Geography of the European Netherlands European part of the country can be split into two areas: the low and flat lands in the west and north, and the higher lands with minor hills in the east and south. The former, including the reclaimed polders and river deltas, make up about half of its surface area and are less than above sea level, much of it actually below sea level. An extensive range of seawalls and coastal dunes protect the Netherlands from the sea, and levees and dikes along the rivers protect against river flooding. The rest of the country is mostly flat; only in the
Flooding of the Nile its function as their gateway to the unknown world. The Nile flows from south to north, to its delta on the Mediterranean Sea. The floods were seen as the annual coming of the god. Possibly Egyptian mythology was based on this understanding, creating stories of gods or nature to give added importance to the processes and cycles that sustained Egypt. Whilst the earliest Egyptians simply laboured those areas which were inundated by the floods, some 7000 years ago, they started to develop the basin irrigation method. Agricultural land was divided into large fields surrounded by dams and dykes and equipped