II. Upper and Lower Egypt

Having examined both lotus and papyrus (with a side trip to the sedge), we will now take a closer look at the notion of Upper and Lower Egypt.

There is really only one reason why the designations Upper and Lower Egypt sometimes cause problems for beginners: the fact that the Delta, being in the north, is on the "top side" of the map, while the valley is located "below" that. The fact that we orientate a map towards the north is mere convention, though. In fact, the very word "to orientate" means literally: to point towards the east (the orient). Most European maps were, right until the 17th century, drawn up in such a way that the east was at the top of the paper. This was done to (roughly) orientate all maps towards Jerusalem, in the east. (Westerners may today find it "peculiar" that Muslims pray with their face towards Mecca, but all over Europe, every medieval cathedral was carefully orientated towards Jerusalem...)

The south of Egypt is called Upper Egypt because it actually lies on higher ground than the Delta. The river Nile flows from south to north, and water always runs down.

Likewise, the higher grounds of southern Nubia are referred to as Upper Nubia, while the part just south of Aswan is called Lower Nubia.

The ancient Egyptians themselves already spoke of the Valley as being on higher ground than the Delta. In the private Old Kingdom tombs around the capital of Memphis, we regularly read statements like the following:

I left my city and descended from my nome, after I did there what was right, and only spoke there the truth.

I left my city and descended from my nome, after I had done there what was right for its lord [i.e.: the god of the city or nome], and did what he [the god] wanted.

This describes the end of a professional career in a nome (province) of Upper Egypt, after which an official descended  towards the capital - which was in the north, and therefore downstream - to be buried near the king.
It takes however until the Ptolemaic Period, before we actually find something reminiscent of our expression “Upper and Lower Egypt”. From this period, we have bilingual texts: in Egyptian (in hieroglyphs and/or demotic) and in Greek. (The Stone of Rosetta, which enabled Champollion to decipher the hieroglyphic script, is the best known of these). The Egyptian expression n-swt-bit (“he of the sedge and the bee”: part of the royal titulature) is in Greek versions rendered as: "Basileus toon te anoo kai toon katoo choroon", meaning: "King of both the upper and the lower countries" (translation kindly supplied by John Gee, BYU).

It is now customary to transpose n-swt-bit in English as "King of Upper and Lower Egypt". We should keep in mind though, that this is merely a convention. We have no reason to assume that for the Egyptians, it ever meant anything else than “he of the sedge and the bee”. The Greeks, no doubt ill at ease with this mysterious expression, simply replaced it with something closer to their own way of thinking.
 

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