view of Blanckhenhorn[59] that primitive man lived on the desert
plateaux rather than in the Nile Valley must, I think, be settled by the
further collection of specimens and by a careful comparison of the forms
to be found in the two situations. In this connection I may remark that
the grinding-stones I have seen in the desert seemed to me to be very
similar to those used by the Nubians of the Nile Valley to-day for
grinding corn.
APPENDIX
SOME RECENTLY DETERMINED POSITIONS IN THE LIBYAN DESERT
In view of their possible utility in connection with future exploratory
surveys, I give below a list of some of the more important of the
positions which I have recently determined by astronomical observation
in the southern part of the Libyan Desert, with brief descriptive notes
on the places to which they refer. The observations were made whilst
accompanying H.R.H. Prince Kemal el Din Hussein on his exploratory
motor-car expeditions of 1923, 1924, and 1925. The longitudes of Qasr
Farafra, Abu Mungar, Pottery Hill, and Regenfeld depend on the transport
of a box-chronometer; the others on wireless time-signals from Europe.
The positions of peaks were found by triangulation from the actual
observation-spots. The altitudes of camps are from careful barometric
determinations; those of the peaks depend on trigonometric levelling
from the camps.
_Altitude
_Place._ _Lat. N._ _Long. E._ above sea.
Metres._
° ′ ″ ° ′ ″
Merga, Camp 600 metres S.W. of west 19 2 29 26 18 32 526
corner of salt lake. (Lake surface
is 17 metres below level of camp.)
Bir Terfawi, Camp close to well and 22 55 12 28 52 51 244
palms
Gebel Kissu, Summit 21 34 59 25 8 26 1726
Gebel Owenat, highest point 21 54 34 25 0 47 1907
„ „ remarkable triple peak 21 53 51 25 1 39 1718
„ „ S.W. peak 21 49 35 24 53 52 1450
Chunk Hill, Summit 21 52 46 25 13 56 985
Owenat, Camp 600 metres S.E. of 21 48 35 24 51 45 568
western spring, on plain at foot of
mountain
Owenat, Camp at mouth of gully, 21 53 8 25 7 58 626
about 800 metres S.S.E. of eastern
springs
Gebel Kamil, Summit (160 metres 22 16 31 26 38 11 800
above plain)
Regenfeld, Rohlfs’ cairn of 1874, 25 10 49 27 24 22 470
rediscovered 1924
Pottery Hill, Summit (39 metres 24 26 27 27 38 54 506
above plain)
Sheb, Camp close to well, 240 22 19 48 29 45 46 228
metres N.N.E. of fort
Mut, Government Rest-house 25 28 37 28 58 24 119
Abu Mungar, Camp at small ruin, 400 26 30 22 27 35 29 117
metres E.S.E. of well
Qasr Farafra, Camp E. of village, 27 3 26 27 57 52 90
200 metres S.W. of Tomb of Sheikh
Dakhil
_Merga._—To geographers the most important of the new determinations
will undoubtedly be that of the uninhabited oasis of Merga, which had
not previously been visited by a European, and of which the situation
could hitherto only be guessed at from Arab statements. Merga lies in a
shallow depression about 50 metres deep, broken by sandstone hills and
sand-dunes, and extending for some 20 kilometres north-east and south-
west. The salt-lake, near the centre of the depression, measures about
300 metres by 150. It is surrounded by tall rushes and sandhills except
at its south-western end. There are numerous date-palms, both near the
lake and at considerable distances from it, as well as acacia trees and
tamarisk bushes. The neighbourhood of the lake swarms with mosquitoes.
Good and plentiful water was got by shallow digging about 1 kilometre
south-south-east of the observation-spot, and could probably be obtained
by digging almost anywhere in the depression. It is possible that the
names Bidi and Tura el Bedai, shown with a question mark on some Sudan
maps, may refer to different spots within the same depression. Owing to
the plentifully scattered vegetation, the place cannot easily be missed,
either by travellers passing within several miles of the lake, or by
aircraft; but the landing of aeroplanes in the neighbourhood of the lake
might be difficult owing to the extensive sand-drifts.
