Dakhla Oasis or Dakhleh Oasis ( Egyptian Arabic: , , "''the inner oases"''), is one of the seven oases of

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

's Western Desert. Dakhla Oasis lies in the New Valley Governorate, 350 km (220 mi.) from the

Nile The Nile (also known as the Nile River or River Nile) is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa. It has historically been considered the List of river sy ...

and between the oases of Farafra and Kharga. It measures approximately 80 km (50 mi) from east to west and 25 km (16 mi) from north to south.

History

Prehistory

The first contacts between the pharaonic power and the oases started around 2550 BCE. The human history of this oasis started during the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

, when nomadic tribes settled sometimes there, in a time when the

Sahara The Sahara (, ) is a desert spanning across North Africa. With an area of , it is the largest hot desert in the world and the list of deserts by area, third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Ar ...

climate was wetter and where humans could have access to lakes and marshes. But about 6,000 years ago, the entire Sahara became drier, changing progressively into a hyper-arid desert (with less than 50 mm of rain per year). However, specialists think that nomadic hunter-gatherers began to settle almost permanently in the oasis of Dakhleh in the period of the

Holocene The Holocene () is the current geologic time scale, geological epoch, beginning approximately 11,700 years ago. It follows the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene to ...

(about 12,000 years ago), during new, but rare episodes of wetter times. In fact, the drier climate didn't mean that there was more water than today in what is now known as the Western Desert. The south of the Libyan Desert has the most important supply of subterranean water in the world through the Nubian Aquifer, and the first inhabitants of the Dakhla Oasis had access to surface water sources. In the third millennium BC the probably nomadic people of the Sheikh Muftah culture lived here.

Pharaonic period

During the late 6th Dynasty, hieratic script was sometimes incised into clay tablets with a stylus, similar to

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

. About five hundred such tablets have been discovered in the governor's palace at Ayn Asil (Balat) in the Dakhla Oasis. At the time the tablets were made, Dakhla was located far from centers of

papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, ''Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'' or ''papyruses'') can a ...

production. These tablets record inventories, name-lists, accounts, and approximately fifty letters.

Deir el-Hagar

Deir el-Hagar ( Egyptian Arabic: 'Monastery of Stone', , ''Sioua'') is a Roman sandstone temple on the western edge of Dakhla Oasis, about 10 km from Qasr ad-Dakhla. The Temple was erected during the reign of the Roman Emperor

Nero Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ( ; born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus; 15 December AD 37 – 9 June AD 68) was a Roman emperor and the final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 until his ...

, and decorated during the time of

Vespasian Vespasian (; ; 17 November AD 9 – 23 June 79) was Roman emperor from 69 to 79. The last emperor to reign in the Year of the Four Emperors, he founded the Flavian dynasty, which ruled the Empire for 27 years. His fiscal reforms and consolida ...

, Titus and Domitian. The temple was dedicated to the Theban triad, composed of Amun-Ra, Mut and Khonsu, as well as to Seth, the main deity of the region. File:DeirHagarGateway2.jpg, Gateway of the temple File:Deir el-Haggar, Entrance Relief (XI) (4566138968).jpg, Roman emperor as pharaoh making offerings to Isis and Osiris File:DeirHagarSarapammon.jpg, Graffiti of Sarapammon with ram and baboon

Qasr ad-Dakhla

The fortified Islamic town of Qasr ad-Dakhla or el-Qasr (

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

: قصر الداخلة, ''the Fortress'') was built in the 12th century on the remains of a Roman fort in the NW of the Dakhla Oasis by the Ayyubid kings. Many of the up to four-storey mud brick Ottoman and Mamluk buildings contain blocks of stone with hieroglyphics from the ancient Thoth temple of the nearby site of Amheida. The three-storey, 21-meter-high minaret is dated 924 CE. File:El-Qasr (XII).jpg, General view of Qasr el-Dakhla File:Flickr - Argenberg - Al-Qasr city, Dakhla oasis (2007-05-219).jpg, Streets of Al-Qasr File:Bahariyya Oasis, Egypt.jpg, Abuyyid minaret File:DakhlaQasrLintel.jpg, Lintel in Qasr el-Dakhla File:DakhlaQasrHieroglyphs.jpg, Hieroglyphic inscriptions File:DakhlaQasrNasrMosqueInside.jpg, Inside the Nasr el-Din mosque File:House in Al-Qasr, Egypt.jpg, Clay house

After 1800

Sir Archibald Edmonstone visited Dakhla oasis in the year 1819. He was succeeded by several other early travellers, among whom Friedrich Gerhard Rohlfs in 1873–1874. It was not until 1908 that the first Egyptologist, Herbert Winlock, visited Dakhla Oasis and noted its monuments in some systematic manner. In the 1950s, detailed studies began, first by Ahmed Fakhry, and in the late 1970s, expeditions of the

Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale An institute is an organizational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes c ...

and the Dakhleh Oasis Project (see below) each began detailed studies in the oasis.

