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PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION
This section summarizes, in brief, the main geographical regions that are under discussion in this website, looking at aspects which might have influenced human habitation including environmental changes and and local geomorphological features. It also provides a very brief key-point summary of the prehistoric and predynastic stages for each area. This is designed to compliment the “Through Time” section which looks at areas of Egypt diachronically, an approach that necessarily splits each areas between time zones, breaking up any sense of how each individual area evolves over time. This section hopes to provide a highly top-level insight into the degree to which a given area’s past was continuous or fragmented. Egypt covers 1,000,449km2. The greater percentage of this is covered by desert, and only 3.5% of the total country is permanently settled and available for cultivation. Settlement is concentrated from the triangular shaped Delta in the north, in the Faiyum Oasis, down the margins of the Nile Valley itself, on the Red Sea coast, and more sparsely in the oasis areas of the Western Desert. 99% of the population today live in the Nile Valley and the Delta, with urban populations concentrated in Cairo and Alexandria. Egypt shares boundaries with Libya and Sudan, and in Sinai with Israel. Geologically, the country is divided into four main regions: the Nile Valley, the Nile Delta, the Western Desert (or Libyan Desert) and the Eastern Desert (or Arabian Desert). The Egyptian Nile, as a single river, is fed by the Blue Nile, the White Nile, and the Atbara river. The Nile is fed by waters from Central and Eastern Africa where tropical weather conditions provide rainfall and fill lakes and rivers which feed into the Blue and White Niles. The White Nile originates in Lake Victoria (Uganda) the Blue Nile originates in Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and the Atbara also originates in Ethiopia. all three provide different levels of water on a seasonal basis, in response to the monsoonal character of Ethiopia. The Nile reaches the Delta at Cairo, where today it divides into two branches (formerly up to seven) which reach the Mediterranean at Damietta and Rosetta. Along the coast there are a number of salt marshes and lakes.
The Nile Valley runs north from the Sudan, just south of Khartoum where the Blue and White Niles meet, to just north of Cairo, where it divides into two branches, the Rosetta and Damietta. On a satellite photograph it stands out remarkably as a green ribbon threading its way through the desert. It is fed from Ethiopia and Central Africa. Today, no tributaries feed the Nile, which is wholly dependent on the weather systems of these areas for its supply of water and the annual flood waters which, during prehistoric and recent historical times flooded the lands along the entire length of the Nile. The floods no longer reach to the north of Aswan due to the building of a number of dams, culminating in the Aswan High Dam. The Nile is usually described in terms of three Egyptian zones (Lower, Middle and Upper) and two Nubian zones (Lower and Upper). In the case of the Nile, which flows south to north, Upper always indicates the south and Lower always indicates the north. xxxx xxxxx
Lower Egypt and the Nile Delta The Nile Delta is a triangular area formed where the Nile splits today into two branches, just north of modern day Cairo. The study of the archaeology of the Nile Delta was never going to be easy. Up to seven branches of the Nile existed in the past, and may have altered course before becoming extinct. High water tables make the discovery and excavation of Predynastic levels difficult. Agricultural activity has been intensive, exploiting rich Nile silts which have been deposited over the Delta area, and the silts themselves can be up to many metres deep, hiding archaeological data beneath them. As Caneva explains: “recent geomorphological and archaeological investigation in the Delta suggests that a considerable amount of the sediments has been deposited very recently int he fan of the Nile branches and in the surrounding areas, means that only deep soundings into the silt layer would expose Neolithic and Early Predynastic remains in this region” (Caneva 1996, p.303). Palaeolithic