Geography of Egypt

• 1. Introduction

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  Egypt covers 1,010,408 square kilometres, yet only 35,000 of them, or 3.5 percent, are cultivated and permanently settled. The rest lies mostly inside the great band of desert that runs from Africa's Atlantic coast across the continent and into southwest Asia. That imbalance shapes almost everything about the country. How does a nation that is largely desert sustain itself? Where does its water begin, and what happened when engineers changed the river that supplies it? What lies in the empty lands on either side, from sunken salt basins to mountains that may have given a sea its name? The answers start at the edges of the map.

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• 2. Edges of the Map

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  Egypt belongs to two regions at once, North Africa and West Asia. Libya lies to its west, Sudan to its south, and Israel and Palestine to its east. Its coastline along the Mediterranean Sea, the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba exceeds 2,900 kilometres. Egypt also holds an Exclusive Economic Zone of 263,451 square kilometres.

  In straight lines, the country measures 1,420 kilometres from north to south and 1,275 kilometres from east to west. Its northernmost point is an unnamed headland north-west of Sidi Barrani, in Matruh Governorate. The westernmost point is also unnamed. It sits on the Libyan border, just east of the ruin of Qasr al Qarn in Libya.

  Two of the extreme points are contested. Ras Hadarba, also called Cape Elba, is the easternmost point, but it lies inside the Halaib triangle. Sudan claims that area, while Egypt claims and administers it. Without it, the easternmost point becomes the Ras Banas peninsula on the mainland, or Mukawwa Island if islands count. In the south, Jabal Bartazuga lies in Bir Tawil, a terra nullius, meaning land that no state claims. If Bir Tawil is excluded, Egypt has no single southernmost point, only a border along the 22nd parallel north.

  Egypt is divided into 27 governorates. Nine make up Lower Egypt in the Nile Delta. Ten make up Upper Egypt, along the river from Cairo south to Aswan. Five frontier governorates cover Sinai and the deserts east and west of the Nile. The water that sustains the Nile governorates, however, begins far outside these borders, in Uganda and Ethiopia.

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• 3. Three Rivers in One

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  Within Egypt, the Nile runs some 1,600 kilometres, and it is the world's longest river. Without the channel that lets it cross the Sahara, Egypt would be entirely desert. The water in that channel arrives from three central African sources: the White Nile, the Blue Nile and the Atbarah.

  The White Nile begins at Lake Victoria in Uganda and supplies about 28 percent of the water reaching Egypt. Between the lake and Juba in South Sudan, its channel drops more than 600 metres. Over the next 1,600 kilometres, from Juba to Khartoum, it falls just 75 metres. In South Sudan it crosses the Sudd, a wide, flat plain of swamp vegetation, and slows almost to stagnation.

  The Blue Nile rises at Lake Tana in Ethiopia and provides on average about 58 percent of Egypt's Nile water. Its gradient is steeper, so it runs faster, and it carries a great deal of sediment. The two rivers meet at Khartoum. For several kilometres downstream, the water along the eastern bank is visibly muddy from the Blue Nile. The western side, fed by the White Nile, runs clearer.

  The Atbarah is a much shorter river that also begins in Ethiopia. It joins the main Nile north of Khartoum, between the fifth and sixth cataracts, which are stretches of steep rapids. It contributes about 14 percent of the Nile's water in Egypt. From January to June, the low-water season, it shrinks to a string of pools. When torrential rain hits the Ethiopian Highlands in late summer, it supplies 22 percent of the flow. Each river's share swings with the seasons, and that rhythm once decided when Egypt's fields were watered.

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• 4. Flood and Silt

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  In the high-water season, the Blue Nile provides 68 percent of the Nile's waters, against 17 percent in the low-water season. The White Nile runs the opposite way. It gives only 10 percent in the high-water season but more than 80 percent in the low. Before the Aswan High Dam was completed in 1971, the White Nile therefore watered Egypt all year. The Blue Nile, carrying seasonal rain from Ethiopia, made the river overflow and leave a layer of fertile mud on the fields. The great flood usually came in August, September and October. It sometimes began as early as June at Aswan, and it often lasted until January.

  Recorded annual flows ranged from as little as 1.2 billion cubic metres to as much as 4.25 billion, and no year could be forecast. Archaeological research suggests that people once lived at a much higher elevation along the river than they do now. The likely reason is a higher river or more severe floods. For centuries, Egyptians tried to predict the flows and to soften the worst floods.

  Researchers estimate that useful silt deposits in the valley began about 10,000 years ago. They put the average deposit of arable soil along the valley at some nine metres. One analysis found that 10.7 million tons of solid matter passed Cairo every year.

  Lake Nasser, one of the world's largest artificial lakes, now allows planned use of the river whatever the rainfall in Central and East Africa. Farming in the valley depends on irrigation. The cost is that the High Dam holds back most of the silt, which now settles in the lake. Water tables and soil salinity have risen in the Delta. River banks have eroded in Upper Egypt. The alluvial fan along the Mediterranean shore, at the Delta's seaward edge, is eroding as well.

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• 5. Valley and Delta

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  The valley and Delta make up only about 5 percent of Egypt's area, yet they are the country's only cultivable regions and hold about 99 percent of its people. The valley stretches roughly 800 kilometres from Aswan to the outskirts of Cairo and is known as Upper Egypt. The Delta is known as Lower Egypt. In places, steep rocky cliffs rise along the banks, while other stretches are flat and open to farming.

