How tall and wide is egypt

In the blackness of the river the result was bedlam. The present Nile is only about 30, years old. It was preceded by at least four other versions of the river that were nourished when the Sahara was not a desert. In , scientists using radioisotopes tracked a crypto-river flowing under the Nile with an annual flow of 20 trillion cubic feetsix times greater than the Nile itself.

The ancient Egyptians regulated their lives according to flooding cycles of the Nile. They relied on the flooding to fertilize their farms but also suffered when high water carried away their homes and property.

The ancient Egyptians believed the Nile was sacred, partly because they had no idea how the river's life-giving floodwaters could mysteriously appear every year out of a barren desert. They didn't know where the river started, and they assumed the water had to be a gift from the gods. According to Egyptian mythology, the Nile divided the world in two, while the Nile itself was compared to a lotus: with the Nile as the flower, the oasis of Al-Faiyum as the bud; and the Nile Valley as the stem.

The Greek historian Herodotus described Egypt as the "the gift of the Nile. Millennia of floods, droughts and silt deposits have shifted the Nile eastward.

Memphis, the seat of the pharaohs, literally, grew in the direction of the Nile as it moved. In the 2nd century the Greek geographer Ptolemy suggested that Nile originated in the mythical Mountain of the Moon in Africa, but no one got close to the real source until the end of the 19th century when British explorer John Speke suggested than it started in Lake Victoria.

Later expeditions showed he was closethe actual source is a stream in Burundi that empties into the Kagera River, which, after miles, flows into Lake Victoria. The construction of the Aswan Dam dramatically altered the character of the Nile in Egypt. Lake Nasser, which was produced by the dam. The dam brought an end to the annual floods but it has also robbed the land of the fertile silt deposited on the farm land each year by the floods. About 85 percent of headwater are in Ethiopia.

The Atbara River contributes one-fifth of the Niles volume during floods. The last major tributary of the Nile, it originates in the highlands of northwestern Ethiopia, flows through Sudan and joins the Nile miles upstream from Khartoum. After tumbling over Blue Nile Falls, the river winds through a steep gorge in the Central Ethiopian Plateau that is a mile deep.

The source of floodwaters in Egypt are the annual rains that fall on Ethiopia and empty into the Blue Nile and Atbara, Much of the fertile silt in the Nile is top soil that washes down from the Ethiopian highlands. The White Nile is the longest of the three Nile tributaries.

Along the way the White Nile flows though Muchinson Falls, where the river narrows from a width of a half a mile to a few hundred meters and then shots through foot-channel like a foaming white "hydraulic explosion. In the Bahr el Jebel region of the Sudan the river spreads out in vast unnavigable swamp filled with papyrus reeds and elephants grass.

The mile Jonglei Canal was designed to reduce water loss from the evaporation and bring water to , acres of land. Construction was halted due to the civil war in the Sudan. The Nile is an important transportation route in Sudan. Waters from the Nile in this barren region are harnessed for irrigation.

North of Khartoum the Nile flows in a broad S-shaped pattern for 1, miles through the desert, where it is interrupted briefly by six cataracts areas of rapids and granite outcroppings. Numbered in ascending order from north to south, the cataracts make the river unnavigable between Lake Nasser in southern Egypt and Khartoum in central Sudan.

Between the First Cataract, not far from Aswan, and Cairo the river is navigable but often times the river is so shallow that the only boats that can negotiate it are flat-bottomed fellucas. North of Cairo the river separates into scores of channels in the approximately mile-wide Nile Delta. The Nile Valley is a flat flood plain that follows the Nile over the length of Egypt from north to south. Described as a mile-long oasis, it is miles if Lake Nasser is included and averages two miles in width.

In many places it is flanked by escarpments and cliffs. Many temples and tombs have been placed on top of these. In Egypt the Nile flows through land that receives almost no rain. The river provides water for crops such as cotton, sugar, rice and is the life force for millions of people. When viewed from an airplane the Nile valley looks like a green ribbon surrounded by endless deserts. In some places the cultivated area is limited by escarpments. In other places where the land is flat and no escarpments are present irrigation has extended agricultural land outward from the river for miles.

Many of the people who live around the river live in villages that have been unchanged by the centuries. The residents dress in robes and turbans as their ancestors have centuries and till the soil and irrigate their crops using traditional methods.

Both before and during the use of canal irrigation in Egypt, the Nile Valley could be separated into two parts, the River Basin or the flat alluvial or black land soil , and the Red Land or red desert land. The River basin of the Nile was in sharp contrast to the rest of the land of Egypt and was rich with wild life and water fowl, depending on the waxing and waning cycles of the Nile.

