Mountain Ranges, Deserts and Landforms of Egypt

Geography

The Sahara covers large parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Western Sahara and Sudan, and parts of southern Morocco and Tunisia. It covers 9 million square kilometres (3,500,000 sq mi), 31% of the African continent. If all areas with a mean annual precipitation of less than 250 mm (9.8 in) were included, the Sahara would be 11 million square kilometres (4,200,000 sq mi). It is one of three distinct physiographic provinces of the African massive physiographic division. The Sahara is so large and bright that, in theory, it could be detected from other stars as a surface feature of Earth, with near-current technology.

Climate

The Sahara is the world's largest hot desert. It is located in the horse latitudes under the subtropical ridge, a significant belt of semi-permanent subtropical warm-core high pressure where the air from the upper troposphere usually descends, warming and drying the lower troposphere and preventing cloud formation.

The permanent absence of clouds allows unhindered light and thermal radiation. The stability of the atmosphere above the desert prevents any convective overturning, thus making rainfall virtually non-existent. As a consequence, the weather tends to be sunny, dry and stable with a minimal chance of rainfall. Subsiding, diverging, dry air masses associated with subtropical high-pressure systems are extremely unfavorable for the development of convectional showers.

History

Scientists have identified more than 230 humid periods in North Africa over the past eight million years, recurring at intervals of approximately 21,000 years.

A modern laboratory examination of the Uan Muhuggiag child mummy and Tin Hanakaten child have suggested that the Central Saharan peoples from the Epipaleolithic, Mesolithic, and Pastoral periods possessed dark skin complexions. The creators of the Round Head rock art possessed dark skin.

A 2025 study sequenced individuals from Takarkori (7,000 YBP) and discovered that most of their ancestry was from an unknown ancestral North African lineage, related to the African admixture component found in Iberomaurusians.

Geography

The Sahel spans 5,900 km (3,670 mi) from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east, in a belt several hundred to a thousand kilometers (c. 600 miles) wide. It covers an area of 3,053,200 square kilometers (1,178,850 sq mi).

Representing a climatic and ecological transition zone with hot semi-desert and steppe conditions, the region borders the more humid Sudanian savannas to its south and the dry Sahara desert to the north. This ecoregion is also called the Sahelian acacia savanna in honour of its most prominent and very drought tolerant genus of tree.

The topography is mainly flat; most of the region lies between 200 and 400 meters (660 and 1,310 ft) in elevation.

History

Around 4000 BC, the climate of the Sahara and the Sahel started to become drier at an exceedingly fast pace. This climate change caused lakes and rivers to shrink significantly and caused increasing desertification. This in turn decreased the amount of land conducive to settlements and caused migrations of farming communities to the more humid climate of West Africa.

The larger Sahelian kingdoms emerged from 750 AD and founded several large cities in the Niger valley region, including Timbuktu, Gao and Djenné.

The kingdom of Alodia was a Christian Nubian Kingdom in the eastern Sahel that reached its zenith from the 9th to 12th century. It was first mentioned in 569, its capital Soba located near modern-day Khartoum.

Geography and climate

The Uweinat mountain range at the very south of the plateau extends from Egypt into Libya and Sudan.

Gilf Kebir Plateau lies in the heart of the eastern part of the vast Sahara Desert, and thus experiences an extremely hyper-arid climate. The area receives very little rainfall, with annual average precipitation hardly reaching 0.1 mm, and has a geological aridity index/dryness ratio of over 200, meaning that solar energy received at the ground evaporates more than 200 times the amount of precipitation received.

History

Magharet el Kantara in the southern Gilf Kebir contains only one known rock art site, a cave discovered by Shaw & party in 1936.

Wadi Sura in the southwestern Gilf Kebir: the "Cave of Swimmers", discovered by the Hungarian Count László Almásy (The English Patient), plus many other paintings nearby.

In January 2003, Zerzura Expeditions and Jacopo Foggini independently discovered a major new rock art site in the Western Gilf Kebir (Foggini-Mestekawi Cave).

The North-western half of the Gilf Kebir aside from Wadi Sura has only a few scattered engravings, of an apparently very ancient age.

Karkur Talh and Karkur Murr: major eastern valleys of the Uweinat contain one of the richest concentrations of rock art in the whole Sahara.

Geography

The region is described by one writer as "a plateau standing on average some 500 feet [150 m] above sea level, barren, rubble- and boulder-strewn, dark brown in colour, occasionally dotted with scrub, and, at first sight, flat". He also states that little of the area conforms to "the romantic view... the Hollywood scenery of wind-formed dunes with occasional oases fringed with palm" (although such areas do exist in the Sand Sea where dunes are sculpted into fantastic shapes); the area is also the location of a series of oases created where the land dips sufficiently to meet the aquifer. These lie in an arc from Siwa in the north-west near the Libyan border, to Bahariya, Farafra, Dakhla, then Kharga in the south.

History

In pre-historic times the Western desert is thought to have been a semi-arid grassland, home to savanna animals and hunter-gatherers; evidence of abundant wildlife can be found in the cave paintings of the Gilf Kebir.

It is thought that over-grazing and climate change led to desertification and the current geography. Even after this, however, the oases remained inhabited, and the Antiquities Museum at Kharga has artifacts dating back to times before the early Egyptian kingdoms.

In ancient times the area was regarded as being under the jurisdiction of the kingdom of Egypt, and Egyptian remains can be found in all the oases.

In 525 BC, the Lost Army of Cambyses, a military expedition by the Persian king Cambyses II got lost in the desert while searching for the Oracle of Ammon, at Siwa.

Geography

The Libyan Desert covers an area of approximately 1,300,000 km2 (500,000 square miles), and extends approximately 1,100 km (680 miles) from east to west, and 1,000 km from north to south, in about the shape of a rectangle slanting to the south-east. Like most of the Sahara, this desert is primarily sand and hamada or stony plain.

