escrito por Manuel José Delgado

Is this Atlantis?

La noticia saltaba a los medios de difusión el pasado 20 de febrero, de la mano del periódico inglés The Sun. Ocupando la mitad de su portada, con

Portada de The Sun

grandes titulares, preguntaba: “¿Se trata de la Atlántida?”. En el artículo, los periodistas se habían hecho eco del descubrimiento, en el fondo del Atlántico, de lo que parecía ser la estructura de una ciudad, con calles y edificios. La fotografía que presentaban había sido obtenida con el programa Google Earth, que gracias a su versión 5.0 se puede recorrer, además de la superficie terrestre, los fondos marinos. Utilizando dicho programa, cuyo software es gratuito, la aparente estructura urbana se puede localizar en las siguientes coordenadas: 31º24’21.38″ Norte y 24º24′22.70″ Oeste. El lugar geográfico se encuentra en la denominada “Llanura Abisal de Madeira”, y dentro de esta, en el área conocida como Great Meteor East (GME), precisamente por hallarse al este de monte submarino de igual nombre, Meteor. El lugar se halla entre los -5300 y -5400 metros de profundidad, o sea, dentro de la zona más profunda del océano, la abisopelágica. Los periodistas aseguraban

Aparentes estructuras en el fondo marino

que el descubrimiento había tenido un interés inusitado en oceanógrafos y geofísicos, y mencionaba que hasta el Dr. Charles Orser, profesor de arqueología histórica en la universidad del estado de Nueva York había considerado el hallazgo como fascinante. El artículo afirmaba que el descubridor era el ingeniero aeronaútico Bernie Bamford, de la ciudad de Chester. Con todos estos datos el periódico dejaba, entre el interés de los científicos y la incredulidad de los autores del programa, el terreno libre para todo tipo de conjeturas. A la mañana siguiente un portavoz de Google declaró que la batimétrica (terreno del mar) puede ser alterada por los datos obtenidos por los barcos al utilizar el sonar para realizar las mediciones de los fondos marinos. Por ello las líneas que aparecen serían sólo las trayectorias seguidas por la embarcación, que se sumaría al propio reflejo del fondo.

De lo que no habla el periódico inglés es que ya en España, desde hacía dos meses, se estaba trabajando en desentrañar este misterio. En la página web de los hermanos Juan y Enrique Menéndez Crespo ya estaba colocado a principio de año tanto el descubrimiento como la hipótesis de que se tratara de los restos de la Atlántida. El 27 de enero Juan Menéndez se puso en contacto con el experto en la Atlántida Georgeos Díaz para ponerle al día del hallazgo, quién investigó el asunto hasta la saciedad, elaborando un informe que fue publicado en su web, en donde llegaba a la misma conclusión que los expertos de Google expusieron después. El fondo marino que refleja el programa no reflejaba su realidad morfológica y estaba contaminado por el rastro del sonar de los barcos.

Anomalía submarina situada en el Atlántico

Cualquiera que dirija la observación del área en cuestión con el Google Earth podrá notar en primer lugar que la estructura arquitectónica, de forma rectangular, está dividida por grandes calles o muros que se asemejan al planteamiento de una ciudad. Sin embargo el mismo programa tiene una herramienta capaz de medir las distancias, con lo que obtenemos que dichos muros o zanjas tienen una anchura de kilómetro y medio, algo que no puede existir en el diseño de una ciudad.

En el estudio realizado para relacionar la estructura encontrada con la ciudad de la Atlántida descrita por Platón, el Sr. Díaz aporta en su página web http://www.antiquos.com una serie de argumentos para evaluar que el lugar no se relaciona con los escritos de Platón. Defensor a ultranza de su teoría de la Atlántida Ibero-Mauretana, y especialmente andaluza, de la que tendrán amplia información en este mismo número de Año Cero, el experto en la Atlántida y textos antiguos expone los principales puntos de desacuerdo para mantener que no sólo estas estructuras no pueden ser la Atlántida, sino que además la misma no puede encontrarse en el centro del Atlántico sino cerca de las Columnas de Hércules, es decir, cercano a Gibraltar. Aduce que las medidas de la ciudad no coinciden con las ofrecidas por Platón ya que el autor griego dijo que la llanura donde estaba la ciudad debía tener una longitud en su lado mayor de 555 kilómetros, mientras que lo ahora descubierto llega tan solo a 160 km. La orientación de la supuesta ciudad tampoco coincide con la metrópolis mencionada por Platón, ya que debería estar orientada al sur. Sin embargo, la supuesta llanura cuadriculada se halla en el extremo occidental de toda el área identificada con la gran llanura o planicie de la comarca del rey Atlas. Los canales que se aprecian en la foto de Google tampoco coinciden con la descripción de Platón. En el Critias leemos que la metrópolis atlante se hallaba a tan solo 50 estadios del mar y su construcción circular concéntrica (que no aparece en los restos hallados) estaba separada del puerto por 50 estadios de longitud, algo que no coincide con lo ahora descubierto. Por otro lado la profundidad del lugar no se corresponde con la isla mencionada por Platón pues, aunque todo el terreno hubiera sufrido un hundimiento, la superficie de la isla nunca podría encontrarse en la ladera inferior de la llanura abisal de Madeira.

Perfil del oceano Atlántico

Perfil del Océano Atlántico entre Norteamérica y África, visto de Sur a Norte, América a la izquierda y África a la derecha. La “Llanura Abisal de Madeira” se encuentra justamente en el área de la cuenca abisal de las Canarias, zona abisopelágica, que como puede verse, se haya entre los -5000 y -7000 metros de profundidad.

La más posible explicación a estas “anomalías” encontradas en los fondos marinos, según explica Georgeos Díaz, sería la de considerar la teoría de “Seismic Lines for Bathymetry”, es decir, simples trayectorias de barridos mediante reflección sísmica, insertadas en el mapamundi batimétrico como parte de un programa oceanográfico internacional, en aras de facilitar a los investigadores el acceso a todos los sondeos y escaneos batimétricos realizados, o publicados, y que son conocidos por la empresa creadora de esta enorme base de datos, de la que sin dudas, NOAA, como sabemos por el propio Google Earth, es al menos coautora. Estaríamos ante un caso de MSRD (Marine Seismic Reflection Data), o sea, “Datos de Reflección Sísmica Marina”, insertados en el mapamundi batimétrico, y que muestra los trazados de líneas sísmicas usados en algún sondeo batimétrico de este tipo.

Libro de los Muertos

Sin embargo, aunque las anomalías detectadas en los fondos marinos tengan una explicación pausible, el tema de la Atlántida no se ha descartado. Es posible que el avance de los sistemas de topografía de los fondos marinos ofrezca en el futuro la posibilidad de un rastreo meticuloso y realista. Por el momento seguiremos con otro tipo de valoraciones para seguir pensando en que Platón, y los sacerdotes egipcios antes, tenían razón al considerar que en algún punto del océano Atlántico existió alguna vez una civilización hundida por un cataclismo, y que sus supervivientes emigraron para colonizar otras partes de nuestro planeta. Porque pistas tenemos suficientes.

Otras anomalías submarinas a lo largo del mundo (Selección de Georgeos Díaz)

También existe la posibilidad, por no descartar nada, de que las estructuras poligonales encontradas en el fondo atlántico tengan un origen natural. Con el mismo programa de Google Earth se pueden encontrar otras muchas líneas rectas perfectas y organizaciones de líneas poligonales en muchas otras partes de los fondos marinos.

Algunas de ellas son:

Anomalías Atlántico Norte

En el Atlántico norte, en Noruega, Mar de Barents. Geoglifos submarinos mil veces más grandes que las líneas de Nazca.

Anomalías en Groenlandia

En Groenlandia, área reticulada en donde se aprecia una forma circular concéntrica y radiada, con al menos dos anillos.

Anomalías en Irlanda

En Irlanda, llanura cuadrangular y reticulada.

Anomalías en el Mar Caribe

En el Caribe, llanura abisal con la más extensa área cuadriculada, más de 1200 kilómetros por su lado mayor.

Más anomalías en el Caribe

También en el Caribe, una perfecta forma rectangular, con al menos tres lados simétricos en la llanura abisal debajo de Puerto Rico.

Anomaías en América del Norte, Philadelfia

En América del Norte, frente a las costas de Philadelphia, una de las formaciones reticuladas más impresionantes (por compleja).

Anomalías en el Triángulo de las Bermudas

En el triángulo de las Bermudas, unas formaciones geométricas bastante complejas.

Anomalías en la dorsal atlántica

En plena dorsal atlántica, en un terreno montañoso o sinuoso.

Anomalías en la zona atlántica de Africa Central

En África central atlántica, estructuras cuadrangulares en una llanura abisal.

Anomalías cerca de Islandia

En Islandia.

Anomalías en el Golfo de Méjico

En el golfo de Méjico, líneas que se cruzan perpendicularmente, formando el más complejo reticulado inimaginable.

Anomalías en el Pacífico

En el Pacífico, más espectacular aún que el de la llanura abisal de Madeira.

Anomalías jundo a la costa de Alaska

En Alaska, formaciones complejas y enormes.

Anomalías en la Antártida

En la Antártida, formaciones de montículos o pequeños montes alineados.

Recuerdos de la Atlántida

En la dilatada vida profesional de Sebastián Vázquez, editor de la Editorial EDAF, han pasado por sus manos miles de obras inéditas cuyos autores buscaban su publicación. Muchas de ellas, por su calidad y contenido, salieron al mercado en forma de libros. Otras muchas nunca vieron la luz y quedaron archivadas en algún cajón de su creador. Esta es la historia de una de ellas.

Sebatián Vázquez. Editorial EDAF

En el año 1996 se personó en el despacho de Sebastián Vázquez un personaje desconocido en mundo de la literatura. Esta persona, ya de cierta edad y de ascendencia catalana, se presentó como médico jubilado que había pasado parte de su vida en Brasil. Allí trabó amistad con un empresario de origen libanés. Este libanés, que había estudiado en Alemania Historia Antigua, contó al catalán su singular existencia. Debido a la guerra de religiones que aconteció en el Líbano a mediados del siglo pasado, emigró a Brasil no sin antes llevarse algo de inusual valor. En la finca propiedad de su familia se encontraba un pequeño túmulo en el que años antes, excavando, encontró una serie de tablillas de arcilla escritas en fenicio. Ya en Brasil el libanés tuvo tiempo para traducirlas al portugués, elaborando un compendio de 1000 folios manuscritos. Cuando tuvo cercana la hora de su muerte mandó una copia del trabajo al médico catalán que, a su vez, tradujo la obra al castellano. Todo ese material acompañaba al hombre cuando visitó a Sebastián. Lo dejó encima de su mesa y animó al editor a leerlo por si acaso la información que aportaba era de utilidad a una editorial caracterizada por publicaciones relacionadas con las civilizaciones antiguas y los misterios, en concreto con la enigmática Atlántida.

