Word: nile
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...RAPE OF THE NILE...
...reliefs that were on the wall of Pharaoh Amun-Hotpe's tomb. To save himself hours in the hot, stuffy tomb, he chiseled off the bas-reliefs and took them to his boat. When he had finished his sketches, he simply dropped the priceless stones into the Nile...
Said's study took him along both banks of the Nile and deep into the deserts. He studied the magnetism of rocks to determine when they had been formed, used radioactive dating methods to determine the age of soil samples and fossils and checked other geological records, such as sea-floor samples from the Mediterranean. As a result of his research, Said has traced the history of the Nile back better than 5 million years, and identified at least five different rivers that flowed during that interval. They...
...Eonile, or original Nile, coursed through Egypt between 5.58 and 5.4 million years ago. Rising near Egypt's present southern frontier and fed by heavy rains, this prehistoric river cut a deep channel as it dropped to the Mediterranean, which was dry at that time and closed off at its western, or Gibraltar end. When Gibraltar opened up once more, possibly as a result of earthquakes, water from the Atlantic poured into the Mediterranean, flooding as far into Egypt as Aswan and covering the entire Nile Valley. For 2 million years the valley was a gulf of the Mediterranean...
...Paleonile, or second Nile, followed, emerging around 3.3 million years ago. The biggest and longest-lived of the five rivers, the Paleonile probably rose in the western Sudan after a prolonged rainy period, filling the Nile Valley with silt that eventually pushed the Mediterranean back out of Egypt. Then, around 1.8 million years ago, a 1-million-year drought dried up the Paleonile, gave birth to the Sahara and turned much of Egypt into a desert that Said says must have resembled the arid "Empty Quarter" of Saudi Arabia...