How did the Sahara Desert contribute to the development of egyptian civilization?

Answer 1

Mostly the desert provided a buffer region around Egypt that allowed them to live and develop and thrive in an area that was virtually free from serious enemy attacks. It kept the Egyptians safe and secure from warring factions and other nations while at the same time allowing them a place to retreat to in order to bury their dead or conduct religious ceremonies.

Answer 2

I like John's answer, it smacks of original thinking, rather than wiki-think. True the Egyptians would have had to deal with fewer immediate proximate enemies than someone in the middle of Europe. There would have been 'threat's in the upper Nile area, and the desert is never as empty or impassable as it seems, but I'd agree that there might have been a good 'balance' in the threat situation - sufficient to stimulate the development of armies and weapons technology, but not so overwhelming as to destroy the civilization before it developed the capacity to create such organizations and technology.

The other thing about the Sahara is that it changed substantially in the last ten thousand years, originally supporting a fairly rich number of early civilizations (in a milder climate), and that Egypt probably was the almost 'sole' survivor of all of these other civilizations, and so 'inherited' (via the movement of refugees for one thing...) all of the best attributes of all of these other cultures. And of course as those other cultures are weakened by declining fertility/rainfall etc they would be more vulnerable to conquest by the Egyptian culture based around a reliable water source.

So what I'm suggesting is that originally the Sahara might have been a rich area, and that with climate change the 'richness' all 'fell into' the hands of the Egyptians (the 'last man standing' in that area), and that thereafter the desert (as John says) made it a more defensible area that allowed it to further develop and gain dominance in the Middle East.

If you talk about the nature of the Sahara, though, as a 'wide empty place', you'd note that a lot of mystics etc talk about taking themselves to such places to seek enlightenment (a mountaintop is really just another sort of 'wide empty place'). You have to experience it to get a sense of it (standing just outside Amman looking at the pre-dawn light in the East did it for me), but all of the 'emptyness' inevitable inspires questions about the nature of existence etc.

Final point though, you'd have to acknowledge that the Nile made the whole of Egypt easier to govern and keep under central control. Just as Haussmann drove all of those nice wide boulevards through Paris in order to facilitate the movement of troops and artillery in order to put down any further rebellions of the kind that surfaced in 1848, so the Nile provided the Pharaohs with the means to get their armies anywhere within Egypt as short notice in order to suppress any dissident activity. The 'restriction' of the Sahara an each side of the Nile meant that any dissident group couldn't get far away from the 'military highway'

A lot of civilizations pre-dated Egpyt, but few lasted as long or as cohesively (not even the Chinese could claim that). Cohesiveness contributes to power and culture of course, as well as longevity. But it does breed a certain 'conservatism', or resistance to change, which shows in their art etc. But this part of the answer belongs more with a 'how did the Nile contribute to the development of Egyptian civilization' rather than 'how did the Sahara contribute'.

Good question, I like the different perspective - and the fact that there's other answers, to do with the culture and architecture that others can explore.

Answer 3

um not sure
was it like use as a defensive barrier
so like no crusaders(invaders) could go in