La tarea del editor no fue fácil. Los escritos tenían muchas lagunas, la narración era inconexa y caótica y la falta de las tablillas originales hacía que la documentación no estuviera avalada por prueba alguna. Estos argumentos obligaban a Sebastián a abandonar cualquier idea de publicación de la obra. No obstante, lo que leyó dejó una profunda huella en su ánimo. Muchos años después de aquellos hechos recuerda aquel manuscrito con benevolencia. Pudo, al final, hacerse una idea general de la odisea que narraba y, aún hoy, cuando nos cuenta la historia, aparece en su semblante una sonrisa de complicidad, como si supiera que una vez tuvo en sus manos algo realmente importante.

Manuel José Delgado en el templo fenicio de Sancti Petri (Cádiz)

Según nos contó Sebastián sobre lo narrado en la obra, navegantes procedentes de Asia Menor se dedicaban principalmente al comercio llegando a las costas de España, aunque no se citaba en absoluto ninguna fecha. Estos marinos-comerciantes tenían la costumbre de dejar en las plazas importantes donde ejercían un mayor mercadeo a sirvientes o esclavos para familiarizarse con el idioma y las costumbres del lugar, con el fin de poder realizar mejor las transacciones económicas. Uno de estos sirvientes trabó relación con sacerdotes de la antigua Tartessos en donde, por su buen hacer e inteligencia, se ganó la confianza no solo de su señor además de la de los sacerdotes, llegando a dominar la lengua de los tartésicos sino, además, otra lengua sagrada, de origen antiquísimo, utilizada exclusivamente en los rituales de culto. En la biblioteca del templo señor tuvo acceso a ciertos archivos que narraban el ocaso de una civilización madre, precursora de culturas a ambos lados del Atlántico, y el deambular de aquellos pobladores desde las islas donde vivían originariamente buscando otros lugares de asentamiento, ya que su territorio había sufrido enormes cataclismos. Este sirviente logró traducir estos archivos y los llevó de vuelta a su puerto de origen. De algún modo posteriormente fue traducido al fenicio-o el sirviente ya lo redacto originalmente en esta lengua pues el texto no lo cita- y muchos siglos después lo halló el historiador libanés.

Recreación de La Atlántida

Según Sebastián, la narración estaba presuntamente avalada por unos mapas que, de forma meticulosa y con todo lujo de detalles plasmaban la antigua ciudad de Tartessos, situada en lo que es hoy el golfo de Cádiz, y la zona entre las desembocaduras de los ríos Guadalquivir y Tinto. Debía ser una ciudad parecida a Venecia, con numerosos canales acuáticos y donde se hallaba un templo de forma circular que era el que guardaba los archivos con las crónicas atlantes que según la narración se inundaba a menudo. La ciudad estaba protegida por amplios cortavientos de piedra y tanto el puerto como la ciudad y la zona estaban tan perfectamente diseñados en el dibujo que hacía pensar en que si fuese una falsificación, esta era muy elaborada. Asimismo, pero ya en la crónica atlante, existían otros mapas realizados de manera más tosca, en donde aparecían gran número de islas diseminadas por el Atlántico, entre el triángulo formado por Gibraltar, Madeira y Canarias.

Según el relato el hundimiento de la Atlántida no se produjo por una sola catástrofe natural, sino que fueron sucediéndose, a lo largo de muchos años. Según relataba el texto parece que en un principio existían cuatro islas más grandes  rodeadas de otras muchas más pequeñas. En la isla principal y de mayor tamaño era donde se alojaban los grandes templos y edificios administrativos. Pero el modelo de sociedad perfecta descrita por Platón no se cumplía, ya que la isla principal subyugaba a las demás, produciendo enfrentamientos guerreros entre ellas. Por lo visto, fueron cuatro los grandes cataclismos que sufrió la Atlántida. Antes del último de ellos tan sólo florecían en superficie algunas islas, mientras que se mantenían un istmo que unía una gran península al continente africano, en el terreno que hoy ocupan las islas canarias que desapareció en el último cataclismo de origen volcánico.

La Atlántida, recreación en The Sun

El texto original fenicio se centra principalmente en el éxodo que realizaron los últimos supervivientes de la Atlántida hasta que se dividieron. Según la crónica un grupo se dirigió hacia “los terrenos fríos del norte”, mientras que otro gran grupo se dirigió hacia África. La travesía debió ser muy dura, con enfrentamientos entre la población y los grandes sacerdotes, con deserciones y castigos, y con todos los peligros que tuvo que pasar una cultura no familiarizada con la geografía africana. Se cuenta, asimismo, que los jerarcas, la casta sacerdotal, llegaron incluso a contratar a tribus africanas para que les acompañaran y les protegieran en el itinerario. Como estos africanos eran tomados por los viajeros como personas de gran envergadura y fuerza, debemos considerar que los emigrantes eran de estatura baja. Un grupo de revolucionarios se separó del grupo para volver sobre sus pasos, lugares considerados peligrosos debido a las erupciones volcánicas que se estaban sucediendo, y que nos recuerda en cierta medida el origen de las islas Canarias.

Toda esta historia, según nos cuenta Sebastián, mantiene una relación directa con las investigaciones de su amigo el explorador Angelo Pitoni. El italiano, por ser amplio conocedor de los países subsaharianos, en donde participó en varias expediciones en busca de diamantes, fue el protagonista del descubrimiento de lo que él considera “la raza perdida”, posiblemente los descendientes de aquellos protagonistas del éxodo atlante. Las figuras que descubrió en la selva de Sierra Leona, la gigantesca estatua femenina  de Guinea Conacry o la enigmática “piedra azul” capaz de curar enfermedades, serían las piezas arqueológicas que avalarían el relato fenicio.

Sebastián Vázquez no guarda el manuscrito, pues lo devolvió al médico catalán. También ha perdido la pista tanto de su nombre como de su localización. Sin embargo mantiene la vaga esperanza de recuperar la pista que le lleven a obtener más información de las tablillas originales fenicias, pues según nos afirma, de ser reales, aportarían informaciones reveladoras el fascinante mundo perdido de los atlantes.

Los que huyeron por el mar

El programa Google Earth, además de las posibilidades de rastreo marítimo comentadas anteriormente, ofrece asimismo una poderosa herramienta para investigar la superficie terrestre a la búsqueda de restos que sólo pueden ser apreciados desde el aire. Como resultado de su aplicación hemos tenido acceso a un enigma que bien puede tener relación con la Atlántida.

Península de Qawra, Malta

El hecho es que investigando la costa de la isla de Malta me encontré con unos círculos concéntricos, de unos 100 metros de diámetro, cuya procedencia histórica se desconocía. Estos círculos pueden visionarse en las siguientes coordenadas: 35º57’36.44” norte y 14º25’42.17” este. Los dibujos, que no habían pasado desapercibidos anteriormente por otros investigadores, habían sido motivo de una agria discusión en el portal de Internet más importante dedicado a la atlantología, Atlantis Rising. Por lo visto, el primero en sacar el asunto a la luz fue un afiliado al foro, con el nick de Nikas, que se presentó como norteamericano de origen griego. Según afirmaba, los dibujos demostraban en cierta medida su teoría de que la isla, o islas, de Malta habían sido la Atlántida. Las intervenciones en el mismo foro de Georgeos Díaz, desbarataron tal posibilidad, sobre todo por los escritos de Platón que la ubicaba más allá de Gibraltar.

Círuclos concéntricos en la península de Qawra, Malta

Sin embargo el asunto no se cerró, ya que aunque las islas de Malta no pudieron ser la Atlántida de Platón, no puede descartarse la posibilidad de que el lugar hubiera sido un asentamiento atlante en ese éxodo que realizaron para buscar nuevos asentamientos, hipótesis que hasta el mismo Díaz acepta. Según el Timeo y el Critias los atlantes se expandieron desde el golfo de Cádiz hacia el interior de las

Similitud con los círculos de La Atlántida

Columnas de Hércules, por casi todo el Mediterráneo, hasta alcanzar los límites de Egipto, Grecia y el Asia Menor (Anatolia). Por ello podemos suponer que también colonizaron las islas más estratégicas, como lo son Malta y Gozo, además de Sicilia, Córcega, Cerdeña y Creta.

En los foros donde se ha debatido el asunto de los círculos concéntricos malteses se apuntó la posibilidad, aceptada por los más críticos y escépticos, de que se tratara de una diana, realizada por las fuerzas navales inglesas durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, para ejercitar prácticas de tiro. Aunque para exponer esta teoría no se aportó documentación alguna relacionada con el caso de Malta, la similitud con otras dianas realizadas en los desiertos estadounidenses hacia que la explicación tuviera que tomarse en cuenta. Para algunos fue el fin de la historia, para otros no, ya que la única forma de investigar los geoglifos era la de investigarlos in situ, algo que todavía nadie había hecho. Y nos fuimos a Malta.

Las líneas de los círculos vistas desde el suelo

Nuestra primera visita a la península de Qawra, donde se encuentran los círculos, cercana a la localidad de San Paul Bay, fue desalentadora. Recorrimos la península en toda su extensión y las líneas circulares no aparecían por ningún lado. El lugar suele estar frecuentado por pescadores que, caña en mano, intentaban con bastante éxito abastecerse de pescados. Pero ellos no sabían nada de los círculos pese a ser nativos del pueblo. No tenían la más mínimo referencia de que allí existieran unos círculos que sólo podían ser vistos desde el aire. De vuelta al hotel volvimos a ver la imagen en el ordenador, tomamos puntos de referencia y trazamos un mapa por donde deberían discurrir las líneas. A la mañana siguiente nos volvimos a situar sobre las rocas y, al final, gracias al mapa pudimos

Las líneas vistas desde el suelo

entrever los trazos que componían las circunferencias. Resultaba extraño que, de ser una diana para tirar proyectiles, no se hubiera empleado pintura para su señalización. Por el contrario sólo se apreciaba una ligera diferencia tonal entre las líneas y la roca en donde se hallaban. No era posible que las líneas se hubieran realizado mediante golpes de una máquina en la roca, ya que no aparecía ninguna señal de deterioro, teniendo adheridas las mismas formaciones vegetales y animales que el resto. Tampoco debieron realizarse por arrojar algún tipo de ácido, pues en el interior de las propias líneas existían zonas de distinta tonalidad. Ello nos llevó a pensar en la antigüedad extraordinaria de esos trazos.

Los dibujos no fueron diseñados para hacer una diana, más aún teniendo en cuenta la proximidad, ahora y hace 60 años, de un importante núcleo de población. De cualquier forma, si durante la II Guerra Mundial se hizo una diana en la península de Qawra, ningún proyectil hizo allí impacto, lo que definitivamente nos aleja de aquella teoría, más aún cuando preguntamos al comisario jefe del puesto de policía de Saint Paul, amplio conocedor de la zona, quien nos aseguró que desconocía que durante la contienda militar se hubiera utilizado el lugar para prácticas de tiro.

