Crocodiles Across African Cultures

Two kilometres from the temple at Kom Ombo, on the Nile north of Aswan, diggers near the village of El Shatb uncovered a graveyard of crocodiles. Not bones scattered by a flood, but bodies, wrapped and preserved with the same care the ancient Egyptians gave their own dead. Some are hatchlings. The largest runs past four metres. Around twenty of them now lie in a small museum beside the temple, and standing in front of that case you understand something no caresheet can tell you: people have been trying to make sense of this animal for as long as there have been people on this river.

The temple itself is shared between two gods, which is rare in Egypt. One half belongs to Horus the Elder. The other belongs to Sobek, the crocodile-headed god of the Nile's water and its power, whom an earlier chapter has already named. The Egyptians kept living crocodiles in a pool beside the temple, fed them, adorned some with gold, and mummified them in their thousands as offerings. Further north, in the Faiyum, stood the town the Greeks called Crocodilopolis, the crocodile city, built around the same worship. None of this was sentiment. A god who could flood a field into a harvest or take a child at the water's edge was a god you learned to read, to honour, and never to turn your back on.