Egypt Physical Characteristics
Egypt is a state in north-eastern Africa, which also extends into a territory traditionally considered to be Asia, E of the Suez isthmus( Sinai peninsula). The name derives from that of the ancient city of Memphis, in Babylonian Hikuptah, which in Greek became Αἴγυπτος. It borders to the NE with Israel and, for a very short stretch (11 km), with the Gaza Strip, a territory administered by the Palestinian National Authority, to the South with the Republic of Sudan and to the West with Libya: frontiers, the last two, completely conventional, marked respectively for long stretches by the parallel of 22 ° N and the meridian of 25 ° E and established in the period of the British protectorate. AN the country is bathed by the Mediterranean and to the East by the Red Sea.
The territory is a strip of large African plateaus, the base of which is made up of endogenous and metamorphic rocks that emerge widely, especially in the South-East; elsewhere it is covered by a mighty sedimentary blanket of limestone and sandstone, of both continental and marine origin, stratified in later periods. The geotectonic events played a large part in the formation of the Egyptian territory, but its current landscape is mainly due to exogenous agents, in particular to the wind. For Egypt geography, please check franciscogardening.com.
From the morphological point of view, Egypt it is made up of four different regions: the Western Desert, the Eastern Desert, the Nile Valley and Delta, Sinai. The Western Desert, just under 700,000 km 2 wide and extending W of the Nile, is part of the great Libyan Desert (and therefore, ultimately, of the Sahara) and appears as a succession of plateaus consisting of horizontal banks mainly limestone or arenaceous, exposed or hidden under a sandy blanket. The morphological monotony is interrupted, as well as by some reliefs placed in the extreme south-west, sometimes higher than 1000 m, by the high and long slopes of the plateaus; and also by deep and wide depressions, in most cases occupied by oases. The Eastern Desert extends from the Nile Valley to the Red Sea (sometimes called the Arabian Desert, as it is a continuation, west of the Red Sea, of the deserts of Arabia), also formed by a series of plateaus, deeply engraved by torrential erosion of the uidians (➔ wadi). The eastern edge of these plateaus rises over 2000 m (Gebel Shā’ib, 2087 m) and looms with very steep walls over the narrow coastal selvedge. The Egyptian section of the Nile Valley is an alluvial corridor which upstream, from the Sudanese border to Aswan, was totally submerged following the construction of a mighty dam and the creation of Lake Nasser; beyond Aswan, the Valley runs very narrow up to Luxor, then expands to a width of 20 or more kilometers up to the vicinity of Cairo, where the limit is traditionally placed between Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt a little further on it opens like a fan forming the Delta, which measures over 20,000 km 2. The Sinai is a squat triangular peninsula, identified by the fork of the Red Sea, towards the North, in the two gulfs of Suez and Aqabah; it is a strip of Arabian plateaus, very elevated to the South, where, in Jebel Katherina, the highest peak of the entire Egyptian territory is reached. Egypt has a coastline of 2450 km, of which almost 1000 belong to the Mediterranean Sea, a mainly flat coast, while that of the Red Sea is bordered by a narrow selvedge, closed behind by the steep escarpment of the Eastern Desert.
Egypt is a strip of the Sahara that extends north to the shores of the Mediterranean; and its climate is typically Saharan. Although the pluviometric and thermometric values reveal some differences between the northern locations, exposed to a very modest Mediterranean influence, and the southern and inland locations, these values are all among those characteristic of the tropical desert climate: very little or almost no rainfall (Alexandria: 170 mm annual; Cairo: 20; Aswan: 0), albeit with exceptional episodes of great violence; high temperature (20-27C °); strong annual and daily temperature variations. Attracted by the low pressures of the interior, frequent breezes blow from the N, known since ancient times as winds from the East. ; from S-SW, on the other hand, the khamsin, a hot wind, laden with dust from the desert sands, often blows impetuously.
The hydrography of Egypt it is in fact identified with the Nile, which enters the country coming from the Republic of Sudan and flows through it, in the SN direction, for almost 1500 km, with a very weak slope and no longer receiving, given the climatic characteristics, any water tribute. The floods, which occurred in the summer and up to October, were significantly attenuated, as did the entire regime of the river after the construction of Lake Nasser.
