Nile, the one great river of Egypt; constituting, in fact, that country by its alluvial banks. In treating of it we avail ourselves of whatever statements we find suitable in the dictionaries of Smith and Fairbairn. See EcjYPT.
I. Names of the Nile in Scripture. — This word, the NfTXof,', A7/(/s, of the Greeks and Romans, which is sup- posed to be of Iranian origin, signifying "dark blue," does not occur in the authorized version of the English Bible, but the river is repeatedly referred to under dif- ferent names and titles. The Hebrew names of the Nile, excepting one that is of ancient Egyptian origin, all distinguish it from other rivers. With the Hebrews the Euphrates, as tlie great stream of their primitive home, was always "the river," and even the long so- journ in Egyi)t could not put the Nile in its iilace. Most of their geographical terms and ideas are, how- ever, evidently traceable to Canaan, the country of the Hebrew language. Thus the sea, as lying on the west, gave its name to the west quarter. It was only in such an exceptional case as that of the Euphrates, which had no rival in Palestine, that the Hebrews seem to have ret^iined the ideas of their older country. These cir- cumstances lend no support to the idea that the Shem- ites .^nd tlicir language came (iriginally from Egypt.
With the ancient Egyptians the river was sacred, and had, besides its ordinary name, a sacred name, un- der which it was worshipped, ir.vi'i, or hati-mu, "the abyss," or "the abyss of waters," or "the hidden." Corresponding to the two regions of Egypt, the Upper
Country and the Lower, the Nile was called irAri-nES, "the Southern Nile," and HAi'i-MKiiiT, "the Northern Nile," the former name applying to the river in Nubia as well as in Upper Egypt. The god Nilus was one of the lesser divinities. He is represented as a stout man having woman's breasts, and is sometimes painted red to denote the river during its rise and inundation, or High Nile, and sometimes blue, to denote it during the rest of the year, or Low Nile. Two figures of hapi are frequently represented on each side of the throne of a royal statue, or in the same place in a bass-relief, bind- ing it with water-plants, as if the prosperity of the kingdom depended upon the produce of the river. The name iiapi, perhaps in these cases hepi, was also ap- plied to one of the four children of Osiris, called by Egyptologers the genii of Ament or Hades, and to the bull Apis, the most revered of all the sacred animals. The genius does not seem to have any connection with the river, excepting indeed that Apis was sacred to Osi- ris. Apis was worshipped with a reference to the in- undation, perhaps because the myth of Osiris, the con- flict of good and evil, was supposed to be represented by the struggle of the fertilizing river or inundation with the desert and the sea, the first threatening the whole valley, and the second wasting it along the northern coast. (See § iii, below.)
It will be instructive to mention the present names of the Nile in Arabic, as they may serve to illustrate the Scripture terms. By the Arabs it is called Bahr en-Nil, " the River Nile" — the two upper streams being respectively termed Bahr el-A hiad, or White Nile, and Bahr el-Azrek, or Blue Nile — the word Bahr being ap- plied alike to seas and the largest rivers. The Egyp- tians call it El-Bahr, or "the river," alone; and term the annual overflow En-Nil, or " The Nile."
1. Shichur, "lin^'j, "linq, "iha, " black." The idea of darkness conveyed by this word has, as we should expect in Hebrew, a wide sense, applying not only to the color of the hair (Lev. xiii, 31, 37), but also to that of a face tanned by the sun (Cant, i, 5, 6), and that of a skin black through disease (.Job xxx, 30). It seems, however, to be indicative of a very dark color ; for it is said in the Lamentations, as to the famished Nazarites in the besieged city, " Their visage is darker than black- ness" (iv, 8). That the Nile is meant by Shihor is evi- dent from its mention as equivalent to Yeor, " the riv- er," and as a great river, where Isaiah says of Tyre, "And by great waters, the sowing of Shihor, the har- vest of the river ('^Xl') [is] her revenue" (xxiii, 3); from its being put as the western boundary of the Promised Land (.Tosh, xiii, 3; 1 Chron. xiii, 5), instead of " the river of Egypt" (Gen. xv, 18) ; and from its be- ing spoken of as the great stream of Egj'pt, just as the Euphrates was of Assyria (Jer. ii, 18).
If, but this is by no means certain, the name Nile, Nf lAoc, be really indicative of the color of the river, it must be compared with the Sanskrit Nilah, " blue" es- pecially, probably " dark blue," also even " black," and must be considered to be the Indo-European equivalent of Shihor. The signification " blue" is noteworthy, es- pecially as a great confluent, which most nearly corre- sponds to the Nile in Egypt, is called the Blue River, or, by Europeans, the Blue Nile. See Shihor.