and Neolithic Cairo area sites are few and far between, partly because of the factors above and partly because of the urban development of Cairo and its suburbs. At Helwan Palaeolithic artefacts dating to the Middle Palaeolithic and Epipalaeolithic have been recovered. The earliest Neolithic site in the area is Merimde Beni Salama (Eiwanger 1984), to the northwest of Cairo which, in an early phase, appears to be closely related to the Neolithic occupation in the Faiyum Depression, but evolved over a number of stages to be far more complex. Later, a somewhat different but still apparently Neolithic settlement pattern was established at a number of sites in the Omari area to the south of Cairo (Debono and Mortensen 1990). In the Chalcolithic a number of sites in the Cairo area and the Delta were occupied and show much greater sophistication as well as connections both with more southerly areas and the Near East. Maadi (Rikzaner and Seeher) and Heliopolis (Debono and Mortensen 1988), both in the Cairo area, Buto (xxxx) and Sais (Wilson and Gilbert 2002, Wilson and Gilbert 2003), both in the Western Delta and some eastern Delta sites show clear similarities at this time and are usually known as the “Maadi-Buto” complex. They were replaced by Naqada II features and this replacement of northern features by southern cultural traits is central to the discussions about state formation and how it happened. Late Predynastic sites include Tarkhan, in the Cairo area, Buto in the western Delta and Minshat Abu Omar (xxxx), Kafr Hassan Dawood (2003), and others in the eastern Delta. The Faiyum depression, known in Dynastic times as Ta-She (lake land) covers an area of around 1700km2. It is close to the Nile Valley: “A divide, from 8 to 14km wide and with an elevation of from 30 to 90m above sea level separates the Fayum from the Nile Valley” (Said et al 1970). Only 60 km from Cairo and the division of the Nile into the number of channels making up the Delta, it was at one time connected during the inundation season to the Nile itself, and shares borders with the Western Desert. It was at a junction between Upper and Lower Egypt and the Western Desert The Faiyum depression has, for much of its past, contained a lake named Birket Qarun (or Lake Moeris) which was fed by a Nile run-off called the Bar Yussef. The Bar Yussef emerges from the Nile and follows the course of an ancient Nile branch. It runs more or less parallel with the Nile until it branches off to enter the Faiyum, today via the Hawara Canal. In prehistoric times it broke naturally into the depression during the annual inundation, to flood it and lay down fertile silts. In the Faiyum, the fluctuating Nile and the level of Nile floods directly impacted the levels of Lake Qarun and this in turn impacted the settlements of the Faiyum. The Faiyum Depression is carved out of Eocene and Oligocene strata and is encircled by a northern escarpment. A small scarp to the west and south divides it from Wadi Rayyan and a wide ridge to the east separates it from the Nile valley. It is overlooked by two mountains, the fossiliferous sandstone Gebel Qatrani to the north and Gebel Guhannam to the west. There is one wadi, Masraf el-Wadi (“Outlet of the Mountain”) near Nazla. Archaeologically, although it is probably best known for its Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, Ptolemaic and Roman sites, it is particularly important for its contribution to knowledge on the Epipalaeolithic in Egypt and for providing some of the earliest evidence of farming in Egypt. There are Lower and Middle Palaeolithic (and perhaps Late Palaeolithic) artefacts found in different locations in the Faiyum (Sandford and Arkell 1929), but the first principal settlement evidence comes from the Epipalaeolithic Qarunian, which is followed by the Faiyum Neolithic, both of which share features with other sites and areas, but are not duplicated anywhere. Both these phases were first identified by Caton-Thompson and Gardner (1934), who misunderstood the sequence of events and put the Neolithic (their Faiyum A) before the Epipalaeolithic (their Faiyum B). This was only corrected with more modern studies of the lake levels and the relationships of the sites to these levels, which saw the sequence reversed so that a more conventional chronology was confirmed (Wendorf and Schild 1976). The Faiyum’s Neolithic