Nile (Hastings' Dictionary)

The word Νεῖλος is of unknown origin. It was the name by which the river was known to the Greeks, Hesiod being the earliest writer to use it; Homer has but one name, Αὔγυπτος, for river and land. It does not occur in MT or LAX. Besides the ἜΘΕΙ connexion with 773, it has been proposed to refer it to a Demotic form, ne-il-u, meaning ‘the rivers.’* The so-called canal, Shatt en-Nil, in Babylonia, is thought by some to have an etymological connexion with the Egyptian river.

t Of the many native names, one of the commonest and most ancient} was i‘ p, a word in some way zoplyatg the idea of eoveriny or hiding. This name, however, is aleve employed in a sense more or less mythological: that so frequent later on, itrw,—the origin of the above Demotic form,—which became the everyday designation of the river, did not grow into popularity until the Middle Kingdom.

§ The Semitic languages record no name for the Nile till a comparatively late date; none, at any rate, Bypass to be met with before the 7th cent. (Assurbanipal), when the Assyrians were making use of the native itrw in the modified pronuncia- tion already current in Egypt, iarw’i, the last letter here representing the syptian Ὁ, ‘great,’ as it appears eventually in the Coptic iero, iaro.|| This same word was as Ν᾽, 7%; most usuall employed also by the Hebrews (e.g.

Gn 411, Ex 1), who for other large rivers used 77} (e.g. Gn 1518, 2K 5", Jer 218), The plur. of “Ν᾽ generally indicates the canals or subsidiary branches of the Nile. Another name used by Hebrew writers is 1nd, ‘ny, Σιώρ, Ἵ Shihor (only Jos 13%. 1 Ch 13°, Is 233, Jer 218), of which the etymology 1s obscure; the word * Groff in Bull. Inst. égypt. 1892, 165. Ὁ Delitzsch, Paradies, 71. YaAkQt (iv. 861) attributes this name merely to a supposed physical resemblance, Σ In the Pyramid texts, e.g.

Wnis 431, 545. §Inscr. of Chnemothes at Beni-Hasan, Kahun Pap., ed. Griffith, ii. 61. || Steindorff in Beitr. z. Assyr. i. 612; Erman in ZDMG xlvi 108, Cf. Ptolemy's ὁ μέγας ποταιμεός (Geogr. iv. δ). ‘J Gloss in Cod. March. (Holmes, xii. ; Swete, Q), Jer 218, a “΄:., ον ΘΒΒΒΙΝΝ NILE is said to refer to the dark hue of the water; but, in fact, the Nile is anything but dark in colour. No Egyptian derivation for the name has been recognized.

Though it may sometimes refer to the Nile (Is 233, Jer 28), sin? elsewhere seems more appropriate to the Wady el-Arish, ‘the Brook of t’ (Jos 138, 1 Ch 13°). See Eaypr (RIVER OF). ether the Nile is to be recognized, as it was by Josephus,* in one of the four rivers of Paradise (Gn 2) is still debated. Of the two not yet identified, Pishon and Gihon, the latter has, owing to its connexion with the land of Cush, been often held to represent the river which flows through Ethiopia as well as Egypt.

The LXX in Jer 2% seem, at any rate, to understand it so (cf. Streane, Double Text of Jer. 38f.) This Cush is, however, now less ponerally held to be Ethiopia than formerly. Delitzsch+ regards it as a Babylonian province ; Hommel ¢ takes it for a district of cen Arabia. The Egyptians fully realized the debt they owed to the river by whose agency their country had been created and was maintained.

The Nile was a deity honoured, from the earliest to the latest times, throughout the land,§ irrespective of local, often antagonistic cults; yet he ge to have had few temples of his own, and his priests are seldom mentioned.|| Several deities besides H'pi, the personification of its name, were regarded as connected with the river in one or other of its aspects.

