Herodotus, the River Nile, dedicated to Sasha.

Hello, this is Bertie, and I'm here with some history from the ancient world inspired by the Greek historian Herodotus.

But first I have a quick message. We're spinning off my Herodotus series into a separate podcast called

Herodotus. So, if you want to catch future editions of Herodotus series into a separate podcast called Naturally Herodotus.

So if you want to catch future editions of Herodotus, please subscribe to Herodotus

in iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or your favourite podcast app.

Previously, I've been telling you about the incredible empire built by the ancient Persians.

When their great leader Cyrus died 530 years before the birth of Christ, his son,

Cambyses took over all the lands that he had amassed, including much of what we now call

the Middle East.

Young Cambyses set his sights on conquering one of the oldest, richest, and most mysterious

kingdoms of the world, Egypt. Herodotus visited Egypt when it was ruled by the Persians,

and in the second book of his histories, he describes

what he found there. He famously called Egypt the gift of the Nile, which is why in this episode

I'm going to be focusing on the River Nile. As you may know, the Nile is the longest river in Africa, and indeed the longest river in the world,

it is over 4,000 miles in length.

People have been wondering since ancient Egyptian times where Africa's greatest river begins.

In fact, there are two Niles, the White Nile and the Blue Nile, which join at Khartoum in Sudan

and become one great river which flows onto Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.

But where is the source of the Nile?

A learned Egyptian, the scribe of the sacred treasury of Athena, otherwise known as the Egyptian

goddess of Neith, told Herodotus this following theory about the source of the Nile.

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