Sand plains, dunes, ridges, and some depressions (basins) typify the endorheic region, with no rivers draining into or out of the desert. The Gilf Kebir plateau reaches an altitude of just over 1,000 m (3,300 feet), and along with the nearby massif of Jebel Uweinat is an exception to the uninterrupted territory of basement rocks covered by layers of horizontally bedded sediments, forming a massive sand plain, low plateaus, and dunes.

Climate

The Libyan Desert is said to be one of the least hospitable regions on Earth. Its climate is surprisingly variable, being hot in summer, with average daytime temperatures of 50 °C (122 °F) and above, though this drops rapidly at night. In winter, days are cool, with temperatures averaging 27 °C (81 °F), but at night this can drop below freezing, with temperatures of −9 °C (16 °F) recorded. At these times the formation of hoar frost is not uncommon, and they are known as "White Nights".

In the north, along the Mediterranean shore, cool onshore winds blow inland, while further south, hot, dry winds, known as Ghibli, blow from the interior, creating blinding sand-storms. Periodic droughts are common in the desert, often lasting several years.

History

Historically, "Libya" referred to an ill-defined area to the west of Ancient Egypt, whose boundary traditionally was the lake of Mareotis, outside Alexandria. The ancient Greeks, such as Herodotus, regarded the whole of the North African littoral, to Cape Spartel in Morocco, as "Libya". Later, the Romans organized the region the provinces of Libya Inferior and Libya Superior, which covered western Egypt and Cyrenaica. Thus the "Libyan Desert" was the desert to the south of Ancient Libya. With the organization of the Italian colony of Libya in the 20th century the term "Libyan Desert" for this region became a misnomer, and the area of desert within Egypt became known as the "Western Desert" (i.e. west of the Nile, in contradistinction to the Eastern Desert, east of the Nile).

Geography

Between 100 and 35 million years ago the area that is now the Eastern Desert was underwater, covered by the Tethys Ocean. During the Oligocene period, around 34 million years ago, the land began to tilt and the coastline was pushed back to the north and west. Concurrently, the basement complex to the east was uplifted, forming the mountain range of the Desert. In this same sequence of land movements, a rift which is now the Red Sea was opened up.

The mountain range of the Eastern Desert runs between 80 and 137 kilometres (50 and 85 mi) inland from and parallel to the Red Sea Coast. It has peaks around 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) above sea level. The southern mountains are predominantly composed of igneous rock while the mountains to the north are composed of limestone.

Climate

The Eastern Desert has a semi-arid/arid/hyper-arid climate. On average, the region usually receives less than 25 millimetres (0.98 in) of rainfall per year in infrequent patterns. Most of the rainfall occurs during the winter months around the mountains. The mountains can create a rain shadow for the rest of the Desert, contributing to the arid environment.

Average temperatures are between 14 and 21 °C (57 and 70 °F) in winter (November–March) and 23.1 and 23.1 °C (73.6 and 73.6 °F) in summer (May–September). The weather is typically sunny; however, sandstorms can occur, usually between March and June. The storms (khamsins) are caused by tropical air moving up from Sudan, accompanied by strong winds and higher temperatures.

History

The earliest signs of humans in the desert was found in the form of flint tools from 250,000 BC.

Around 25,000 BC, the land underwent significant climatic change which transformed the grassy plains into desert. This made the land much less habitable, driving nomads which had inhabited what is now the Eastern Desert towards the Nile River.

Trade routes from the Nile to the Red Sea were established through the Desert. Notably, there was a route between the Nile River and Mersa Gawasis, an ancient Egyptian port. There were also many mines and quarries along this route. Boats were carried in pieces across the desert through the wadis and then set up once they reached the port to embark on expeditions.

Geography

From north to south, the delta is about 160 km (100 mi) long. From west to east, it covers some 240 km (150 mi) of coastline. The delta is sometimes divided into sections, with the Nile dividing into two main distributaries, the Damietta and the Rosetta, flowing into the Mediterranean at port cities with the same names. In the past, the delta had several distributaries, but these have been lost due to flood control, silting, and changing relief. One such defunct distributary is Wadi Tumilat.

The Suez Canal is east of the delta and enters the coastal Lake Manzala in the north-east of the delta. To the north-west are three other coastal lakes or lagoons: Lake Burullus, Lake Idku and Lake Mariout.

Climate

The Delta has a hot desert climate (Köppen: BWh) as the rest of Egypt, but its northernmost part, as is the case with the rest of the northern coast of Egypt which is the wettest region in the country, has relatively moderate temperatures, with highs usually not surpassing 31 °C (88 °F) in the summer. Only 100–200 mm (4–8 in) of rain falls on the delta area during an average year, and most of this falls in the winter months. The delta experiences its hottest temperatures in July and August, with a maximum average of 34 °C (93 °F). Winter temperatures normally range from 9 °C (48 °F) at nights to 19 °C (66 °F) in the daytime. With cooler temperatures and some rain, the Nile Delta region becomes quite humid during the winter months.

History

People have lived in the Nile Delta region for thousands of years, and it has been intensively farmed for at least the past five thousand years. The delta was a major part of Lower Egypt, and many archaeological sites are located in and around the region. Artifacts belonging to ancient sites have been found on the delta's coast. The Rosetta Stone was found in the delta in 1799 in the port city of Rosetta (an anglicized version of the name Rashid). In July 2019 a small Greek temple, ancient granite columns, treasure-carrying ships, and bronze coins from the reign of Ptolemy II, dating back to the third and fourth centuries BC, were found at the sunken city of Heracleion, colloquially known as Egypt's Atlantis.