Geology -- Egypt; Nile River; Water-supply -- Egypt
Tables 65 and 67 of Appendix L contain the Assuân and Cairo gauges for
typical years in a period of twenty years from 1873 to 1892, and the
mean gauges of these twenty years. Finding it impossible to understand
the Nile without first referring every gauge to some uniform standard, I
have had to choose the line of reference. The mean high water level and
the mean low water level are both available. In Egypt the mean high
water level varies very considerably whether we take it in August and
the early part of September when the basin canals are running full
supply, or in the latter half of September when the canals are running
only half supply, or in October when the basins are discharging back
into the Nile. Early and quick rising floods have a different series of
levels from slow and late floods; while again the recent works carried
out in Upper Egypt by Col. Ross have so increased the discharging
capacity of the canals that the flood gauges have been appreciably
affected. All this points to the conclusion that the mean high flood is
no satisfactory standard. The mean low flood on the other hand is much
less liable to change and is very fairly constant from year to year.
High floods are certainly followed by scouring out of the bed, and low
floods by a silting up of the channel, but the changes are very moderate
compared to those in high flood. I have chosen the mean low water level
as the line of reference, and referred all gauges to it. From the mean
of twenty years’ observations, this level at Assuân is R. L. 85 metres.
By observations along the Nile generally, and by calculations at Cairo,
I have fixed it at all important places north of Assuân. Table 46 of
Appendix K gives the Reduced Levels at different places, while it is
also drawn on the longitudinal section of the Nile in Plate XII. It was
on this system that the ancient Egyptian engineers worked the Nile. They
however chose the mean high water level during the early part of the
flood as their standard of reference and consequently made the so called
cubits in the flood reaches of the Cairo gauge half cubits. This means a
discharge of 1600 cubic metres per second and fairly represents the
discharges of the basin canals in flood. When it is considered that the
level of the Nile valley is raised by about 10 centimetres per 100 years
it will be seen that the old Cairo gauge, which was a living record 1500
years ago, is to-day a meaningless anachronism. It has also to be
compared with the Assuân gauge which was erected in Ismail Pasha’s time
with an arbitrary zero some 90 centimetres below mean low water level,
and which may be reading 17 cubits while Cairo may be recording 25
cubits. The Cairo gauges in winter and summer are no records of
discharge as the afflux from the Barrage affects them. To find the
discharge at Cairo during these months, I have added those of the
Rosetta and Damietta branches and the Delta canals upstream of the
Barrage.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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