- English translation
When the Nile rises around you in a flood, put your child under your feet.
- Literal wording
If the Nile comes to you as a flood, put your son beneath your feet.
- Meaning and lesson
The proverb depicts self-preservation in an extreme image: when danger is overwhelming, one puts one's own safety ahead of even a child. It expresses a person’s excessive preference for the self over every other claim or attachment.
Its force comes from making the nearest family bond secondary to personal survival. The child becomes an imagined means of gaining height above the flood, conveying a view in which one's own welfare is valued above all else.
- When it is used
Used to express an extreme form of self-regard, where someone is understood to place personal safety or interest before even the closest family relationship.
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
Report an issue with this meaning: When the Nile rises around you in a flood, put your child under your feet.