Climate, agriculture, and communications

In antiquity, Dakhleh was often grouped together with the neighbouring Oasis, Khargeh, under the umbrella term the ‘Great Oasis’ (oasis magna), or simply ‘the Oasis’.¹²⁰ Herodotus referred to the Great Oasis as ‘the island of the blissful’ (III, 26), and it had a reputation for being rich and fertile, as related by Strabo (XVII, 791) and by Olympidorus of Thebes (FHG 4, 64, 33).¹²¹ The latter (fl. mid-fifth century CE) is one of few important local (Upper Egyptian) historians of the era, and claimed to have visited the Great Oasis himself. He separated between the

‘outer’ (exōterō) and the ‘inner’ (esōterō) oasis:¹²² Greek terms which, as Guy Wagner has noted, correspond exactly to the current Arabic terms ‘Khargeh’ and ‘Dakhleh’.¹²³ The reference point for the designations ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ are the desert: Dakhleh is ‘innermost’

towards the desert, furthermost from the Nile Valley. While Olympidorus still saw the Oasis as prosperous, Christian authors of the fourth and fifth centuries such as Gregorius of Nazanzius (Or. XXV, 14), Asterios (Homilia IV, Adv. Kalendarium Festum) and Zosimus (V, 9) held a less rosy view: they emphasised the extreme weather conditions and lack of water.¹²⁴ Whether this reflected deteriorating agricultural conditions since Strabo (and consequently an exaggeration or anachronism of Olympiodorus), or a conflation of oasis and desert by the Christians (and perhaps a desire to stress the suffering of co-believers who were exiled to the

119 Colin A. Hope and Amy J. Pettman, ‘Egyptian connections with Dakhleh Oasis in the early Dynastic Period to Dynasty IV: new data from Mut al-Kharab’, in The Oasis papers 6: Proceedings of the Sixth International Converence of the Dakhleh Oasis Project, ed. Roger S. Bagnall, Paola Davoli, and Colin A. Hope (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2012), 159–62.

120 Documents from the Nile Valley do not always distinguish between oases; it can therefore at times be difficult to gouge their intended reference point.

121 See Wagner, Les Oasis d'Égypte, 113–14.

122 Fragmenta, 33, in FHG 4, 65, cited in ibid., 131.

123 Ibid., 131 n.6.

124 See ibid., 116–19.

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Oasis), is difficult to determine.¹²⁵ Recent archaeological excavations have found a change in settlement patterns in the late fourth and fifth century, and the abandonment of some important sites, suggesting that conditions may in fact have deteriorated.¹²⁶

The climate of the Great Oasis is indeed extreme: harsh sunlight, sand-carrying winds (sometimes rising to storms), and long periods of heat relieved only by rare rainstorms.¹²⁷ In such an environment agriculture only blooms under very particular circumstances. As the oases were not dependent on Nile floods, the source of Egypt’s prosperity elsewhere, human activity here took on a distinct character vis-à-vis the rest of Egypt.¹²⁸ The Oasis lies just above a large underground aquifer layer. In some places, the groundwater gushes forth in natural springs, but for the most part wells and canals must be constructed to irrigate the land. Oasis settlements grew up around clusters of such wells. According to Olympiodorus these were constructed through communal effort, although right of usage seems to have been strictly regulated, as attested to by the numerous occurrences of well-tags among the ostraca with the formula ‘well of [name]’.¹²⁹ The control of wells was an important indicator of power (and thus a contentious issue) already in Pharaonic times.¹³⁰ Bagnall has argued that Oasite society in the Roman era must have been characterised by a smaller segment of independent peasantry than Egypt in general.¹³¹ Only the very wealthy would have had resources to undertake well construction, and so the agricultural sector came to be dominated by a small

125 See ibid.

126 Most notably Trimithis and Kellis itself. Roger S. Bagnall and Olaf Kaper, ‘Introduction’, in An Oasis City, ed.

Roger S. Bagnall, et al. (New York: NYU Press, 2015), 23–24. For a tentative explanation, see Roger S. Bagnall and Nicola Aravecchia, ‘Economy and society in the Roman Oasis’, ed. Roger S. Bagnall, et al., An Oasis City (New York: NYU Press, 2015). 188–89.

127 Modern-day measurements in Dakhleh have measured rainfall to 0 to 1mm per year. Warm summers can see the temperature remain at over 40°C for long periods, while it can change rapidly in winter, from 0°–2°C in the morning to 20°–25°C by midday. Anna L. Boozer, ‘The social impact of trade and migration: The Western Desert in pharaonic and post-pharaonic Egypt’, ed. Christina Riggs, Oxford Handbooks in Archaeology Online (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2015). 5.

