During the late-Miocene Messinian salinity crisis, when the Mediterranean Sea was a closed basin and evaporated to the point of being empty or nearly so, the Nile cut its course down to the new base level until it was several hundred metres below world ocean level at Aswan and below Cairo.
=== Eonile ===Današnji Nil je vsaj petina reke, ki je tekla severno od etiopskega višavja.