A 42-year-old method for finding water, monitoring pollution and
helping with tunnelling may also be a way to locate and protect tombs in
the Valleys of the Kings and Queens and other burial sites in Egypt,
according to Penn State researchers.
The idea that fracture traces could bare some connection to the rock
cut tombs found in Egyptian valleys came to Katarin A. Parizek as she
toured Egypt. K. Parizek, the daughter of Richard R. Parizek, professor
of geology and geo-environmental engineering at Penn State, is a digital
photographer, graphic designer and geologist. In 1992, on a Nile cruise
to the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, she recognized the geological
structures.
"Many of the tombs were in zones of fracture concentration revealed
by fracture traces and lineaments," says K. Parizek, an instructor in
digital photography. "I knew that these fractures were what Dad used to
find water or to plan dewatering projects."
Fracture traces are the above-ground indication of underlying zones
of rock fracture concentrations...
While it does not often rain in the desert, when it does, water pours
off hills and runs over the land and into the wadis — valleys.
Paving of parking lots, roads and paths to allow tomb visitors increases
the flooding. Even though the Egyptians build barriers at the tomb
entrances, water often flows into the tunnels causing irreversible
damage to the tombs.
The open entrances, however, are not the only way water enters the
tombs. Water finds the fracture concentrations beneath the fracture
traces and seeps into the ground. If tombs are built along or below the
traces, eventually water insinuates itself through the fractured rock
and enters the tombs. Water can ruin even undiscovered, unopened tombs
in this way...