La curiosa representación que encontramos en Malta guarda una similitud más que aparente con la representación que de la isla de la Atlántida hizo Platón. Los tres círculos concéntricos que representaban a tres canales acuáticos, recorridos todos por otro canal longitudinal que une el exterior con el centro, resulta cuanto menos espectacular. Pero dos datos nos llamaron la atención que ahondaban aún más en la hipótesis de que el dibujo representara la antigua capital de la Atlántida. El canal vertical se encuentra perfectamente alineado norte-sur, exactamente lo mismo que

Bañera central de los círculos concéntricos de Qawra

mencionaba Platón. Cuando pudimos ubicar y delimitar los círculos concéntricos y el canal central, intentamos hallar cuál era el centro exacto del dibujo, correspondiendo a un punto donde se encontraba una especie de bañera o pozo, realizado artificialmente ya que se notaba el borde carcomido por escoriaciones y algunos canalillos construidos posiblemente para desalojar agua.  En ese momento recordamos que según el filósofo griego en el centro de la Atlántida se encontraba un templo dedicado al dios Poseidón, el dios del mar y de los terremotos, adoptado posteriormente por los romanos como Neptuno. ¿Existió alguna vez una estatua de este dios en el centro de los círculos?.

La presunción de considerar este dibujo como representante de la visita de los atlantes a la isla de Malta, en contra de la teoría de la diana para prácticas de tiro, se ve avalada porque aparte de estos círculos, conocidos por algunos investigadores, han aparecido otros similares en la cercana isla

Círculos en la isla de Comino (muy deteriorados)

de Comino, a escasos metros de la posición de un faro centenario. Estos círculos no se aprecian desde el aire con la misma nitidez que los de Malta, sin embargo están ahí. La única forma de apreciar su diseño es utilizar un programa de contraste y relieve que revela su existencia. Como en el caso de Malta allí nunca hizo impacto un proyectil. Y, como en Malta, tampoco se diseñaron con pintura, sino con una paciencia infinita al tener que raspar la roca para sacar de ella el color claro que se encuentra bajo la capa oxidada de la piedra. Y de eso hace muchos miles de años.

La presencia en Malta de misterios relacionados con un pasado ignoto no se queda en estos círculos. A lo largo de toda isla, de norte a sur y de este a oeste, se encuentran los llamados Cart Ruts. En un ejercicio de humildad

Cart Ruts, increíbles líneas kilométricas que no van a ninguna parte

inusitado, los arqueólogos no han dado ninguna explicación a su presencia y evitan decantarse hacia alguna solución fácil, manifestando su desconocimiento ante estos restos arqueológicos. Los Cart Ruts están incluso anunciados, como interés turístico, por las islas de Malta y de Gozo. En los carteles se afirma que fueron realizados durante la Edad del Bronce. Hemos leído alguna teoría para su explicación, como que eran los rastros en granito del paso de ruedas de carro, o que con ellos evitaban que las lluvias anegasen el terreno, al poder conducir el agua hacia otros lugares. Ambas

Manuel Delgado examinando un enigmático Cart Ruts de Malta

hipótesis son absurdas. Hay miles de Cart Ruts, son zanjas que recorren la superficie pétrea de Malta en todas direcciones. Algunos gozan de una longitud de kilómetros, otros en cambio sólo tienen un metro de largo. A veces son varios los que recorren paralelos la superficie, en otras ocasiones los trazos son únicos, entrecortándose entre sí haciendo quiebros sorprendentes. Su excavación debió ser una tarea ardua. En ocasiones tienen una profundidad de 50 centímetros o otras veces no son más que señales superficiales. Empiezan y terminan sin causa aparente, con un propósito desconocido. Algunas veces las líneas su dirección, en otras las líneas se sumergen desde tierra hacia el fondo del mar.

El trabajo de excavar miles de zanjas en toda la isla carece de todo sentido y no es propio de ninguna cultura conocida. Son remotos vestigios de una civilización perdida en el tiempo, que trabajó con un propósito desconocido. Algo que apunta directamente a la enigmática cultura atlante.

Los que huyeron por tierra

Albert Slosman es quizás el máximo defensor de la relación entre la Atlántida y Egipto. Antes de visitar Egipto y analizar sus monumentos fue en Camerún donde encontró la pista sobre el gran cataclismo que había hundido un inmenso continente situado al oeste de África, a través de la información suministrada por individuos procedentes de la tribu de los Fako. Esta misma historia volvió a encontrarla en Egipto, tanto en los textos del Libro de los Muertos, como en los muros pétreos del templo de

Los dioses que se salvaron del cataclismo, templo de Dendera

Dendera. Con la mismos argumentos con los que los sacerdotes egipcios informaron a Sólon, uno de los siete grandes sabios de la antigua Grecia, y que valió a Platón para escribir su Timeo y su Critias, Slosman encontró que la civilización egipcia no había tenido su génesis a orillas del Nilo, sino que sus ancestros vinieron de otro lugar lejano, situado en el océano Atlántico.

En los viajes que Slosman realizó a Marruecos, se percató que algunos lugares geográficos tenían mucha similitud con algunos prefijos y sufijos utilizados frecuentemente en los textos jeroglíficos del Libro de los Muertos, como la Duat y Ta Mana. Si Ta Mana, en los textos jeroglíficos, puede traducirse como el “lugar del Poniente del sol”, el “lugar de los Bienaventurados”, Ta Uz significaría, a su vez, “lugar de Osiris”. La ciudad de Tamanar se encuentra a sesenta kilómetros al norte de Agadir, y Ta Uz, a la entrada del desierto sahariano. De la misma manera que hicieron los de la tribu Fako, los beréberes contaron a Slosman una historia parecida sobre su ascendencia divina, y procedencia lejana, un lugar idílico situado asimismo al oeste.

En lenguaje jeroglífico, esta tierra desaparecida se conocía fonéticamente como Ahâ-Men-Ptah, cuya traducción sería “Primogénito-Durmiente-de-Dios”, vocablos que, según Slosman, sufrieron con el paso del tiempo una contracción fonética para convertirse en El Amenta, aunque seguía recordando su significado primigenio de “País de los Muertos”, “País de los Bienaventurados”, y “País del Más Allá”. Curiosamente el nombre del dios Ptah estaría asimismo incorporado en el epíteto para denominar a los monarcas, que fueron los Ptah-Ahâ, cuyo significado sería el de “Primogénito-de-Dios” puesto que se consideraban descendientes directos del primer Hijo de Dios. Tendríamos con ello que Ahâ se pronunciaría Ahan y que Ptah también se escribe Phtah, de su fonetización en lengua griega, en la que la letra pi se convierte en phi (fi), por lo que Phtah-Ahan fue fonetizado “Faraón”, que de Primogénito-de-Dios pasó a ser “Hijo-de-Dios”. Con los mismos argumentos Slosman explica que el nombre de la tierra a orillas del Nilo, Ath-Kâ-Ptah (Segundo-Corazón-de-Dios) se convirtió posteriormente, en la fonetización griega, en Aegyptus, Egipto para nosotros.

Según Slosman, el primer lugar a donde llegaron los supervivientes del éxodo atlante en Egipto fue a la zona de Dendera y de Abydos. Consideraba que el templo de Dendera, cuya actual reconstrucción es la realizada por Ptolomeo II Evergetes, fue originariamente diseñado por los atlantes. En sus muros, Slosman pudo leer: “En el principio, estas palabras enseñaron los Ancestros, aquellos Bienaventurados de la Tierra primera: Ahâ-Men-Ptah. Los que convivían con las Creaciones del Corazón-Amado: el Corazón-Primogénito.”

Asegura Slosman, por la traducción de los textos del templo, que las fechas que aparecen grabadas no sólo hablan de diez milenios atrás, sino de hace veinticinco mil años, cuando Ahâ-Men-Ptah existía como un continente de clima templado, vegetación exuberante, numerosas especies de una fauna hoy ya extinguida en su mayor parte, y en donde los humanos vivían de forma ordenada y pacífica en varias ciudades que se desarrollaban bajo un mismo poder central. Pero la Atlántida se hundió rápidamente en el agua en una fecha que, según Slosman, debió ser el 27 de julio de 9,792 antes de nuestra era, fecha que consideraba inequívoca gracias a la lectura e interpretación de los acontecimientos narrados en el planisferio celeste grabado en el techo de una de las salas del templo de Dendera, más conocido con el nombre de “zodíaco”.

Coincidiendo con lo que nos había contado Sebastián Vázquez sobre el éxodo atlante, Slosman asegura que durante el éxodo atlante se produjo una lucha fratricida entre dos miembros de una misma familia, posiblemente hermanos, que prosiguió durante los quince siglos anteriores a la llegada a Egipto y aún continuó aquí durante cuatro mil años más. Las dos ramas enfrentadas serían por un lado los “Rebeldes de Set” y, por otro, los “Seguidores de Hor”. Durante el enfrentamiento se alternaron en el poder, aunque más adelante ambos clanes fueron deteriorándose, algo que favoreció su desvanecimiento y toma del poder los usurpadores (los Râ-Sit-U). Desde el  cataclismo que promovió el hundimiento del archipiélago de Ahâ-Men-Ptah, añade Slosman, la supervivencia tradicional no pudo ser practicada más que por una memorización oral intensiva y conservada perseverantemente, hasta la llegada, siglos y siglos después, a Ath-Ka-Ptah donde, en el oportuno momento, esta lengua ancestral fue reconstituida y puesta de nuevo en uso, así como ciertas costumbres que ancestrales.

La historia del Gran Cataclismo y los avatares de los supervivientes del mismo fueron grabados, además de en otros materiales, sobre la perdurable piedra del templo de Dendera, como lección y recordatorio para los siglos venideros.

Monumentos atlantes en Egipto

En el artículo titulado “La conexión egipcia del Tassili” exponía la teoría del éxodo, hace muchos miles de años, de una población que venía desde occidente, del lugar al que los antiguos egipcios consideraron como “el país de sus antepasados”. Y el camino que siguieron por el norte de África en dirección a Egipto fue llamado “camino de los antepasados”.

No existe la menor duda, ya que está avalado por estudios antropométricos de cráneos procedentes de las islas Canarias y de Egipto, en que anterior a la primera dinastía Egipcia, en lo que los estudiosos denominan “Dinastía 0”,

Gigantesco tanque en el Serapeum de Saqqara

llegaron a Egipto seres de otra cultura, a los que se les llamó atlantes. Un estudio pormenorizado del fenómeno atlante debe pasar por considerar que aquella cultura edificó en Egipto monumentos que, si actualmente son considerados como propiamente egipcios, están mal catalogados. Y los modernos medios para analizar la tecnología aplicada a la arquitectura y a la ingeniería son las herramientas adecuadas para dictaminar lo que hicieron los egipcios, y lo que ya se encontraron hecho en el país del Nilo.

