Journal of Geography and Earth Sciences

Climate Effects on archaeological buildings forming the Roman temples: Dush Temple in El- Kharga Oasis, Western Desert of Egypt as a Case Study
Hossam Ismael

Abstract
The archaeological buildings worldwide are relics that have a great historical value recording and revealing nations' events throughout thousands of years. These events are recorded through paintings, rock art, engraves and inscriptions. The construction rocks that had been used for building the archaeological site may be sedimentary, meta-sediments, or basement rocks of small or large dimensions.Climate is the act of all atmospheric events such as rainfall, temperature, wind, air pressure and humidity etc. In last few decades, the alterations about climate observed in Egypt negatively affected the archaeological buildings, the cultural riches of the country that they have been worn out by various natural effects for a long time. However, since archaeological buildings have great importance due to their identity of transferring old era information to the future generations, there should be taken special precautions against deteriorations on the monumental buildings.Weathering processes are acting physically, chemically and/or biologically on a given material based on material's properties, its geographic orientation and intensity of the predominant weathering process. The aim of the current study is to measure the climate effects on Dush temple stones. To achieve that aim the current study found out the distribution of rock's damage categories on the wall sides of Dushtemple.Examining rock properties including its petrography, mineralogy, petrophysical and mechanical properties on one hand; and defining the damage category of some wall sides of this temple are considered to find out the inter-relation between the geographic orientations of the wall side with its damage category.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jges.v3n2a4