6000–3300 BCE: (The Middle Nile Culture Area’s Landscape — Rainfall Decreased but Still Supported Continuous Steppe and Semidesert Grassland Extending Across…

6000–3300 BCE: (The Middle Nile Culture Area’s Landscape — Rainfall Decreased but Still Supported Continuous Steppe and Semidesert Grassland Extending Across Middle and Southern Egypt and Far South into the Sudan Belt, the Vast Majority of Inhabitants Not Living Along the River but Carrying Out Pastoral Economies in Wide Expanses West and East of the Nile, Some Communities Living Close to the River as Lesser Rain Amounts Reduced the Danger of Over-High Floods): In the nearly three-millennia period from around 6000 to 3300 BCE, rainfall amounts decreased but still supported an environment of continuous steppe and semidesert grassland that extended not only across middle and southern Egypt but far south into the Sudan geographical belt. Some communities most certainly did live close to the Nile, because lesser rain amounts reduced the danger of recurrent over-high Nile floods. But the vast majority of the inhabitants of this Middle Nile Culture Area would not have lived along the river. Instead, they would have carried out their lives and their pastoral economies in the wide expanses of lands extending both west and east of the river. This is the Egypt that the textbooks never show you — an Egypt of open grasslands and mobile pastoralists, an Egypt where the river was a feature of the landscape rather than its defining characteristic, an Egypt whose cultural and economic life was oriented toward the steppe rather than the floodplain. The people building the cultural foundations of pharaonic civilization were herding cattle across grasslands, harvesting grain in semi-arid steppe, and interacting with their southern neighbors in the Sudan belt across a landscape that presented no natural barrier between them. There was no border between “Egypt” and “Nubia” in this period, because there was no Egypt yet — only a continuous cultural zone in which communities from the Nile confluence to Middle Egypt shared a common way of life.