Según muchos investigadores, las pirámides de Giza no guardan relación tecnológica con las otras pirámides, desconociendo por tanto la fecha de su construcción, así como los autores de las mismas. Herodoto afirmaba que los egipcios eran reticentes en mencionar los nombres de los reyes que

Meseta de Giza

edificaron las pirámides de Giza, y que cuando se referían a ellas lo hacían como “las pirámides del pastor Filitis”, por ser ese pastor, aclara Herodoto, el que apacentaba sus ovejas en el lugar donde se edificaron. El historiador griego Diodoro de Sicilia atribuye la construcción de las tres pirámides a Armaeus, Amosis e Inarón, aunque admite el alto riesgo de equivocación por falta de pruebas. Un autor árabe del siglo XIV, Makrizi, refiriéndose a leyendas mucho más antiguas, escribió que el rey Surid Ben Sahluq tuvo un sueño que fue interpretado por los sacerdotes como presagio del Diluvio, haciendo construir las pirámides, en las que habría guardado inmensos tesoros y todas las ciencias conocidas en el pasado. Otro escritor, el Cadi el-Galil Abu Abd Allah Mohammed Ben Salamat el-Qodai, también narró que las pirámides se construyeron antes del Diluvio, puntualizando que la llegada de la desgracia que amenazaba la Tierra llegaría en el momento en que el Corazón del León se hallara en el primer minuto de la cabeza del Cangrejo. Y otro historiador, también árabe, Abu’lRihan el-Biruni, escribió que las huellas del Diluvio y del nivel alcanzado por las aguas se distinguían todavía, antes de la desmantelación del revestimiento, notándose la marca o señal hacia la mitad de la altura de las pirámides. Si consideramos que esa marca del agua fue dejada por la subida de aguas producida por el derretimiento de los hielos en el fin de la cuarta glaciación, las pirámides se encontrarían erigidas hace 12000 años, o sea, antes del cataclismo que acabó con la Atlántida.

Artículo escrito por Manuel José Delgado para la revista Año Cero

Près d’Abydos en Haute Égypte, une mission archéologique a découvert un ensemble de cercueils datant de 3000 ans avant notre ère.

Il s’agit de treize cercueils en bois avec des restes d’ossements humains. Cette découverte suscite de nombreuses réactions de la part des experts qui se demandent si les défunts faisaient partie de la famille royale ou s’ils étaient des artisans.

Chose certaine, cette découverte pourra nous éclairer encore plus sur cette remarquable civilisation qu’était l’Ancien Empire, connu comme l’Âge d’Or de la civilisation égyptienne. D’ores et déjà l’on peut dire que l’un des objets trouvés démontre l’ancienneté et la pérennité de la vision du monde de l’Égypte pharaonique.

 Cet objet intriguant est un jeu composé d’un échiquier et de pièces en ivoire. Ce n’est pas la première fois qu’un tel jeu, appelé “le jeu de Senet”, est retrouvé. Howard Carter, lors de la mise au jour du tombeau de Toutankhamon en 1922, y avait trouvé un jeu de Senet.

Ce jeu ressemble sous certains aspects à notre actuel jeu de dames. Son existence remonte aux premières dynasties de l’Égypte. Le jeu de Senet avait des significations spirituelle, philosophique et religieuse très importantes pour les égyptiens de cette époque. D’où son usage dans les rites funéraires où il représente le passage de l’âme du défunt à une autre vie.

 C’est que les égyptiens, comme toutes les grandes civilisations, considéraient que l’âme habite un corps lorsqu’elle est incarnée sur Terre. Puis lorsque le corps meurt, l’âme continue de vivre dans une autre dimension. La bonne transition de l’âme vers l’autre vie est jugée selon les actes posés lors de son passage sur Terre.

Sur les peintures funéraires qui présentent le jeu de Senet, on ne nous montre qu’un seul joueur… alors avec qui joue-t-il? Se pourrait-il que ce soit avec soi-même – l’on serait alors son propre “adversaire”, à la fois obstacle et solution de nos difficultés? Ou bien serait-ce que l’âme, pour transiter, a besoin d’avoir fait des acquis spirituels lors de sa vie terrestre?

Chose certaine, avec les connaissances actuelles sur la profondeur de la pensée égyptienne, il est trop simpliste que 3000 ans d’histoire puissent résumer le Senet à un simple divertissement, ou à un rituel funéraire magico-religieux pour tromper les masses.

 -Liliana Homrich

And after goodness, purity:

Wabet,  ”pure” or “clean” - in the feminine form when spoken, but without the loaf of bread representing the t , because it’s so obvious to those in the know that the scribe, dashing off yet another offering formula, hasn’t bothered to write it down.  But we know it’s there, don’t we?

Advanced office scribes like us will also have deduced that the masculine form is wab, and that the rather curious sumbol above is a triliteral sign conveying the sound of three letters, w a and b. 

We’ve had b before, haven’t we?  If you cast your mind back to the first line of the offering formula, when we were looking at Abydos or Abdju, one of the major cult centres of Osiris, you’ll recall that the letter b in ancient Egyptian is represented by the human foot.  And what do we have as the bottom half of this symbol?  A human foot!  That’ll be the b, then.

But what’s that spout on top, and what’s it spouting?  No, it’s not what you’re thinking.  They could draw what you’re thinking much better than that.  The upper part of the symbol is a little water pot, and it’s pouring forth a libation of purifying water.

You can see the kind of pot in full pouring action in this scene from the sarcophagus of a royal lady:

In this scene, one of the lady’s servants is pouring her a drink.  In temples and in funeral rites, water was used for ritual purification, as in this scene where a priest is pouring water over the coffin of the deceased:

It’s a shame the painting has flaked away just where I want to show you the water spouting out of the pots, but never mind.  And the blue wiggly lines for the water have come out nicely.  So, the symbol for “pure” was the standard ritual purification device of ancient Egyptian religion, the pot pouring out clean water, rendering the person or object it was poured over cleansed and pure.  Wab was also the word for “priest” in ancient Egyptian; literally, “the pure one”.

Here’s an example from a temple relief:

We already know how to draw the foot.  Then just draw a little oval on top for the pot, like an egg lying on its side, but square off the pointy end a bit for the rim.  Then draw a zigzag line for the water, arcing out of the pot in a graceful curve.

Finally -please remember all this when the office plant contractors come round and water the aspidistras.  And stop stubbing out illicit cigarettes in the rubber plants, and using the weeping fig as a receptacle for your coffee dregs, or the office party plonk.  They’ve been ritually purified.  Have some respect.

It’s the fourteenth post, and time to visit my favourite temple, Abydos, via the third of Osiris’ titles in this formula:

neb Abdju, Lord of Abydos.

We’ve done neb, haven’t we?  We can get straight on to Abdju:

Just for a change, I thought we’d compare handwritten hieroglyphs and the more detailed painted hieroglyphs for the whole word side by side.  They’re facing in opposite directions, but that’s not going to bother experienced office scribes, is it?  And I know you’re going to take the spelling variation in your stride.  As for the slightly different arrangement of hieroglyphs for the sake of artistic balance – pah!  We laugh in its face.

OK, let’s do a bit of dissection. 

The first sign is – well, no-one’s quite sure, but it could be a chisel. In which case, the blade is probably the wide, flat bit that looks like the handle.  It’s painted green in the inscription on the right, which would figure if it were copper or bronze .  (Almost the whole of the Pharaonic Period, took place in the Bronze Age in Egypt – something to contemplate while you’re waiting for that response from the IT helpdesk.)  The horizontal lines in the painted version may be cords lashing the blade to the handle.

So, when you’re drawing it, you need to draw a shape something like a short, wide vase or jar, then add a long thin shaft to the bottom.

The second sign (or the third sign in the painted version)

is a reinforcement of the b already present in Ab.  It’s a human foot, and in the second version painted the normal colour used for male skin in ancient Egypt – a dark, suntanned he-man red.  Ladies (and, in later periods, privileged men like scribes who worked indoors), were painted a pale yellow.

When you’re drawing your foot, give him a straight shin, an indication of the toes and heel and maybe a bit of instep – unlike the painted one, which seems to be flat-footed.  I know what that’s like and it’s cruel, so be kind to your hieroglyphs and don’t deform them (unless you’re writing them for someone ina  traditionally flat-footed profession, like the police).

Which brings us to the third sign (or second in the alternative version)

dju.  See how the artist in the painted inscription has given it a reddish, speckled, grainy appearance above a thick, dark baseline?  That is because the  dju hieroglyph is a depiction of the desert hills rising above the fertile plain of the Nile.  And the gap between the hills is where the sun would rise above or set below the horizon.  (The two pylons of a temple and the gap of the gateway also represent this idea.)

Finally, some familiar signs to complete the word;  the cute little quail chick reinforcing the u sound of dju in the painting; the city or village determinative, and the single stroke, as much to fill an otherwise empty space as for any other reason.

Abdju, or Abydos, was the major cult centre of Osiris in Upper Egypt, or the Nile Valley.  It’s not as easy to get there as it used to be, for security reasons, and there are restrictions on how long you can stay (nowhere near long enough) but it’s the most wonderful place. 

For one thing, it’s very ancient.  There are royal tombs out in the desert which date back to around the time of the unification of Egypt – the tombs of several “he of the sedges”.  In later times, the Egyptians believed that one of them was the tomb of Osiris himself, and it became a place of pilgrimage for people from all over the country.  There was a huge festival there every year, where mystery plays re-enacting the death and resurrection of Osiris and the battles of Horus and Seth were performed.  People came from far and wide to be part of them.

Kings built magnificent temples to Osiris there: the temple of Seti I is just about the only Pharaonic temple of any size with it roof intact.  This plus the fact that the Christians whitewashed over the walls  meant sthat the colours of  the reliefs are the best preserved of any Egyptian temple – and Seti I went for quality; just compare them with his son Ramesses II’s temple next door – even allowing for the fat that the roof is gone, there’s no comparison really.  Behind the Seti I temple is a highly intrguing underground temple called the Osireion, with an island in an underground lake, and…

Oh, I can’t wait to go back!. Go, go, go!

Djedu:  Busiris, the Lower Egyptian cult centre of Osiris, in the middle of the Nile Delta.  There’s not much to see there now.  But the hieroglyphs in its name bear some investigation.

The first symbol is an ancient and powerful Egyptian fetish:  the djed pillar,

pronounced – wait for it – djed. 

Waaaay back in the mists of the Predynastic period, the djed pillar was a sizeable cult object, something like a totem pole.  It appears to have been a tree trunk with sheaves of grain bound to it to give it its distinctive shape.  If you think it has a certain vertebrate quality, you’re right.  When Seth chopped up Osiris’ body and scattered his forty-two limbs the length and breadth (such as it is) of Egypt, Busiris got his backbone.  Osiris, as you’ll remember, was an agricultural god, who taught farming while he was alive and was resurrected in the growing corn after he was slain and had fallen.  So his Lower Egyptian symbol, the djed pillar, is a kind of gigantic backbone made of corn.  Whether that was how the Egyptians understood it in the early days, who knows – but that was what it came to symbolise as the milennia rolled on.

