Adam Bülow-Jacobsen Communication, travel, and transportation in Egypt’s Eastern Desert during Roman times (1st to 3rd century AD)

AFRICA PRAEHISTORICA Desert Road Archaeology 27 HEINRICH-BARTH-INSTITUT Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte der Universität zu Köln Forschungsstelle Afrika 27 A F R I C A P R A E H I S T O R I C A Monographien zur Archäologie und Umwelt Afrikas Monographs on African Archaeology and Environment Monographies sur l’Archéologie et l’Environnement d’Afrique Edited by Rudolph Kuper KÖLN 2013 Desert Road Archaeology in Ancient Egypt and Beyond Edited by Frank Förster & Heiko Riemer H E I N R I C H - B A R T H - I N S T I T U T © HEINRICH-BARTH-INSTITUT e.V., Köln 2013 Jennerstr. 8, D–50823 Köln htp://www.hbi-ev.uni-koeln.de This book is in copyright. No reproduction of any part may take place without the writen permission of the publisher. Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek The Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at htp://dnb.ddb.de Financed by Heinrich-Barth-Institut e.V. Printed in Germany by Hans Kock GmbH, Bielefeld Typeset and layout: Heiko Riemer Copy editors: Elizabeth Hart and Rachel Herbert Set in Palatino ISBN 978-3-927688-41-4 ISSN 0947-2673 Contents Prologue by Rudolph Kuper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Foreword by Steven E. Sidebotham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Editors’ preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Introduction 1 Heiko Riemer & Frank Förster Ancient desert roads: Towards establishing a new field of archaeological research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Methods, approaches, and historical perspectives 2 Olaf Bubenzer & Andreas Bolten Top down: New satellite data and ground-truth data as base for a reconstruction of ancient caravan routes. Examples from the Western Desert of Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 3 Heiko Riemer Lessons in landscape learning: The dawn of long-distance travel and navigation in Egypt’s Western Desert from prehistoric to Old Kingdom times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 4 Heidi Köpp Desert travel and transport in ancient Egypt. An overview based on epigraphic, pictorial and archaeological evidence . . . . . . . . . . 107 5 Klaus Peter Kuhlmann The realm of “two deserts”: Siwah Oasis between east and west . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 6 Meike Meerpohl Footprints in the sand: Recent long-distance camel trade in the Libyan Desert (northeast Chad/southeast Libya) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 7 Frank Förster, Heiko Riemer & Moez Mahir, with an appendix by Frank Darius Donkeys to El-Fasher or how the present informs the past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 7 Roads and regions I: Egypt’s Western Desert, and Bayuda 8 8 John Coleman Darnell, with the assistance of Deborah Darnell The Girga Road: Abu Ziyâr, Tundaba, and the integration of the southern oases into the Pharaonic state . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 9 Corinna Rossi & Salima Ikram Evidence of desert routes across northern Kharga (Egypt’s Western Desert) . . . . . . . 265 10 Laure Pantalacci Broadening horizons: Distant places and travels in Dakhla and the Western Desert at the end of the 3rd millennium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 11 Frank Förster Beyond Dakhla: The Abu Ballas Trail in the Libyan Desert (SW Egypt) . . . . . . . . . . . 297 12 Stan Hendrickx, Frank Förster & Merel Eyckerman The Pharaonic potery of the Abu Ballas Trail: ‘Filling stations’ along a desert highway in southwestern Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 13 András Zboray Prehistoric trails in the environs of Karkur Talh, Jebel Uweinat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 14 Heinz-Josef Thissen Donkeys and water: Demotic ostraca in Cologne as evidence for desert travel between Oxyrhynchos and the Bahariya Oasis in the 2nd century BC . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 15 Per Storemyr, Elizabeth Bloxam, Tom Heldal & Adel Kelany Ancient desert and quarry roads on the west bank of the Nile in the First Cataract region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 16 Angelika Lohwasser Tracks in the Bayuda desert. The project ‘Wadi Abu Dom Itinerary’ (W.A.D.I.) . . . . . . . 425 Roads and regions II: Cyrenaica, Marmarica, Sinai, and Arabian Peninsula 17 Steven Snape A stroll along the corniche? Coastal routes between the Nile Delta and Cyrenaica in the Late Bronze Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 18 Thomas Veter, Anna-Katharina Rieger & Heike Möller Water, routes and rangelands: Ancient traffic and grazing infrastructure in the eastern Marmarica (northwestern Egypt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455 19 James K. Hoffmeier & Stephen O. Moshier “A highway out of Egypt”: The main road from Egypt to Canaan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485 20 Claire Somaglino & Pierre Tallet A road to the Arabian Peninsula in the reign of Ramesses III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511 Roads and regions III: Egypt’s Eastern Desert 21 Ian Shaw “We went forth to the desert land…”: Retracing the routes between the Nile Valley and the Hatnub travertine quarries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521 22 Kathryn A. Bard, Rodolfo Fatovich & Andrea Manzo The ancient harbor at Mersa/Wadi Gawasis and how to get there: New evidence of Pharaonic seafaring expeditions in the Red Sea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533 23 Adam Bülow-Jacobsen Communication, travel, and transportation in Egypt’s Eastern Desert during Roman times (1st to 3rd century AD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557 Road index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577 9 Adam Bülow-Jacobsen Communication, travel, and transportation in Egypt’s Eastern Desert during Roman times (1st to 3rd century AD) Abstract In Roman times, Egypt’s Eastern Desert, i.e. the arid zone between the Nile and the Red Sea from modern Za’farana in the north and Berenike in the south, was economically important for stone and minerals, especially granite from Mons Claudianus and porphyry from Mons Porphyrites. It was also important because the trade routes to Arabia, Eastern Africa and India passed that way. Three main desert roads, equipped with fortified stations (praesidia) at more or less regular intervals, are known: (1) the road to Myos Hormos (Qoseir al Qadim), (2) the road to Berenike, and (3) the quarry-road to Mons Porphyrites and Mons Claudianus. There was also the Via Hadriana, from Antinoopolis to Berenike, which was mostly of military importance. In Roman times the most important trade route was from Koptos to Berenike. It was longer than the road to Myos Hormos, but preferred because of the prevailing northern winds in the Red Sea which