128 See Roger S. Bagnall, Paola Davoli, and Olaf E. Kaper, ‘Amheida in its surroundings’, in An Oasis City, ed. Roger S. Bagnall, et al. (New York: NYU Press, 2015).

129 Wagner, Les Oasis d'Égypte, 280–81. See the large number of well-tags from Trimithis in Roger S. Bagnall and Giovanni Ruffini, Amheida I: Ostraka from Trimithis. Texts from the 2004–2007 Seasons. (New York: NYU Press, 2012).

130 See e.g. the Setekh-stela. Anthony J. Mills, ‘Pharaonic Egyptians in the Dakhleh Oasis’, in Reports from the Survey of the Dakhleh Oasis 1977–1987, ed. C. S. Churcher and A. J. Mills (Oxbow, 1999), 175–76.

131 See Bagnall and Aravecchia, ‘Economy and society in the Roman Oasis’.

elite of well-to-do landlords (geoukhoi) and their households. The introduction of new lifting devices and techniques in Achaemenid, Ptolemaic, and Roman times allowed for more intensive irrigation.¹³² They may have facilitated a growth in population (particularly in Roman times), probably helped by migration from the Nile Valley.¹³³

As elsewhere in the ancient world, the basic agricultural produce of the oases was grain: wheat, barley, and millet were all part of the staple diet in Dakhleh.¹³⁴ Under Roman rule, important fruit crops were grapes (for wine), olives, and dates, cultivated alongside various other products such as cotton, jujubes, honey, vegetables, and possibly sesame and cumin.¹³⁵ Alum (a type of sulphate salts) was an important product from the Ammon Oasis, and has recently been attested for Kellis.¹³⁶ Olive oil and cotton products were probably of particular importance to the Oasis. Cultivating cotton had proved difficult in Egypt, as cotton requires year-round irrigation and could not be adapted to the Nile’s inundation cycle. Nor was Egypt well-suited for olive cultivation. The oases, with their abundant groundwater, had conditions more favourable for cultivating both cotton and olives. The export of these goods may have shaped the commercial life of both Dakhleh and Kellis.¹³⁷

Of the two oases of the Great Oasis, Khargeh was the more important, being larger and closer to the Nile Valley. Well-travelled, if difficult, roads led to Khargeh from the major Valley cities of Abydos and Lycopolis.¹³⁸ According to Strabo (XVII.42) the journey from Abydos to the Great Oasis – meaning probably Hibis, capital of Khargeh – took seven days.¹³⁹ To the south

132 Mills, ‘Pharaonic Egyptians’, 175–76.

133 Boozer, ‘The social impact of trade and migration: The Western Desert in pharaonic and post-pharaonic Egypt’, 13.

134 See Ursula Thanheiser, ‘Roman agriculture and gardening in Egypt as seen from Kellis’, in Dakhleh Oasis Project: Preliminary reports on the 1994–1995 to 1998–1999 field seasons, ed. Colin A. Hope and Gillian Bowen (Oxford: Oxbow, 2002), 302–3.

135 See Wagner, Les Oasis d'Égypte, 284–301. and Bagnall, P. Kell. IV, 36–46. For archaeological remains of fruit crops at Kellis, see Thanheiser, ‘Roman agriculture and gardening’, 305–6.

136 Wagner, Les Oasis d'Égypte, 306–9. For Kellis, see for instance okell.24.

137 For the potential economic importance of cotton in the Dakhleh Oasis, see Bagnall, P. Kell. IV, 39–40; for olives, 80. See also Boozer, ‘The social impact of trade and migration: The Western Desert in pharaonic and post-pharaonic Egypt’, 19.

138 See Alan Roe, ‘The Old "Darb al Arbein" Caravan Route and Kharga Oasis in Antiquity’, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 42 (2005).

139 See Wagner, Les Oasis d'Égypte, 143.

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lay Kysis, also part of Khargeh. The Dakhleh Oasis lay westward, beyond another stretch of desert – further into the desert, as the name implies. A papyrus letter from a Roman official travelling from Khargeh to Dakhleh in the late fourth century describes a journey from Khargeh to Dakhleh of four days and nights through waterless desert (anydrōn orōn) (M.

Chrest. 78, ll.6–7).¹⁴⁰ A long desert road, faster but less convenient, went directly from Lycopolis to Dakhleh.¹⁴¹ Travel to and from the Nile Valley would have relied on donkeys and camels, with larger caravans preferring the latter.¹⁴² Roads continued northward from Dakhleh to other oases, eventually reaching the Mediterranean coast