The djed pillar or backbone of Osiris was a powerful magical symbol and represented stability, endurance, everlastingness.  In the form of an amulet, it conveyed everlastingness on the owner, alive or dead.  Djed pillars are very common in Egyptian art, from tiny beads to unwieldy cult objects. 

Here are a couple of carved and painted djed hieroglyphs:

Here is the djed symbol incorporated into the top of the sceptre of the god Ptah:

And here is the King grappling with the erection of the djed pillar (surmounted by double plumes and a sun disk and probably much smaller than life size) at the festival of Osiris at Abydos (of which more anon, in a post coming to a blog near you soon):

Now I’ve shown you a few different versions, you’ll be seeing it everywhere.  It’s not difficult to draw; a central column, rounded at the top and flaring out into a base at the bottom, and then just draw four straight horizontal lines across the top.  Whether the ultimate symbol of stability is appropriate for a redundancy leaving card, I leave to your own judgement.

Now for the w.  The w is one of those signs that make it easy to tell which way the hieroglyphs run, because it has a recognisable face to turn to the beginning of the sentence:

  And the face is the face of a little fluffy quail chick.  Aaaaaaahh.  Or, rather, oooohh.  Here’s a painted version:

See his downy body and his little wing?  A pity the artist/scribe hasn’t given him an eye, but there may be a (magical) reason for that, as this one comes from a tomb.  When you draw yours, start with his beak and rounded head, go down his back and turn the corner of his tail, come up under his belly and around to his beak again.  Or something like that, but draw the outline, anyway, Then add on his two little stick-like legs and make sure you put in a baseline for him  to stand on.  The Egyptians liked to have their animals and people standing on the ground.  They didn’t like them hovering in mid-air.  In any case, he can’t fly yet, he’s only a chick.  Then you can dot his eye and give him a little curved, featherless wing.  Ah bless!

Hang on, you’re saying, we’re only two hieroglyphs into the word and we’ve already got the sound Djedu.  We seem to have a lot of signs left over.

Er – kind of.  The third sign, is a determinative – which, you’ll remember, is a soundless sign put at the end of a word to show what kind of word it is, and to prevent confusion with other words of the same consonantal pattern.  It may look like a button or a hot cross bun, but it is actually a town or village.  You wouldn’t think it, would you – a whole town, or even a village, encompassed in that one little sign?  However, the essentials are there:  two intersecting streets surrounded by an enclosure wall.  Here’s a relief version:

Now, the scribe could have stopped there.  He’d finished the place name Djedu; all sounds faithfully rendered and a town determinative on the end.  But he must have got carried away.  The Egyptian word for town was niwet, and it was written

In this word, the city sign is not just a determinative; it has a phonetic value, niwe.  You can see our old friend the loaf of bread t completing the word. The final stroke is a kind of determinative that conveys the idea “one of these” as opposed to two or three strokes, which mean the dual or plural form of the noun.  Or sometimes it’s just a filler.

So it looks as though, when the scribe or artist got to the determinative of Djedu, he followed straight through into the word for town or village: Djeduniwet; Busiriston, maybe.  Thank god he didn’t have to spell banana.

Torna in libreria l’originale ricerca del filosofo francese Jean Fallot sul pensiero e sull’arte dell’antico Egitto

di Simona Maggiorelli

«Non si possono in alcun modo usare le categorie logiche della Grecia per avvicinarsi alla comprensione dell’Egitto» scriveva Jean Fallot, nel libro Il pensiero dell’Egitto Antico, che ora Bollati Boringhieri recupera nel suo catalogo, dopo che l’edizione del 1992, caldeggiata da Sebastiano Timpanaro, era da lungo tempo esaurita. E ancora rifiutando l’idea di Nietzsche che la tragedia greca fosse nata dal culto di Dioniso e dei misteri di Eleusi aggiunge: «Non comprenderemmo l’Egitto invocando o sottovalutando le idee dell’identico e dell’altro, la contrapposizione fra natura e società, animale e uomo, ragione e irrazionale, scienza e mito, tutte distinzioni che i Greci concepirono…».

Di formazione marxista, studioso di Epicuro e di Nietzsche, ma anche lettore di Heidegger, il pensiero di Fallot, per quanto fuori dall’establishment risentiva del groviglio di contraddizioni feroci della filosofia francese del Novecento. Ma all’epoca di questo suo ultimo libro cercava una svolta; una via d’uscita dal logos astratto e dall’angoscia di morte dell’ esistenzialismo. E credette di  intravederla nella cultura e nell’arte egizia, un universo non ancora adeguatamente esplorato; un modo di pensare per immagini che non può essere sbrigativamente classificato come pre-filosofico. Così, dopo anni di viaggi nelle terre dei faraoni e di studi, come in un diario intimo, si mise a scriverne con linguaggio nuovo. «L’Egitto resta legato alla sensazione. Per lui – annotava- è importante sentire, non concepire». Ma nell’arte egizia, che prima «raggiunge la pienezza sculturea» come testimonia lo scriba accovacciato del Louvre (2575-2323 a.C.) e mille anni più tardi la stilizzazione della forma nei raffinati rilievi d Abydos, Faillot vede una logica diversa da quella tragica di Sofocle che inventa l’enigma della sfinge («in Egitto non si è mai parlato di enigma della Sfinge») e al tempo stesso differente da quella di Platone che taglia le ali alle immagini e procede per concetti astratti. «La ripetizione della stessa figura o di un medesimo geroglifico – scrive Fallot – rimanda all’evocazione di un senso». In quelle figure geomerizzanti, dice , non c’è piatto realismo. E l’animismo e il «sensismo egizio» che ispirarono l’atomismo di Democrito non fu rozzo materialismo. Lettura affascinate, la sua. Anche se guardando certe pitture egizie ieratiche e seriali, a noi resta ancora una domanda: fino a che punto si può parlare di immagini e non di figure razionali?

da left-avvenimenti del 7 agosto

Alla scoperta di civiltà scomparse

Se Salgari e Jules Verne e poi poeti e scrittori come Gozzano e Possoa hanno fatto nascere in noi una struggente nostalgia per un Oriente e un Oltreoceano, che neanche loro avevano mai visto, studiosi di civiltà antiche, di archeologia e arte, dagli scaffali delle librerie invitano numerosi – in questi mesi – a seguirli in viaggi di carta alla scoperta di luoghi, epoche e culture lontane e scomparse.Così riscoprendo la tradizione degli scrittori in poltrona dalla parte del lettore, ecco più di una occasione per farsi un tuffo nel tempo. In concomitanza delle due grandi mostre dedicate all’arte egizia, (di cui una in corso fino all’8 novembre al Castello del Buoncosiglio di Trento) Allemandi pubblica il volume Egitto. I tesori sommersi che documenta il recupero di oltre 500 reperti dal fondo del mare da parte dell’archeologo Frank Goddio e del suo team di archeologi subacquei.La scoperta risale al 1992 e ha prodotto da allora una mostra itinerante fra Berlino, Parigi, Bonn, Madrid e la torinese Reggia di Venaria, ma anche una ricca messe di studi che hanno permesso di catalogare sculture, steli, gioielli e monete riportati alla luce da Goddio come databili fra il 700 a.C. e l’800 a.C. e provenienti dalle città di Thonis, Canope e Alessandria. Una civiltà quella egizia che, diversamente da quelle occidentali coeve, ebbe anche regine in posti di potere e di prestigio, come ci racconta la vicenda di Cleopatra, ma anche quella meno nota di Nefertiti. In forma di romanzo storico Michelle Moran la ricostruisce ne La regina dell’eternità. Il romanzo di Nefertiti (Newton Compton) tratteggiando la forte personalità della giovane donna «che fu data in sposa a Amenofi IV nella speranza che potesse distoglierlo dall’ossessione religosa per il dio Aton». Proseguendo il viaggio, dalle terre dell’antico Egitto a quelle dell’antico Oriente, troviamo un’altra guida illustre: quella dello storico e archeologo Mario Liverani. Festeggiato di recente con un convegno di studi in suo onore all’Università La Sapienza di Roma, il professore ha appena mandato in libreria un denso volume dal titolo Antico Oriente (Laterza) in cui ripercorre il suo trentennale studio delle culture della Mesopotamia, con straordinari focus, per esempio, sul mondo di Ebla, dei Fenici, dei Sumeri, degli Assiri. Dal Vicino Oriente alla nostra penisola, lungo la fitta rete di traffici che hanno sempre animato il Mediterraneo, Electa pubblica un lavoro multidisciplinare sugli Etruschi. «Venivano dal mare e si dicevano Tirreni. Ma i Romani che riuscirono a soggiogarli e a dissipare la loro cultura li chiamavano Etruschi », raccontano Davide Locatelli e Fulvia Rossi. Un popolo ai nostri occhi ancora misterioso che in Etruschi (Electa) i due ricercatori invitano a studiare, attraverso i siti archeologici e delle necropoli scavate nell’Italia centrale.

Dal quotidiano Terra

Usir neb Jedu, netjer aa, neb Abju:  (t0) Osiris Lord of Busiris, the great god, Lord of Abydos.

We’ve been working hard on the first bit of the offering formula.  I tell you what; let’s not have a hieroglyphic lesson this time.  Put your feet up, and I’ll tell you a story.

Once upon a time in ancient Egypt, when Egypt was so ancient that the gods lived on earth, there was a god-king called Osiris.  He was married to his sister Isis, which seems odd to us but was fairly normal for Egyptian gods (and their kings, come to that). Osiris was a good king and very useful; he invented farming and taught it to the Egyptians, his subjects.  His rule was peaceful and happy. 

Well, you know gods.  They don’t like that kind of thing.  It doesn’t matter whether they’re Egyptian gods or Greek or Roman or Viking or Mexican; your average god likes nothing more than a humungous family row. They like to get everyone either miserable or furious, running around like headless chickens and finally descending into a brawl.  And there’s always one who starts it. (You’re beginning to see the pagan origins of Christmas now, aren’t you?)

The one who started it in Osiris’ case was his brother Seth.  He wanted to be King.  So, at a family party (when else?) he tricked Osiris into getting into a coffin, sealed it shut and threw it into the Nile.  The coffin with Osiris inside it floated down the Nile, out into the Mediterranean and along the Levant coast to Byblos.  At Byblos, it got tangled up in the roots of a cedar tree, and came to a halt.

Seth had, however, reckoned without their sister Isis.  Isis was a very resourceful goddess-queen, and not only that, a very powerful magician.  She was also devoted to Osiris, and had her sister Nephthys, Seth’s own wife, totally on her side.  Isis  transformed herself and Nephthys into kites (the birds, not the paper flying things) and they scoured Egypt and the East until they found the coffin stuck in the roots of the cedar.