_Bir Terfawi._—Scarcely less important than the accurate fixation of
Merga is that of Bir Terfawi, the farthest south-west of all the
Egyptian artesian water-sources hitherto known. It will be remarked that
this latest determination places the well some 22′ south and 15′ east of
the position which I had provisionally assigned to it from the rough
data furnished by Lieut. Moore’s traverse of 1916.[60] A knowledge of
the true position of Terfawi is specially desirable for a traveller who
wishes to reach it, owing to the absence of any conspicuous landmark
near it and to the sandy nature of the surrounding country, which causes
tracks to be soon obliterated. There are numerous sandhills covered with
tamarisk bushes around Terfawi, and a little grazing for camels. Besides
the well at which observations were taken, water was found by digging in
the sand at the foot of some tamarisk mounds about 13 kilometres farther
west, and it is probable that good and plentiful supplies could be
obtained at shallow depths near any of the other mounds. The palmtrees
at Terfawi are few and small, and are less conspicuous than the
tamarisk-bushes. These latter should enable the place to be easily found
by aircraft; but landing would require some caution owing to the
prevalence of drifted sand.
_Gebels Kissu and Owenat._—The peaks of these mountains (especially that
of Kissu, because of its isolated character and sharply marked summit)
will form useful points for the connection of future surveys, being
visible from very long distances.
_Chunk Hill_ is a prominent isolated hill, nearly conical and of dark
colour, which forms a good landmark in the broken country to the east of
Gebel Owenat. It rises some 335 metres above the ground at its foot.
_The Springs of Owenat._—Of the two water-sources of Owenat whose
positions are given, the western one is the better, and is moreover very
easy of access, being practically on the level of the plain which
extends southwards from the mountain mass, and easily discoverable by
the numerous animal-tracks converging to it; it is a pool among great
boulders, obviously fed by percolation through cracks and fissures in
the granite mountain which towers above it. The eastern water-source is
less easy of access; it lies about 1 kilometre up a stony gully, and
consists of a series of pools in the rocky floor of the gully, fed by
trickling springs at the level where the granite is overlain by
sandstone. The plain to the south of the western spring would form an
excellent landing-ground for aircraft.
Whilst in the neighbourhood of Owenat, I had hoped to re-determine the
longitude of Hassanein Bey’s camp of 1923 with the aid of wireless time-
signals, or at least by triangulation-connection to one of my
observation-points, because a really accurate fixation of the longitude
of a point about midway along his route from Jarabub to Furawia would
possibly furnish the means of slightly correcting the longitudes
assigned to Hassanein’s camps at Kufra and Erdi. I was unfortunately
prevented from carrying out the desired connection; but from a hurried
car-traverse which I made, skirting the western side of the mountain
mass, in the course of which I must have passed pretty close to the site
of Hassanein’s Owenat camp, I think that camp really lies about in
longitude 24° 49′, or some 5 miles to the west of where I had previously
calculated it to be from Hassanein’s traverse data;[61] and that in
consequence the longitudes assigned to Kufra and Erdi from the same data
may be some 2 or 3 miles too great.
_Gebel Kamil_ is a sharply pointed hill of dark sandstone, forming a
useful landmark between Terfawi and Owenat. It was visible from the east
for more than 40, or from the west for about 20, kilometres. The name
was given to it by Prince Kemal el Din in honour of his father, Hussein
Kamil, the late Sultan of Egypt.
