Word: nile
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While studying aerial photographs of the Nile Delta after their country's 1967 conquest of the Sinai, Israeli geologists noticed soil markings that were clearly vestiges of two dried-up waterways. One was quickly identified as a silted offshoot of the Nile River called the Pelusiac branch (after the ancient city of Pelusium at its mouth). The nature of the other waterway baffled the geologists until they visited the area and found man-made embankments. With that, they realized that these old mounds marked the route of a remarkable ancient canal that predated the Suez Canal by as many...
...defense expenditures, which now devour $2 billion, or 25% of the gross national product (v. $3.6 billion, or 30% for Israel). Sadat is hard-pressed even to feed his 37 million people, 96% of whom are crowded in a narrow, seven-mile strip running 500 miles along the Nile. Egypt's trade deficit has been revised upward to $4 billion this year, and short-term debts to commercial banks have risen to about the same amount...
...Abdel Nasser as President in 1970. Since then it has got worse. One of the problems is geographic: though vast in area, Egypt is mostly desert. Fully 96% of its population is jammed into a narrow green belt averaging seven miles in width and 500 miles long in the Nile Valley. Another problem is the population itself, which is growing at a million per year despite belated efforts to control...
Outside Cairo, Sadat's power base includes the 'umdas, or mayors, of rural villages; bred in the Nile Delta village of Mit Abu el Kom, Sadat is as comfortable with local mayors as he is with sophisticated city dwellers. In fact, Sadat functions as if Egypt were one big Mit Abu el Kom and he the great 'umda. Sadat has pretty much neutralized the once-mighty Arab Socialist Union, which Nasser established as Egypt's only political party. He uses the A.S.U. only as a sounding board of grass roots opinion; membership is no longer mandatory...
...flood control provided by the dam has posed other problems. Residents along the Nile's banks now endure increasing rodent populations that were previously curbed by the cyclical floods. In towns bordering the river, sewage systems that once were regularly flushed out by the flooding and subsequent receding of the river have become badly clogged. The most serious criticism of flood control is that the drainage of more than 1.2 million acres of the nation's rich farm land below the dam is now insufficient Much of that land has become increasingly saline, reducing agricultural productivity...