Inscribed Landscapes: Marking and Making Place

Eight. The Narrow Doors of the Desert: Ancient Egyptian Roads in the Theban Western Desert

A ncient itineraries in the Eastern Desert of Egypt have received much deserved attention ,1 but most of those in the Western Desert remain obscure (see Leclant 1950 and Vercoutter 1970 for exceptions). The differences between the Eastern and Western Deserts explain this incomplete image of ancient activity: the Eastern Desert is colorful, reasonably well watered, and teeming with life (e.g., Roquet 1985), but the Western Desert is a stark, dry, and inhospitable realm of rocky plateaus and chains of dunes. Though often considered the best road through Egypt (Casson 1974), and the only connection between central Africa and the Mediterranean world (Bagnall 1993; Goedicke 1981), the Nile may not always have been the ideal artery of travel. During times of inundation the Nile seemed an extension of the sea (see Bonneau 1964:94–96), with the channel of the river obscured, a fact that may have discouraged some river traffic (e.g., Thompson 1983: 73–74). During the low Nile sandbanks were prevalent (Sethe 1933), stopping all but the smallest vessels (Bonneau 1964:96–101, 418–419; Darnell 1992:70–71). Some stretches of the river were diffi104 eight The Narrow Doors of the Desert Ancient Egyptian Roads in the Theban Western Desert John Coleman Darnell cult to navigate; one treacherous area was the northern part of the Qena Bend (Degas 1994). In Nubia the cataracts were obstacles to riverine travel (Vandersleyen 1971; for reference to an ancient slipway at Mirgissa, avoiding the rapids of the Second Cataract, see Vercoutter 1970:13–15, 173–180, 204–214). In fact a network of overland caravan routes crisscrosses Egypt’s Western Desert.2 By the time of the OldKingdom,theancientEgyptiansweremakinguse of many routes to traverse the desert regions bordering their Nile Valley home, as is evidenced by the substantial Old Kingdom material at Dakhla Oasis (see Churcher and Mills 1999) and the accounts of expedition leaders such as Harkhuf (Helck 1977; Obsomer 1995; O’Connor 1986; Smith and Giddy 1985; Spalinger 1979; Vercoutter 1982). Archaeological finds in more remote areas suggest a far-reaching command of theWestern Desert in the Old Kingdom (Banks 1980:313–314; Kuper 1995; Vercoutter 1988:16; Wendorf et al. 1976:106; Wendorf et al. 1977:217). Later references to the administration of the oases, and remains in the oases themselves, prove thatcontactcontinued(Giddy1987;Valloggia1981). The degree to which the ancient Egyptians controlled theWestern Desert has never been fully explored (Valloggia 1989a), nor do we understand fully the impact of the Saharan peoples on Egypt, especially during its formative period (el-Yahky 1985). THE CARAVAN TRACKS The examination of pharaonic desert activity considered in this chapter will concentrate on two major pharaonic tracks leading west out of theThebaïd.The southern route, the Farshût Road, leads from Western Thebes toward Hou in the northwest. The northern route—the Alamat Tal Road, named for a toponym on Schweinfurth’s 1909 map of Western Thebes— leads from several kilometers north of Qurna, joining the Farshût Road at Gebel Qarn el-Gir, two-thirds of the way across the Qena Bend (Figure 8.1). The tracks of these routes appear as grooves worn into the limestone surface. On the low desert they Egyptian Roads in the Theban Western Desert 105 Figure 8.1. The Qena Bend of the Nile, showing the major pharaonic tracks of the Thebaïd, the Alamat Tal Road (northern) and the Farshût Road (southern), meeting at the Gebel Qarn el-Gir caravansary (after Davies and Friedman 1998:115). fan out in a swath several meters wide; where they ascend the gebel (escarpment) the tracks converge, often into one narrow ribbon. The tracks disappear where they cross wadi beds (e.g., Gardiner’s [1946: pl. 6, 51–52] “storm-washed roads”), and the ascents on either sides of such wadis are marked by small cairns. Even where the actual ruts have long since been eroded away, masses of pottery remain. The Egyptians recognized the often astonishingly thick pottery carpets of the roads as a type of marking of the roads. A late magical text contains a prayer that the lions of the desert and the crocodiles of the water and snakes in their holes be driven away and made like “gravel” of the desert and “broken pots” in the road (Sander-Hansen 1956:52, nos. 117–119). Low walls of stones cleared from the tracks border the routes at several points...