made it difficult to come back to Myos Hormos. The road from Koptos to Myos Hormos was kept manned and fortified at least into the third century and may have been important only for the ship-building in Myos Hormos, because it was easier to transport timber the shorter way from Koptos to Myos Hormos. This conclusion is based on the apparent absence of wagons on the road to Berenike, while they are well atested on the Myos Hormos road. Myos Hormos and the road leading there seem to have been abandoned in the third century. The roads to the quarries started in Kainepolis (Qena). Most of the stone was moved on wagons, some of them with twelve wheels, although the very largest columns must have been transported on rollers. This paper, mainly based on Greek texts (ostraca) found at the desert praesidia, will focus on the various forms of transportation and communication along these roads. Keywords: quarry, minerals, camel, donkey, wagon, praesidium, tower, Berenike, Red Sea, Roman 1. Introduction The Eastern Desert in Egypt is the region between the Nile in the west and the Red Sea to the east. To the north it is normally defined by the mountains that come close to the coast at the level of modern Za’farana, to the south, for practical purposes, it stops at about the level of Berenike, south of which one normally calls it the Nubian Desert. It is different from the Sahara, west of the Nile, in most respects, except that both are dry. First of all, there is generally no fine sand that blows into dunes and covers everything, like it is known from the Western Desert. The Eastern Desert consists of mountains and gravel, and there are very few places where soft sand makes it difficult to pass. This means that actual road-building was usually unnecessary, and when I speak of roads in what follows, they were mostly desert tracks that might somehow be marked out and furnished with wells and stations at more or less regular intervals [Fig. 1]. Also, distances are much shorter in the Eastern Desert. There is hardly a point where one is more than 100 km from either the sea or the river. The Eastern Desert has no oases except Laqeita, so there are no permanent setlements and no agriculture, Communication, travel, and transportation in Egypt’s Eastern Desert 557 Fig. 1 Roadworks, presumably Roman, north of Bir Fawakhir (this and all other photos in this paper are by the author). but wells can be sunk in most places, provided one digs deep enough, nowadays often about 30 metres, though this was presumably less in Roman times. The fossil water-reserves under the Eastern Desert are not renewed, so the water-table has been sinking ever since desertification began, some 7000 years ago. The region was, and still is, cut through by several roads that link the Nile Valley to the Red Sea. Most important in Roman times were [Fig. 2]: (1) ὁδὸς Μυσορμιτική, the road from Koptos (Qift) to Myos Hormos (Qoseir al Qadim),1 and (2) ὁδὸς Βερενίκης, the road from Koptos to Berenike. Besides there was (3) ὁδὸς Κλαυδιανή 1 The identification of Myos Hormos with Qoseir al Qadim is comparatively new, see Peacock 1993 and Bülow-Jacobsen et al. 1994. On older maps one still finds Myos Hormos further north, at Abu Sha’r, and the fictitious Leukos Limen at Qoseir. 558 Adam Bülow-Jacobsen (or Κλαυδιανοῦ) and ὁδὸς Πορφυρίτου, the roads from Kainepolis (Qena) to the imperial quarries at Mons Claudianus and Mons Porphyrites, and (4) the Ptolemaic road from Apollinopolis Magna (Edfu) to Berenike. (5) The Via Hadriana, from Antinoopolis to the Red Sea and all the way down along the coast to Berenike, appears to have been largely of military, rather than commercial, importance, and the same may be said of (6) the canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, the so-called Trajan’s River. The region is rich in stone and minerals and was also important for the commercial traffic between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea. In Roman times, this traffic passed from Koptos to Myos Hormos and Berenike and it is with these roads that the present paper will principally be concerned. At the end a section will be devoted to the transportation of stone from the quarries at Mons Claudianus. Fig. 2 Map of Egypt’s Eastern Desert with all the known or possible roads and sites drawn in. Note that Myos Hormos is wrongly placed at Qoseir instead of at Qoseir al Qadim and that the precise form of some of the ancient names is now beter established. From Aufrère et al. 1994: 212, based on Meredith 1958. The shortest and easiest road from the Nile Valley to the Red Sea is from Koptos to Myos Hormos, while the longer one went from Koptos to Berenike. The reason why the route to Berenike was nevertheless the most used falls outside the scope of this paper, but is described in Cuvigny, ed., 2003: 13 and De Romanis 1996: 183. Let it suffice here that Berenike was easier to get back to because of the prevailing northern winds in the Red Sea. The going is good nearly everywhere in the Eastern Desert, and the roads were certainly not paved nor even prepared in any way except for very occasional places like the mountains around Wadi Hammamat where there are traces of roadworks. Along these two roads from Koptos there 2 Directed by Hélène Cuvigny and funded by the French Foreign Office (Ministère des affaires étrangères) and the Institut français d’archéologie orientale, Cairo. were praesidia equipped with wells, at about 30 km distance, manned by 8–10 infantry, and 3–5 cavalry (Cuvigny 2005: 2f.). These praesidia have recently been, and still are, the object of study, not least by a French team2 that worked on the Koptos–Myos Hormos road between 1994 and 1997 (Cuvigny, ed., 2003: 1–3). The same team has later worked on the road to Berenike, excavating first the praesidium of Didymoi (1998–2000) and subsequently that of Dios (2005–2009). Berenike itself has been excavated by a Dutch-American team (Sidebotham & Wendrich 1995; 1996; 1998; 1999; 2000; 2007). 2. The roads from Koptos and Apollinopolis Magna (Edfu) As the maps in Figs. 2 and 3 show, there are two obvious roads to Myos Hormos and Berenike respectively: from Koptos to Myos Hormos and from Communication, travel, and transportation in Egypt’s Eastern Desert 559 Fig. 3 The main roads of the Eastern Desert in Roman times with the ancient names of the sites so far as they are known. Apollinopolis Magna to Berenike. This is what Strabo, in the middle of the first century BC (Geogr. 