Review: The Atlas of Egypt

Summary

The reviewer praises the workmanship of the Survey of Egypt's 1928 Atlas of Egypt, compiled, drawn, and printed in Egypt for the International Geographical Congress at Cambridge, and credits H. Sirry Bey, in charge since 1927, and his collaborators. John Ball's general and orographical maps incorporate fifteen years of increased desert knowledge gained largely through motor transport. They show motor communications and recent exploratory routes, Gebel Owenat, and the Qattara Depression; the relief map reserves green for arable land and uses brown and gray for desert above and below sea level. The reviewer highlights detailed geological mapping of Sinai by W. F. Hume and O. H. Little, and L. J. Sutton's meteorological coverage extending to the Central African lakes, including six weather-type maps. The population-density map is judged exceptionally effective. Economic maps and diagrams compiled by F. S. Richards, with text by J. I. Craig, show the close correspondence between population density and agricultural value, the concentration of cotton cultivation in the middle delta, and substantial areas cropped twice annually.