phase ends with the later Moerian, which may have been an intrusive occupation (Kozlowski and Ginter). The Faiyum Neolithic is particularly similar to Merimde Beni Salama, which may have predated it. There are only a few accounts of later Predynastic sites following the Neolithic occupation, and the Faiyum was only reoccupied fully in the Middle Kingdom, although a quay and temple were established in conjunction with quarrying activities in the Old Kingdom. Eastern Desert and Red Sea Coast The Eastern Desert covers an area of 220,000km2, and consists of a desertified rocky range of hills, the Red Sea Hills, which extend from the Sudan in the south to the Delta in the north, and which are parallel to the Red Sea coast. During periods when there was some rainfall, a wadi system drained run-off both east into the Red Sea and west into the Nile. Unlike the Western Desert, there are no concentrated areas where water resources enable permanent settlement and cultivation. However, the Eastern Desert is rich in natural resources, many of which were used in both Predynastic and Dynastic times, for both stone and mineral supplies. The Red Sea mountains form a westerly fringe along the Red Sea, extending from the north of the Red Sea into the Sudan, rising above the desert floor which lies between the mountains and the Nile Valley. They include a number of rock types, the result of a number of geological processes. A series of ravines wadi systems are now generally dry, but are testament to wetter times, when waters ran from the mountains both into the Red Sea and into the Nile. Humidity in former times is also indicated by the erosion of the Red Sea Mountains. Today, some occasional torrential showers may still fall in the mountains, draining away in torrents via usually dry wadis. (Sampsell 2003). The Eastern Desert was first explored by Hans Winkler, a German explorer, who did pioneering work locating rock art in the 1930s. He was forced to suspend his work when the Second World War broke out, and died before being able to return. Since then a number of other expeditions into the Eastern Desert have helped to identify more rock art and to begin to classify and date it. Typical motifs include cattle and herdsmen, sheep, goats, elephants, giraffes, ibex, ostriches, and many types of boat. Less work has been done to try and locate and excavate settlement sites, and knowledge of the Eastern Desert’s archaeology suffers accordingly. This may be partly because of how the Eastern Desert has been perceived in the past: “Ancient Egypt has frequently been portrayed as a land separated by inhospitable desert from surrounding cultures. This is inaccurate on two counts. First, the deserts were in earlier times a little wetter and much more habitable than they are now. And second, the desert was as much a highway and a source of raw materials as a barrier” (Majer, J. 1992, p.227). The Western Desert covers around two thirds of Egypt, an expanse of some 700,00km2. It extends from the fertile Nile margins to the Libyan border, east to west, and from the Mediterranean coast to the Sudan border, north to south. Where Egypt, Sudan and Libya meet is the highland Gebel Uweinat, and a little to the north the Gilf Kebir plateau, which rises 1000m above the desert below. There are a number of oases located within the Western Desert, the most prominent of which today are Siwa, Bahariya, Farafra, Dakhleh and Kharga. The Faiyum Depression is often quoted as a Western Desert oasis but was actually a Nile-fed depression (and is again today, thanks to modern irrigation techniques) but was never an oasis. The northernmost of the semi-circle of oases nearest to the Nile, Bahariya is a long depression surrounded by cliffs. In stark contrast to the White Desert features between Farafra and Dakhleh, the Bahariyan geology is dominated by dark rocks like dolerite, basalt and limestone. Today it is a source of iron ore, which is extracted from Eocene deposits. The floor of the depression is formed of Nubian sandstone. (Sampsell 2003, p.152). Numerous springs feed the oasis, and this has allowed it to be inhabited more or less continuously from prehistoric times. One of the least well explored of the oases, it is probably best known for the Valley of the Golden Mummies, a subterranean deposit of Graeco-Roman mummies. However, it was occupied from much earlier times.
