Transcription of the lecture of David Neumann (English)

Transcription of the D.David Neumann “Egypt” (Fragment)

Today I’m going to go to Egypt.Egypt is a very peculiar country in many ways and it's one of the early centers of Western civilization, one of the early cradles of Western civilization.Egyptian civilization begins about the same time as the Sumerian, but of course under entirely different circumstances.Now Egypt is peculiar in many ways and this is one of them: the country is a thousand miles long from North to South.It is five miles wide.So, it's difficult for us to conceive of it but, nevertheless, that's the physical reality of Egypt.Now if you look at a map, of course, it'll say, you know, Egypt is 360000 sq.by ml.in a big square corner - that's all Sahara desert.The fact is that Egypt itself is along the banks of the Nile, that's the only place where people can live.And because it is of that size: 5 miles from cliff to cliff side, the cliff side with the river in the center and a thousand miles from North to South with a big meander, and then the river as it flows out it spreads out into a delta.And the Greeks gave it the name Delta because it has the shape of the letter "delta" as it flows out into what was the sea at that point.But then the silt deposited and so the delta was built up.