Inversion of Electrical and Shallow Seismic Data for Detecting the Groundwater Sources Affecting El-Ashmunein Archeological Site

By

 M. M. Abou Heleika¹, I. Setto¹, B. Ismail²

(1) El Minia University, El Minia, Egypt (2) South Valley University, South Valley, Egypt

 The site of the ancient Egyptian city of Khmunu, later the Graeco-Roman Hermopolis Magna, has long been known, situated on the west bank of the Nile in south of El-Minia, Egypt. The modern name of this site is El-Ashmunein. This archaeological site is suffering from the rising of the subsoil water level. As result most of the temples were subjected to detritions process or completely destroyed. There are no studies for managing the groundwater sources in this area.

In this study twenty vertical electrical sounding distributed in six profiles and ten shallow refraction seismic profiles were measured. These data were processed and interpreted. By using all available geologic information and the result of interpreted data the subsurface succession and the depth to the water table were detected. This succession is formed from four layers. The first and second ones consists from Nile silt and the second layer is characterized by low resistivity ranging from 5 to 13 Ohm. m and depth ranging from 1.2 to 10 m. The third and forth layer consists mainly of sand and gravels. The expected depth to the water table is ranged between 0.7 and 3.4 m. The main reason for the ground water table rising is the second layer, which prevent the passing of the groundwater percolated from the near by cultivated land to third and forth layer. It is necessary to drill number of wells around the study area and pumping from it trying to decrease the water table level.