17, 1, 45), tries to describe in a rather confusing way when he speaks of an ἰσθμός (isthmos, ‘a neck of land between two seas’ or a ‘narrow passage’). Strabo, who has sailed on the Nile, but not been to the Red Sea ports, is unaware that there are 280 km between Myos Hormos and Berenike. At the same time he has confused the two cities of Apollo, the ‘Big’ which is Edfu and the ‘Small’ which is Qus. The road to Berenike departed from Edfu, the ‘Big Apollinopolis’, which is some 150 km south of Koptos, while the ‘Small Apollinopolis’, Qus, is only about 15 km south of Koptos. He jumps to the conclusion that the roads from these two cities are somehow one and the same across the desert and then fork out to reach both Myos Hormos (Qoseir al 560 Adam Bülow-Jacobsen Qadim) and Berenike which must then be rather close together as well. In reality there are 280 km between them (see Cuvigny, ed., 2003: 3ff.). Strabo must have imagined the roads like sketched in Fig. 4A, while the reality in Ptolemaic times were more like Fig. 4B. For reasons that are never stated, but must have something to do with the collection of customs dues, the Romans centered both routes on Koptos. The routes then became like shown in Fig. 4C: The southern part of the road to Berenike remained the same and the route to Myos Hormos was unchanged, but a stretch from Phoinikon (Laqeita) to Phalakro was new. This concerns the praesidia Didymoi, Aphrodites Orous, Kompasi (which was already there in the form of a gold-mine, but now became a praesidium), Dios, and Xeron, the later being erroneously marked as Aristonis on many maps.3 Pliny describes the road (Nat. hist. 6, 102–103) giving distances and the names of some of the installations, but it becomes clear that the part of the road between Phoinikon and the ‘hydreuma’ of Apollo did not have any praesidia (see Cuvigny, ed., 2003: 11ff.). The building of the praesidia [Fig. 5] along this new stretch of road appears to have happened under Vespasian, probably around AD 76–79 (see Bagnall et al. 2001), but the inscriptions I.Minayh 4 and 5 from the rock-shelter south of Didymoi are dated to year 28 of Augustus (2 BC) by C. Numidius Eros on his return from India, so Pliny is right that the road was used earlier. 2.1. Communication along the roads and between the praesidia Two kinds of communication may be distinguished, although they were perhaps not so separate in practice as they should, in theory, have been. One is the sending of official leters etc. and the official provisioning of the praesidia, the other is the private exFig. 4 The roads from Koptos and Apollinopolis Magna to Myos Hormos and Berenike: A According to Strabo 3 The error is due, no doubt, to a medieval translation of Ξηρόν into Latin Aridum, which was abbreviated and then wrongly expanded. B Reality in Ptolemaic times C In Roman times Fig. 5 A desert praesidium: Διός / Iovis during excavations in 2007. Communication, travel, and transportation in Egypt’s Eastern Desert 561 The traffic on the Myos Hormos road has been treated in Bülow-Jacobsen 2003. Our knowledge of the official post-system along the Koptos-Myos Hormos road has recently been much advanced by the publication of the ostraca from the praesidium Krokodilo (O.Krok.). Similar texts from the praesidium Dios, to be published in due course as O.Dios, confirm that the same system was in operation on the Berenike road. 2.2. The post-riders The most important job of the horsemen in the praesidia seems to have been relay-delivery of official leters. Our source for this is the day-book of the curator praesidii, the non-commissioned officer in charge. He made his list on ostraca like O.Krok. 1–4, day by day, noting the passing of official traffic and the arrival and dispatching of relay-riders. A few examples may be taken from the O.Krok. 1 [Fig. 6]. 17 Fig. 6 The curator’s day-book, O.Krok. 1 (detail). α κλ(ῆρος) λ̅ · ἐπιστολαὶ [ἠ]νέκθ(ησαν) ἀπὸ Πέρσου διὰ Δομ(ιττίου) ἱππέ(ος) ὅραν (read: ὥρᾳ) γ̅ ἡμ(έρας) · ἰς Φοι(νικῶνα) Καιγιζα ‘1st tour (of duty), the 30th [of Mecheir]. Leters were brought from Persou by Domitius the horseman at the 3rd hour of the day. Kaigiza (brought them) to Phoinikon.’ change of information, leters, money, and other objects between the inhabitants of the praesidia along the road. As we shall see, the post-riders also took leters and goods, provided they were not too heavy, for private individuals. Given the repeated prohibitions against unauthorized use of the cursus publicus (Kolb 2000: 117–122), I am convinced that private use of the equites dispositi was at least as forbidden, if not more. Though unauthorized use surely must have taken place, we do, however, not have to assume that all the private leters were delivered illegally. The post-riders seem to have returned to their base empty-handed, and this is surely when they could be persuaded, no doubt for payment, to take leters and whatever else they could carry, sometimes as much as 20 kg (see Bülow-Jacobsen 2003: 403f.). No restrictions seem to have applied to the donkey-drivers. 562 Adam Bülow-Jacobsen The ‘tour of duty’ (κλῆρος) is the number of the dispatch rider. There were three at Krokodilo: Kaigiza, no. 1, Eial, no. 2, and Aestivius, no. 3. This order decided which rider was to take the next trip whether to Persou or to Phoinikon. It becomes clear that the riders normally made trips only to the next praesidium and that they returned at once, ‘empty’. We could imagine that they would wait to see if something needed to be carried back to their homestation, but this does not seem to be the case in the period for which we have documentation. If a rider arriving at his destination coincided with one coming from the opposite direction, he may well have taken whatever was to be carried, but such a case does not seem to have arisen during the period covered by our documents from Krokodilo. On the other hand, as we shall see later, the carrying capacity of the riders on the return journey was not wasted. Apparently (cf. Cuvigny 2005: 19) the riders returned the same day, since there is a case where the same rider is sent forth from Krokodilo on two consecutive days. However, unpublished ostraca from the praesidium Dios add details to this and we see that post-riders there sometimes met with their counterpart from a praesidium further away and took post back to their place of origin. O.Dios inv. 986 is a post-register where we read: Κέλσος ἀπὸ πραισιδίου| Κόμπασι ἐνήνοχεν ἐπι-|στολὰς Ἐπὶφ κδ ὥρᾳ θ| τῆς νυκτὸς καὶ εὐθέως | ἐβάσταξεν Δίσαλα ̣ ̣ | ἀπὸ Ξηροῦ Apart from relaying mail, the riders also escorted important people or military transports, for the roads were not always safe from gangs of beduins (Cuvigny 2005: 7). It is, however, difficult to imagine what a single horseman could do to protect a whole train of camels or donkeys against an atack by sometimes as many as 60 ‘barbarians’. The best documented case of such an atack on a praesidium is described in O.Krok. 87. Sometimes, however, the post did not function as well as it should and an inspector investigated the case of malfunction and made a report. O.Dios inv. 394 is a fragment of such a report (spelling normalized): ‘Celsus from the praesidium Kompasi brought leters on 25 Epiph at the 9th hour of the night and Disala from Xeron took them at once ...’ So, Celsus is coming from Kompasi north of Dios with leters, and Disala from Xeron south of Dios happens to be there and takes them further south without involving any horseman from Dios. The riders did not only transport leters. Between the 18th and the 27th Mecheir we find them bringing fish, sometimes specified as mullet and parrot-fish, from Persou, i.e. from the Red Sea, to Koptos. The fish must have been fresh and urgent for we even see a rider seting out towards Phoinikon with fish that had arrived at Krokodilo in the first hour of the night. 5 ηὗρ() 10 Ἐπεὶφ ιθ ἐλθόντος διπλώματος τῆς ἐπιθέσεως καὶ ἐπιστολῶν ἡγεμονικῶν διὰ Νεπωτιανοῦ ἱππέως {ηρα} ὥρᾳ{ν} α τῆς νυκτὸς Ἡρακλῆς ἱππεὺς λαβὼν τὰς ἐπιστολὰς ὥρᾳ{ν} ι τῆς νυκτὸς ἐξῆλθε, ὃ καὶ δύνασαι ἐπιγνῶναι, μετὰ γυναικὸς κοιμώμενος. ‘Epeiph 19. As an order of conveyance and leters of the prefect arrived through Nepotianus, the horseman, at the first hour of the night (c. 7 pm), Herakles, the horseman, took the leters, but did not leave until the tenth hour of the night (c. 4 am), which you can verify, (in margin: ‘I found it’) because he was lying with O.Krok. 1 has: a woman.’ 37 We do not know who the inspector was, nor to whom he reported, but it is certain that the system had nothing to do with the cursus publicus, being rather a case of equites dispositi as used in military areas (Kolb 2000: 289). Besides the amusing insight in the private life of Herakles, the horseman, the text also shows us that the post was meant to travel by night as well. If it was a moonlit night, this would of course present no problem. 38 γ̅ κ̅ε̅ ὥραν α̅ νυκτὸς ἠνέκθη ὀψάρια [ἀπὸ Πέρσου] διὰ ̣ ̣ ζ̣ ̣ ̣ υ ̣ ̣ ?Δ̣ιζα ̣ ̣ ̣ ς̣ ?· ἰς Φοινικῶνα Αἴστις. ‘3rd (tour of duty). 25th (Mecheir) in the 1st hour of the night fish was brought from Persou by ... (corrected into Diza). Aistivius (brought them) to Phoinikon.’ The editor argues convincingly (Cuvigny 2005: 12f.) that this fish was fresh and may have been destined for the table of the prefect of Egypt who would then have been holding conventus in Koptos during those days. I suppose that the fish was kept in a wet cloth, and that the distance between Myos Hormos and Koptos could be covered by the relay-riders in less, perhaps considerably less, than 24 hours. 2.3. The caravan (ἡ πορεία) In the private leters from the praesidia we quite often hear about ‘the caravan’. This is clearly not, as 4 Published by H. Cuvigny as P.Worp 51. Communication, travel, and transportation in Egypt’s Eastern Desert 563 we might have expected, any commercial caravan bringing goods to or from Berenike, but rather the caravan that provisioned the praesidia with the official rations and necessities, like oil, onions, lentils, grain, vinegar, and fodder for the horses. K. Ruffing (1995: 4–7) has calculated that 2000 camel-loads a month would be necessary just to keep the town of Berenike in provisions. I am not sure I believe entirely in this figure, but let us accept it with caution. To these 2000 camels that passed along the road to Berenike every month we must add the commercial caravans and the caravans that provisioned the praesidia. If, as seems possible, the caravan that provisioned the praesidia passed once a month, we can calculate that it must have consisted of at least some thirty camels and probably many more: There are eleven praesidia along the road to Berenike5 and if each one had a garrison of 15 men who each received an artaba of grain, we already need 27 camels per month. To this must be added fodder for the horses, camels, and donkeys and whatever else was needed. We do not know how exactly the caravan was organized, nor is it said of which animals it consisted. When we hear ‘caravan’ we automatically think of camels, but this is not necessarily so, see section 2.4 below, but there certainly were camels also and the camel-drivers even had a secretary, the γραμματεὺς τῶν καμηλιτῶν (O.Did. 53). The commercial caravans, like those of the Nikanor-‘firm’, surely consisted of camels, as Pliny (Nat.hist. 6, 102– 103) tells us and as can be seen from the loads: a standard load (γόμος) is 6 artabas which makes c. 186 kg – clearly a camel-load.6 Camels are hardly ever mentioned in the ostraca found at the praesidia, which proves nothing either way, although the absence of mention may be contrasted with the frequency with which horses and donkeys are mentioned. The reason may be that the passage of the camel-caravans, commercial or military, did not generate any writen documents on a local level. This is different from the O.Claud. and the, as yet 5 Counting only those that probably functioned at the same time. 6 See, e.g., O.Bodl. I 228, 231 or 233. For the weight of the artaba, see Bülow-Jacobsen 1994. On the carrying capacity of camels and donkeys, see Habermann 1990: 50f. 564 Adam Bülow-Jacobsen unpublished, ostraca from Umm Balad (excavated in 2003–2004) where camels and camel-drivers are mentioned quite often, because they were an integral part of the local transport-system, notably the distribution of water. Presumably the caravan set out from Koptos, fully laden with whatever was to be distributed along the road, but as it progressed, did the empty camels, assuming that they were camels and not donkeys, return, or did they make the whole journey? It is possible that the camels all went the whole way to Berenike and there picked up imported goods to bring back. This assumes that the military provisioning could be mixed, administratively, with the commercial transportation of imported goods. It is clear from the texts that the caravan was somehow regular, although we do not know at which intervals it passed. O.Did. 345 is sent from Phoinikon to Didymoi and has: ἢ αὔριον ἢ ἰς | τρίτην αὐτὰ ἀποφέρω· ἐὰν | δὲ παρέλθῃ ἡ πορεία, προσ|δέχου με ἐκεῖ. ‘I shall bring them (i.e. some baskets, presumably to Koptos) either tomorrow or the next day. But if the caravan comes by, await me there (at Didymoi).’ So, the writer of the leter was a horseman, stationed at Phoinikon. His comrade had sent him some baskets to forward to Koptos, where he expected to be going in a day or two, presumably carrying mail when any arrived, unless the caravan came by on its way from Koptos towards the south, in which case he would have to escort it and would then come to Didymoi. The writer of the leter thus knew that the caravan was due one of these days, but not more precisely when. Apart from bringing provisions, the poreia also served to transport people. There are plenty of examples, but let us take one where several texts can be developed into a sequence: In O.Did. 402–404 we learn that Theanous, who receives leters at Didymoi, has just given birth while her man, Veturius, a soldier, has been moved to a station closer to the valley, presumably to Phoinikon. He wants her to join him when she is well enough. He therefore writes to her that the caravan will be a good way of travelling and asks her to bring his ground-sheet. What Veturius knew was that the caravan was passing from Phoinikon to Didymoi on its way to Berenike, and the leter may even have arrived with the caravan. But Theanous was going in the opposite direction. We must assume that she asked someone at Aphrodites Orous to notify her when the caravan was going to pass Didymoi on its way back to the valley, for she receives the following note (O.Did. 404) from a man called Theophilos, whom we do not otherwise know, but who must have been at Aphrodites Orous: Θεόφιλος Θεανοῦ|τι τῇ ἀδελφῇ πλεῖσ|τα χαίρειν. γεινώσ|κειν σε θέλω ὅτι ἡ πορεί|α ἔρχεται εἰς Διδύμους | τῆ ἑβδόμῃ καὶ εἰκά|δι. διὸ ἔγραψά σοι ἵνα | ἑτοιμάσεις τὰ σά. ‘I wish you to know that the caravan comes to Didymoi on the twenty-seventh. So, I write to you in order that you get your things ready.’ This leter must have arrived in advance of the caravan, presumably with a horseman who went faster than the camels. Veturius was planning well in advance, since the caravan must have taken some three weeks to go from Didymoi to Berenike and back again. At any rate, O.Did. 405 is a leter from Theanous to someone who is still at Didymoi which assures us that she arrived safely at Phoinikon. As mentioned above, Veturius also asks Theanous to bring his ground-sheet when she comes with the caravan. ‘If not, send it with someone trustworthy.’ It is not quite clear what he means by this. Does he mean ‘if you do not come, send it by someone else who comes with the caravan’, or does he mean ‘send it through whoever is trustworthy who makes the journey before the caravan passes’? In any case, it is certain that there was more frequent traffic on the road than the caravan, but it was either on horseback or on foot and therefore unsuitable for a woman with a newborn child. 2.4. Donkeys Donkeys seem to have passed independently of the caravan, but it is unclear whether they also formed part of the caravan. We have expressions like the woman who writes (O.Krok. inv. 603) ἐὰν ἀναβῇ ἡ πορεῖα ἐλεύσομαι μετὰ τῶν ὀναρίων, ‘if (when) the caravan comes, I shall come with the donkeys’. If the caravan consisted entirely of donkeys, the pre- cision, that she will come with the donkeys, is superfluous. I am uncertain about the assumption that the caravan consisted of donkeys and camels walking together, since they walk at slightly different speeds, but mixed caravans must have existed anyway. However, donkeys also circulated independently, and the impression is that donkey-drivers traded along the road, picking up loads as they found them, which seems rather surprising in this military area where movements were strictly controlled. In any case, they brought leters and victuals and whatever else needed transportation between soldiers and civilians. Perhaps the donkey-drivers worked in relays and specialized in a given distance, perhaps just between two praesidia, for we see quite often that leters are sent by a donkey-driver and that an answer can be sent back with him. See, e.g., the leter O. Krok. inv. 252 (Bülow-Jacobsen 2003: 402, and see the correction concerning the meaning of κουιντάνα in Cuvigny, ed., 2006) which is sent with the donkey-driver who is to bring Procla to Maximianon. Perhaps the donkeydrivers did these shorter journeys and joined the πορεῖα when there was one, but otherwise went alone. In some cases the donkey-drivers made longer journeys, though. O.Did. 361 is a leter from a woman, presumably at Phoinikon, who writes to a friend at Didymoi asking him to lend a water-skin to a donkey-driver who is going to Berenike and will return it when he passes on his way back. The reason for this could be, simply, that the donkeydriver’s own water-skin was defective, but then, how did he manage for water between Phoinikon and Didymoi? I wonder if it was not because of the exceptionally long journey that he needed an extra water-skin. Since this paper is about travel and transportation, I shall not go into details about the system of prostitution at the desert praesidia. This is treated by Cuvigny (2003: 374–395) and there is more information now available by the recently published O.Did. The prostitutes (τὰ κοράσια) had to be transported between the praesidia, from one contract to the next. This seems to have been done by donkey as we can see from O.Krok. inv. 252 (Bülow-Jacobsen 2003: 402), where Procla is to be sent from Krokodilo to Maximianon – some 52 km – with a donkey-driver for a fare of eight drachmas. O.Did. Communication, travel, and transportation in Egypt’s Eastern Desert 565 400 from the early second century tells the story of Nemesous who was to deliver a ‘girl’ to a praesidium, but had a most uncomfortable journey with a donkey-driver. She reports to her correspondent that μὴ νομίσῃς ὅτι ἠμέλησα περὶ τῶν πλακίων· οὐδεὶς ὀνηλάτης ἠθέλησε αὐτὰ αἴρειν. διὰ τῶν καμηλίων πέμψω σοι αὐτά (spelling normalized). ‘Don’t think that I have been neglectful concerning the plates, but no donkey-driver would take them. I shall send them with τὸ κοράσιν ... οὐκ εὐτόνηκε περιπατεῖν δύο βήματα. ἐγὼ περιπεπάτηκα ἑπτὰ μίλια, ὡσαύτως περιπατεῖ δύο μίλια· καὶ ἔστακε ὁ ὀνηλάτης λυπούμενος τὸν ὄνον καὶ ἀνέβαλέ με. καὶ πάλι ἀπελθοῦσα ἄλλῳ ὀνηλάτῃ ἔστακε. the camels.’ No doubt the plates were too heavy for a donkey. The text must mean that donkeys passed more or less constantly, but camels only at intervals. ‘the girl ... has not been able to march two steps. I marched seven miles and she in the same way two miles and the donkey-driver 2.5. The προβολή (probolē) stopped, grieving about his donkey, and he made me dismount. I set off again with another donkey-driver, and he stopped.’ The two women had clearly set out with a small caravan of donkeys and were meant to share a donkey, taking it in turns to walk beside. After a while the donkey-driver claims that his donkey is tired and makes Nemesous dismount, so she must negotiate with another donkey-driver. This one, after a while, demands to be paid, and Nemesous must pay him out of her own pocket. She insists on the girl’s inability to walk in order to justify this extra expense. She also shows that she has not spared herself since she has walked seven milia or more than eleven kilometres. One is left with the impression that the donkey-drivers have taken advantage of these women, so vulnerable in the desert and alone in a group of men. It is, I suppose, fairly typical that the second donkey-driver did not ask for money immediately, but stopped after a while to ask for money which he should have received from the first donkey-driver. The two donkey-drivers have obviously reassured her that there was ‘no broblem’, after which the first one disappeared to take care of his tired donkey and the second one found an inconvenient spot in the middle of nowhere to insist on payment. The journey must have been most disagreeable when we think of the general discomfort of desert travelling and add the ill will of the donkey-drivers and the whining of the girl. The donkeys transported most things: people, leters, vegetables, clothes and furniture, but sometimes they refused. Pigs were unpopular with donkey-drivers (Bülow-Jacobsen 2003: 417). O.Did. 416 concerns πλάκια, which I take to be stone plates (e.g. for paving floors): 566 Adam Bülow-Jacobsen This rather mysterious entity is mentioned from time to time. In LSJ it is translated ‘advanced body of cavalry’ as one of many different meanings. Etymologically the word can mean anything that is thrust forward, whether to atack or as protection. In Bülow-Jacobsen 2003: 403 I took it to mean ‘advanced cavalry party’ or ‘horse patrol’. Both J. Bingen and I, in publishing O.Claud. II 227, 279, 375, 376 and 380, had translated it ‘patrol’ or ‘détachement’, never doubting that it consisted of cavalry. However, a phrase in O.Max. inv. 89 made me wonder (Bülow-Jacobsen 2003: 404) how it could be that the horse-patrol was not the fastest way of travelling. The ostracon says: τῇ προβολῇ ἐλεύσομαι, ἐγὼ δὲ οὐχ οὕτως σπουδαῖός εἰμι which I translated: ‘I shall come with the patrol, for I am not that pressed for time’. O.Did. 462 would appear to confirm that the probolē did not consist of donkeys. The text is: [ἤ τε με]τὰ ὄνων ἤ τε με|[τὰ προ]βολῆς ‘(he will come) either with donkeys or with probolē’. O.Dios inv. 636 was presumably writen at Kompasi and has: ‘please send me a basket by the horseman who brings you this ostracon, and I shall send it to you with the probolē that is coming.’ So, here the basket was carried one way by a post-rider and back again by the probolē. The point may be that on the return journey there were vegetables in it. The text, incidentally, shows that the probolē was somehow foreseeable and also that post-riders sometimes carried private business both ways. So, the probolē did not consist of horses, if we judge by what it carried: grain in O.Dios inv. 106, an amphora (κεράμιον) in O.Claud. II 227, or a quantity of rope in O.Claud. II 376. Clothes, as in O.Dios inv. 382, could be sent by any means, I suppose, but when the probolē brings people, as, e.g., in O.Did. 462 or O.Claud. II 279, just to mention two of many examples, we hardly think of a mounted patrol. Neither were they donkeys, if we judge by O.Did. 462. It passed at foreseeable intervals, if we trust O.Dios inv. 636, and this impression is strengthened by O.Claud. II 375 and 376 (and the unpublished inv. 3895) where the προβολή and the πορεῖα are mentioned as equally good alternatives. What was the probolē, then? Probably it consisted of donkeys, but organized in a different way to ‘the donkeys’ (οἱ ὄνοι) and their donkey-drivers (ὀνηλάται) who seem to have had more freedom of movement and choice in what they would take. Perhaps the probolē was a military donkey-caravan, somehow different from the πορεῖα, while ‘the donkeys’ refer to the more private donkey-drivers that appear to have plied their trade between the praesidia. 2.6. Wagons (ἅμαξαι) Wagons are mentioned occasionally, and a survey of their use on the road from Koptos to Myos Hormos is given in Bülow-Jacobsen 2003: 408f. Unfortunately, later evidence from the Berenike road does not favour my idea that a conductor was simply a wagonner. It seems that they were mobile tax-collectors and could be persuaded to take things along as they moved around. As for wagons, the writen material from the Berenike road adds nothing. Wagons are not mentioned in any ostraca from Didymoi or Dios, and it would appear that they were not used on the Berenike road. There may have been several reasons for this, but the most obvious is that some stretches of the road consist of fairly soft sand. Another may have been that nothing that was sent to Berenike needed a wagon. This in turn begs the question what was transported on the road from Koptos to Myos Hormos that needed a wagon? The obvious answer is: the stone from the quarries at Wadi Hammamat (ancient Persou), but timber for ship-building was perhaps even more important. Such timber-transports are atested in O.Krok. 41 (AD 109) in which Artorius Priscillus, Prefect of the Desert of Berenike, forbids the wagonners to sell any of the wood destined for ship-building in Myos Hormos along the road. Other texts, like O.Krok. 13, tell us that such wagons were to be escorted by two cavalrymen, surely because wood was such a precious commodity. Wagons are also mentioned in I.Portes 67 (the so-called Koptos tariff from AD 90), where wagons ‘fited with a τετράγωνον (a rectangle?)’ must pay four drachmas to enter the desert. The editor translates τετράγωνον as ‘a rectangular roof’ without further explanation. I should be happy to know what is meant, but am more inclined to think that τετράγωνον means a rectangular frame, i.e. a long, four-wheeled wagon that could be used for timber. In the same inscription there is also a payment for ‘a mast’ and ‘a yard-arm’. Contrary to N. Lewis (1960), I am fairly certain that these came from the Nile Valley and were meant for the ship-yards at Myos Hormos. In any case, since we now have fairly good, although negative, evidence that wagons rolled only on the Koptos–Myos Hormos road and not towards Berenike, we can deduce that ships were built at Myos Hormos only, not in Berenike. Since the harbour at Myos Hormos is beter and the land transport from the Nile is only about half the distance, this makes sense. The disadvantage of the harbour at Myos Hormos is the permanent northwind which makes it difficult to come home again, but if ships were built there, they would sail to Berenike and spend the rest of their useful life sailing from and to that harbour, and would never need to come back to Myos Hormos. With this in mind, we may also have found a possible explanation of why two roads to the Red Sea were kept guarded at least until the third century. The reason for the road to Myos Hormos may have been the provisioning of the ship-yard only, while all commerce passed through Berenike. Strabo tells us (Geogr. 2, 5, 12) that Gallus set out from Myos Hormos with 120 ships which must have been built there. The theory of Myos Hormos as a shipbuilding yard receives fairly good support from the recent excavations at Quseir al-Qadim. Peacock & Blue (2006: 59; 80f.; 87) describe trenches 10 and 14 as belonging to an ‘area ... primarily connected with boat maintenance’ and mention ‘an intense period of light industrial activity’ in the 1st and 2nd centuries. A possible problem is presented by O.Osl. 2 where wagons are mentioned going to (or coming from?) Berenike. Or so the editor thought. But Berenike is a doubtful reading, and the writer states that he is Communication, travel, and transportation in Egypt’s Eastern Desert 567 seting out for Koptos. The text may be dated to the 3rd or 2nd century BC, and at this time traffic to and from Berenike would pass on the older road from Apollinopolis Magna (Edfu).7 If you were going to Koptos, you were on the northern road from Myos Hormos. 