Into the Eastern Desert of Egypt from the New Kingdom to the Roman period

Project Information

Desert Networks

Grant agreement ID: 759078

DOI

10.3030/759078

Project closed

EC signature date 23 October 2017

Start date 1 November 2017

End date 31 October 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 499 844,00

EU contribution

€ 1 499 844,00

Coordinated by

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS
France

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - Desert Networks (Into the Eastern Desert of Egypt from the New Kingdom to the Roman period)

Reporting period: 2022-05-01 to 2022-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The desert is a paradox: whether one puts emphasis on its aridity or its wealth, its attractiveness or its frightening character, the experience of the desert cannot be a solitary one. The desert—far from being a no man’s land—is a social space of linked solidarities. The Eastern desert of Egypt, located between the Nile and the Red Sea, perfectly exemplifies this twofold definition of the desert: mostly empty, difficult to cross, rocky and poor in water resources, it is also rich in mineral resources (gold and stones), and serves as a gateway for the people of the Valley of the Nile and Westerners to the Red Sea and beyond (Southern Arabia, the Horn of Africa and India).
Archaeologists have explored the area for ca 300 years. Its ancient remains are spectacularly well preserved. They include road-stations, caravanserai, mining villages, imperial quarries, temples, rock shelters, and many others. Its characteristics have been mentioned by numerous writers in antiquity and in sources from the Eastern Desert itself. Thanks to its dry climate, thousands of inscriptions and ostraka have been discovered there. These inscribed potsherds keep track of the correspondence exchanged by people scattered across the Eastern Desert and highlight their daily lives and connections.
Yet despite important progress due to the recent publication of archaeological remains and texts found in the sands of the Eastern Desert, the history of its occupation, its appropriation by the powers that have ruled Egypt and by the people of the Valley and the desert itself, remained a static and compartmentalized history.
The ambition of the Desert Networks project was to work for the first time in and on the Eastern Desert as a dynamic object, and to analyse the nature and function of the different networks that linked its various component parts over time. We wanted to consider how local populations, both in the desert and in the Nile Valley, successive Egyptian dynasties and Roman Empire have appropriated the region and shaped it through linked social institutions and material networks? How were networks of different types and different scales interconnected?
This investigation took a long term approach, spanning from the beginning of the New Kingdom (c. 1500 BC), which was the peak of regional occupation during the Pharaonic era, until the end of the Roman period (c. 300 AD), after the Greco-Macedonian dynasty of the Ptolemies (323-30 BC) and the Roman emperors had invested extensively in the area.
The “Desert Networks” project was divided into 5 WP:
-1: Database and SIG building
-2: Archaeological fieldwork
-3: Physical networks
-4: Economic networks
-5: Social networks

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The first objective of the project was to gather all the documentation (textual and archaeological in the broadest sense) on the sites of the Eastern Desert from the New Kingdom to the end of the Roman period, in a database linked to a GIS, in order to create an online atlas. This is now available to the public: https://desertnetworks.huma-num.fr/
The website is a gateway to the results of the project. It includes: 1. a directory of over 260 archaeological sites, providing full information on the sites, their remains, location, archaeological and textual finds, chronology, historiography, bibliography, images, with a search tool; 2. a "Finds" page, which includes information on a selection of artefacts recovered during archaeological excavations and surveys in the project area; 3. a "Food" page, which includes all information relating to water and energy use. A "Food" page, where all the foods that were part of the ancient diet of the inhabitants are discussed; 4. A "Networks" page, dedicated to the presentation of the networks and geospatial models that have been reconstructed by the project team; 5. An interactive map; 6. A "Missions and Travellers" page; 7.
The site has been recognised as a great tool by many colleagues, and was recently cited as an example at the 2022 ASOR (American Society of Oriental Research) meeting.
The geodatabase has also been used for spatial analyses in the project on the physical, economic and social networks of the region. It helped us to create a theoretical model of the camel trails of the eastern desert, which allowed us to reconstruct the layout of the ancient roads and their equipment over time. This "Camel GoogleMap" is one of our major achievements, and is already being used and replicated by other projects. It helps to understand the evolution, the layout and the factors of change of the networks over time. It is also a very good tool to discover new sites. In parallel, we also traced the trade flows that crossed the region (goods exchanged, people involved, pace of trade, etc.). By looking at the landscape and the environment, as well as the knowledge of the local populations on these factors, we highlighted the choices that prevailed in setting up the rest stops along the old roads (shade, heat, presence of water, etc.). Finally, we worked on two particularly rich and/or still largely unpublished corpuses of texts (Ptolemaic ostraca from the Eastern Desert, and Roman ostraca on food production and distribution in the Eastern Desert) and carried out analyses of social and economic networks within the small societies that once lived in the region.
During the 5 years of the project, 12 researchers (PhD and post-doctoral students) were recruited by the project, and more than 20 scholars were involved in our work. Four field missions were organised to a Ptolemaic fort (Abbad), a Roman fort (Berkou), a miners' village (Ghozza) and a large Roman and late Roman fortress (Deir el-Atrash). The four field missions led to the discovery of numerous artefacts, which shed light on the occupation of the northern part of the desert. They allowed the reconstruction of the circulation network in this area.
In terms of productions, in addition to the website, 14 articles and 2 monographs were published between 2017 and 2022, and more than 20 communications were given by members of our team. A PhD thesis was defended in July 2022, and the second one will be defended soon in 2023.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

In many ways, our results go far beyond our expectations. If we take the example of the camel model, it is not only a very practical tool to calculate the time and length of journeys in the eastern desert during antiquity, but also a very good tool to find new sites, which have never been seen or studied before. So far, more than 100 new sites have been recognised by photo-interpretation, which will require further field exploration to be characterised.
We also showed that the roads were much more numerous than expected. The few main routes were well known, but our model and surveys identified several new ones, particularly in the northern desert region (in the Gidami and Gasus area for example). The work on travellers also highlighted the importance of water in the region: although we are indeed in an arid environment, water is in fact much more abundant in the region, if one knows how to look for it. Thus, certain dynamics of the Ptolemaic occupation are now better understood: the presence of artesianism in the eastern part of the desert has allowed us to understand, for example, the major role of the first stopovers along the roads: they served to supply the caravans with water, before leaving for the desert.

Ancient site of Abu Garaish, visited by a Beduin and his camels (© MAFDO)