The smallest of the Western Desert Oases, Farafra is 600km southwest of Cairo. In Pharaonic times it was known as ta-iht, or the Land of Cows. An arc of limestone cliffs border the oasis to the north, east and west, and the oasis contains the White Desert, which consists of white Cretaceous limestone hills which have been eroded into different shapes by wind blown sand. Surviving components of this erosive process include flint, from which tools could be made, gypsum and fossils as well as iron-bearing nodules (Sampsell 2003, p.152). In recent years it has been the subject of investigation by the Archaeological Mission of Rome (from 1987) who have focused on prehistoric contexts, expanding knowledge about the prehistoric occupation of the Western Desert from the Early Holocene. Three moist phases are recorded within the oasis: “the first occurring in the Early Holocene (9300-8800 or 8600-7100bp); the others corresponding to the humid intervals of the Middle Holocene (5900-5000 and 5800-4600/4500bp” (Barich and Lucarni 2002, p.102). Prehistoric sites of all phases represented were always located near to the most prolific water sources. During the Early Holocene an ephemeral hunter gatherer community used the area. In the Middle Holocene increasing sedentism is apparent in groups who herded sheep and goat, used wild cereals and hunted. They were based near water sources. In the Late Holocene nomadic communities, possibly related to those at Napta Playa were established (Barich and Lucarni 2002). The largest of the Western Desert oases, Dakhleh was probably on the border between the northern Mediterranean climatic zone and the monsoonal southern Egyptian climatic zone, perhaps exposing it to both summer and winter rains (Hassan, pre-publication). The floor of the depression is white-coloured late Cretaceous limestone or chalk.
Sampsell comments that Kharga “is not really a separate depression but it is a continuation of the one designated as Dakhla” (2003, p.153). It is bounded by an escarpment of over 350m high to the northwest, north and east. The floor is formed by Nubian sandstone, and in places is dotted with yardangs. (Sampsell 2003, p.152).
“During the early Holocene there was a northward shift of the summer monsoon systems and a return of rainfall, which would have been highly seasonal, falling only in the summer” (Wendorf and Close ??FOLLOWERS, p.157). Precipitation estimates vary depending on the data used to assess it, but between <100mm - 200mm. The rains formed temporary lakes in basins, which created sediments. The former ephemeral lake Napta Playa is located near the Gebel Napta. Originally it was thought that there were three phases of humidity separatd by arid periods described as Playa I, II and III (Wendorf and Close, p.156) but it is now know that things were a lot more complex - see the Environmental Context page (Schild and Wendorf 2002). The Siwa area includes the Siwa Oasis, Gara Oasis, El Araq Oasis, El Hahrein Oasis and Sitra. There are still regions that are perfectly habitable today, but even more favourable conditions existed during prehistoric periods when there were phases of much greater humidity. In the 1983 survey (Cziesla 1989) expanding dunes of the Great Sand Sea, to the east, are encroaching on ancient shorelines, and it is clear that sites in the region can be expected to be considerably disturbed by the action of sand and wind. Siwa’s location in a depression which is 17m below sea level at its lowest point still features permanent lakes, although they “were once larger and are now very saline” (Sampsell 2003, p.150). There are several hundred springs, many of which are very saline, and only a small proportion are freshwater. Only a small number of field projects have been carried out, including two seasons of work under Hassan between 1974 and 1976 (Hassan 1976, Hassan 1978) which examined 35 sites and was able to obtain samples for radiocarbon dates which established an occupation range between the 8th and 5th millennia BC of 800 years but with a gap between c.5700-4900BC (Cziesla 1989, p.206) or c.6000-4500bp. The BOS survey of the area (Cziesla 1989) was carried out in anticipation of a project to cover substantial parts of the area with an energy project. In spite of the small number of field projects, nearly 400 sites have been identified by the BOS survey alone. The Sitra area is seen as one of the key regions for looking at the relationships between the Near East, North Africa and the Nile, particularly with a view to understanding how ceramics were developed, and how herding and cultivation were established. Cziesla’s 1983 paper focuses on three sites 5km to the north of the Sitra Lake on a limestone plateau on an undrained basin where low grass and bushes still survive. The settlement zone was large, over an area measuring c.1000m by 500m, and sites consist of hearths, flake-middens and different tool assemblages. Most appear to have dated to the Neolithic, with very highly skilled bifacial tools being produced at some sites (83/09 and 83/11 South), a less refined but specialized burin-based site at another(83/12) and a possible tool-manufacturing site where the full production sequence can be reconstructed but very few completed tools are present (83/11 North).. Qattara Depression is absolutely vast, lying between Siwa Oasis in the west and Wadi Natrun and the Delta in the east, with an average depth of 60m below sea level and contains a saline lake.
