig­no­rant and un­couth in­vaders.

79:1.3By 8000 B.C. the slowly in­creas­ing arid­ity of the high­land re­gions of cen­tral Asia be­gan to drive the And­ites to the river bot­toms and the seashores. This in­creas­ing drought not only drove them to the val­leys of the Nile, Eu­phrates, In­dus, and Yel­low rivers, but it pro­duced a new de­vel­op­ment in And­ite civ­i­liza­tion. A new class of men, the traders, be­gan to ap­pear in large num­bers.

80:6.1From the times of the ter­mi­nal And­ite mi­gra­tions, cul­ture de­clined in the Eu­phrates val­ley, and the im­me­di­ate cen­ter of civ­i­liza­tion shifted to the val­ley of the Nile. Egypt be­came the suc­ces­sor of Mes­o­po­ta­mia as the head­quar­ters of the most ad­vanced group on earth.

80:6.2The Nile val­ley be­gan to suf­fer from floods shortly be­fore the Mes­o­po­ta­mian val­leys but fared much bet­ter. This early set­back was more than com­pen­sated by the con­tin­u­ing stream of And­ite im­mi­grants, so that the cul­ture of Egypt, though re­ally de­rived from the Eu­phrates re­gion, seemed to forge ahead. But in 5000 B.C., dur­ing the flood pe­riod in Mes­o­po­ta­mia, there were seven dis­tinct groups of hu­man be­ings in Egypt; all of them, save one, came from Mes­o­po­ta­mia.

80:6.3When the last ex­o­dus from the Eu­phrates val­ley oc­curred, Egypt was for­tu­nate in gain­ing so many of the most skill­ful artists and ar­ti­sans. These And­ite ar­ti­sans found them­selves quite at home in that they were thor­oughly fa­mil­iar with river life, its floods, ir­ri­ga­tions, and dry sea­sons. They en­joyed the shel­tered po­si­tion of the Nile val­ley; they were there much less sub­ject to hos­tile raids and at­tacks than along the Eu­phrates. And they added greatly to the met­al­work­ing skill of the Egyp­tians. Here they worked iron ores com­ing from Mount Sinai in­stead of from the Black Sea re­gions.

80:6.4The Egyp­tians very early as­sem­bled their mu­nic­i­pal de­i­ties into an elab­o­rate na­tional sys­tem of gods. They de­vel­oped an ex­ten­sive the­ol­ogy and had an equally ex­ten­sive but bur­den­some priest­hood. Sev­eral dif­fer­ent lead­ers sought to re­vive the rem­nants of the early re­li­gious teach­ings of the Sethites, but these en­deav­ors were short-lived. The And­ites built the first stone struc­tures in Egypt. The first and most ex­qui­site of the stone pyra­mids was erected by Imhotep, an And­ite ar­chi­tec­tural ge­nius, while serv­ing as prime min­is­ter. Pre­vi­ous build­ings had been con­structed of brick, and while many stone struc­tures had been erected in dif­fer­ent parts of the world, this was the first in Egypt. But the art of build­ing steadily de­clined from the days of this great ar­chi­tect.

80:6.5This bril­liant epoch of cul­ture was cut short by in­ter­nal war­fare along the Nile, and the coun­try was soon over­run, as Mes­o­po­ta­mia had been, by the in­fe­rior tribes from in­hos­pitable Ara­bia and by the blacks from the south. As a re­sult, so­cial prog­ress steadily de­clined for more than five hun­dred years.

139:11.11He went to Alexan­dria and, af­ter work­ing up the Nile, pen­e­trated into the heart of Africa, ev­ery­where preach­ing the gospel of Je­sus and bap­tiz­ing be­liev­ers. Thus he la­bored un­til he was an old man and fee­ble. And he died and was buried in the heart of Africa.

80:1.2In the east­ern trough of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean the Nod­ites had es­tab­lished one of their most ex­ten­sive cul­tures and from these cen­ters had pen­e­trated some­what into south­ern Eu­rope but more es­pe­cially into north­ern Africa. The broad-headed Nod­ite-An­don­ite Syr­i­ans very early in­tro­duced pot­tery and agri­cul­ture in con­nec­tion with their set­tle­ments on the slowly ris­ing Nile delta. They also im­ported sheep, goats, cat­tle, and other do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mals and brought in greatly im­proved meth­ods of met­al­work­ing, Syria then be­ing the cen­ter of that in­dus­try.

80:1.3For more than thirty thou­sand years Egypt re­ceived a steady stream of Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans, who brought along their art and cul­ture to en­rich that of the Nile val­ley. But the ingress of large num­bers of the Sa­hara peo­ples greatly de­te­ri­o­rated the early civ­i­liza­tion along the Nile so that Egypt reached its low­est cul­tural level some fif­teen thou­sand years ago.

80:2.2The purer in­digo el­e­ments moved south­ward to the forests of cen­tral Africa, where they have ever since re­mained. The more mixed groups spread out in three di­rec­tions: The su­pe­rior tribes to the west mi­grated to Spain and thence to ad­ja­cent parts of Eu­rope, form­ing the nu­cleus of the later Med­i­ter­ra­nean long-headed brunet races. The least pro­gres­sive di­vi­sion to the east of the Sa­hara pla­teau mi­grated to Ara­bia and thence through north­ern Mes­o­po­ta­mia and In­dia to far­away Cey­lon. The cen­tral group moved north and east to the Nile val­ley and into Pales­tine.

96:2.2Again and again the Ara­bian Semites fought their way into the north­ern Prom­ised Land, the land that “flowed with milk and honey,” but just as of­ten were they ejected by the bet­ter-or­ga­nized and more highly civ­i­lized north­ern Semites and Hit­tites. Later, dur­ing an un­usu­ally se­vere famine, these rov­ing Bed­ou­ins en­tered Egypt in large num­bers as con­tract la­bor­ers on the Egyp­tian pub­lic works, only to find them­selves un­der­go­ing the bit­ter ex­pe­ri­ence of en­slave­ment at the hard daily toil of the com­mon and down­trod­den la­bor­ers of the Nile val­ley.

64:6.13The last great strug­gle be­tween the or­ange and the green men oc­curred in the re­gion of the lower Nile val­ley in Egypt. This long-drawn-out bat­tle was waged for al­most one hun­dred years, and at its close very few of the or­ange race were left alive. The shat­tered rem­nants of these peo­ple were ab­sorbed by the green and by the later ar­riv­ing in­digo men. But as a race the or­ange man ceased to ex­ist about one hun­dred thou­sand years ago.

81:1.1For about thirty-five thou­sand years af­ter the days of Adam, the cra­dle of civ­i­liza­tion was in south­west­ern Asia, ex­tend­ing from the Nile val­ley east­ward and slightly to the north across north­ern Ara­bia, through Mes­o­po­ta­mia, and on into Tur­kes­tan. And cli­mate was the de­ci­sive fac­tor in the es­tab­lish­ment of civ­i­liza­tion in that area.