Each year the Nile deposited rich silts along its banks, allowing the people of ancient Egypt (in good flood years) to gather sufficient crops to feed their families and livestock to the extent that the elite could focus their efforts on art, music, architecture, and foreign expeditions. Unlike the Nile further south in Nubia, there were no cataracts to impede travel up or down the Nile, making it ideal for transportation of goods and ideas. The Nile allowed for excellent fishing, as well as hunting (especially in prehistoric to early time periods in its marshes), and grazing for livestock. Good flood levels were so important to the ancient Egyptians that they connected annual floods with the religious myth of the wandering eye of the sun, which told the story of the goddess Hathor bringing annual inundation waters from the south (Darnell 1995).
The Nile River is 6670 km long, originating at Lake Tana in the Ethiopian plateau, (at 1830 m elevation) and Lake Victoria in East Africa (at 1134 m elevation). Annual monsoon rainfalls filled these Sub-Saharan lakes and fed the Blue and White Nile and main Nile river before the construction of the Aswan High Dam (in the early 1900s and 1960s) (Said 1988: 1-7). Most of the water reaching Aswan comes from precipitation directly related to the Indian Monsoon rainfall, so lower monsoon rainfalls could have disastrous effects on the Nile flooding levels.
Many studies exist describing the long-term geology of the Nile (Said 1990), which is outside the scope of this study. It is more important to explore what effect the Nile had on the overall development of ancient Egyptian landscapes, specifically, just how much the annual Nile inundations caused ancient landscapes to change. To assess this change, one must begin by asking how much the Nile moved over time, both horizontally and vertically. A river so famed for its unpredictable annual flooding levels would, like so many other great rivers today, have meandered from East to West and West to East over time.
Recent work by Egyptologists and archaeologists using satellite remote sensing, coring, and survey, has determined that the Nile was anything but stable in antiquity, and that much of our knowledge regarding ancient Egyptian landscapes and Nile location needs reassessment. Archaeological exploration work in Luxor using a combination of deep cores and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data has suggested the full Pharaonic period extent of the Nile’s eastward migration patterns. Based on the scientific data, we find that the early-to-predynastic Nile flowed past Medamud to the SE of modern Luxor, migrating at a rate of 2-3 km every 1000 years (Hillier et al. 2007: 1011-15) During Pharaonic times, the Nile migrated from the East to West near Karnak Temple, and in the Middle Kingdom times, the temple was probably located on an island that filled in as the Nile moved west (Bunbury and Graham 2005: 17-19).
The Nile River, its movements, and annual silt depositions over time must be evaluated from a larger ancient landscape perspective, as has been done in examining the great Nile bend at Qena with RADAR imagery (Stern and Abdel Salaam, 1996, 1696-8). Consider the overall landscape surrounding el-Amarna, as well as the associated modern development issues. As one embarks from the ferry at the modern town of et-Till, the landscape slants upwards towards the east, flattening out to a plain where spoil heaps from 150 years of excavation often cover known houses and additional features. Each year encroaching agriculture cuts into more and more of the site, especially a large agricultural area slightly to the south of the Central City. This development affects the choices of present day archaeologists, led by Barry Kemp (Kemp 1982-95). The work of the Amarna team balances the need to excavate
Figure 1.2 Coring work in the modern fields to the west of el-Amarna. Courtesy the author.
New architectural features with cataloguing past excavated remains. Much of Amar-na’s landscape has already been lost to agricultural expansion, with 90 ha lost since the 1980s, as demonstrated by old maps, aerial photographs and satellite imagery.
The total landscape of Amarna is only beginning to be understood in terms of its longer-term environmental changes. A coring study, initiated by the author, taking place along the floodplain edge to the west of the city, suggests significant landscape alterations over the past 1600 years. The study retrieved 30 cores at a range of 1 m-7 m in depth, from the surface of the cultivated area to the desert surface. The coring revealed some Amarna period material in the cultivation to the west of the central city. All other datable material culture (pottery) from the cores matched Late Roman period (c.400-800 ad) wares.
Coring results show that the Nile deposited an average of c.5 mm of silt per year in Middle Egypt, five times the silting rate found in the Delta (Butzer 1976: 23). This 1 mm per year Nile silt deposition is most often cited by Egyptologists, yet is from the area ofancient Egypt that would have traditionally had the lowest silt deposition rates: The Nile would have had more silt to discharge upriver and would have spread its silt over a far greater area further north. Higher silting rates would be expected further south where the average Above Sea Level measurements are higher than the Delta.
Combining the coring results with the survey results suggest that Nile has shifted between 0.6 and 1.2 km to the east over the past 1200 years in Middle Egypt, cutting into and likely washing away part of el-Amarna’s Central City area (and thus answering the question of why few crop-marks can be seen in the modern fields). We cannot say with any certainty exactly where the Nile flowed during the Amarna period. Two 7 m deep cores taken to the south of et-Till and just outside Hagg Kandil reveal likely locations for canals, based on deep clay and silt deposits (Parcak 2005; 2007b). Whether or not these canals date to the Amarna period will require further work, but they show how past landscape changes in ancient Egypt cannot be viewed through any single archaeological lens.
World History
