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Up or Down the Nile? Another one for the Blooper File
The Nile is a river in Egypt that empties into the Mediterranean. Its source, though hotly debated in ancient times and incorrectly theorized by King Juba II to be in ancient Mauretania, is actually (mostly) in Ethiopia. The river flows north.
Consequently, when traveling from Alexandria on a river barge into deeper parts of Egypt, one would be traveling upstream. Not down.
Unfortunately, I have always thought of traveling south as down. My use of this colloquialism is totally untenable as pertains to river travel. In this case, because the Nile flows the other way, no experienced river barge traveler would ever phrase it this way. And certainly not one from Egypt, where ‘Upper Egypt’ was often considered its own land.
Nevertheless, I wrote of going down the river in Lily of the Nile and probably in Song of the Nile as well, though I have not yet checked. It will be corrected in the third and final book of the Nile series. In the meantime, it’s another thing to file in my blooper’s section.
I’ve always thought it funny and odd how the Nile flows north. I can’t wait until the third book!
German rivers flow north all the time, the Rhine, Weser, Elbe which confluence into the North Sea; the Oder and Weichsel (Vistula; now Poland) joining the Baltic Sea …. so it would read odd to me to have ‘down the Nile’ mean southward.
It is entirely my mistake.
But then the nile source in Mauretania could Juba be hinting at Selene? That the bloodline of Egypt was now flowed in Mauretaina? Just speculating.
That was almost assuredly what Juba was doing, Michelle. He just also mentioned it as an incorrect fact of geography!