For instance, Hnm-Chnubis, Jnkt-Anukis, Stt-Satis were thought to rule the Cataracts, the point at which the Nile came within the knowledge of the Egyptians; Sdk-Souchos, again, was the tutelary god of the Fayyfm lake. It is possible that Osiris himself was originally a Nile deity. The Nile god is represented as a man with woman’s breasts, water-plants on his head, and, for dress, the girdle of a sailor or fisherman. Some- times he carries an offering of fish and water-fowl.

This representation appears to date from the 12th Dynasty. Long hymns are extant in his praise, enumerating his benefits to mankind;** he is honoured, too, in many shorter inscriptions. The festivals held in medisval and modern times to celebrate the Inundation are doubtless survivals of ancient heathen ceremonies, one of which classical authors call the Νειλῶα. 1 The Copts have always used special prayers for the river’s rise ; so, too, have the Ethiopian Ghristians.

ἐν A curious liturgy is extant, containing a sort of harvest service in connexion with the Inundation, which was in use among the medieval Syriac-speaking community in Egypt.§$ ihe banndation (which is perhaps referred to in Am 85 9°) was never understood by the Egyptians themselves, who attributed it to some mystic, divine agency, the tears of Isis’ yearly sorrow for Osiris being in one view its origin.||\| Herodotus (ii.

22) rejects the one explanation, among those he had heard,—and that from a Greek source,— which approximated to the truth. Subsequently Ptolemy gave this same explanation—that the river rose owing to melted snow. The Christian Fathers if had learned the true one, viz. the annual rains in Ethiopia. * Ant. 1. i. 3. ἡ Paradies, 71. : AAT 8140, § Cf. Lucian, Jup. Trag. 42. | He was, however, specially honoured under the New ing. dom at Silsilis. Of. Lepsius, Denkm, ili. 175a, 200c, d, 218d, etc.

“ Cf. Maspero, Hist. anc. i. 98. ** The best known in Pap. Sallier, ll. ; see Guiesse in Rec. de Trav. xiii. tt Heliodorus, ix. 9. For later times see Lumbroso, L' Egitto2, 1ff., and Lane, Mod, Eg. ti. ch, xiii. tt Tuki, Missale (S. Basil.), 71; Leyden, Catal, 129; Brightman, Liturgies, 208. The river’s rise is thought to be due to the in- tercession of St. Michael; see Amélineau, Contes, L 17. §§ G. Margoliouth in JRAS, 1896, Ht Pausan x. 82; cf. Brugsch, Thes, 293. 41 ἐγ.

Athanasius, Vita Ant. (Pat. Gr. 26, 891). meee tee eee NIMRIM, THE WATERS OF δ5] The source of the river was equally mysterious One theory, with which the Odyssey seema acquainted (iv. 477), regarded it as a branch of a heavenly Nile, from which it separated to form the earthly stream somewhere in the Cataract district. Two deep springs (Xrti) in that region, or two rocks (cf. Herod. ii. 28), were spoken of as the point whence the waters flowed.

* The height of the river’s annual rise—a matter of vital importance to all dwellers on its banks— was officially registered from an early period (at Semneh, 12th Dyn.),+ and recently similar in- scriptions of a later age (22nd-26th Dyn.) have been found at Thebes.¢ The regulation of supplies of water for irrigation was one of the functions of the crown itself. Among the newly discovered remains of the earliest monarchy (1st-2nd Dyn.) at Hieraconpolis is a relief showing the king opening (?)

an artificial canal. Of the numer- ous Nilometers of more recent times, the oldest extant—probably of Ptolemaic origin, and in its modernized form still in use—is at Elephantine, though tradition assigned to that which existed at Memphis a much higher antiquity.|| Abu Salih (quoting Ibn ‘Abd el-Hakam) attributes it to Joseph.

7 The story of the seven years’ famine in Gn 41, due to an insufficient inundation, finds a parallel in a text discovered in 1891, which, though written at earliest under the Ptolemies, purports to give an account of a drought of like duration under the 3rd Dynasty. ** A curious legend in the Targum describes the burial of Joseph’s coffin in the Nile, and its re- discovery by Moses.tt The Egyptians, of course, never used the river in this way. See, further, art. EGyPt, in vol. i. p. 653. W. E.

Crum.