In contrast, the red desert was a flat dry area which was devoid of most life and water, regardless of any seasonal cycle. The Nile Delta is a flat expanse of extremely fertile land covered with green fields and laced with canals.

Covering about 6, square miles, it has such a perfect triangular shape that the ancient Greeks coined the world "delta" to describe it because they were reminded of a Greek letter by the same name. The ancient Egyptians also had a major presence here. Jews believe that the delta was Goshen, the "house of bondage" where the Israelites labored for the pharaoh before they were led to the promised land by Moses.

North of Cairo the Nile splits into several tributaries, the largest ones being the Rosseta and Damietta branches, which empty into the Mediterranean Sea near ports with the same names. In many ways life on delta today has changed remarkably little since Biblical times. Most peasants still use cattle plows instead of tractors to cultivate their land. Water wheels and Archimedes screws are used instead of pumps to lift water from the Nile.

However, more and more, traditional saqia irrigation wheels are being replaced by diesel pumps. The Nile Delta is one of the world's most intensely cultivated piece of land.

Almost every inch of the region cultivated. The land is divided into fields and canal chocked with hyciths and papyrus. There are cotton fields, rice paddies, wheat fields, grape arbors, and fields with leafy vegetables, beets, melons, broad beans, potatoes, and squashes. Of Egypt's 7. Over a million people now live in the Nile Delta area, along with thousands of water buffalo, donkeys and thousands of migratory birds up until , 25 percent of all the wetlands in the Mediterranean was in the Nile Delta.

The Egyptians that live in the delta area are known for their industriousness. Near Zagazig are the runs of Bubastis, one of the oldest ancient cities in Egypt and the center of an ancient cat cult. Some 40 miles northeast of Zagazig near the village of San el Hagar are the ruins of Tanis, where statues of pharaohs were stored and many scholars believe the Hebrews were enslaved.

Rashid 40 miles east of Alexandria is where the Rosetta St was found by Napoleon;s soldiers in It is located where the western Rosetta branch of the Nile empties into the Mediterranean. The water in the Nile is generally very shallow but goes through periods of flooding caused mostly by heavy rains in Africa, particularly in the Ethiopian highlands.

First the White Nile floods, then the Blue Nile and its tributaries. The flood waters reach Egypt in late spring and rise through the summer until they reach their peak in September or October and then decline until November. The water level of Nile fluctuates as much as 10 feet a year. Water levels are at their lowest around July when seasonal rains are late in Africa. As the floods recede the water drains through the soil, leaching out the salts and carrying them off to the sea.

The Nile loses up to 95 percent of it water compared to 1 percent of the Rhone , most of it for agriculture. The area around the Upper Nile receives only three to five millimeters of rain a year. In ancient times there was a system of dykes that diverted water into basins. When the river flooded water filled the basins. When the water left fertile silt was left behind. To get water to agriculture land a number of pumping stations have been built along the Nile. The inundation of the Nile-a slightly unpredictable event-was the time of greatest fertility for Egypt.

As the banks rose, the water would fill the man-made canals and canal basins and would water the crops for the coming year. However, if the inundation was even twenty inches above or below normal, it could have massive consequences upon the Egyptian agricultural economy. Even with this variability, the Egyptians were able to easily grow tree crops and vegetable gardens in the lower part of the Nile Valley, while at higher elevations, usually near levees, the Nile Valley was sparsely planted.

Other than wells, the River Nile is the only source of water in the country. During an idyllic year, the flooding of the Nile would begin in July, and by September its receding waters would deposit a rich, black silt in its wake for farming. The Nile runs along an alluvial plain, the ebb and tide of the Nile corresponding to an annual movement of the ground.

When the Nile is the lowest, the ground completely dries up. When it floods, the water seeps into the dry soil and causes the ground to rise as much as a foot or two like some bloated sponge.

As the inundation subsides the ground settles again to its original dry level, but never settles evenly. When conditions were stable, food could be stored against scarcity. The situation, however, was not always favourable. High floods could be very destructive; sometimes growth was held back through crop failure due to poor floods; sometimes there was population loss through disease and other hazards. Contrary to modern practice, only one main crop was grown per year. Management of the inundation in order to improve its coverage of the land and to regulate the period of flooding increased yields, while drainage and the accumulation of silt extended the fields.

Vegetables grown in small plots needed irrigating all year from water carried by hand in pots, and from B. Some plants, such as date palms, whose crops ripened in the late summer, drew their water from the subsoil and needed no other watering.

