About how tall and wide is egypt

T he men wore knee-length shirts, loincloths or kilts made of linen. Leather loincloths were not uncommon, however. Their garments were sometimes decorated with gold thread and colourful beadwork. The priests , viziers and certain officials wore long white robes that had a strap over one shoulder, and sem-priests one of the ranks in the priesthood wore leopard skins over their robes. H airstyles T he Egyptian elite hired hairdressers and took great care of their hair.

Hair was washed and scented, and sometimes lightened with henna. Children had their heads shaved, except for one or two tresses or a plait worn at the side of the head. This was called the sidelock of youth, a style worn by the god Horus when he was an infant. B oth men and women sometimes wore hairpieces, but wigs were more common.

Wigs were made from human hair and had vegetable-fibre padding on the underside. Arranged into careful plaits and strands, they were often long and heavy. They may have been worn primarily at festive and ceremonial occasions, like in eighteenth-century Europe. P riests shaved their heads and bodies to affirm their devotion to the deities and to reinforce their cleanliness, a sign of purification. M ake-up E lite men and women enhanced their appearance with various cosmetics : oils, perfumes , and eye and facial paints.

Both sexes wore eye make-up, most often outlining their lids with a line of black kohl. When putting on make-up, they used a mirror , as we do today. T he Egyptians used mineral pigments to produce make-up. Galena or malachite was ground on stone palettes to make eye paint. Applied with the fingers or a kohl pencil made of wood, ivory or stone , eye paint emphasized the eyes and protected them from the bright sunlight.

During the Old Kingdom, powdered green malachite was brushed under the eyes. 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.

Q-What do you see on a Nile cruise? Q-How much is a Nile cruise? Generally these prices include 3 meals a day, plus 10 expert-led shore excursions with a Certified Professional Guides. Q-Best time for Nile River Cruise? A -Best time for Nile River Cruise? A-The best time to for Nile Cruise is October through April when the temperatures are mild and good weather.

However, late spring — Easter Time — is also prime tourist season. Q-Is it safe to do a Nile Cruise? The section of the country between the Nile and the Red Sea is also considered mostly safe. Q-How long is a Nile Cruise? More exotic trips can occasionally stretch from 10 days to two weeks know as Long Nile Cruies.