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| LONE ACACIA TREE |
After driving for hours – and
seeing nothing but desert sand – you come across an acacia tree, standing
completely alone, surrounded by nothingness. This tree is the only one for
hundreds of kilometers; its roots go very deep, tapping into a reservoir that
keeps it alive. This poetic scene is a case of beauty surviving even in the
harshest of environments. Yes, you just arrived to Sannur Cave.
Formed by groundwater percolating
through the earth, Sannur Cave dates back some 60 million years. And it's just
a day trip from modern Cairo.
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| SANNUR CAVE SITE |
The age of the cave is estimated
at around 60 million years. To be precise, there are two chambers, one
estimated at 60 million years old, the other 20 million years old. A narrow
corridor, just a meter long, connects the two chambers.
It is this coupling of two
formations from vastly different eras (a staggering 40 million years apart)
that marks out Sannur as among the one of the rare natural spots in the world.
It doesn’t take an expert to see
the remarkable difference between the two chambers. One has long-and-pointy
formations sticking out every direction, like an underwater cave on a reef,
while the other has uniform bubble-like formations covering every inch of its
walls.
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| GALALA MOUNTAINS |
One of the magical features of
Sannur is the internal temperature. While sunny and hot outside the cave,
inside it remained cool and breezy. The inner temperature hardly changes at all
through the seasons.
This fact was a little difficult
to comprehend, given that the cave is in the middle of Upper Egypt’s desert,
with only a small hole connecting it to the outside world.
Sannur Cave Protectorate is
located in the Beni-Suef governorate of Egypt and lies at 70 km southeast of
the city of Beni Suef and 200 km from Cairo. The place has many geographical
formations of stalactites and stalagmites as well. The reserve becomes even
more important due to the natural formations present here many of which are
rare and hard to find elsewhere. The reserve is filled with a large number of
quarries dating back to different eras.
Discovery
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| NOTICE ENTRANCE TO THE RIGHT |
The alabaster digging operations,
which is still continued, led to the discovery of 54 big cavities that opened
way to the caves and were present at the bottom of the earth. The reserve has
just one chamber or cave in it. The cave here extends to an area of 700 meters
and has a depth and width of 15 meters respectively. The caves contain
geographical formations, which are referred as ups and downs. The most
important feature of the natural formations is the quality and also the rare
nature of these, which are found nowhere else on the globe. The researchers and
geologists thus find this reserve very important to learn and do conductive research
and studies about the environmental and other conditions that prevailed during
the ancient times.
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| SANNUR CAVE VIEW |
The Sannur Caves were discovered
in the 1989s after a blasting in the quarry led to opening of an entranceway to
the chamber. The cave is overlaid with alabaster that has been brought by the
thermal springs and the chamber is made of limestone. The unique geography and
natural formations make this place very popular and recognized as a
protectorate by a decree in 1992.
Formation
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| STALACTITES & STALAGMITES |
Sannur Cave is a classic karst
cave (Karst: is a topography formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such
as limestone, dolomite, and gypsum. It is characterized by underground drainage
systems with sinkholes and caves) created by groundwater percolating through
the Eocene limestone of the Galala Plateau (a mountain renowned by marble
quarries). It is the best example of this type of cave in Egypt. As the water
percolates downwards, excess calcium carbonates are deposited on the roof and
floor of the cave forming spectacular stalactites and stalagmites of various
forms. When a light is shone on them, they glitter like a wonderland. Above
ground, there are deposits of the red soil (terra rossa) associated with such
formations, as well as several swallow-holes (dolines or “depression”).
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| AMAZING COLOR FORMATION |
Sannur Cave is characterized by
the presence of geological formations known as Stalactites and Stalagmites in a
perfect beautiful formed over millions of years, about 60 million years ago
dates back to the Era of Middle Eocene. Leakage of aqueous solutions of calcium
carbonate saturated through the roof of the cave and then evaporated, leaving
the mineral salts that accumulated in the form of deposits of stalactites and
stalagmites. The cave is important to the scarcity of such natural formations “Egyptian
Alabaster” as it is of great importance for researchers, Geologists, and Caving
fans.
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| GROUP VISIT |
Stalactite and stalagmite, elongated forms of various minerals deposited from solution by slowly dripping water. A stalactite hangs like an icicle from the ceiling or sides of a cavern . A stalagmite appears like an inverted stalactite, rising from the floor of a cavern.
