Nile River in Fausset's Bible Dictionary

Not so named in the Bible; related to Sanskrit Nilah, "blue." The Nile has two names: the sacred name Hapi, or Hapi-mu, "the abyss of waters," Hp-ro-mu, "the waters whose source is hidden"; and the common name Yeor Aor, Aur (Atur): both Egyptian names. Shihor, "the black river," is its other Bible name, Greek Melas or Kmelas, Latin Melo, darkened by the fertilizing soil which it deposits at its overflow (Jeremiah 2:18). The hieroglyphic name of Egypt is Kam, "black." Egyptians distinguished between Hapi-res, the "southern Nile" of Upper Egypt, and Hapi-meheet, the "northern Nile" of Lower Egypt. Hapi-ur, "the high Nile," fertilizes the land; the Nile low brought famine. The Nile god is painted red to represent the inundation, but blue at other times. An impersonation of Noah (Osburn). Famine and plenty are truly represented as coming up out of the river in Pharaoh's dream (Genesis 41). Therefore they worshipped it, and the plague on its waters, was a judgment on that idolatry (Exodus 7:21; Psalm 105:29). (See EGYPT; EXODUS.) The rise begins at the summer solstice; the flood is two months later, after the autumnal equinox, at its height pouring through cuttings in the banks which are higher than the rest of the soil and covering the valley, and lasting three months. (Amos 8:8; Amos 9:5; Isaiah 23:3). The appointed S.W. bound of Israel (Joshua 13:3; 1 Chronicles 13:5; 2 Chronicles 9:26; Genesis 15:18). 1 Kings 8:65 "stream" (nachal, not "river".) Its confluent is still called the Blue river; so Nilah means "darkblue," or "black." The plural "rivers" is used for the different mouths, branches, and canals of the Nile. The tributaries are further up than Egypt (Psalm 78:44; Exodus 7:18-20; Isaiah 7:18; Isaiah 19:6; Ezekiel 29:3; Ezekiel 30:12). "The stream (nachal) of Egypt" seems distinct (Isaiah 27:12), now "wady el Arish" (where was the frontier city Rhino-corura) on the confines of Israel and Egypt (Joshua 15:4; Joshua 15:47, where for "river" should stand "stream," nachal)). Smith's Bible Dictionary suggests that nachal) is related to the Nile and is that river; but the distinctness with which nachal) is mentioned, and not as elsewhere Sihor, or "river," Ye'or, forbids the identification. "The rivers of Ethiopia" (Isaiah 18:1-2), Cush, are the Atbara, the Astapus or Blue river, between which two rivers Meroe (the Ethiopia meant in Isaiah 18) lies, and the Astaboras or White Nile; these rivers conjoin in the one Nile, and wash down the soil along their banks from Upper Egypt, and deposit it on Lower Egypt; compare "whose land (Upper Egypt) the rivers have spoiled" or "cut up" or "divided." The Nile is called "the sea" (Isaiah 19:5), for it looks a sea at the overflow; the Egyptians still call it El Bahr "the sea" (Nahum 3:8). Its length measured by its course is probably 3,700 miles, the longest in the world. Its bed is cut through layers of nummulitic limestone (of which the pyramids of Ghizeh are built, full of nummulites, which the Arabs call "Pharaoh's beans"), sandstone under that, breccia verde under that, azoic rocks still lower, with red granite and syenite rising through all the upper strata...