_Regenfeld_, it will be remarked, was found to be very nearly in the
position assigned to it by Jordan in 1876,[62] and my estimation of the
level of the place is only 20 metres higher than Jordan’s. The
neighbouring dune I found to be 30 metres high, agreeing exactly with
Jordan’s measurement of fifty years previously; and as far as I could
judge, the situation of the dune relative to the cairn seems to have
remained unchanged through this long interval, showing that there has
been at any rate no great lateral displacement of the dunes. The iron
tanks left by Rohlfs were quite intact, in spite of their half-century
of exposure; they had become covered with a hard dark brown film,
apparently of magnetic oxide of iron, not rusted in the ordinary way, a
fact which speaks strongly for the dryness of the region. Empty wine-
bottles left by the Rohlfs expedition were frosted by the sand-blast
wherever they were exposed; but surprisingly little of the glass had
been removed in this way.
_Pottery Hill_ is the northern one of a pair of nearly conical dark
sandstone hills about 40 metres high, which are conspicuous from some
distance owing to their situation on a nearly level sand-plain. I gave
it its name from the numerous jars which I discovered at its foot in
1917.
_Sheb Well_ is a pool of fairly good water in a shallow excavation at
the foot of a clump of dom palms, half surrounded by sand-dunes and
tamarisk mounds, 240 metres north-north-west of a fort; the latter
occupies a fairly conspicuous position on a sandstone hill about 25
metres high. Another well, situated at the foot of a clump of dom palms
about 11 kilometres farther north, is called Bir Terfau; this should
not, of course, be confused with the Bir Terfawi already mentioned.
To the north of Sheb, on the Arbain road, are three other water-sources
which I visited in 1925 and of which I determined the approximate
positions by a carefully controlled car-traverse: Bir Kassaba, in lat.
22° 41′, long. 29° 55′; Bir Abu Hussein, in lat. 22° 53′, long. 29° 55′;
and Bir Murr, in lat. 23° 22′, long. 30° 5′. Bir Kassaba is a pool of
good water at the foot of a clump of palms; Bir Abu Hussein, which
likewise yields good water, is a small excavation in sand near a hill of
pink coarse-grained granite, and usually requires to be dug out afresh
by each traveller; Bir Murr, on a little plain surrounded by hills,
consists of several holes, with fairly good water, excavated in the sand
at the south side of the outcrop of a steeply inclined bed of speckled
calcareous sandstone.
I have not myself traversed the desert to the east of Sheb, but
according to an intelligent Arab who has recently made the journey from
Sheb to Dungul, there are only two spots between these places at which
water is obtainable; they are Bir Abu Seifa, a small well of good water
about 50 kilometres from Sheb, and Bir Haleifa, about 15 kilometres
farther on, where there is a fort and numerous wells. This latter place
must, I think, be the same as the Bir Nakhlai, of which the position
found astronomically by Colonel Talbot in 1893 was lat. 22° 29′ 1″,
long. 30° 19′ 36″.
_The Rest-house at Mut_, in Dakhla Oasis, is a low whitewashed building
of three rooms, situated on open ground a little to the south of the
village. It is conspicuous by reason of its isolation from other
buildings, and forms a convenient starting-point for car journeys to the
south-west of Dakhla, as well as for journeys to Kharga by the southern
track which was mostly followed by cars during the war.
_Abu Mungar_ proved to be very close to the position given by Mr.
Harding King’s observations of 1912.[63] To the south-east of Abu
Mungar, about halfway to Dakhla, are two remarkable hills forming
outliers of the plateau. These hills, which are good landmarks, were
first discovered by Mr. Harding King, and as they appear to possess no
native name, I have called them “King’s Hills” on the map. The farther
one of the two from the plateau lies in lat. 25° 58′, long. 28° 11′,
from compass-bearings which I took to it on a careful car-traverse in
1924. The other is about 2 kilometres farther north.
_Qasr Farafra._—The position of the village of Qasr Farafra which I gave
in my paper of 1919[64] is proved to be very nearly correct by the
latest observations. The main advantage of the new determination is that
it is referred to an easily identifiable landmark, the tomb of Sheikh
Dakhil, instead of to the ill-defined centre of the village.
