FIELD RECOGNITION AND REMOTE SENSING OF AN ANCIENT CHANNEL OF THE PELUSIAC NILE, EGYPT

Surface mapping and satellite remote sensing reveal geomorphic elements of the eastern Nile Delta and Mediterranean coastline during the Bronze Age, providing geographic context for archaeological sites. During that time, the Mediterranean coast in the northwest Sinai (just east of the Suez Canal) was fixed along the Pelusium Line, a structural lineament that marks the southern edge of the Tineh Plain. The ancient coast featured a dune ridge and prominent lagoon that is now a crescent shaped sabkha, located about 16 km northeast of Qantara, Egypt. A fluvial-estuarine system represented by coarse sand and fine sandy loam deposits connected the lagoon to channels, wetlands, and lakes in the pear-shaped Ballah depression (now bisected by the Suez Canal) directly south of Qantara city and north of Ismailia city and Lake Timseh. Sediment probes 8-10 m deep in the Ballah depression recovered very coarse sands with abundant rock fragments, feldspars and heavy minerals giving the deposits compositions of lithic arenite to sublith-subarkose arenite. The sands also contain Nile catfish skeletal remains. The deposits are narrowly constrained and distinct from the underlying Pleistocene sand and overlying Recent eolian-sheet sands. We suspect the paleo-channel is a very early distributary of the Pelusiac Nile. The Ballah depression is known as Lake Ballah from historical documents and maps through the nineteenth century (when it was drained during the construction of the Suez Canal). Tell Abu Sefeh is a Roman military installation with boat slips on the north bank of the Ballah depression. We believe that the depression shifted from a fluvial-estuarine to a lacustrine setting as Pelusiac Nile branches migrated north and west from Middle Bronze to Roman times. Based upon GIS-Remote Sensing analysis of SRTM elevation data, CORONA and Landsat imagery (including band ratio processing), we propose a course for the early Pelusiac Nile from the inner delta to the Ballah depression. The course follows low elevations and reflectance of moist and clay-rich surface deposits evident north of Wadi Tumilat and appears to coincide with some archaeological sites. Future work should be directed at confirming the existence of the channel-course west of the Ballah depression.