They were too late.  Osiris was no longer of this world.  Isis hid the coffin in the marshes of the Nile Delta, which she organised a decent burial.  While she was up to her neck in the funeral arrangements, Seth discovered the coffin by accident, and was so angry that he tore Osiris’ body limb from limb and scattered the bits the length of Egypt.  Actually, it must have been more than limb from limb, because he broke it into anything up to forty-two pieces, depending on which version of the story you read.

The devoted, put-upon Isis set about clearing up the mess.  Someone always has to.  She found most of her husband’s bits, except – er – her husband’s bits, which had been swallowed by a fish.  Never one to admit defeat, she made him a new one.  One wonders whether it was  a new and improved one … Anyway, by reassembling Osiris. scattered limbs and bandaging them all together, Isis invented mummification.

Isis the magician was able to reanimate Osiris’ corpse, including the aritifically substituted bit, sufficiently to conceive the child Horus, who became the rightful heir to his father’s throne and opponent of his usurping uncle, Seth.

You can imagine how Seth felt about that.  He was about as much in favour of Osiris having an heir as elderly relatives are when they’re watching the news and the kid comes in an switches channels to the cartoons.  Realising the danger to her son, Isis hid him in the marshes until he was old enough to stand up to Seth.  In the meantime, Seth searched for Horus until, eventually, they met. 

The subsequent contendings of Horus and Seth were almost as bad as the battle over the remote control when the Queen’s Speech is up against the Christmas special.  Seth did his darndest to trick, seduce, blind, conquer and kill Horus to secure the throne.  However, much aided by Isis’ magic, and after a great deal of political wrangling among the gods, Horus eventually succeeded in ascending the throne and Seth was banished to the desert.

Osiris was still dead. However, you can’t keep a good god down.  Well, you can, but you can’t keep him inanimate.  Although Osiris could not rule Egypt any more, what with him being dead and a mummy and all, Re, King of the Gods, sent him  down to the Netherworld to be King of the afterlife. (No Egyptologist calls Re Ra any more.)  So Osiris gained a kingdom in the land of the dead.  And every year, when the green shoots of the corn that Osisirs had shown the Egyptians how to cultivate sprouted in the black mud of the Nile, people believed he was born again.  Aaaaaah…

That is why Osiris is usually shown as a mummy, and often with black or green skin, as in this tomb painting:

(And later on Osiris had an affair with Nephthys and a child out of wedlock called Anubis, god of mummification – after all Isis had done for him.  Typical.  Spoils it a bit, doesn’t it?)

Never mind.  We’ll start tearing him apart – or at least his name and titles  -next time.  That’ll teach him.

Yes but, yes but, yes but – what does the blooming thing say?  How do you expect us to concentrate on the first group of signs when we’re three lessons in and we still don’t know what the sentence means? 

Ok, sorry, I quite take your point.  I shall do better than that.  I shall both translate and transliterate it for you.  How about that?

Transliteration first.  Hieroglyphs are an alphabet which can be read and pronounced.  So, when the fascinated recipient of your birthday offerings gasps, “Wow!  May a gigantic owl eat the snake that’s about to crawl under your upside-down teacup, and may the little man with the squiggle er – er – do something with all the other squiggles..  Great!  How original.  Just what I always wanted,” you can say, “No, no, it doesn’t work like that.  It’s not a cartoon strip.  It’s more like those children’s puzzles, where the words are replaced by pictures which sound similar – an eye for “I”, a deer for “Dear”, etc.  It says: 

Then you can pause while they blink at you, impressed but totally unenlightened. 

 Transliteration means turning the hieroglyphic alphabet into the Roman alphabet, so that we have at least a vague idea of what it might sound like.  A very good point, you may say.  How the heck do I read that out? 

Ancient Egyptian is a semitic language, like Hebrew, Arabic and others in that linguistic family.  In semitic languages, writers tend to set down the consonants, but make only very limited attempts, if any, to write down the vowels.  So, with hierogplyphs, we (mainly) have a string of consonants and have to guess the vowel sounds in between.  We don’t really know exactly how ancient Egyptian was pronounced, but the convention is to supply an “e” between consonants.  The transliteration above would sound something like:

Hetep di nesu Usir neb Djedu, netjer aa, neb Abdju,

di-ef peret-kheru (em) te, henket, kau apedu, shes menkhet,

khet nebt nefret wabet ankhet netjer im,

en ka en imakhy Senwosret, maa-kheru.

The beauty of the two-pronged transliteration and translation approach is that it gives you a double whammy – reading it aloud first, then nonchalantly explaining:

 ”It means An offering which the king gives (to) Osiris, Lord of Busiris, the great god, Lord of Abydos, so that he may give an invocation offering (of) bread, beer, meat and fowl, alabaster, clothing and every good and pure thing on which a god lives, to the spirit of the revered one Senwosret, true of voice.”

Of course, that’s only if you haven’t customised it, and if your colleague happens to be a Revered One called Senwosret.  (If you’re reading this in California, that’s perfectly possible.) We’ll get on to customisation soon, after we’ve broken down the offering formula into its working parts.  You have to take the engine apart before you can rebuild it, after all.

For the past 7 days, I have been participating in the Writing Institute for Abydos, what used to be The New Jersey Writing Project of Texas. I am loving it! While it may seem taxing to spend two weeks out of my summer taking a class and reading for homework, I am learning so much that it is absolutely worth it. I think that I will teach the curriculum very differently next year after having taken this training. Plus, I get to do lots of writing and it almost becomes a sort of free therapy. If you ever have the opportunity to get this training, do it.

http://www.youregypttours.com

Egypt’s population is very large in relation to the country’s natural resources. Although it is not a perfect measure of the impact of high population growth rates, the amount of land cultivated by the average farmer provides a glimpse at the extent of the problem. In slightly more than 150 years (1821-1976), the per capita cultivated area dropped from 0.8 feddan to 0.27 feddan among the rural population. If the urban population is included, the per capita cultivated area in 1976 amounted to only 0.15 feddan. The decline has meant that the same amount of cultivated land must feed a continuously increasing population. In 1974 Egypt, which had been a net exporter of cereals for centuries, became a net importer of food, especially grains.

As early as 1959, government economists expressed concern about the negative impact of high population growth rates on the country’s development efforts. In 1966 the government initiated a nationwide birth control program aimed at reducing the annual population growth rate to 2.5 percent or less. Since then staterun family planning clinics have distributed birth control information and contraceptives. These programs were somewhat successful in reducing the population growth rate, but in 1973 the rate began to increase again. Population control policies tended to be ineffective because most Egyptians, especially in rural areas, valued large families.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress

http://www.youregypttours.com

Egypt’s population, estimated at 3 million when Napoleon invaded the country in 1798, has increased at varying rates. The population grew gradually and steadily throughout the nineteenth century, doubling in size over the course of eighty years. Beginning in the 1880s, the growth rate accelerated, and the population increased more than 600 percent in 100 years. The growth rate was especially high after World War II. In 1947 a census indicated that Egypt’s population was 19 million. A census in 1976 revealed that the population had ballooned to 36.6 million. After 1976 the population grew at an annual rate of 2.9 percent and in 1986 reached a total of 50.4 million, including about 2.3 million Egyptians working in other countries. Projections indicated the population would reach 60 million by 1996.

Egypt’s population in mid-1990 was estimated at 52.5 million, about an 8 percent increase over the 1986 figure. The increase meant that the annual population growth rate had slowed slightly to 2.6 percent. Although Egypt’s overall population density in 1990 was only about fifty-four people per square kilometer, close to 99 percent of all Egyptians lived along the banks of the Nile River in 3.5 percent of the country’s total area. Average population densities in the Nile Valley exceeded 1,500 per square kilometer–one of the world’s highest densities.

According to the 1986 census, 51.1 percent of Egypt’s population was male and 48.9 percent female. More than 34 percent of the population was twelve years old or younger, and 68 percent was under age thirty. Fewer than 3 percent of Egyptians were sixty-five years or older. In 1989 average life expectancy at birth was fifty-nine years for men and sixty years for women. The infant mortality rate was 94 deaths per 1,000 births. Although the urban population has been increasing at a higher rate than the rural population since the 1947 census, approximately 51 percent of people still lived in villages in 1986. By the end of 1989, however, demographers estimated the urban-rural distribution to be equal.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress

EGYPTIAN SOCIETY IN 1990 reflected both ancient roots and the profound changes that have occurred since Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the country in 1798. Land tenure, crops, and cultivation patterns had all been transformed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the country had become increasingly urbanized and industrialized. Nevertheless, approximately half the population still lived in rural areas where settlement patterns remained defined, as they had been since pharaonic times, by the Nile River and irrigated agriculture. Villages were clustered along both banks of the Nile and along myriad irrigation canals in the Delta.

The rise of commercial agriculture in the nineteenth century set in motion a transformation of rural society. Land that was previously held in common by a village and granted in usufruct to individual families was transferred to private ownership. The transfers created a small class of wealthy absentee landowners, a somewhat larger class of relatively prosperous farmers who owned medium-sized parcels of land, and an enormous class of small farmers, sharecroppers, and landless casual laborers.

The land-reform measures implemented by the government in the 1950s and 1960s led to the redistribution of nearly 15 percent of the arable land to about 10 percent of the rural population. Land reform limited individual landownership to twenty-one hectares, thus forcing the wealthiest landed families to sell most of their holdings. Small peasant proprietors were the main beneficiaries of the redistribution. By the early 1980s, however, continued population growth and rising production costs had eroded many of the accomplishments of land reform. Inheritance tended to fragment already small holdings, and the number of landless people increased.

Land reform was only one of several social programs initiated by the Free Officers who led the 1952 Revolution. The majority of these officers, who came mostly from the middle class, was determined to broaden opportunities in a society that had been dominated by a narrow elite. They perceived education as a critical force for change. Beginning in the nineteenth century, secular education provided the country with the foundation for a civil bureaucracy. Access to a university education and government employment, however, was generally limited to the urban upper classes until the mid-1930s, when sons of urban and rural middle-class families were accepted into the military or civil administration. Following the 1952 Revolution, educational opportunities from primary school through university increased substantially. Through the 1980s, university enrollments swelled as increasing numbers of middle- and lowerclass youth pursued higher education in the hope of obtaining prestigious employment.

By the 1980s, overstaffing in the state bureaucracy had become a major problem. Periodic discussion by the mass media on the need to reform the government’s hiring and promotion systems, which gave preference to university graduates, caused anxiety among students, many of whom had migrated from rural areas and faced limited employment prospects in agriculture. Most of these students perceived higher education and government employment as means for achieving upward mobility. They therefore showed little support for the proposed reforms, which would reduce their opportunities.

Massive urbanization beginning after World War II has had a pervasive and accelerating impact on the nation’s cities, especially Cairo and Alexandria. These cities, which were once the enclaves of the relatively prosperous and privileged, have attracted millions of rural migrants, including landowning families’ children who wanted to pursue an education and illiterate sons and daughters of poor, landless peasants who were willing to work as unskilled laborers. The migrants have adapted to urban life by attempting to replicate the social organization found in villages. Residential patterns, employment practices, and socializing have tended to reflect and to reinforce relationships formed in the countryside.