The Wadi Natrun lies 70km northwest of Cairo, and still contains a number of lakes which in more humid times were larger, and some were conjoined into fewer bigger entities. Sampsell (2003, p.151) suggests that there are no signs of it having been a wadi and that in fact it is another depression. The Gilf Kebir means “Big Plateau” and consists of two main sections, each cut into by wadis which were formerly sites of human occupation in prehistoric times. The Gilf Kebir plateau rises some 300 metres above the surrounding plain, and is located near to where Egypt, Libya and the Sudan meet. Wadi el Akhdar and Wadi Bakht, two of the locations where Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic occupations have been found, are located in the southern part of the Plateau. The area is renowned for its rock art and the various explorers who discovered it. Today there is so little rainfall that it is difficult to measure. However, in prehistoric times, from the beginning of the Early Holocene, it was much more humid and capable of supporting both human, animal and plant life - playa lakes were recorded in the Gilf Kebir before 9400bp and was habitable for pastoralists until around 5000bp. To the south of the Gilf is the Gebel Uweinat, a mountainous area which is the highest in the Western Desert, reaching to a height of 800m, high enough for rain to fall from time to time, and the area was still occupied by pastoralists in the earliest part of the last century. Valleys were occupied in prehistoric times, and the area is well known for its extensive rock art. This entire area is a visible legacy of geological activity which took place many thousands of years ago. It seems extraordinary that Egypt was occasionally covered by the Tethys Sea, a vaster ancestor of the Mediterranean, which led to the deposition of sedimentation which in turn formed into sedimentary rocks. These are found throughout the Western Desert and include both limestones and sandstones (Sampsell 2003, p.140). The seas left Egypt as the land gradually uplifted: “The uplift began in the southwestern corner of Egypt - the site of Gebel Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir Plateau - tilting the rock layers towards the north and producing cracks and joints in the surface rocks” (Sampsell 2003, p.140). Erosion has reduced the Gebel Uweinat, revealing Paleozoic sedimentary layers together with igneous and metamorphic rocks in Egypt known as the Basement Complex which date to the Precambrian. The Basement Complex is the oldest layer of rock in Egypt and underlies the entire country, usually hidden beneath more recent sedimentary rocks, but occasionally revealed on the surface “in a few locations where uplift and erosion have combined to expose it” (Sampsell 2003, p.17). The Gilf Kebir plateau itself has been significantly reduced but remains as a block of Nubian sandstone. Another geological phenomenon, shared by both the Gebel Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir is the presence of basalt sheets, which extruded from fissures during the Oligocene as a result of volcanic activity (Sampsell 2003, p.140). XXXXXXXXXXX Between the Nile Delta and the Near East is the Sinai Peninsula, which covers 61,000km2 and contains a large coastline, plus an interior with desert areas, coastal plain and highland zones which rise up to 2,642m (Gebel Katrinah). It was valued for a number of raw materials during both Predynastic and Dynastic eras. It was taken by Israel aftrer the Six-Day War in 1967, but was returned entirely to Egyptian control in 1982. In a survey focusing on the northwestern area of Sinai one of the purposes of which was to try and identify early sites which might indicate connections between Egypt and the Near East, no Predynastic sites were found (Caneva 1996). No permanent settlement appears to have been established here either in the Epipalaeolithic or Neolithic periods, in spite of permanent settlements in the Near Eastern Natufian and in both the Near Eastern and northern Egyptian Neolithic periods: “The human occupation of this region seems to have always been of a seasonally type. it was never concentrated in permanent villages” (Caneva 1996, p.307).
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