CLIMATE OF ANCIENT EGYPT
Sahara dunes
The weather in Egypt is generally warm in the winter, very hot in the summer and dry most of the year, with the exception of a rainy period in the winter that occurs mostly in the northern part of the country. In the desert there are great extremes of hot and cold on a daily basis. Daytime and nighttime temperature differences of 80̊F (45̊C) have been recorded. The Tropic of Cancer roughly divides Egypt into north and south.
Precipitation is generally scarce in most of the Egypt and, if it occurs, tends to fall between November and March, with January and February generally being the rainiest months. Moisture is generally carried in by winds from the Mediterranean Sea. Very little rain comes in from the Red Sea. Egypt’s mountains are situated in places where they don’t cause much of rain making effect. As a result the rainfall amounts are considerably lower than in parts of Israel, Lebanon and Iran.
The climate of Egypt is more uniform than that of other Mediterranean countries, owing to the absence of the rainy season, which corresponds to our winter. From December to March the air is cool, and at night sometimes the temperature may almost go down to freezing point, but during eight months of the year it is very hot, and in July the thermometer rises to 110̊F in the shade. Several causes combine to produce this difference of temperature. The hot south-east wind blows only from the middle of February to the middle of June, but this wind often rises to a hurricane, filling the air and covering the plants with dust; during the rest of the year even in the hottest season the northwest wind mitigates the intense heat of the clay; the ancient Egyptians thought it one of the best things in life to " breathe its sweet breath." [Source: Life in Ancient Egypt by Adolph Erman, 1894]
Websites on Ancient Egypt: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Discovering Egypt discoveringegypt.com; BBC History: Egyptians bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians ; Ancient History Encyclopedia on Egypt ancient.eu/egypt; Digital Egypt for Universities. Scholarly treatment with broad coverage and cross references (internal and external). Artifacts used extensively to illustrate topics. ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt ; British Museum: Ancient Egypt ancientegypt.co.uk; Egypt’s Golden Empire pbs.org/empires/egypt; Metropolitan Museum of Art www.metmuseum.org ; Oriental Institute Ancient Egypt (Egypt and Sudan) Projects ; Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre in Paris louvre.fr/en/departments/egyptian-antiquities; KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt kmtjournal.com; Egypt Exploration Society ees.ac.uk ; Amarna Project amarnaproject.com; Abzu: Guide to Resources for the Study of the Ancient Near East etana.org; Egyptology Resources fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk
Seasons of Egypt
Cairo and the Mediterranean region are considerably cooler and wetter than the rest of the country. The climate in these places is influenced more by the Mediterranean Sea than by the Sahara. Alexandria and Cairo can be quite cool in the winter when temperatures may drop into the 40s F (single digits C) at night.
Winter in Egypt is warm in most of the country, with high temperatures in the 70s F (20s C), and cool in the mountains and north, where the temperatures may fall below freezing at night. The tops of the highest mountains sometimes receive snow. Spring and autumn are warm in the north and hot in the south.
Summer in Egypt is very hot throughout the country. There is generally no rain. In most of Egypt the highs are in the 90s and 100s F (upper 30s and 40s C). The deserts are extremely hot. Temperatures often rises above 100̊F (38̊C) or even 120̊F (50̊C) during the afternoon and then sometimes drop into the 40s F (single digits C) at night. The Red Sea area, the Mediterranean area and Cairo are very humid. June, July and August are the hottest months.
Importance of the Winter Solstice to Ancient Egyptians
The ancient Egyptians appeared to have valued the winter solstice based on the position of some buildings and tombs. Why was this so? Owen Jarus wrote in Live Science: The winter solstice had an important meaning for the ancient Egyptians, researchers told Live Science. "The winter solstice marked the beginning of the daily victory of light against darkness, culminating in the summer solstice, the longest day on the earthly plane," study lead author María Dolores Joyanes Díaz, a researcher at the University of Málaga in Spain, told Live Science. [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science, November 29, 2022]
Moreover, the solstice was seen as a moment of renewal. "After the winter solstice the days begin to be longer, which was interpreted as a rebirth," Jiménez-Serrano added. "This concept was transferred to [the] physic[al] world, specifically to the statue that represented the dead governor."