Religion, mainly Islam, is an integral aspect of social life. Although most Egyptian Muslims respect and agree on the basic tenets of Islam, their religious perspectives differ. Trained theologians, for example, practice orthodox Islam while villagers practice a simple form of the religion. Since the 1970s, there has been a resurgence of Islamic political groups. Activists ranged from persons fervent in religious practice to individuals who favor the adoption of the Muslim legal code as the basis of Egyptian law to others who espouse the violent overthrow of the government to achieve an Islamic social order. Some leaders of the Islamic political groups are former university students or recent graduates whose families migrated from rural areas. Many Muslims have responded favorably to these leaders, who are likely to remain a potent political force in the 1990s.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress

http://www.sharmexcursion-tours.com

Egypt’s population is very large in relation to the country’s natural resources. Although it is not a perfect measure of the impact of high population growth rates, the amount of land cultivated by the average farmer provides a glimpse at the extent of the problem. In slightly more than 150 years (1821-1976), the per capita cultivated area dropped from 0.8 feddan to 0.27 feddan among the rural population. If the urban population is included, the per capita cultivated area in 1976 amounted to only 0.15 feddan. The decline has meant that the same amount of cultivated land must feed a continuously increasing population. In 1974 Egypt, which had been a net exporter of cereals for centuries, became a net importer of food, especially grains.

As early as 1959, government economists expressed concern about the negative impact of high population growth rates on the country’s development efforts. In 1966 the government initiated a nationwide birth control program aimed at reducing the annual population growth rate to 2.5 percent or less. Since then staterun family planning clinics have distributed birth control information and contraceptives. These programs were somewhat successful in reducing the population growth rate, but in 1973 the rate began to increase again. Population control policies tended to be ineffective because most Egyptians, especially in rural areas, valued large families.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress

http://www.sharmexcursion-tours.com

Egypt’s population, estimated at 3 million when Napoleon invaded the country in 1798, has increased at varying rates. The population grew gradually and steadily throughout the nineteenth century, doubling in size over the course of eighty years. Beginning in the 1880s, the growth rate accelerated, and the population increased more than 600 percent in 100 years. The growth rate was especially high after World War II. In 1947 a census indicated that Egypt’s population was 19 million. A census in 1976 revealed that the population had ballooned to 36.6 million. After 1976 the population grew at an annual rate of 2.9 percent and in 1986 reached a total of 50.4 million, including about 2.3 million Egyptians working in other countries. Projections indicated the population would reach 60 million by 1996.

Egypt’s population in mid-1990 was estimated at 52.5 million, about an 8 percent increase over the 1986 figure. The increase meant that the annual population growth rate had slowed slightly to 2.6 percent. Although Egypt’s overall population density in 1990 was only about fifty-four people per square kilometer, close to 99 percent of all Egyptians lived along the banks of the Nile River in 3.5 percent of the country’s total area. Average population densities in the Nile Valley exceeded 1,500 per square kilometer–one of the world’s highest densities.

According to the 1986 census, 51.1 percent of Egypt’s population was male and 48.9 percent female. More than 34 percent of the population was twelve years old or younger, and 68 percent was under age thirty. Fewer than 3 percent of Egyptians were sixty-five years or older. In 1989 average life expectancy at birth was fifty-nine years for men and sixty years for women. The infant mortality rate was 94 deaths per 1,000 births. Although the urban population has been increasing at a higher rate than the rural population since the 1947 census, approximately 51 percent of people still lived in villages in 1986. By the end of 1989, however, demographers estimated the urban-rural distribution to be equal.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress

EGYPTIAN SOCIETY IN 1990 reflected both ancient roots and the profound changes that have occurred since Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the country in 1798. Land tenure, crops, and cultivation patterns had all been transformed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the country had become increasingly urbanized and industrialized. Nevertheless, approximately half the population still lived in rural areas where settlement patterns remained defined, as they had been since pharaonic times, by the Nile River and irrigated agriculture. Villages were clustered along both banks of the Nile and along myriad irrigation canals in the Delta.

The rise of commercial agriculture in the nineteenth century set in motion a transformation of rural society. Land that was previously held in common by a village and granted in usufruct to individual families was transferred to private ownership. The transfers created a small class of wealthy absentee landowners, a somewhat larger class of relatively prosperous farmers who owned medium-sized parcels of land, and an enormous class of small farmers, sharecroppers, and landless casual laborers.

The land-reform measures implemented by the government in the 1950s and 1960s led to the redistribution of nearly 15 percent of the arable land to about 10 percent of the rural population. Land reform limited individual landownership to twenty-one hectares, thus forcing the wealthiest landed families to sell most of their holdings. Small peasant proprietors were the main beneficiaries of the redistribution. By the early 1980s, however, continued population growth and rising production costs had eroded many of the accomplishments of land reform. Inheritance tended to fragment already small holdings, and the number of landless people increased.

Land reform was only one of several social programs initiated by the Free Officers who led the 1952 Revolution. The majority of these officers, who came mostly from the middle class, was determined to broaden opportunities in a society that had been dominated by a narrow elite. They perceived education as a critical force for change. Beginning in the nineteenth century, secular education provided the country with the foundation for a civil bureaucracy. Access to a university education and government employment, however, was generally limited to the urban upper classes until the mid-1930s, when sons of urban and rural middle-class families were accepted into the military or civil administration. Following the 1952 Revolution, educational opportunities from primary school through university increased substantially. Through the 1980s, university enrollments swelled as increasing numbers of middle- and lowerclass youth pursued higher education in the hope of obtaining prestigious employment.

By the 1980s, overstaffing in the state bureaucracy had become a major problem. Periodic discussion by the mass media on the need to reform the government’s hiring and promotion systems, which gave preference to university graduates, caused anxiety among students, many of whom had migrated from rural areas and faced limited employment prospects in agriculture. Most of these students perceived higher education and government employment as means for achieving upward mobility. They therefore showed little support for the proposed reforms, which would reduce their opportunities.

Massive urbanization beginning after World War II has had a pervasive and accelerating impact on the nation’s cities, especially Cairo and Alexandria. These cities, which were once the enclaves of the relatively prosperous and privileged, have attracted millions of rural migrants, including landowning families’ children who wanted to pursue an education and illiterate sons and daughters of poor, landless peasants who were willing to work as unskilled laborers. The migrants have adapted to urban life by attempting to replicate the social organization found in villages. Residential patterns, employment practices, and socializing have tended to reflect and to reinforce relationships formed in the countryside.

Religion, mainly Islam, is an integral aspect of social life. Although most Egyptian Muslims respect and agree on the basic tenets of Islam, their religious perspectives differ. Trained theologians, for example, practice orthodox Islam while villagers practice a simple form of the religion. Since the 1970s, there has been a resurgence of Islamic political groups. Activists ranged from persons fervent in religious practice to individuals who favor the adoption of the Muslim legal code as the basis of Egyptian law to others who espouse the violent overthrow of the government to achieve an Islamic social order. Some leaders of the Islamic political groups are former university students or recent graduates whose families migrated from rural areas. Many Muslims have responded favorably to these leaders, who are likely to remain a potent political force in the 1990s.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress

http://www.sharmexcursion-tours.com

Throughout Egypt, days are commonly warm or hot, and nights are cool. Egypt has only two seasons: a mild winter from November to April and a hot summer from May to October. The only differences between the seasons are variations in daytime temperatures and changes in prevailing winds. In the coastal regions, temperatures range between an average minimum of 14° C in winter and an average maximum of 30° C in summer.

Temperatures vary widely in the inland desert areas, especially in summer, when they may range from 7° C at night to 43° C during the day. During winter, temperatures in the desert fluctuate less dramatically, but they can be as low as 0° C at night and as high as 18° C during the day.

The average annual temperature increases moving southward from the Delta to the Sudanese border, where temperatures are similar to those of the open deserts to the east and west. In the north, the cooler temperatures of Alexandria during the summer have made the city a popular resort. Throughout the Delta and the northern Nile Valley, there are occasional winter cold spells accompanied by light frost and even snow. At Aswan, in the south, June temperatures can be as low as 10° C at night and as high as 41° C during the day when the sky is clear.

Egypt receives fewer than eighty millimeters of precipitation annually in most areas. Most rain falls along the coast, but even the wettest area, around Alexandria, receives only about 200 millimeters of precipitation per year. Alexandria has relatively high humidity, but sea breezes help keep the moisture down to a comfortable level. Moving southward, the amount of precipitation decreases suddenly. Cairo receives a little more than one centimeter of precipitation each year. The city, however, reports humidity as high as 77 percent during the summer. But during the rest of the year, humidity is low. The areas south of Cairo receive only traces of rainfall. Some areas will go years without rain and then experience sudden downpours that result in flash floods. Sinai receives somewhat more rainfall (about twelve centimeters annually in the north) than the other desert areas, and the region is dotted by numerous wells and oases, which support small population centers that formerly were focal points on trade routes. Water drainage toward the Mediterranean Sea from the main plateau supplies sufficient moisture to permit some agriculture in the coastal area, particularly near Al Arish.

A phenomenon of Egypt’s climate is the hot spring wind that blows across the country. The winds, known to Europeans as the sirocco and to Egyptians as the khamsin, usually arrive in April but occasionally occur in March and May. The winds form in small but vigorous low-pressure areas in the Isthmus of Suez and sweep across the northern coast of Africa. Unobstructed by geographical features, the winds reach high velocities and carry great quantities of sand and dust from the deserts. These sandstorms, often accompanied by winds of up to 140 kilometers per hour, can cause temperatures to rise as much as 20° C in two hours. The winds blow intermittently and may continue for days, cause illness in people and animals, harm crops, and occasionally damage houses and infrastructure.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress

http://www.sharmexcursion-tours.com

This triangular area covers about 61,100 square kilometers (slightly smaller than West Virginia). Similar to the desert, the peninsula contains mountains in its southern sector that are a geological extension of the Red Sea Hills, the low range along the Red Sea coast that includes Mount Catherine (Jabal Katrinah), the country’s highest point–2,642 meters. The Red Sea is named after these mountains, which are red.

The southern side of the peninsula has a sharp escarpment that subsides after a narrow coastal shelf that slopes into the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba. The elevation of Sinai’s southern rim is about 1,000 meters. Moving northward, the elevation of this limestone plateau decreases. The northern third of Sinai is a flat, sandy coastal plain, which extends from the Suez Canal into the Gaza Strip and Israel.

