Egypt Guide
The Delta
While the Nile Valley's place in Ancient Egypt remains writ large in extraordinary monuments, the Nile Delta's role has largely been effaced by time and other factors. Although several pharaonic dynasties arose and ruled from this region – Lower Egypt – little of their twenty provincial capitals remains beyond mounds of debris known as tell or kom. The pharaohs themselves set the precedent of plundering older sites of their sculptures and masonry – hard stone had to be brought to the Delta from distant quarries, so it was easier to recycle existing stocks – and nature performed the rest. With a yearly rainfall of nearly 20cm (the highest in Egypt, most of it during winter) and an annual inundation by the Nile that coated the land in silt, mud-brick structures were soon eroded or swept away. More recently, farmers have furthered the cycle of destruction by digging the mounds for a nitrate-enriched soil called sebakh, used for fertilizer; several sites catalogued by nineteenth-century archeologists have all but vanished since then.
Highlights
1 Rosetta's Delta-style architecture The little town of Rosetta has been busy restoring its legacy of highly distinctive eighteenth- and nineteenth-century mansions, making it a very worthwhile stopover en route from Alexandria into the Delta.
2 Moulid of Saiyid Ahmed el-Bedawi The city of Tanta becomes a seething mass of chanting Sufis, musicians, vendors, circus acts and spectators in the Delta's biggest festival of the year, held in October.
3 Tanis The region's most interesting archeological site.
4 Lake Manzala One of Egypt's top sites for birdwatching, where herons, spooonbills, pelicans and flamingos wade the shallows in search of fish.