_Levels in or near Baharia Oasis._—I think it may be well to record here
that owing to an unfortunate mistake about the datum to which the level
of the old military railway-terminus at B6 was referred, all the
altitudes given on pp. 10 and 11 of my above-mentioned Survey Department
Paper of 1919 require a correction of 19 metres to be added. At the time
when I triangulated Baharia in 1917, I was informed that the level found
by the military authorities for the terminus was measured from the sea-
level datum, and I employed the value given for it as my fundamental
level. But I have since ascertained that an arbitrary datum was employed
by the military engineers; and trigonometric levelling from the Nile
Valley has shown that this arbitrary datum was about 19 metres above
sea-level.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: The use of motor cars for reconnaissances in the Libyan
Desert, initiated by the British Army during the Great War, has been
considerably developed in the last few years by Prince Kemal el Din
Hussein (son of the late Sultan of Egypt), who has made several long
exploratory journeys with a fleet of cars of the caterpillar type,
specially constructed so as to be capable of carrying considerable loads
over sandy tracts which were impassable to the Army patrols. The
expeditions organized and led by His Royal Highness have resulted in
important additions to geographical knowledge concerning the Libyan
Desert, especially the southern and western regions, which have hitherto
been practically inaccessible. I had the pleasure of accompanying the
Prince on three of his journeys, and am much indebted to him for thus
affording me the opportunity of making many observations which would
otherwise have been impossible to me. I have further to thank him for
kind permission to illustrate this paper by reproductions from a
selection of the excellent photographs taken by him during our travels.]
[Footnote 2: Kindly communicated by Mr. A. R. Boyce, Director of Sudan
Surveys.]
[Footnote 3: Printed by the French Army Staff, 1926.]
[Footnote 4: By way of comparison, it may be remarked that the area (at
the sea-level contour) of the Qattara depression is about four times
that of the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley depression; but the latter
(reckoning to the lowest point of the bed of the Dead Sea) is about six
times the deeper of the two.]
[Footnote 5: A similar ambiguity of meaning very commonly attaches to
Arabic geographical terms. Thus _beled_ may mean either a village or an
entire country; _gebel_, either a mountain or a desert; _gezira_, either
an island or a part of the Nile bank which is alternately covered and
uncovered by the rise and fall of the river; _bir_, which properly
signifies a well, is often used to denote a spring or a water-cistern;
_wadi_, though its proper meaning is a valley, is also sometimes
employed for a closed-in depression, as in the case of the Wadi Natrun.]
[Footnote 6: ‘Nouveaux Mémoires des Missions de la Compagnie de Jesus
dans le Levant,’ Tome ii. (Paris, 1717), p. 74. This little book
contains a map of Egypt, prepared by Father Sicard at Cairo in 1715, on
which the “Mer sans eau” is shown with “bateaux petrifiez” depicted
alongside it.]
[Footnote 7: See “Particulars concerning the Valley of the Natron Lakes,
and that of the Old Bed of the River” (with map) by Andreossi, General
of Artillery, in ‘Memoirs Relative to Egypt, Written in That Country
during the Campaigns of General Bonaparte in the Years 1798 and 1799, by
the Learned and Scientific Men who Accompanied the French Expedition’
(London, 1800), p. 270.]
[Footnote 8: See Rohlfs’ ‘Drei Monate in der libyschen Wüste’ (Cassel,
1875), p. 337; and Jordan’s ‘Physische Geographie und Meteorologie der
libyschen Wüste’ (Cassel, 1876), p. 214.]
[Footnote 9: ‘Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin,’
1902, Tafel III.]
[Footnote 10: ‘Topography and Geology of the Fayum Province of Egypt’
(Cairo, 1905), p. 67.]
