Looking at the Western Desert

ref.: "Bes/Western Desert" by Cassandra Vivian, Oct 29, 2000

Below some excerpts from
"The Western Desert of Egypt - An Explorer's Handbook" by Cassandra Vivian
Retitled, reorganized, and substantially expanded version of "Islands of the Blest: A Guide to the Oases and Western Desert of Egypt" (1990). A comprehensive guide for desert and oasis travel in Egypt west of the Nile, 428 pp., fully illustrated with some 50 maps and plans and over 270 drawings. For the table of contents see: URL (then hit The Western Desert of Egypt)

The excerpts are posted by the author and are not to be moved or used without her permission.

The exerpts deal with the Western habit of seperating Egypt (i.e. the Nile Valley) from the rest of North Africa, and show two examples of why looking to the Western Desert may prove fruitfull in many cases.

(From the opening page): When Octavian saw the last of Antony and Cleopatra, he changed his name to Augustus Caesar and separated Egypt from the rest of Rome's empire by giving it a separate status: it acquired a separate ruler, separate legions, and, ultimately, a separate history. As Augustus, Octavian was no fool. Roman politics were too full of intrigue and Egypt too rich a plum for Augustus to allow an ambitious appointee too tempting an opportunity. Egypt was too rebellious for him to let its leaders mix with those of Rome's other conquests. Egypt's granaries were too vital to Rome's sustenance to have them used as pawns in a Middle Eastern power play. Thus, everything in Egypt became, of design, isolated and self-contained, reporting directly to Rome and bypassing the normal hierarchy. This one brilliant maneuver separated Egypt from the rest of North Africa and the Middle East for the next twenty centuries.
Today, scholars follow the same patterns. Roman scholars study North Africa and the Middle East and for the most part ignore Egypt. Egyptian scholars study Egypt and seldom look west to Libya or east to Sinai or Palestine for answers to perplexing questions. North African scholars do not look to Egypt as a continuation of their desert civilizations. Egypt stands alone, and so does its desert, a fact that makes unraveling its mysteries more difficult.

Roman forts in Kharga Oasis
There are so many unanswered questions about these mostly understudied structures that it would require an encyclopedia to deal with them in the manner they deserve. The fortress towns like Zayyan, Ghweita, Hibis, and Dush do not pose as many riddles as the long string of structures from Qasr in the south to Dabadib, Labeka, Sumaria, and Geb in the north. The former have been studied by archaeologists over an extended period of time. The latter have not, and they have few inscriptions or designs to tells us about them. John Ball and Hugh Beadnell, who were among the first to describe, measure, and record them were already confused in 1897. Why were they there? They were perplexed by the location, and suggested they were arranged in a long string for "fear of invasion" or to prevent the escape of prisoners. Invasion was indeed likely, as the Darb al-Arbain was a major desert caravan route. Prisoners were also likely, as Kharga had been used as a penal colony for centuries. Are they Roman? All the litter around them suggests they are: most pottery dates to Roman times, most burials date to Roman times. From what we can see, Roman forts existed throughout the empire in a variety of sizes, some sites-like Dabadib-large enough to accommodate an entire legion (5,000 persons), others-like Geb-merely outposts guarding a specific road. Their shape and function changed with time (Rome ruled for hundreds of years), so we have different architectural styles. Kennedy and Riley in Rome's Desert Frontier from the Air define Roman forts as "all military installations which fall in function between the bases for legions and the towers garrisoned by a handful of soldiers as a watch post."
All of this exists in Kharga Oasis. Why have the Roman scholars ignored them? Along the eastern (Palestine to Persia) frontier these scholars point to dozens of forts. All rubble. They do the same thing with the few forts in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. They too, are rubble.
Here in the Western Desert, where the forts stand tall and magnificent, scholars are mute. Kennedy and Riley have an entire chapter on Roman forts in the Middle East, but practically ignore Egypt as part of Rome's frontier. The text discusses and shows aerial views of ruins that stand less than a meter high, but ignores completely structures in Kharga that rise over 30 meters (96 feet). The Limits of Empire by Benjamin Isaac, published in 1990, makes no mention of Roman forts in Egypt. Richard Alston in Soldier and Society in Roman Egypt: A Social History, published in 1995, talks of Roman forts erected early in the Nile Valley and Eastern Desert, but in the Western Desert, where he dates all military installations to the late empire (fourth and fifth centuries), he mentions only two forts: the fort at Dionysius in the Fayoum and the one at Dush (Kysis) here in Kharga. These are amazing omissions.

Aquaducts
There is another method of obtaining water which was used in ancient times, probably developed by the Chinese or the Persians and possibly brought to Egypt by the Romans. An elaborate underground aqueduct system tapped trapped water in limestone ridges below, but near, the surface. Once tapped the water was channeled through a massive system of tunnels to lower lying areas where it was used for irrigation. Sometimes these tunnels went on for kilometers. Three systems were known to exist in Kharga: at Ain Umm Dabadib, Qasr al-Labeka, and Qasr al-Geb. Now a new site must be added, for the French Mission at Dush has found an extensive system at Manawar. These amazing systems exist in many areas of the ancient world and are still used in Afghanistan and Iran (Persia), where they are called qanat; in Libya and Algeria, where they are called foggara; in Oman, where they are called falaj; in southeast Asia where they are called karez; and in Egypt's Western Desert. These systems are found in Bahariya, Farafra, and Kharga and in each place under a different name. In Bahariya they are manafis, in Farafra, jub, and in Kharga manawal.
Their origin in Egypt is somewhat questionable. It has been suggested they came late to North Africa and could have been introduced to the Western Desert well after the classical era. Ahmed Fakhry, excavating at Bahariya, where similar aqueducts exist, found that a Twenty-sixth Dynasty tomb had to be redug because it collided with one of the existing aqueducts. That means that particular system may have been in existence before the Persians came to Egypt. The variety of names raises the possibility that different people introduced the systems to different parts of the oases.

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