Before the Israeli military occupied Sinai during the June 1967 War (Arab-Israeli war, also known as the Six-Day War), a single Egyptian governorate administered the whole peninsula. By 1982 after all of Sinai was returned to Egypt, the central government divided the peninsula into two governorates. North Sinai has its capital at Al Arish and the South Sinai has its capital in At Tur.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress

http://www.sharmexcursion-tours.com

The topographic features of the region east of the Nile are very different from those of the Western Desert. The relatively mountainous Eastern Desert rises abruptly from the Nile and extends over an area of approximately 220,000 square kilometers (roughly equivalent in size to Utah). The upward-sloping plateau of sand gives way within 100 kilometers to arid, defoliated, rocky hills running north and south between the Sudan border and the Delta. The hills reach elevations of more than 1,900 meters. The region’s most prominent feature is the easterly chain of rugged mountains, the Red Sea Hills, which extend from the Nile Valley eastward to the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea. This elevated region has a natural drainage pattern that rarely functions because of insufficient rainfall. It also has a complex of irregular, sharply cut wadis that extend westward toward the Nile.

The Eastern Desert is generally isolated from the rest of the country. There is no oasis cultivation in the region because of the difficulty in sustaining any form of agriculture. Except for a few villages on the Red Sea coast, there are no permanent settlements. The importance of the Eastern Desert lies in its natural resources, especially oil. A single governorate, the capital of which is at Al Ghardaqah, administers the entire region.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress

Throughout Egypt, days are commonly warm or hot, and nights are cool. Egypt has only two seasons: a mild winter from November to April and a hot summer from May to October. The only differences between the seasons are variations in daytime temperatures and changes in prevailing winds. In the coastal regions, temperatures range between an average minimum of 14° C in winter and an average maximum of 30° C in summer.

Temperatures vary widely in the inland desert areas, especially in summer, when they may range from 7° C at night to 43° C during the day. During winter, temperatures in the desert fluctuate less dramatically, but they can be as low as 0° C at night and as high as 18° C during the day.

The average annual temperature increases moving southward from the Delta to the Sudanese border, where temperatures are similar to those of the open deserts to the east and west. In the north, the cooler temperatures of Alexandria during the summer have made the city a popular resort. Throughout the Delta and the northern Nile Valley, there are occasional winter cold spells accompanied by light frost and even snow. At Aswan, in the south, June temperatures can be as low as 10° C at night and as high as 41° C during the day when the sky is clear.

Egypt receives fewer than eighty millimeters of precipitation annually in most areas. Most rain falls along the coast, but even the wettest area, around Alexandria, receives only about 200 millimeters of precipitation per year. Alexandria has relatively high humidity, but sea breezes help keep the moisture down to a comfortable level. Moving southward, the amount of precipitation decreases suddenly. Cairo receives a little more than one centimeter of precipitation each year. The city, however, reports humidity as high as 77 percent during the summer. But during the rest of the year, humidity is low. The areas south of Cairo receive only traces of rainfall. Some areas will go years without rain and then experience sudden downpours that result in flash floods. Sinai receives somewhat more rainfall (about twelve centimeters annually in the north) than the other desert areas, and the region is dotted by numerous wells and oases, which support small population centers that formerly were focal points on trade routes. Water drainage toward the Mediterranean Sea from the main plateau supplies sufficient moisture to permit some agriculture in the coastal area, particularly near Al Arish.

A phenomenon of Egypt’s climate is the hot spring wind that blows across the country. The winds, known to Europeans as the sirocco and to Egyptians as the khamsin, usually arrive in April but occasionally occur in March and May. The winds form in small but vigorous low-pressure areas in the Isthmus of Suez and sweep across the northern coast of Africa. Unobstructed by geographical features, the winds reach high velocities and carry great quantities of sand and dust from the deserts. These sandstorms, often accompanied by winds of up to 140 kilometers per hour, can cause temperatures to rise as much as 20° C in two hours. The winds blow intermittently and may continue for days, cause illness in people and animals, harm crops, and occasionally damage houses and infrastructure.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress

This triangular area covers about 61,100 square kilometers (slightly smaller than West Virginia). Similar to the desert, the peninsula contains mountains in its southern sector that are a geological extension of the Red Sea Hills, the low range along the Red Sea coast that includes Mount Catherine (Jabal Katrinah), the country’s highest point–2,642 meters. The Red Sea is named after these mountains, which are red.

The southern side of the peninsula has a sharp escarpment that subsides after a narrow coastal shelf that slopes into the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba. The elevation of Sinai’s southern rim is about 1,000 meters. Moving northward, the elevation of this limestone plateau decreases. The northern third of Sinai is a flat, sandy coastal plain, which extends from the Suez Canal into the Gaza Strip and Israel.

Before the Israeli military occupied Sinai during the June 1967 War (Arab-Israeli war, also known as the Six-Day War), a single Egyptian governorate administered the whole peninsula. By 1982 after all of Sinai was returned to Egypt, the central government divided the peninsula into two governorates. North Sinai has its capital at Al Arish and the South Sinai has its capital in At Tur.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress

The topographic features of the region east of the Nile are very different from those of the Western Desert. The relatively mountainous Eastern Desert rises abruptly from the Nile and extends over an area of approximately 220,000 square kilometers (roughly equivalent in size to Utah). The upward-sloping plateau of sand gives way within 100 kilometers to arid, defoliated, rocky hills running north and south between the Sudan border and the Delta. The hills reach elevations of more than 1,900 meters. The region’s most prominent feature is the easterly chain of rugged mountains, the Red Sea Hills, which extend from the Nile Valley eastward to the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea. This elevated region has a natural drainage pattern that rarely functions because of insufficient rainfall. It also has a complex of irregular, sharply cut wadis that extend westward toward the Nile. The Eastern Desert is generally isolated from the rest of the country. There is no oasis cultivation in the region because of the difficulty in sustaining any form of agriculture. Except for a few villages on the Red Sea coast, there are no permanent settlements. The importance of the Eastern Desert lies in its natural resources, especially oil. A single governorate, the capital of which is at Al Ghardaqah, administers the entire region. Source: U.S. Library of Congress

http://www.youregypttours.com

Throughout Egypt, days are commonly warm or hot, and nights are cool. Egypt has only two seasons: a mild winter from November to April and a hot summer from May to October. The only differences between the seasons are variations in daytime temperatures and changes in prevailing winds. In the coastal regions, temperatures range between an average minimum of 14° C in winter and an average maximum of 30° C in summer.

Temperatures vary widely in the inland desert areas, especially in summer, when they may range from 7° C at night to 43° C during the day. During winter, temperatures in the desert fluctuate less dramatically, but they can be as low as 0° C at night and as high as 18° C during the day.

The average annual temperature increases moving southward from the Delta to the Sudanese border, where temperatures are similar to those of the open deserts to the east and west. In the north, the cooler temperatures of Alexandria during the summer have made the city a popular resort. Throughout the Delta and the northern Nile Valley, there are occasional winter cold spells accompanied by light frost and even snow. At Aswan, in the south, June temperatures can be as low as 10° C at night and as high as 41° C during the day when the sky is clear.

Egypt receives fewer than eighty millimeters of precipitation annually in most areas. Most rain falls along the coast, but even the wettest area, around Alexandria, receives only about 200 millimeters of precipitation per year. Alexandria has relatively high humidity, but sea breezes help keep the moisture down to a comfortable level. Moving southward, the amount of precipitation decreases suddenly. Cairo receives a little more than one centimeter of precipitation each year. The city, however, reports humidity as high as 77 percent during the summer. But during the rest of the year, humidity is low. The areas south of Cairo receive only traces of rainfall. Some areas will go years without rain and then experience sudden downpours that result in flash floods. Sinai receives somewhat more rainfall (about twelve centimeters annually in the north) than the other desert areas, and the region is dotted by numerous wells and oases, which support small population centers that formerly were focal points on trade routes. Water drainage toward the Mediterranean Sea from the main plateau supplies sufficient moisture to permit some agriculture in the coastal area, particularly near Al Arish.

A phenomenon of Egypt’s climate is the hot spring wind that blows across the country. The winds, known to Europeans as the sirocco and to Egyptians as the khamsin, usually arrive in April but occasionally occur in March and May. The winds form in small but vigorous low-pressure areas in the Isthmus of Suez and sweep across the northern coast of Africa. Unobstructed by geographical features, the winds reach high velocities and carry great quantities of sand and dust from the deserts. These sandstorms, often accompanied by winds of up to 140 kilometers per hour, can cause temperatures to rise as much as 20° C in two hours. The winds blow intermittently and may continue for days, cause illness in people and animals, harm crops, and occasionally damage houses and infrastructure.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress

http://www.youregypttours.com

This triangular area covers about 61,100 square kilometers (slightly smaller than West Virginia). Similar to the desert, the peninsula contains mountains in its southern sector that are a geological extension of the Red Sea Hills, the low range along the Red Sea coast that includes Mount Catherine (Jabal Katrinah), the country’s highest point–2,642 meters. The Red Sea is named after these mountains, which are red.

The southern side of the peninsula has a sharp escarpment that subsides after a narrow coastal shelf that slopes into the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba. The elevation of Sinai’s southern rim is about 1,000 meters. Moving northward, the elevation of this limestone plateau decreases. The northern third of Sinai is a flat, sandy coastal plain, which extends from the Suez Canal into the Gaza Strip and Israel.

Before the Israeli military occupied Sinai during the June 1967 War (Arab-Israeli war, also known as the Six-Day War), a single Egyptian governorate administered the whole peninsula. By 1982 after all of Sinai was returned to Egypt, the central government divided the peninsula into two governorates. North Sinai has its capital at Al Arish and the South Sinai has its capital in At Tur.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress

http://www.youregypttours.com

The topographic features of the region east of the Nile are very different from those of the Western Desert. The relatively mountainous Eastern Desert rises abruptly from the Nile and extends over an area of approximately 220,000 square kilometers (roughly equivalent in size to Utah). The upward-sloping plateau of sand gives way within 100 kilometers to arid, defoliated, rocky hills running north and south between the Sudan border and the Delta. The hills reach elevations of more than 1,900 meters. The region’s most prominent feature is the easterly chain of rugged mountains, the Red Sea Hills, which extend from the Nile Valley eastward to the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea. This elevated region has a natural drainage pattern that rarely functions because of insufficient rainfall. It also has a complex of irregular, sharply cut wadis that extend westward toward the Nile.

The Eastern Desert is generally isolated from the rest of the country. There is no oasis cultivation in the region because of the difficulty in sustaining any form of agriculture. Except for a few villages on the Red Sea coast, there are no permanent settlements. The importance of the Eastern Desert lies in its natural resources, especially oil. A single governorate, the capital of which is at Al Ghardaqah, administers the entire region.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress

http://www.fly2egy.com

Egypt is predominantly desert. Only 35,000 square kilometers- -3.5 percent of the total land area–are cultivated and permanently settled. Most of the country lies within the wide band of desert that stretches from Africa’s Atlantic Coast across the continent and into southwest Asia. Egypt’s geological history has produced four major physical regions: the Nile Valley and Delta, the Western Desert (also known as the Libyan Desert), the Eastern Desert (also known as the Arabian Desert), and the Sinai Peninsula. The Nile Valley and Delta is the most important region because it supports 99 percent of the population on the country’s only cultivable land.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress