It’s one of the most tantalising travel images in the world — a felucca floating along the Nile at sunset, its lateen sail spread aslant to catch the wind. It takes us back to the beginnings of ancient Egypt, when the need to manage Nilotic flooding and the imperative to trade along the river’s course were the motors of civilisation. Even 2,500 years ago Herodotus was fascinated by the ease with which the Egyptians had learned to cultivate the soil with its waters rather than with laborious ploughs — which, some speculate, had given them the leisure to build pyramids in the down months.
Of course many authors have been attracted to the river since — notably Alan Moorehead, with his fine books on the Blue and White Nile in the 1960s, and more recently Anthony Sattin, with his wonderful account, Winter on the Nile, of a journey Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert may have taken in the same boat. And that’s not including Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot.
So what does Terje Tvedt add to what we already know? He starts at the delta and works his way south: ‘A travelogue through 5,000 years and 11 countries, from the Mediterranean to Central Africa.’ The narrative is of the ‘I found myself with a new view before me’ variety, but the historical sections are excellent, with some satisfyingly arcane facts.
The most interesting parts are when he leaves the familiar stretches in Egypt and enters the upper waters in Sudan. Who knew, for instance, that Churchill, faced with anti-British and pro-Egyptian sentiment in Sudan in the 1950s, suggested bombing Khartoum, saying ‘Munich is situated on the Nile’? He had travelled the length of the river in 1907, and had written his own book about it, so considered himself something of an expert when prime minister; fortunately his wish was refused.
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