Nubian formation

The royal cemetery complex (Tombs 1 and 2), where a considerable amount of fine Plum Red Ware (PRW) was found, was located in the Great Wadi. The Plum Red Ware pottery appeared to have been fired at sites along the northern side of the Great Wadi (localities 39 and 59) on the upper beds of ancient (Cretaceous) sediments (variegated shales and sandstone) that are a part of the Nubian formation. 

In most areas of the wadi floor and the low desert area, the Nubian formation is covered by an average of 5-7 m of Pleistocene Nile silts (9). These older Nile sediments represent different episodes in the evolution of the Nile River (10-13), The oldest Nile sediments (called Protonile) in the area, exposed at high (about 125 m above sea level) Pleistocene terraces, were deposited during the Lower to Middle Paleolithic period (10). 

The Nubian sedimentary formation has a different origin than the Nile sediments, and the two types of sediments can be easily distinguished on the basis of trace element contents (4). As Figure 1 shows, these ancient variegated shales and ferrugineous sandstone beds are exposed in parts of the low desert surface west of the cultivation zone, as well as in the high desert areas that border the Great Wadi. 

Dissolution of evaporite minerals in sedimentary basins is also a common cause of salinization. This type of salinization occurs in the Ogallala Formation in the Southern High Plains, Texas, USA (Mehta et al, 2000a,b), the Dammam aquifer in Kuwait (Al-Ruwaih, 1995), the Nubian sandstone aquifer in the Sinai and Negev (Rosenthal et al., 1998), and the Great Artesian Basin in... 

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