The overall sedimentary nature of the Miocene sediments in the Cairo- Suez

District, Egypt tends to be dominated by empiric ramp deposits. The Cairo–Suez area lays East of Cairo and extends about 120 km to the city of Suez. It lies between Latitudes 29°55´ - 30°20´ N and Longitudes 31°15´ - 32°35´ E (Fig. 1). The topography of the Area is largely controlled by its structure and the relief is generally low except for few Hills and small mountains. Topographically, the area is subdivided into three ridges Crossing the district in a more or less E–W alignment; between these ridges there are Two depressions. The Cairo–Suez asphaltic road passes through the southern one, while Gabal Ataqa, Gabal Abou Treifiya, Gabal Qattamiya, Gabal Anqabiaya, Gabal Nasuri and Gabal Mokattam form an elongated ridge running parallel to Cairo–Suez high way depression from East to West and to the South of it (Abou Khadrah et al., 1993).

 The oldest exposed rocks in the area are of Early Cretaceous age while the youngest rocks are of Quaternary age of sy-nrift sedimentary sequence (Bruce and Hotzl, 1988). The Miocene rocks of the Cairo-Suez area were the subject of many studies since the last quarter of the 19th 49 century.

 

The regional stratigraphy of the Miocene in the Cairo–Suez area 50 has been studied

by different authors (e.g. Fuchs, 1883; Depéret and Fourtau, 1900; Blanckenhorn, 1901;

Barron, 1907a; Shukri and Akmal, 1953; Sadek, 1959; Said, 1962; Said and Metwalli,

1963; Ghorab and Marzouk, 1965; Abdallah and Abd El-Hady, 1966; Barakat and Aboul Ela, 1970; Said, 1971; Stratigraphic Sub-Committee, 1974; Abbass, 1977; El-Heiny,1982; Abd El-Wahab and El-Belassy, 1987; Szczechurar and Abd-Elshafy, 1988; Said,1990; Abd-Elshafy and Abd-Elmoneim, 1992; Hamza, 1992; Abou Khadrah et al., 1993;El-Sorogy and Ziko, 1999; El Shazly and Saber, 1999; Abdelghany, 2002; Elattar, 2003;Mowafi, 2006). The lithostratigraphic classification of the Miocene in the Cairo-Suezarea is illustrated in table 1.

The main two aims of the present study are:

1) Identifying facies types of the

Miocene sediments in the Cairo-Suez area in Egypt, as well as make an acceptable

interpretation by integrates micro- and biofacies analysis to construct a 2D carbonate

model.

2) Estimating the studied successions in the view of sequence stratigraphic

analysis by subdividing the studied sections into sequences, cycle sets, and cycles. Three stratigraphic sections have been chosen to fulfill these aims of study. These are Gabal Geneifa, Gabal Gharra and Gabal Homeira sections (Figure).