Nile muds

The test bars of the Nile mud were reddish brown (5YR 5/4) in the Munsell color notation at the 600°C zone of the gradient firing, red (2.5YR 5/6) at 850°C, and darkened with incipient vitrification to weak red (2.5YR 4/3) at 1100°C after a holding period of 30 minutes. The scratch hardness, using Mohs scale, increased from 3.0 to 6.5 for the male (better working clay in the potters terminology), and from 2.3 to 5.0 for the female mud. The Nile mud shrank far more when fired... 

The needed Egyptian data were obtained from as yet unpublished work on Egyptian clays, Nile muds, and ceramics carried out at Brook-haven by Sami Tobia. Since the results compared favorably with published material (9), further Egyptian studies were not carried out. 

Examination of the Egyptian material led to a further discovery. The general Nile pattern, produced by Nile muds and the ceramics made from it, is on first glance very close to that of the Palestinian red field clay. When the plots of three clays and six sherds were matched by the scandium—iron points, cobalt, chromium, and europium also matched exactly. Thus in the Nile samples, concentrations of the five elements are highly mutually correlated. This observation then allowed detection of subtle differences between Palestinian and Egyptian materials. The... 

Almost everything that growB has been called upon to make bread for man. In remote ages the Egyptians of the Nile Valley prepared bread from the seed of lotus flowers. These flowers grew abundantly in the mud of the river bottom, and when the annual overflow receded there was a harvest of lotus flowers, just as we harvest wheat to-day. 

Thales upheld that everything in the material world was a single reality appearing in different forms, and that this single reality was water. He thought water was converted into other substances by natural processes, like the silting up of the delta of the Nile in which water was apparently converted into mud. 

For thousands of years, men have been using natural composite materials. Materials such as wood [a polymer-polymer composite made of cellulose fibers in a lignin/hemi-cellulose matrix], bone [a polymer-ceramic composite made of hydroxyapatite reinforced with collagen fibers], teeth, and ivory are natural composites. In ancient Egypt, more than 5000 years ago, brick makers added short lengths of straw to Nile mud mixed with sand and water, in order to improve the mechanical properties of the bricks. In Mesopotamia too, this combination of materials was employed to make tubes designed for the transportation of water. 

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