Urban fluctuations in the north-central region of the Nile Delta: 4000 years of river and urban development in Egypt.

Abstract

This research explored urban changes in the north-central region of the Nile Delta —from the beginning of the Dynastic period (ca. 3150 BCE) until the beginning of the Tulunid dynasty (868 CE)— using a multi-dimensional, long-term approach with different independent variables: Spatiotemporal, Cultural and Urbanistic, Hydrological or Geomorphological, Historical, and Contextual. To investigate the location, connectivity, and permanence of the known archaeological settlements in the Nile Delta, an extended version of the Egyptian Exploration Society’s Delta Survey database was created to analyse settlement patterns through time compared against an original reconstruction of a palimpsestual river network using remote sensing, historical sources, archaeological and geomorphological data, spatial and network analysis.
This investigation has studied the extent to which human agency and geomorphology are intertwined and shape urban patterns in the Nile Delta; against the long-lived idea that the Nile River has almost exclusively made Egypt and that the river fluctuations have shaped the Egyptian urban landscape. For some authors like Fernand Braudel, the Nile River has defined the Egyptian world to the point of accepting that Egypt was considered a gift from the Nile, whereas, by contrast, Mesopotamia was made by human hands. In this thesis, however, it is argued that humans and their politics have played a more important role in defining the Nilotic landscape. Hence, this research explored to what extent river shifts and human agency have impacted urban patterns and settlement locations from the Old Kingdom to the modern era with the construction of the High Aswan Dam.
Regardless of river fluctuations, settlements persisted, and disastrous events obliterating cities are exceptional events. Urban fluctuations, bliss or misery, heydays or collapse, are certainly political and social happenings intermingled with the omnipresent river Nile.