EGYPT, a country forming the N.E. extremity of Africa.[1] In the following account a division is made into (I.) Modern Egypt, and (II.) Ancient Egypt; but the history from the earliest times is given as a separate section (III.).
Section I. includes Geography, Economics, Government, Inhabitants, Finance and Army. Section II. is subdivided into:—(A) Exploration and Research; (B) The Country in Ancient Times; (C) Religion; (D) Language and Writing; (E) Art and Archaeology; (F) Chronology. Section III. is divided into three main periods:—(1) Ancient History; (2) the Mahommedan Period; (3) Modern History (from Mehemet Ali).
I. Modern Egypt
Boundaries and Areas.—Egypt is bounded N. by the Mediterranean, S. by the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, N.E. by Palestine, E. by the Red Sea, W. by Tripoli and the Sahara. The western frontier is ill-defined. The boundary line between Tripoli and Egypt is usually taken to start from a point in the Gulf of Sollum and to run S. by E. so as to leave the oasis of Siwa to Egypt. South of Siwa the frontier, according to the Turkish firman of 1841, bends eastward, approaching the cultivated Nile-land near Wadi Halfa, i.e. the southern frontier. This southern frontier is fixed by agreement between Great Britain and Egypt at the 22° N. The N.E. frontier is an almost direct line drawn from Taba, near the head of the Gulf of Akaba, the eastern of the two gulfs into which the Red Sea divides, to the Mediterranean at Rafa in 34° 15′ E. The peninsula of Sinai, geographically part of Asia, is thus included in the Egyptian dominions. The total area of the country is about 400,000 sq. m., or more than three times the size of the British Isles. Of this area 1415ths is desert. Canals, roads, date plantations, &c., cover 1900 sq. m.; 2850 sq. m. are comprised in the surface of the Nile, marshes, lakes, &c. A line corresponding with the 30° N., drawn just S. of Cairo, divides the country into Lower and Upper Egypt, natural designations in common use, Lower Egypt being the Delta and Upper Egypt the Nile valley. By the Arabs Lower Egypt is called Er-Rif, the cultivated or fertile; Upper Egypt Es Saʽid, the happy or fortunate. Another division of the country is into Lower, Middle and Upper Egypt, Middle Egypt in this classification being the district between Cairo and Assiut.
General Character.—The distinguishing features of Egypt are the Nile and the desert. But for the river there would be nothing to differentiate the country from other parts of the Sahara. The Nile, however, has transformed the land through which it passes. Piercing the desert, and at its annual overflow depositing rich sediment brought from the Abyssinian highlands, the river has created the Delta and the fertile strip in Upper Egypt. This cultivable land is Egypt proper; to it alone is applicable the ancient name—“the black land.” The Misr of the Arabs is restricted to the same territory. Beyond the Nile valley east and west stretch great deserts, containing here and there fertile oases. The general appearance of the country is remarkably uniform. The Delta is a level plain, richly cultivated, and varied alone by the lofty dark-brown mounds of ancient cities, and the villages set in groves of palm-trees, standing on mounds often, if not always, ancient. Groves of palm-trees are occasionally seen besides those around the villages, but other trees are rare. In Upper Egypt the Nile valley is very narrow and is bounded by mountains of no great height. They form the edge of the desert on either side of the valley, of which the bottom is level rock. The mountains rarely take the form of peaks. Sometimes they approach the river in bold promontories, and at others are divided by the dry beds of ancient watercourses. The bright green of the fields, the reddish-brown or dull green of the great river, contrasting with the bare yellow rocks, seen beneath a brilliant sun and a deep-blue sky, present views of great beauty. In form the landscape varies little and is not remarkable; in colour its qualities are always splendid, and under a general uniformity show a continual variety.
The Coast Region.—Egypt has a coast-line of over 600 m. on the Mediterranean and about 1200 m. on the Red Sea. The Mediterranean coast extends from the Gulf of Sollum on the west to Rafa on the east. From the gulf to the beginning of the Delta the coast is rock-bound, but slightly indented, and possesses no good harbourage. The cliffs attain in places a height of 1000 ft. They are the termination of a stony plateau, containing several small oases, which southward joins the more arid and uninhabitable wastes of the Libyan Desert. The Delta coast-line, composed of sandhills and, occasionally, limestone rocks, is low, with cape-like projections at the Nile mouths formed by the river silt. Two bays are thus formed, the western being the famous Bay of Aboukir. It is bounded W. by a point near the ancient Canopic mouth, eastward by the Rosetta mouth. Beyond the Delta eastward the coast is again barren and without harbours. It rises gradually southward, merging into the plateau of the Sinai peninsula. The Red Sea coast is everywhere mountainous. The mountains are the northern continuation of the Abyssinian table-land, and some of the peaks are over 6000 ft. above the sea. The highest peaks, going from north to south, are Jebels Gharib, Dukhan, Es Shayib, Fatira, Abu Tiur, Zubara and Hammada (Hamata). The coast has a general N.N.W. and S.S.E. trend, and, save for the two gulfs into which it is divided by the massif of Sinai, is not deeply indented. Where the frontier between Egypt and the Sudan reaches the sea is Ras Elba (see further Red Sea).