In B. He began with the construction of basins to contain the flood water, digging canals and irrigation ditches to reclaim the marshy land. King Menes is credited with diverting the course of the Nile to build the city of Memphis on the site where the great river had run. By B. It remained in use until the Roman occupation, circa 30 B. For pure water, the Egyptians depended upon wells. Workers had to dig through feet of solid rock to tap into the water.

Agriculture had not been the original basis of subsistence, but evolved, together with the land itself, during the millennia after the last Ice Age ended around 10, B. As well as providing the region's material potential, the Nile and other geographical features influenced political developments and were significant in the development of Egyptian thought. The land continued to develop and its population increased until Roman times.

Important factors in this process were unity, political stability, and the expansion of the area of cultivated land. The harnessing of the Nile was crucial to growth. By the Middle Kingdom c. The only area where there was major irrigation work before Graeco-Roman times was the Faiyum, a lakeside oasis to the west of the Nile. Here Middle Kingdom kings reclaimed land by controlling the water flow along a side river channel and directing it to irrigate extra land while lake water levels were lowered.

Their scheme did not last. These diet staples were easily stored. Other vital plants were flax, which was used for products from rope to the finest linen cloth and was also exported, and papyrus, a swamp plant that may have been cultivated or gathered wild. Papyrus roots could be eaten, while the stems were used for making anything from boats and mats to the characteristic Egyptian writing material; this too was exported.

A range of fruit and vegetables was cultivated. Meat from livestock was a minor part of the diet, but birds were hunted in the marshes and the Nile produced a great deal of fish, which was the main animal protein for most people. The Egyptians also celebrated their world in the decoration of tombs. There we see many images of agriculture and animal husbandry, but the Nile itself is largely absent. Instead, the focus of watery scenes is on marshes where game was hunted and on small watercourses that were crossed by peasants and herders.

Pictures in temples of major festivals and of the return of trading and transport expeditions that used large ships are the main representations that show the river explicitly. These scenes brought glory to the king, who commissioned the expeditions. The Delta and its mouths posed obstacles to invaders. Travel into the desert or to Asia was altogether more difficult than movement within Egypt, where the ease of boat travel on the Nile was a major unifying force in such a long, thin country.

In social terms, however, the river could also separate people. The image of a poor man was someone who had no boat, whom the more fortunate should ferry across. Dying was 'coming to land' on the other side, and the passage into the next world was a 'crossing'. Unlike most peoples, the Egyptians oriented towards the south, from which the river came, so that the west was on their right-with the result that it was the 'good' side for passage into the next world.

The year and calendar were adjusted to the Nile and the stars. New Year was in mid July, when the river began to rise for the inundation; this coincided approximately with the reappearance of the star Sirius Egyptian Sothis in the sky after 70 days' invisibility. Sothis provided the astronomical anchor for the day calendar. The river defined three seasons of four months: 'Inundation' and 'Emergence' November-March when the land reappeared and could be cultivated, and 'Heat' or Harvest, when crops were gathered and the water was lowest.

They thought of its regular flooding, so essential for the fertility of the land it ran through, as the natural state of affairs-so much so that they termed rain in other countries an 'inundation in the sky'. The Egyptians had a relatively matter-of-fact attitude towards the river, whose inundations could sometimes cause destruction but were seen a beneficent moral force.

Egyptian gods, by contrast, were seen as complex beings whose abode was outside the physical world of the land and river. It was left to the Greeks and Romans to make a god of the Nile, as they had of the other rivers of the world. Kings controlled agricultural resources through ultimate ownership of land, taxation of its produce, administrative measures to ensure that it was cultivated, and compulsory labour. In return for control, they were responsible for storage and for provision against failures, so that they took upon themselves much that is achieved through cooperation in small societies.

This force worked to create the fortifications and pyramids of the Middle Kingdom, and following the imperial expansion built the temples and tombs of the New Kingdom c. It also made possible the building and other activities of the Graeco-Roman period. When central control collapsed, chiefly in the three Intermediate periods c. However, for most people the diversion of labour made possible by high productivity was not a personal benefit, but served rulers and elites.

Except in times of great political instability, the lot of many may have been as good or better in the Intermediate periods, although traditional values probably always favoured centralised government to some extent.

The Egyptians took their world largely for granted and praised the gods for its good features. There was no name for the Nile, which was simply the 'river' the word 'Nile' is not ancient Egyptian. The bringer of water and fertility was not the river but its inundation, called 'Hapy', who became a god. Hapy was an image of abundance, but he was not a major god. He was not depicted as a normal god but as a fat figure bringing water and the products of abundance to the gods.

