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I.—The Gulf of Suez1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

John Ball
John Ball
Affiliation:
Geological Survey of Egypt.
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Extract

In a previous paper published in this Magazine, I gave reasons for the belief that neither the Gulf of Suez nor the valley of the Nile owes its origin to trough-faulting, as was at that time generally supposed. The skeleton of the argument was as follows:—

1. Extensive faulting at the faces of the scarps of the Nile Valley and Gulf of Suez cannot be held to be evidence of trough-faulting, since the same can be observed along the scarps of the Wadi Araba, the structure of whose floor shows it to be an eroded anticline, and the faults along its scarp-faces to be merely huge landslips.

2. The faulting observable immediately along the coast of the Gulf of Suez is of an exactly similar nature to that above mentioned, and along part at least of the gulf the strata dip away from the sea on the opposite coasts, leading to the inference that the Gulf of Suez is, like the Wadi Araba, an eroded anticline.

3. If it be granted that the Gulf of Suez is not a trough-fault, the argument against the Nile Valley being a trough-fault is strengthened, the support of parallelism being removed.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , January 1911 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1911

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Footnotes

1

Communicated by permission of the Director-General, Survey Department, Egypt.

References

page 1 note 2 Geol. Mao., Dec. V, Vol. VII, pp. 71–6, 1910.Google Scholar

page 2 note 1 Admiralty Chart No. 757, revised to 1908.Google Scholar

page 2 note 2 Red Sea Sheet No. 1, Admiralty Chart No. 8a, revised to 1897.Google Scholar

page 2 note 3 It is remarkable that these same charts appeared to Mr. Barron and Dr. Hume to support the idea of a trough-fault origin for the gulf, which is just what I consider the charts disprove. See Topography and Geology of the Eastern Desert of Egypt, Central Portion, Cairo, 1902, p. 213.Google Scholar My colleagues would, I think, have been driven to an opposite conclusion had they drawn in the contours of the entire gulf, or constructed a section across it to a natural scale.

page 2 note 4 Such local deepenings occur in many river valleys, usually in consequence of a waterfall; an example occurs in the Nile Valley below the First Cataract.

page 4 note 1 Evidence of raised beaches. See Barron, & Hume's, Eastern Desert, p. 139.Google Scholar

page 4 note 2 Recent coral reefs have in parts given rise to small steps in the slope near the present water-line, but it will be perceived that these have nothing to do with the argument.

page 4 note 3 The only break in the continuous slope down the gulf as shown by 10 fathom contours is a slight rise of a few fathoms a little north of latitude 28. It is probable that the soundings may have missed the very deepest parts here, or that silting or coral-growth has filled up the hollows to the thickness of a few fathoms.

page 6 note 1 Geoi. Mag., Dec. V, Vol. VII, p. 388, 1910.Google Scholar

page 6 note 2 I regret that owing to our separation for a long period I did not have the opportunity of explaining these difficulties to Dr. Hume before he published his paper. To English readers it will appear strange, but when one of two workers is in Cairo and the other is in the desert, they are frequently much further apart as regards time of communication than if one were in England and the other in Khartoum.

page 7 note 1 “The Rift Valleys of Eastern Sinai”: International Geological Congress, Paris, 1900.Google Scholar

page 7 note 2 Western Sinai, p. 180.Google Scholar

page 7 note 3 Most of these observed facts will be found summarized in Suess' Face of the Earth, English translation, vol. i, p. 380, 1904.Google Scholar

page 10 note 1 Principles of Geology, 10th ed., vol. i, p. 438, 1807.Google Scholar

page 10 note 2 Cairo Scientific Journal, 1909, p. 230.Google Scholar