The Nile Valley (see also Nile).—Entering Egypt proper, a little north of the Second Cataract, the Nile flows through a valley in sandstone beds of Cretaceous age as far as 25° N., and throughout this part of its course the valley is extremely narrow, rarely exceeding 2 m. in width. At two points, namely, Kalabsha—the valley here being only 170 yds. wide and the river over 100 ft. deep—and Assuan (First Cataract), the course of the river is interrupted by outcrops of granites and other crystalline rocks, which have been uncovered by the erosion of the overlying sandstone, and to-day form the mass of islands, with numerous small rapids, which are described not very accurately as cataracts; no good evidence exists in support of the view that they are the remains of a massive barrier, broken down and carried away by some sudden convulsion. From 25° N. northwards for 518 m. the valley is of the “rift-valley” type, a level depression in a limestone plateau, enclosed usually by steep cliffs, except where the tributary valleys drained into the main valley in early times, when there was a larger rainfall, and now carry off the occasional rainstorms that burst on the desert. The cliffs are highest between Esna and Kena, where they reach 1800 ft. above sea-level. The average width of the cultivated land is about 10 m., of which the greater part lies on the left (western) bank of the river; and outside this is a belt, varying from a few hundred yards to 3 or 4 m., of stony and sandy ground, reaching up to the foot of the limestone cliffs, which rise in places to as much as 1000 ft. above the valley. This continues as far as 29° N., after which the hills that close in the valley become lower, and the higher plateaus lie at a distance of 10 or 15 m. back in the desert.
The Fayum.—The fertile province of the Fayum, west of the Nile and separated from it by some 6 m. of desert, seems to owe its existence to movements similar to those which determined the valley itself. Lying in a basin sloping in a series of terraces from an altitude of 65 ft. above sea-level in the east to about 140 ft. below sea-level on the north-west, at the margin of the Birket-el-Kerun, this province is wholly irrigated by a canalized channel, the Bahr Yusuf, which, leaving the Nile at Derut esh Sherif in Upper Egypt, follows the western margin of the cultivation in the Nile valley, and at length enters the Fayum through a gap in the desert hills by the XIIth Dynasty pyramids of Lahun and Hawara (see Fayum).
The Delta.—About 30° N., where the city of Cairo stands, the hills which have hitherto run parallel with the Nile turn W.N.W. and E.N.E., and the triangular area between them is wholly deltaic. The Delta measures 100 m. from S. to N., having a width of 155 m. on the shore of the Mediterranean between Alexandria on the west and Port Said on the east. The low sandy shore of the Delta, slowly increasing by the annual deposit of silt by the river, is mostly a barren area of sand-hills and salty waste land. This is the region of the lagoons and marshes immediately behind the coast-line. Southwards the quality of the soil rapidly improves, and becomes the most fertile part of Egypt. This area is watered by the Damietta and the Rosetta branches of the Nile, and by a network of canals. The soil of the Delta is a dark grey fine sandy soil, becoming at times almost a stiff clay by reason of the fineness of its particles, which consist almost wholly of extremely small grains of quartz with a few other minerals, and often numerous flakes of mica. This deposit varies in thickness, as a rule, from 55 to 70 ft., at which depth it is underlain by a series of coarse and fine yellow quartz sands, with occasional pebbles, or even banks of gravel, while here and there thin beds of clay occur. These sand-beds are sharply distinguished by their colour from the overlying Nile deposit, and are of considerable thickness. A boring made in 1886 for the Royal Society at Zagazig attained a depth of 375 ft. without reaching rock, and another, subsequently sunk near Lake Aboukir (close to Alexandria), reached a depth of 405 ft. with the same result. Numerous other borings to depths of 100 to 200 ft. have given similar results, showing the Nile deposit to rest generally on these yellow sands, which provide a constant though not a very large supply of good water; near the
- ↑ By the Greek and Roman geographers Egypt was usually assigned to Libya (Africa), but by some early writers the Nile was thought to mark the division between Libya and Asia. The name occurs in Homer as Αἴγυπτος, but is of doubtful origin.