He had no temple, but was worshipped at the start of the inundation with sacrifices and hymns at Gebel el-Silsila, where the hills meet the river, north of Aswan. In myth Osiris was a king of Egypt who was killed by his brother Seth on the river bank and cast into it in a coffin. His corpse was cut into pieces. Later, his sister and widow Isis succeeded in reassembling his body and reviving it to conceive a posthumous son, Horus. His death and revival were linked to the land's fertility.

In a festival celebrated during the inundation, damp mud figures of Osiris were planted with barley, whose germination stood for the revival both of the god and of the land. He was usually depicted as a crocodile on an altar or as a man with a crocodile head wearing a headdress with a sun disk with upright feathers and horns. At this temple there was a pool where sacred crocodiles were kept. Original mummified crocodiles ate still kept at the temple. Hapi Hap was the god of the Nile in inundation.

He was represented as a pot-bellied man with full, heavy breasts, a clump of papyrus on his head, carrying heavy offering-tables. Hapi was not the god of the river Nile but of its inundation. He was thought to live in the caves of the first cataract, and his cult center was at Aswan. A potter and protector of the source of the Nile, he was based on Elephantine Island near Aswan but his best-preserved temple is at Esna. The wife of Khnum, she was represented as a woman with a high feather head-dress.

Satis Satet , the goddess of the Island of Siheil in the Cataract-region, was represented as a woman wearing a white crown with antelope horns. She was the daughter of Khnum and Anukis. Who manifests thyself over this land, and comes to give life to Egypt! Mysterious is thy issuing forth from the darkness, on this day whereon it is celebrated!

Watering the orchards created by Re, to cause all the cattle to live, you give the earth to drink, inexhaustible one! Path that descends from the sky, loving the bread of Seb and the first-fruits of Nepera, You cause the workshops of Ptah to prosper! Thatcher, ed. I: The Ancient World, pp. You create the grain, you bring forth the barley, assuring perpetuity to the temples.

If you cease your toil and your work, then all that exists is in anguish. If the gods suffer in heaven, then the faces of men waste away. Then He torments the flocks of Egypt, and great and small are in agony. But all is changed for mankind when He comes; He is endowed with the qualities of Nun. If He shines, the earth is joyous, every stomach is full of rejoicing, every spine is happy, every jaw-bone crushes its food. If offerings are made it is thanks to Him. He brings forth the herbage for the flocks, and sees that each god receives his sacrifices.

A network of drainage and irrigation canals supplements these remaining outlets. In the north near the coast, the Delta embraces a series of salt marshes and lakes; most notable among them are Idku, Al Burullus, and Manzilah. The fertility and productivity of the land adjacent to the Nile depends largely on the silt deposited by floodwaters. Archaeological research indicates that people once lived at a much higher elevation along the river than they do today, probably because the river was higher or the floods more severe.

The timing and the amount of annual flow were always unpredictable. Measurements of annual flows as low as 1. For centuries Egyptians attempted to predict and take advantage of the flows and moderate the severity of floods. The construction of dams on the Nile, particularly the Aswan High Dam, transformed the mighty river into a large and predictable irrigation ditch. Lake Nasser, the world's largest artificial lake, has enabled planned use of the Nile regardless of the amount of rainfall in Central Africa and East Africa.

The dams have also affected the Nile Valley's fertility, which was dependent for centuries not only on the water brought to the arable land but also on the materials left by the water.

Researchers have estimated that beneficial silt deposits in the valley began about 10, years ago. The average annual deposit of arable soil through the course of the river valley was about nine meters.

Analysis of the flow revealed that The reduction in annual silt deposits has contributed to rising water tables and increasing soil salinity in the Delta, the erosion of the river's banks in Upper Egypt, and the erosion of the alluvial fan along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The Western Desert covers about , square kilometers equivalent in size to Texas and accounts for about two-thirds of Egypt's land area.

This immense desert to the west of the Nile spans the area from the Mediterranean Sea south to the Sudanese border. The desert's Jilf al Kabir Plateau has an altitude of about 1, meters, an exception to the uninterrupted territory of basement rocks covered by layers of horizontally bedded sediments forming a massive plain or low plateau. Scarps ridges and deep depressions basins exist in several parts of the Western Desert, and no rivers or streams drain into or out of the area.