  The Nile enters Egypt a few kilometres north of Wadi Halfa, a Sudanese town rebuilt on high ground after its original site was submerged. Lake Nasser reaches 320 kilometres south from the dam to the border and another 158 kilometres inside Sudan. Its waters fill the narrow canyon between sandstone and granite cliffs through Lower Nubia.

  Below Aswan, the cultivated floodplain widens to as much as 20 kilometres. North of Isna, which lies 160 kilometres from Aswan, the plateau on both sides rises as high as 550 metres above sea level. Some 90 kilometres farther at Qina, 300-metre limestone cliffs push the river southwest for about 60 kilometres. It then turns northwest for about 160 kilometres to Asyut. North of Asyut the escarpments shrink, and the valley widens to a maximum of 22 kilometres.

  At Cairo, the Nile spreads across what was once a broad estuary, later filled by silt. The result is a fan-shaped delta about 250 kilometres wide at the sea and about 160 kilometres from north to south. It covers roughly 22,000 square kilometres, close to the area of Massachusetts. Accounts from the first century AD describe seven branches of the river crossing it. By around the twelfth century, later accounts counted six.

  Nature and people have since closed all but two main outlets. The Damietta branch, also called Dumyat, is 240 kilometres long and lies to the east. The Rosetta branch is 235 kilometres long and lies to the west. Each is named for the port at its mouth, and a network of canals supplements them. Near the coast, the Delta holds salt marshes and lakes, notably Idku, Lake Burullus and Lake Manzala. Some marshy, waterlogged stretches are unsuitable for farming.

  The 1971 census counted 57 percent of Egyptians as rural. By 1992-33 percent of the population worked in agriculture, a sector that still depends on irrigation from the Nile.

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• 6. Western Desert

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  The Western Desert covers some 700,000 square kilometres, around two-thirds of Egypt. It stretches from the Mediterranean south to the Sudanese border. Most of it is a massive plain or low plateau, with basement rocks buried under horizontal layers of sediment. The Jilf al Kabir Plateau, at a mean altitude of about 1,000 metres, is the exception. The Great Sand Sea extends from the Siwa Oasis to Jilf al Kabir. No rivers or streams drain into or out of the region.

  The government treats the desert as a frontier region and divides it near the twenty-eighth parallel. Matruh lies to the north and New Valley, or Al Wadi al Jadid, to the south. Seven important depressions pit the desert, and all count as oases except the largest, Qattara, whose water is salty.

  The Qattara Depression covers 19,605 square kilometres, about the size of Lake Ontario. At its lowest it reaches 133 metres below sea level, the country's lowest point. Badlands, salt marshes and salt lakes spread across it, and few people live there.

  The Siwa Oasis lies close to the Libyan border, west of Qattara. It is isolated from the rest of Egypt yet has sustained life since ancient times. Its cliff-hung Temple of Amun was renowned for its oracles for more than 1,000 years. Herodotus and Alexander the Great were among the illustrious visitors before the Christian era.

  The other oases form a chain of basins that begins with the Faiyum Oasis, 60 kilometres southwest of Cairo. The chain runs south through Bahariya, Farafirah and Dakhlah to Kharijah, the largest oasis. Each has fresh water from the Nile or from local groundwater. In ancient times, Birket Qarun, a brackish lake at the north of Faiyum, drained into the Nile. For centuries, sweet water from artesian wells has allowed extensive cultivation across 1,800 square kilometres of Faiyum.

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• 7. Red Sea Hills and Sinai

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  East of the Nile, the land rises abruptly from the river. Within 100 kilometres, a downward-sloping plateau of sand gives way to arid, rocky hills running north and south between the Sudan border and the Delta. These hills climb past 1,900 metres. The most prominent feature is the Red Sea Hills, a chain of rugged mountains reaching from the Nile Valley to the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea. Their natural drainage pattern rarely functions because so little rain falls. Sharply cut, irregular wadis, or dry valleys, run westward toward the Nile, and desert continues all the way to the coast.

  The Sinai Peninsula is a triangle of about 61,100 square kilometres, slightly smaller than Latvia. Its southern mountains are a geological extension of the Red Sea Hills. They include Mount Catherine, or Gabal Katrine, Egypt's highest point at 2,642 metres above sea level. The Red Sea may have been named after these mountains, which are red.

  The southern rim of the peninsula stands about 1,000 metres high. A sharp escarpment falls to a narrow coastal shelf that slopes into the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba. Moving north, the limestone plateau loses height. The northern third is a flat, sandy coastal plain running from the Suez Canal into the Gaza Strip and Israel.

  Before the Israeli military occupied Sinai during the Six Day War of 1967, a single Egyptian governorate administered the whole peninsula. By 1982, all of Sinai had been returned to Egypt, and the central government split it in two. North Sinai has its capital at Al Arish, and South Sinai has its capital at El Tor. The Port Said, Ismailia and Suez governorates also control parts of eastern Sinai.

  Life in Sinai is easy to miss. Many of its mammals, reptiles and even owls are nocturnal, spending the day in burrows, under boulders or in rock crevices. Visitors may see only tracks and trails, or a fleeting glimpse of a small gerbil or a zig-zagging hare in car headlights. Even the animals that brave the daylight are usually active only in the early morning or evening.

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