[Footnote 11: Since the above was written, the Professor of Geography at
the new University of Cairo, M. Lorin, has suggested that at a former
geological epoch the Nile flowed through Siwa Oasis and thence westward
so as to make Cyrenaica an island. (See ‘L’Egypte,’ published by the
Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, Cairo, in December 1926, p.
153.) M. Lorin does not give any grounds for this suggestion, and I know
of no evidence that would justify its acceptance. As will be gathered
from my remarks elsewhere in this paper, it seems to me far more likely
that Siwa and the other northern depressions were in recent geological
times regions of central drainage, than that they were local deepenings
of a single channel; and in regard to earlier geological periods we
possess too little information to form any conclusions as to drainage-
lines.]
[Footnote 12: See Sir Hanbury Brown’s ‘The Fayum and Lake Moeris’
(London, 1892), pp. 40-48 and 106-110; Sir W. Willcocks’ ‘Perennial
Irrigation and Flood Protection for Egypt’ (Cairo, 1894), also the same
author’s ‘Egyptian Irrigation,’ third edition (London, 1913); Sir W. E.
Garstin’s ‘Report on the Basin of the Upper Nile’ (Cairo, 1904),
Appendix I. pp. 6-9; and Beadnell’s ‘Topography and Geology of the Fayum
Province of Egypt’ (Cairo, 1905), pp. 16-24.]
[Footnote 13: ‘Report on the Administration of the Irrigation Department
for 1895’ (Cairo, 1896), pp. 25-28.]
[Footnote 14: ‘Report on the Administration of the Irrigation Department
for 1896’ (Cairo, 1897), p. 129.]
[Footnote 15: It may be remarked that even if a channel were to be cut
from Lake Mariut to the Wadi Natrun it would still be necessary to
continue pumping on a large scale from Lake Mariut to maintain the
present-day drainage. According to returns communicated to me by the
Irrigation Service, the quantity of water removed from Lake Mariut by
pumping during the last nine years has averaged nearly 650 million cubic
metres a year; and even on the most optimistic estimate of evaporation
and seepage the Wadi Natrun could not be expected to dispose of half
this quantity after the lapse of the few years which would be occupied
in filling it to a permanent level.]
[Footnote 16: The average discharge of the Nile past Cairo in a year is
67 cubic kilometres. The capacity of the Qattara depression at the sea-
level contour is roughly about 900 cubic kilometres.]
[Footnote 17: _Geogr. Journ._, 56 (1920), pp. 97-99 and 161-163.]
[Footnote 18: Lucas (‘Natural Soda Deposits in Egypt’ (Cairo, 1912), p.
15) regarded the water of the Wadi Natrun as being due to infiltration
from the Nile, mainly on the ground that he supposed the water visibly
entering the wadi (as small streams and trickles) to do so on the north-
eastern side. But this, I think, is a mistake, as it neglects
consideration of the large springs of warm fresh water which bubble up
in and near the salt-lakes themselves, and also the large wells of the
monasteries which lie south-west of the lakes.]
[Footnote 19: A far better site for this well would have been in the
depression some 20 kilometres to the north-west, the ground-level at the
lowest point of which is only 61 metres above sea; but at the time when
the site of the well was chosen the existence of this depression was
unknown.]
[Footnote 20: See Appendix III. in the second volume of Willcocks’
‘Egyptian Irrigation,’ 1913, p. 853.]
[Footnote 21: Schweinfurth (_op. cit._, p. 855) even thought it might
have percolated to Siwa, in spite of the great distance (480 kilometres)
and the adverse direction of the difference of level between the two
places.]
[Footnote 22: Mr. Beadnell (‘An Egyptian Oasis’ (London, 1909), p. 139)
estimates the total discharge of the Kharga wells at 53,000 cubic metres
per diem. We should not, I think, err greatly in estimating the total
output of all the Egyptian oasis wells and springs at about five times
this, or 250,000 cubic metres per diem. As the average daily discharge
of the Nile in Egypt is about 180 million tons, a local influx into it
several times as great as the total discharge of the oasis wells would
represent but an insignificant addition to the discharge of the Nile. I
think, however, that the influx of the warm water might possibly be
detected by careful thermometric measurements made in the river near its
banks at the time of low Nile.]
