This accessible volume looks at the centrality of the Nile to Egyptian history - how the people of Egypt have relied on it for food, irrigation, and transportation, how they have impacted on the Nile itself, and the place it has held in their culture. Much of the book concentrates, as one might expect, on the Pharaohnic period, but Booth shows how the Nile and its cycles of innundation provides a common thread linking Egyptian history through the Middle Ages and right up to the cruises of the present day.