TVM Entry Floor: Egypt Tour -- Lower Egypt

Egypt on Tour
in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Lower
Egypt

The Delta

The Nile river from earliest times has annually overflowed its banks in the summer. This period of the year was called the inundation. All along the Nile the flood would be noted. Each year the first sighting was at the Nubian border and it was measured giving an indication of the extent of the flood. High water meant a good year because the fields would be flooded and fertilized by fresh earth brought by the river from central Africa. The Delta was most affected by the flood because it consisted of mostly low marshy ground. A few islands would remain above the flood and it was on the temporary islands that most of the people lived. The coast line of ancient Egypt is unknown. There are no good maps from the period and reconstructing the coastline from geological evidence is difficult or impossible.

Here is a reconstructed map of the ancient Delta showing the Nomes and important centers where archeological excavation has uncovered items of interest. Archeology in this area is hampered by the wet climate which destroys papyrus and many other artifacts used to help understand the period. The Nome boundaries tended to follow high ground that remained above water during the inundation.

Ancient Map of Nile Delta with Nome Names

To get a feel for the Delta pretend you are flying in a U2 American spy plane on the edge of space; you are flying South toward the Nile delta. You look ahead toward the interior this is what you might see:

Note that the Delta shape of the mouth of the river is evident even today. Many of the Nile branches have been blocked by man during succeeding centuries, and now only three major branches remain. In Pharaoh times, there were a dozen or more branches of the Nile emptying into the Mediterranean.

Alexandria, the ancient Greek capital city of Egypt, would be located just to the right of the picture. Straight ahead at the apex of the Delta would be Memphis, one of the earliest ancient Egyptian capitals of unified Egypt. Just before Memphis you would find the great pyramids and now modern Cairo. The greenish area extending west from the Nile somewhat above the Delta is the oasis of Fayium.

Alexandria

The Egyptians called Alexandria Raqote, and it had been settled long before Alexander. So the story that Alexander looked at a bit of desert and said: "Build my capital here...." was probably wrong. He looked at the harbor and existing city and said: "This will be the new Alexandria, capital of Egypt". And for the six hundred years of Greek and Roman domination it remained the capital of Egypt.

For at least five hundred years the body of Alexander the Great occupied a tomb here.... what eventually happened to his body is still a historical mystery. Here was the great library of Alexandria that contained the finest collection of ancient books, which were destroyed by fire in 300AD, still a tragic loss to our knowledge of early Greek and Aribic thought.

Along the Alexandria waterfront is where the great palace of the Ptolemys was located, where Cleopatra seduced two Romans: Julius Caesar and Antony... bearing them both children. This is where Greek domination of Egypt ended and Rome became her master when Octavian/Caesar-Augustus conquered Antony and Cleopatra ending the Roman Civil Wars.

The sea rose, or the earth fell, covering the Ptolemaic palace, the world famous lighthouse, and the waterfront. Only recently have underwater archeologists begun to rediscover these remains of Ptolemaic Egypt.

Memphis

Memphis is located at the apex of the delta. It was the first capital of unified Egypt. Supposedly it was founded by Menes in the first Dynasty (some time around 3000 BC). Built on low ground, it was protected from the inundation by dikes. It played an important part of Egyptian history being capital on and off for 300 centuries. It was the capital of all Egypt for the Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom eras. Its necropolis, over time, spread across many west bank sites including Giza and Saqqara. It only fell into truly hard times after the fall of the Roman Empire around 600AD and the capture of Egypt by the Turks. Little is left of the site (or sites) of the old city. It is now buried under thirteen centuries of silt left by the Nile. It now lies in well settled land used primarily for agriculture just outside the modern city of Cairo. The pyramids and many west bank temples near Cairo are all a part of its heritage.

Cairo

The modern city of Cairo is located 30 miles down river from the old archeological site of Memphis. The apex of the delta forms the connecting point between the Upper Egypt of the South and the Lower Egypt of the North. The museum has no modern day pictures of Cairo, but there are several pictures of Cairo drawn by artists in the 19th century.