The government has considered the Western Desert a frontier region and has divided it into two governorates at about the twenty-eighth parallel: Matruh to the north and New Valley Al Wadi al Jadid to the south. There are seven important depressions in the Western Desert, and all are considered oases except the largest, Qattara, the water of which is salty. The Qattara Depression is approximately 15, square kilometers about the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island and is largely below sea level its lowest point is meters below sea level.

Badlands, salt marshes, and salt lakes cover the sparsely inhabited Qattara Depression. Limited agricultural production, the presence of some natural resources, and permanent settlements are found in the other six depressions, all of which have fresh water provided by the Nile or by local groundwater.

The Siwah Oasis, close to the Libyan border and west of Qattara, is isolated from the rest of Egypt but has sustained life since ancient times. The Siwa's cliff-hung Temple of Amun was renowned for its oracles for more than 1, years. Herodotus and Alexander the Great were among the many illustrious people who visited the temple in the pre-Christian era.

The other major oases form a topographic chain of basins extending from the Al Fayyum Oasis sometimes called the Fayyum Depression which lies sixty kilometers southwest of Cairo, south to the Bahriyah, Farafirah, and Dakhilah oases before reaching the country's largest oasis, Kharijah. For centuries sweetwater artesian wells in the Fayyum Oasis have permitted extensive cultivation in an irrigated area that extends over 1, square kilometers. The topographic features of the region east of the Nile are very different from those of the Western Desert.

The relatively mountainous Eastern Desert rises abruptly from the Nile and extends over an area of approximately , square kilometers roughly equivalent in size to Utah. The upward-sloping plateau of sand gives way within kilometers to arid, defoliated, rocky hills running north and south between the Sudan border and the Delta.

The hills reach elevations of more than 1, meters. The region's most prominent feature is the easterly chain of rugged mountains, the Red Sea Hills, which extend from the Nile Valley eastward to the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea. This elevated region has a natural drainage pattern that rarely functions because of insufficient rainfall. It also has a complex of irregular, sharply cut wadis that extend westward toward the Nile.

The Eastern Desert is generally isolated from the rest of the country. There is no oasis cultivation in the region because of the difficulty in sustaining any form of agriculture. Except for a few villages on the Red Sea coast, there are no permanent settlements. The importance of the Eastern Desert lies in its natural resources, especially oil. A single governorate, the capital of which is at Al Ghardaqah, administers the entire region.

This triangular area covers about 61, square kilometers slightly smaller than West Virginia. Similar to the desert, the peninsula contains mountains in its southern sector that are a geological extension of the Red Sea Hills, the low range along the Red Sea coast that includes Mount Catherine Jabal Katrinah , the country's highest point, meters.

The Red Sea is named after these mountains, which are red. The southern side of the peninsula has a sharp escarpment that subsides after a narrow coastal shelf that slopes into the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba.

The elevation of Sinai's southern rim is about 1, meters. Moving northward, the elevation of this limestone plateau decreases. The northern third of Sinai is a flat, sandy coastal plain, which extends from the Suez Canal into the Gaza Strip and Israel. By after all of Sinai was returned to Egypt, the central government divided the peninsula into two governorates.

Throughout Egypt, days are commonly warm or hot, and nights are cool. Egypt has only two seasons: a mild winter from November to April and a hot summer from May to October. The only differences between the seasons are variations in daytime temperatures and changes in prevailing winds. In the coastal regions, temperatures range between an average minimum of 14 C in winter and an average maximum of 30 C in summer.

Temperatures vary widely in the inland desert areas, especially in summer, when they may range from 7 C at night to 43 C during the day. During winter, temperatures in the desert fluctuate less dramatically, but they can be as low as 0 C at night and as high as 18 C during the day.

The average annual temperature increases moving southward from the Delta to the Sudanese border, where temperatures are similar to those of the open deserts to the east and west. In the north, the cooler temperatures of Alexandria during the summer have made the city a popular resort. Throughout the Delta and the northern Nile Valley, there are occasional winter cold spells accompanied by light frost and even snow.

At Aswan, in the south, June temperatures can be as low as 10 C at night and as high as 41 C during the day when the sky is clear.

Egypt receives fewer than eighty millimeters of precipitation annually in most areas. Most rain falls along the coast, but even the wettest area, around Alexandria, receives only about millimeters of precipitation per year. Alexandria has relatively high humidity, but sea breezes help keep the moisture down to a comfortable level. Moving southward, the amount of precipitation decreases suddenly. Cairo receives a little more than one centimeter of precipitation each year.

The city, however, reports humidity as high as 77 percent during the summer.