MEASURING THE ABUNDANCE OF THE NILE

A thousand years after the previous story…

We tend to think of measurement as something taken from the world; as knowledge extracted from nature by means of scales and rulers. This is just convention, however and the opposite is equally true. The measure often precedes the measurement. It is the product of some complex system, perhaps unseen or unknown which exists before our attention, and which requires effort to be understood.

In ancient Egypt one particular measure could be found long before people settled the land and founded the civilisation we know today. This was the bounty of the Nile River, a liquid bonus given each year in floodwater and fertility.

Herodotus wrote that ‘Egypt is the gift of the Nile’. Quite so, the land either side of the Nile is desert, as would the whole of Egypt be without the Nile. The river flows south with a total length of about 6,650 km starting in Tanzania and passing through eleven countries on its way to the Mediterranean Sea.

For millennia it lay clotted thick, rich mud on the land every summer. Into this, crops could be planted to grow with minimal watering under the winter sun. By spring, the crops would be ready for harvesting. The mud would then dry under the summer heat and the cycle would repeat.

Geography being what it is, the variation in rainfall in Ethiopia and Tanzania will cause a variation in the annual floods. These floods are so important that the ancient Egyptian calendar was divided into three: k Akhet – inundation k Peret – growing. k Shemu – drought

The variation in flooding has two unacceptable extremes: k Too low a flood and there may not be support for the cultivation required to avoid starvation. k Too high a flood may cause structural damage to buildings and washing away of field structures.

Observation of the pattern of floods must have resulted in the desire for records, which can then be assessed and interpreted. The priest caste were already interested in the heavens and as they were the educated class, must have led the way in observing and recording the flood progress and final height. The importance of this is illustrated by the fact that in bible times about one third of all floods were inadequate to feed the Egyptian population, and perhaps more important to Egypt’s rulers raised, in their eyes, inadequate taxation.

The device they used and invented is still in use today, in Egypt it is called a ‘Nilometer’.

In its basic form it is simply a pillar of stone inscribed at regular intervals. In Egypt the primary division is the cubit, this is used in many civilisations and is generally accepted as the distance from elbow to fingertip. The English word is derived from the Latin ‘cubitum’, meaning elbow.

The importance of the nilometer to the Egyptians can be illustrated by the fact that they were a key feature of Egyptian life, many hundreds were present throughout Egypt along the Nile. Whilst it is not known when they were introduced, they were certainly in use by around 3000 BCE.

The importance is also reflected in the elaborate construction of those survivors. One is on Roda island in Cairo which consists of a well, a shaft containing a column some eleven meters tall, the hight of a modern house. The shaft is wide with stairs leading down to allow access to water level. Now blocked, there was originally a side tunnel to allow the Nile waters to flow into the well. Many nilometers were in temples, so as to allow the priests sole access to the nilometer, as today, information is king!

Each nilometer seemed to have been inscribed with the record highs and lows. We do not know how often the readings were recorded or how they were collated or how the flood levels were predicted, but they were important.

Pliny the Elder (later to die in the volcanic eruption which buried Pompei and Herculaneum) wrote in the first century AD, describing the use of a nilometer thought to have been in Memphis, the capital of ancient Egypt: k ‘When the water rises to only twelve cubits, Egypt experiences the horror of famine. k When it attains thirteen cubits, hunger is still the result. k A rise of fourteen cubits is productive of gladness. k Arise of fifteen sets all anxieties at rest. k A rise of sixteen cubits is productive of unbounded transports of joy.’ This figure of sixteen seems to have been significant, a later copy of a third century statue depicted the Nile as a reclining figure … which was surrounded by sixteen cherubs, each a cubit high.

The use of nilometers only faded away in Egypt after the Aswan dam was completed in the 1970’s, controlling the flow of the Nile at last.

Nowadays we have telemetry data processing and so forth, but it is comforting to see my local branch of the River Derwent has an automatic Yorkshire Water level monitoring station, with a white painted vertical plank of wood, inscribed with horizontal black lines – a Derwentometer! I receive text messages when the Derwent is likely to flood. Saves our local vicar a job!

Indeed, the harbours of North Yorkshire still have such visible displays. I know what I would take notice of if I were manoeuvring a boat into my harbour!

Having nearly been flooded out myself in 2002 I appreciate the damage and distress resulting from flooding. The house was not flooded but the garage was, to a depth of two feet – six hundred millimetres. Our twentyyear-old Curry’s Zoppas freezer continued running, despite the power switch being at the bottom, under water. The result: a freezer half full of frozen river water.

We were happily on holiday in Yellowstone National Park when we returned to our hotel in Jackson Hole and heard a recorded call from our then sixteen year old daughter, ‘the house has been flooded but don’t worry, it didn’t last long.’

The Nile was not the only major river to have flood markers. A hunger stone (German: Hungerstein) is a type of hydrological landmark common in Central Europe.

Hunger stones serve as famine memorials and warnings and were erected in Germany and in ethnic German settlements throughout Europe in the 15th through to the 19th centuries.

These stones were often embedded into a riverbank during droughts to mark the water level as a warning to future generations that they will have to endure famine-related hardships if the water sinks to that level again.

One on the Elbe river erected in what is now the Czech Republic bears an inscription, “Girl, don’t weep and moan, if it’s dry, water the field”. Not very politically correct by modern standards, but we get the meaning!

Once again our children gave inspiration by buying me a book for my birthday, accordingly I give credit to James Vincent, author of ‘Beyond Measure’ ISBN 978-0-57135421-4.

In the world of genset manufacturing, AMPS holds a special place in the hearts of those who were part of its formation in the late 1980s. In this article, Gerald Parkinson, the founder and first Secretary of AMPS, takes us on a journey through the early years of the association, its formation, and the challenges faced during its inception.

It all started in the summer of 1987, when a group of genset builders gathered for lunch on the first floor of Giovani’s Restaurant in Regent Street, Rugby. Hosted by Don Andrews and Brian Williams of Intex Engineering, the aim was to form a new association of genset manufacturers, to ensure they had an equal voice within the industry. The first formal meeting of the executive committee of AMPS was held in November 1988, with 20 companies having already signed up.

John Wilkins, MD of Coronet EM in Leicester, contacted Parkinson to