Lee Roy Stokes, age 12, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for his question:

Why do they call Egypt the gift of the Nile?

The great Nile, one of the three longest rivers in the world, gathers its water from the heart of Africa. ‑It is fed by lakes. and streams from mountains and steamy jungles‑. Then it flows north through the sandy desert of North Africa to empty itself into the Mediterranean Sea.

It brings water to this otherwise arid region and, wherever it flows, plants will grow. And the water of the Nile has its seasons. They are months when it is low and months when it spills over its banks, flooding the land.

The ancient Egyptians who lived on the banks of the Nile took advantage of this flooding. They planted their rice in the flood waters and used the reeds and rushes that grew in the; marshy mud. Their way of life depended on the Nile and its floods. Egypt was, and to a large extent still is, a gift of the mighty river Nile.