"I would understand it within the common sun cult as a symbol of new beginnings and resurrection," Lara Weiss, a curator of the Egyptian and Nubian collection at the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, the Netherlands, told Live Science. "The winter solstice could be interpreted as [the] beginning of the annual course of the sun."
Deserts of Egypt
In the deserts and south of the Tropic of Cancer the high temperatures are: in the 80s F (upper 20s C) during January and February; and in the 90s (30s C) in March, April, October and November. It is extremely hot from May to September, when is not unusual for the temperature to hit 125̊F (50̊C). At this time of the year, if the high temperature only reaches 110̊F (45̊ C) locals often comment that a cold front must coming through.
The air in the desert is generally dry and the humidity is low. Many places go years without seeing any rain, and when it does rain it comes in a deluge. The temperatures in the desert can also drop quite low at night. In the northern desert they can drop below freezing as late as April. This is because all that heat that arrives during the day escapes into the atmosphere at night because they are no clouds to hold it in.
In the hottest deserts, the winter temperatures can rise to the 90s F (30s C) in the day and drop to the 30s F (single digits C) at night. There are occasional downpours. In the summer it is so hot that shoes fall apart because the glue melts and thermometers do not have a high enough measurement to record the high temperatures. In addition, the air is so dry that pages fall out of books because the bindings fail. At night the temperature drops only to 95̊F (35̊C).
Rain and Wind in Egypt
The prevailing winds generally blows from north to south, with rainfall amounts generally decreasing as one moves southward. Northern Egypt receives the same amount of rain as southern Italy. Alexandria get about 75 inches (190 centimeters) of rain a year. Cairo gets about 15 inches (40centimeters). The barren deserts in the south, east and west get between nothing and 5 inches (13 centimeters). The Red Sea area receives little rain but can oppressively humid and hot. In the desert regions rainfall can vary greatly from month to month and year to year. Egypt doesn’t suffer as much as other places during droughts because it water comes from the Nile and oases.
Egypt can get very windy and experience nasty sandstorms. The “Khamsin” is a hot, dusty, wind that blows up from the south during the summer. Sometimes beginning as early as April, it lasts for two or three days and is strong enough to kick up huge clouds of dust and sand and damage vegetation. Some people regard the wind as a "witch" that brings evil and causes people to do awful things, including commit suicide. “Khasmin” is the Arabic word for "fifty." It describes the number of days the wind strike the cities of North Africa.
The “Etesian” is an eastern Mediterranean summer wind that blows from the north towards the Sahara and from the Near East highlands towards the sea. It is also called a “Meltemi” . The “hamoob” is a dark gloomy wind associated with the Nile. Sometimes sandstorms suddenly whip up, particular in the khamsin season, shutting down flights, reducing visibility to near zero and sometimes killing people. These are often accompanied by thunderstorms or “sinoons” (hot sand-laden storms).
Weather in Ancient Egypt
There was a severe 200-year drought in North and East Africa around 2200 B.C. Hieroglyphics record that the annual Nile flood failed for 50 about years and many people died of famine. The disaster may have produced the collapse of the Old Kingdom and caused the period of chaos that followed. The power of the Pharaohs was based in part on their ability to predict the annual flooding of the Nile.
ancient rivers under the Sahara at Safsa Oasis
Beatrix Midant-Reynes wrote: “Between 8500 and 5000 B.C. monsoon rains reached the northern Sahara, supporting the growth of savanna. As a consequence of annual precipitation of up to 100 mm, the area supported hunter-gatherer groups capable of covering vast distances. They brought with them ceramic technology and possibly domesticated cattle (for the question of the domestication of the Bos in Africa, see Marshall and Hildebrand 2002). Although we can only speculate on the relationships between the eastern Sahara and the Nile Valley during this time due to the lack of data from the Valley itself, it is clear that the region we currently identify as “desert” was not the large area of hyperaridity that exists today, nor was it a barrier between the Saharan nomadic populations and the inhabitants of the Valley. On the contrary, the two groups shared the hunter-gatherer way of life. [Source: Beatrix Midant-Reynes, Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2014, escholarship.org ]
“In the sixth millennium B.C. the landscape changed. The gradually increasing seasonality of rains and the increasing rate of evaporation during the hot seasons rendered pools and lakes temporary, necessitating that people be highly mobile on the one hand and agglomerate in permanent water areas (e.g., oases and the Nile Valley) on the other (Riemer 2007): thus they adopted a radical new way of life based on livestock breeding.”