2.7. Communication by the towers? Along the road from Koptos to Myos Hormos there is a series of small towers that have puzzled travellers for a long time. On the first, flat stretch after Koptos, there do not seem to be any, but from Qusur al Banat (mid-way between Phoinikon and Krokodilo) one cannot help seeing them. A detailed discussion with a bibliography can be found in Cuvigny, ed., 2003: 207–234, from where I resume briefly. The best preserved are some 3.5 m high, solid and with a platform on top, and they are placed on mountains or on the plain at varying distances (from 0.4 to 6 km), but always so as to be intervisible (cf. Riemer & Förster, this volume: fig. 15). The immediate thought is that they formed some kind of optical telegraph. This idea is so obvious that the Baedecker guide to Egypt from 1913, p. 358 (p. 398 in the English edition from 1929), tells us that they were built by Mohammed Ali. This is, however, not so, since they were noticed already by G.M. Browne in 1792. Their age is still debated, but they are in any case ancient, although they may be considerably younger than the praesidia. Since there are no traces of fire at the top of any of them, they cannot be beacons. The Romans did know about optical signalling with beams, perhaps something like the ‘Chappe’ optical telegraph, but such a system would presumably demand a structure for supporting and managing the beams that should still be visible in the beter preserved towers. None of them contains any ceramics to speak of, nor are there any paths leading up to them, so they do not seem to have been manned regularly. It has therefore been thought that they were way-markers, but 7 Strabo just says Ἀπόλλωνος πόλις (Geogr. 17, 1, 45). The editor of O.Osl. 2 appears to be unaware of the fact that the Ptolemaic road to Berenike started from Edfu (Apollinopolis Magna) and adds Parva (i.e. Qus) to the city-name. 568 Adam Bülow-Jacobsen they do not mark the way. Quite a few of them are placed so as to be ambiguous and they are not always visible from the road. If they were look-out posts, they would have been manned and would have had visual contact with the praesidia, which is often not the case. In short, their purpose is still unknown. If they were part of some kind of signalling-system, they were probably built at a time when the praesidia no longer functioned, since writen communication along the road through the post-riders was quite fast and efficient, as we have seen above. In my opinion, they may have been meant for some kind of optical signalling during the Islamic middle ages, perhaps in connection with the pilgrims to Mecca who took this road, and perhaps the system was never used, which would account for the absence of signs of humans spending time around them (paths, ceramics, etc.). 3. The quarry-roads from Kaine (Qena) to Mons Claudianus and Mons Porphyrites The roads from Καινή (Qena) to the imperial quarries did not have Ptolemaic antecedents and served exclusively to provision the quarries and bring the stone down to the Nile Valley. The town Καινήπολις (i.e. ‘New Town’) was even built to lodge the wives of the workers (Cuvigny 1998). The distance from Mons Claudianus to Qena is about 110 km as the crow flies, but the route taken by the ancients may have been somewhat longer, probably about 140 km, in order to avoid gradients.8 There is no doubt that a great deal of the traffic on this road consisted of wagons. We do not know so much about the transportation of the porphyry from Mons Porphyrites, but a massive loading ramp, 1.75 m high, shows that the stone was loaded onto large wagons once it had been taken out of the mountains, presumably on rollers (Maxfield & Peacock 2001: 211–214). The evidence from Mons Claudianus is fuller, not least because we have texts from there and they mention several kinds of wag- 8 My calculation is based on a route joining the road from Mons Porphyrites at Es-Saqqia, then to El-Heita and down Wadi Qena. See further Peacock 1997: 265f. Fig. 7 An artist’s impression of what the twelve-wheeled wagon looked like. Loaded here with the column of 9.16 m which still lies ready for loading at the great loading ramp at Mons Claudianus, but such a column weighs only c. 10 tons. The wagon was probably able to load about 30 tons. (Computer drawing: David BülowJacobsen). ons, viz. two-, four-, and twelve-wheelers. As usual with the kind of texts we have, we never get the information we should really like, i.e. how the wagons were constructed, which animals pulled them, or how much they could carry. Wagons are mostly mentioned in contexts of loading and unloading and it becomes clear that provisions and tools arrived in wagons which took the stone down to the Nile Valley on their return journey. The descriptions of the wagons are δρομικὴ ἅμαξα for a two-wheeler – at least this is how I understand it. δρομικός (dromikos) means ‘racing-’, and since the word clearly means some kind of wagon which is not a four-wheeler (see O.Claud. IV 874) I suppose it is a joke. The only thing that a cart with two wheels had in common with the sulkies used for horse-racing was exactly the two wheels instead of four. Otherwise I am convinced there was nothing racy about the two-wheeled carts. Fourwheelers were simply τετράτροχοι ἅμαξαι. Once, in O.Claud. IV 871, a twelve-wheeler occurs (δωδεκάτροχος ἅμαξα). There is no further description, except that we learn that it had a crew of 39 men, but we can deduce a litle more from the design of the largest of the loading ramps. The ramp at the end of the so-called Pillar Wadi is 1.7 m high and c. 14 m long. Since this is by far the largest of the ramps, it is fair to assume that it also served the biggest wagons. Equally, tracks found in the desert vary from 2.3 to 3.3 m in width (Peacock 1997: 261ff.) and here again I take the broadest tracks. The tracks further show a tyre-width of 40– 50 cm. I take it as certain that the wagon was rigid without bogies, which is borne out by the tracks which are straight [Fig. 7]. This is as far as the reconstruction will get us. At least two important questions are left unanswered, viz. the loading-capacity and the kind and number of animals that pulled such a cart. It is often postulated (e.g. Kraus & Röder 1962: 116) that 10 tons is the maximum load that could be transported on wheels in antiquity. I am not quite sure where this originates, but it corresponds well to evidence from the Renaissance and later, e.g. from Carrara (Klapisch-Zuber 1969: 71–73) where four-wheeled carri with a capacity of 8–9 tons are described in the 16th century. Since the limitation of the loading-capacity must be in the strength of the hubs and axels, I venture that a twelve-wheeled cart could carry three times more than a fourwheeler, i.e. c. 30 tons. This is about the weight of the broken column of 8.8 m (some 30 pedes) that still lies at the south-eastern corner of the praesidium at Mons Claudianus. As for the question of traction, there are