Hapy in Sudan (Photo: Emily O'Dell)
In Sudan, when I visited the large temple complex of the god Amun in the Royal City of Meroe, I came across this block with the Nile god Hapy chiseled on its side. Though the mudhut where I lived in Sudan was surrounded by Saharan sand, my colleague and I one day reached the damp banks of the Nile, after a thirty-minute walk through some hidden, lush fields nourished by Hapy…
Hymn to the flood, Hail flood!
Emerging from the earth, arriving to bring Egypt to life,
hidden of form, the darkness in the day,
the one whose followers sing to him, as he waters the plants,
created by Ra to make every herd live,
who satisfies the desert hills removed from the water…
— Hymn to Hapy