Green Sahara
During the last 300,000 years there have been major periods of alternating wet and dry climates in the Sahara which in many cases were linked to the Ice Age eras when huge glaciers covered much of Europe and North America. Wet periods in the Sahara often occurred when the ice ages were waning. The last major rainy period in the Sahara lasted from about 12,000, when the last Ice Age began to wan in Europe, to 7,000 years ago. Temperatures and rainfall peaked around 9,000 years ago during the so-called Holocene Optimum.
Scientists believed the ice ages and the climate changes in the Sahara were produced by events triggered by changes in the Earth's orbits and rotations based on the fact the timing of the climate changes have correlated with the changes in the Earth’s tilt and rotation. Sometimes when the Earth approached close to the sun or the tilt of the Earth exposed the Northern Hemisphere to more sunlight the African monsoon shifted northward or the Mediterranean winds to shift south.
As the Ice Age in Europe ended more water evaporated from the Atlantic filling clouds and and more moisture was brought to North Africa as monsoon winds from Africa shifted north and Mediterranean westerly winds south because of the cooler temperatures in Europe. This caused the rains that nourished western Africa and the Mediterranean region to move into the Sahara in North Africa.
See Separate Article: CLIMATE CHANGE IN ANCIENT EGYPT: DROUGHT, FAMINE, EMPIRE COLLAPSE? africame.factsanddetails.com
Ice Ages
Climatic Shifts and the Early Cultures of Egypt
Beatrix Midant-Reynes wrote: “The large surveys conducted over the past thirty years by American and German expeditions in the eastern Sahara have provided an overview of the environmental and cultural changes that occurred during the Holocene in Egypt’s Western Desert and have revolutionized our knowledge of the emergence of Predynastic cultures in Middle and Upper Egypt. In the 1970s, Wendorf and his team concentrated on the Bir Sahara-Bir Tarfawi area. Over the next two decades, the BOS and ACACIA German expeditions surveyed more than 1500 sites, revealing several new sites that exhibited extended periods of occupation along with short-lived climatic oscillations. From 8500 to 1500 B.C. the climatic history of the Eastern Sahara was dominated by a gradual aridization that had increased dramatically by about 3500 B.C..
“The climatic and ecological variations determined the dynamics of the human population, who had necessarily to adapt to the changing conditions....In the fifth millennium the drastic shift toward aridity prompted far-reaching migrations to areas with permanent water sources and consequent restricted activity in waterless areas. As shown by specific types of vessel and by strong similarities in the lithic equipment, an original culture, the Tasian, which constitutes a branch of a Nubian tradition, flourished from the Gilf Kebir to the southern part of the Western and Eastern deserts (Gatto 2002, 2011). Although discovered by Brunton at Mostagedda in 1937, the chronological classification of the Tasian culture and its status as a cultural entity have been long debated (Friedman and Hobbs 2002; Gatto 2006; see also Kobusiewicz et al. 2010). Nevertheless, the Tasian is believed to have given birth to the Badarian—the first Egyptian Predynastic culture—in northern Upper Egypt.
“The development of Predynastic regional cultures at the end of the fifth millennium was thus determined largely by the regional adaptation to new living strategies in the unsteady context of climatic and ecological changes. While the adoption of food production was a response to the drastic environmental deterioration of the eastern Sahara, the choice of Asiatic species suggests a connection with the northern regions, and the marshy areas of the Delta, which first became available to agricultural settlers around 6500 – 5500 B.C. (Stanley and Warne 1993).
See Separate Article: CLIMATE CHANGE IN ANCIENT EGYPT: DROUGHT, FAMINE, EMPIRE COLLAPSE? africame.factsanddetails.com
ancient rivers under the Sahara at Safsa Oasis
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Tour Egypt, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com; Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
Last updated July 2024