> Egypt and the Nile don't seem particularly different as an environment. Dry desert with regular river floodings etc. The Nile flood was extremely benign comp

> Egypt and the Nile don't seem particularly different as an environment. Dry desert with regular river floodings etc. The Nile flood was extremely benign compared to Mesopotamia. You can set your calendar by it (and the Egyptians did), you can measure the height of the flood for a few years and be very confident that the flood of the next year will be similar to the ones of the past few years. And most crucially, the Nile flows in a deep river valley, with fairly steep sides, meaning that you can build your houses and granaries within comfortable walking distance of the flood plain and still be confident that you will be safe from the floods. In contrast, the floods of Tigris and Euphrates were extremely unpredictable in both timing and strength, and the flood plain was so large that the entire civilizations working it had to live in it. This resulted in very different outlooks, most visible in how they viewed their river gods. The Egyptian ones were friendly, the Sumerian ones were capricious and cruel.