Buried City in Oasis Lends View of Ancient Egypt
The latest in a chain of archaeological discoveries in a site that dates back at least 5,000 years, the covered streets are a glimpse into rural life under the Egyptian sun.
At Amheida, archaeologists led by Roger Bagnall at New York University have sifted through the remains of a settlement far removed from the thoroughfares of the Nile Valley. The site is in the Dakhleh Oasis, 500 miles (800 kilometers) from Cairo and 185 miles (300 kilometers) from Luxor, a religious and political hub of ancient Egypt.
The Egyptian oases — Kharga, Dakhla, Fayum — are really fascinating places archaeologically. They’re all fairly similar geologically and structurally: A sharp northern escarpment gradually sloping upwards to the south eventually merging into the desert. It’s not entirely clear why they formed the way they did. The formations slope towards the north in the western desert, so when you look at the escarpments (see this photo of the Fayum, for example — you are seeing the edges of the strata as they dip northwards. It’s been suggested that the basins abutting these escarpments developed because the underlying aquifer had a high point and helped to weaken the sediments so they could be wind-deflated. Or they may be natural fault lines. I suspect the aquifer explanation is probably the most likely.
Anyway, they mention perhaps the Neolithic of the Western desert as being the source of agriculture in the Valley proper. There is some evidence for this, although it’s mostly in the form of artifact similarities. E.g., see Cultural Origins of the Egyptian Neolithic and Predynastic: An Evaluation of the Evidence from the Dakhleh Oasis (South Central Egypt), Ashten R. Warfe, African Archaeological Review 20 (4): 175-202, December 2003. Here’s the abstract:
The debate surrounding the origins of the Egyptian Neolithic and Predynastic has, over the past few decades, come to rest on the neighboring Saharan region as the most likely source of influence. Although there is some evidence for the appearance of domesticates in the Western Desert before food-producing communities emerged in Upper and Lower Egypt, there is a strong case for the introduction of Saharan artifacts and technologies to the Nile Valley communities. This paper examines this argument in relation to the Western Desert region of the Dakhleh Oasis (South Central Egypt). The intent of the paper is to recognize the role Dakhleh played in the cultural development of the Egyptian Neolithic and Predynastic and whether this can clearly be seen through artifact parallels.
A lot of this comes from Wendorf, Schild, and Close’s work in the western desert. Unfortunately, not a lot is known from the Valley since the Nile has been dumping sediment since the end of the Pleistocene so a lot of the early archaeology is buried beneath meters of Nile mud.
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