Recent discoveries

In August 2017, archaeologists from the Ministry of Antiquities announced the discovery of five mud-brick tombs at Bir esh-Shaghala, dating back nearly 2000 years. Researchers also revealed worn masks gilded with gold, several large jars and a piece of pottery with unsolved ancient Egyptian writing on it. Some of the tombs are completely large containing several burial chambers, while one tomb has a roof built in the shape of a pyramid and some of them with vaulted roofs.

Geography

Dakhla Oasis consists of several communities, along a string of sub-oases. The main settlements are Mut (more fully Mut el-Kharab and anciently called Mothis), El-Masara, Al-Qasr, together with several smaller villages.

Climate

Dakhla Oasis has a

hot desert climate The desert climate or arid climate (in the Köppen climate classification ''BWh'' and ''BWk'') is a dry climate sub-type in which there is a severe excess of evaporation over precipitation. The typically bald, rocky, or sandy surfaces in desert ...

(

Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification divides Earth climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature. The five main groups are ''A'' (tropical), ''B'' (arid), ''C'' (te ...

''BWh''), typical of much of

Dakhleh Oasis Project

The Dakhleh Oasis Project (DOP) is a long-term study project of the Dakhleh Oasis and the surrounding palaeo-oasis, initiated in 1978 when the

Royal Ontario Museum The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is a museum of art, world culture and natural history in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the largest museums in North America and the largest in Canada. It attracts more than one million visitors every year ...

and the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities were awarded a joint concession for part of the Oasis. In 1979, the Centre for Archaeology and Ancient History at Monash University began to cooperate in the project. The DOP studies the interaction between environmental changes and human activity in the Dakhleh Oasis. The excavations at Ismant el-Kharab (ancient Kellis), Mut el-Kharab (ancient Mothis), Deir Abu Metta and Muzawwaqa were undertaken with the cooperation of Monash University. The DOP has also excavated at 'Ain el-Gazzareen, El Qasr el-Dakhil, Deir el Hagar and Ain Birbiyeh. In 1985, the Petroglyph Unit of the Dakhleh Oasis Project was created by Lech Krzyżaniak, then director of the Archaeological Museum in Poznań, under the auspices of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology University of Warsaw. At first, the studies of the petroglyphs focused on the eastern part of the oasis, where rock carvings had been documented by archaeologists already before

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

( Herbert Winlock and Hans Alexander Winkler). The expedition created systematic documentation of both the depictions mentioned earlier in the literature and the newly discovered ones. Aerial photographs proved helpful in this work. Then, under the direction of Michał Kobusiewicz from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the

Polish Academy of Sciences The Polish Academy of Sciences (, PAN) is a Polish state-sponsored institution of higher learning. Headquartered in Warsaw, it is responsible for spearheading the development of science across the country by a society of distinguished scholars a ...

, attention was turned to the area of the Central Oasis where 270 new petroglyph sites were recorded. The current director of The Petroglyph Unit, Paweł Polkowski from the Archaeological Museum in Poznań, extended the area of prospection and created a map showing the distribution of more than 1,300 panels with rock art. The depictions date from the Prehistory to the Islamic period and include images of animals and people (often pregnant women), hieroglyphs, and Beduin markings. In addition to the Dakhleh Oasis Project, long-term excavations have been conducted in Balat (IFAO), Amheida (New York University) and Bir el-Shaghala (Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities).

Dakhleh Trust

The Dakhleh Trust was formed in 1999 and is a registered charity in Britain. Its declared aim is to advance understanding of the history of the environment and cultural evolution throughout the Quaternary period in the eastern

, and particularly in the Dakhla Oasis. To this end, the present trustees have committed themselves to supporting the DOP.The Dakhleh Trust
Retrieved May 1, 2020.

References

External links

IFAO Page for Balat Site Excavations

Dākhla on Wikivoyage
{{Authority control Populated places in New Valley Governorate Oases of Egypt Western Desert (Egypt)