many unknown factors. The total absence of bovine remains at Mons Claudianus tells us that Communication, travel, and transportation in Egypt’s Eastern Desert 569 Fig. 8 Roman road with modern tracks. The road, ten metres wide, leads up to the praesidium at Umm Balad (Καινὴ λατομία). Late 1st century AD. oxen were not used. The choice thus remains between donkeys and camels. At a guess, I think camels are the more likely, since the cart would be sufficiently high for camels to put their weight into the pull. The crew of 39 men that accompanied the cart may have served, among other things, for helping to get the wagon started, as they would of course also be necessary whenever a curve was to be negotiated. But columns of 30 tons are far from being the biggest produced at Mons Claudianus. Anyone who has visited the quarries will have admired the 50-foot column still lying at the head of the Pillar Wadi. This is estimated at some 200 tons, and columns of similar dimensions stand in front of the Pantheon in Rome, so they were transported. The transportation of such a column is atested in P.Giss. 69 (AD 118/9; see also Peña 1989) where barley is requested ‘since we have many draft-animals because of the transportation of the 50-foot column’. Clearly this concerns a column from Mons Claudianus that was to be used for the front of the Pantheon. Unfortunately we are not told which animals they were, they are just called κτήνη, nor how many they were, nor how they were pulling. In my opinion, such a load could not be transported except on rollers and rails, as also Röder (in Kraus & Röder 1962: 116) thinks. However, Peacock (1997: 261– 570 Adam Bülow-Jacobsen 263), followed by Adams (2001: 176), believes that all columns, even the biggest, must have left Mons Claudianus on wagons. Peacock (1997: 264), who toys with the idea of human traction, suggests that the barley was for the animals that were transporting the food for the humans. While there would indeed be advantages in human traction, this is not what the Greek text would normally be taken to mean. 4. A piece of desert road that came to nothing Apart from the tracks found by earlier explorers and mentioned by Peacock (1997: 265, with fig. 7.13), nothing much was normally done in the way of road-making. Apart from the stretch seen in Fig. 1, above, one exception is known to me, and as so often the best illustration is the atempt that failed. On the outside of the circle of mountains around Mons Porphyrites, about 1.5 km north of the road to Qena, lies Umm Balad, a small, well preserved praesidium with a large cistern inside. The quarry was begun under Domitian and was called Δομιτιανὴ λατομία until the damnatio memoriae of Domitian in AD 96. After that it was known as Καινὴ λατομία. The site was excavated in 2002– 2003 by a French team 9 and will be published in the foreseeable future. The quarry that was the reason for the building was eventually abandoned because the stone is too intractable, but before this was realized, the whole infrastructure had been made. Since the quarry is fairly deep inside a wadi, the praesidium was built at the mouth of the wadi on an elevated point where it was protected from the violent flash floods that sometimes devastate everything on the wadi-floor. The terrain all around is strewn with boulders and even a Landrover can hardly pass, so the Romans had to make a road which is mostly well preserved to this day [Fig. 8].10 From the main road to Qena a side road leads c. 1.6 km up to the praesidium and past it, down a slope into the wadi, where it has been destroyed by flash floods. Faint traces here and there show that it continued up the wadi for about 1 km to a workers’ village, above which the quarry is situated, high up on the mountain [Fig. 9]. The road construction consisted only in clearing the stones away, but what is interesting is the width that was thought necessary: ten metres – almost enough, in theory, for two carts to meet while one of them was being overtaken by a third. The reason for this extraordinary width escapes me. Even more surprising is an alternative road that was begun, but never finished. Starting from near the praesidium and going south, another road, also ten metres wide, has been cleared, but after some 500 m it runs directly into an outcrop of a mountain. It is as if this was a surprise to the road-makers and they began to chop away at the rock in order to remove it. A passage, a couple of metres wide, was achieved and the rest of the surface on the northern side of the obstacle has been atacked, but then the atempt was given up [Figs. 10; 11]. South of the obstacle there are faint traces of clearing, but nothing serious. Either the atempt was badly planned from the beginning, or the road-making came to a halt when the whole enterprise was abandoned, presumably sometime shortly after AD 100. 9 Fig. 9 A rough sketch of the roads serving the quarry of Umm Balad (map source: Google Earth). In any case, the road was badly planned since it would have been necessary to cross a low pass in order to join the main road, whereas the only slightly longer road, that must already have existed, has a light downward gradient all the way to the main road. There is, however, another possibility. There is no well at the praesidium and water was brought by camels from wells in the neighbourhood, as is often mentioned in the ostraca from Umm Balad. Since at least some of these wells must have been down the road towards Qena, like, e.g., Bir Qatar, using the projected road would have saved about 1.4 km for those doing the water-trip (ὑδροφορία). It is thus possible that the projected road was never meant for the heavy stone transports, but rather for the camels carrying water. If this were so, there is the question why the road was made so wide. Perhaps there were plans for water-supply by wagon in the future? We shall never know. The same team as mentioned in footnote 2 above. 10 The praesidium and the roads are clearly visible on Google Earth at 27° 08’ 50.45’’ N / 33° 17’ 29.66’’ E. Communication, travel, and transportation in Egypt’s Eastern Desert 571 Fig. 10 Looking south from Umm Balad. A 10 m wide road has been cleared among the boulders until the obstacle is encountered (seen as a dark rectangle about the middle of the image). As can be seen, the obstacle might easily have been avoided to the right, but instead an atempt was made to cut through it. Fig. 11 The obstacle with the man-made passage. 572 Adam Bülow-Jacobsen References Adams, C. (2001) Who Bore the Burden? The Organization of Stone Transport in Roman Egypt. In: D.J. Matingly & J. Salmon (eds.), Economies beyond Agriculture in the Classical World. Leicester-Notingham Studies in Ancient Society 9 (London & New York: Routledge) 171–192. Habermann, W. (1990) Statistische Datenanalyse an den Zolldokumenten des Arsinoites aus römischer Zeit II. 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