[Footnote 23: This was the lowest level recorded at the time when I drew
the static contours on the map. The further exploration of the
depression by Mr. Walpole in the present year has shown that at one
place the ground-level descends to − 134 metres; the situation of this
local deepening is, however, such that the drawing of the static
contours would not have been affected by its inclusion in the list of
adopted data.]
[Footnote 24: ‘An Egyptian Oasis’ (London, 1909), p. 156.]
[Footnote 25: “The Mutual Interference of Artesian Wells,” _Geol. Mag._
(London, 1909), pp. 23-26; also ‘An Egyptian Oasis,’ chap. x.]
[Footnote 26: ‘An Egyptian Oasis,’ p. 140.]
[Footnote 27: ‘Drei Monate in der libyschen Wüste’ (Cassel, 1875), p.
115.]
[Footnote 28: See Jordan’s ‘Physische Geographie und Meteorologie der
libyschen Wüste’ (Cassel, 1875), p. 204. Jordan states that there were
on an average not more than two to four plants per acre in this
locality.]
[Footnote 29: See Rohlfs’ ‘Drei Monate in der libyschen Wüste’ (chapter
ix. of which was written by Ascherson), p. 250.]
[Footnote 30: In my paper on ‘Recent Determinations of Geographical
Positions in the Libyan Desert,’ published in Cairo in 1919, I gave (p.
14) the approximate position of the hill as lat. 24° 28′, long. 27° 45′.
The position given above is from a more accurate determination which I
made on revisiting the place with Prince Kemal el Din in 1923. On this
latter occasion the excavations made by the Prince in the sand around
the foot of the hill revealed the existence of hundreds of additional
jars, many of them intact, set in regular order in the sand and
obviously forming a water-dump. The majority of the jars bore clearly
incised markings, which Prince Kemal el Din was able later to identify
positively as being tribal marks of the Tebus, the marks being in fact
exactly the same as those used by the Tebu tribes of the present day.]
[Footnote 31: See Jordan’s ‘Physische Geographie und Meteorologie der
libyschen Wüste’ (Cassel, 1876), p. 215.]
[Footnote 32: ‘Kharga Oasis’ (Cairo, 1900), p. 57.]
[Footnote 33: _Geogr. Journ._, 42 (1913), p. 283; also ‘Mysteries of the
Libyan Desert’ (London, 1925), p. 304.]
[Footnote 34: This “locus” is of course given by joining up the points
of intersection of the 100-metre water-contour with the 200-metre
ground-contour, the 200-metre water-contour with the 300-metre ground-
contour, and so on.]
[Footnote 35: It is possible that the “Nubian Sandstone” in South-
Western Egypt may represent more than one geological system, as has been
found to be the case in Sinai. Col. Tilho (_Geogr. Journ._, 56 (1920),
p. 259) records that the sandstone at Ennedi proved to be of Upper
Silurian age by the fossils found in it.]
[Footnote 36: Though we passed within 10 kilometres to the east of Kissu
on the return journey from Merga to Owenat in 1925, I could not observe
the structure of the mountain very clearly, owing to haze. But it
appeared to me to be a huge granitic intrusion rising through the gneiss
which covers a large area hereabouts. The sandstone over which we had
been travelling since leaving Merga gave place to gneiss about 40
kilometres before we came abreast of Kissu, and gneiss continued to be
the country rock until we came within 30 kilometres of Gebel Owenat,
when sandstone reappeared, at first capping low hills and then forming
the plain.]
[Footnote 37: There exists no published English translation of Ptolemy’s
‘Geographia.’ Müller’s edition (Paris, 1883-1901) gives Greek and Latin
texts, with a Latin commentary.]