Roman Egypt Roman Egypt was an imperial province of the Roman Empire from 30 BC to AD 642. The province encompassed most of modern-day Egypt except for the Sinai. It was bordered by the provinces of Crete and Cyrenaica to the west and Judaea, ...

, a (plural ) was an enclosed (and often fortified) "watering station" along trade routes in dry regions. A ''hydreuma'' was a manned and fortified watering hole or way station along a caravan route, providing a man-made

oasis In ecology, an oasis (; : oases ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environmentKharga Oasis and outlying parts of villages with wells there. The

Arabs Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of yea ...

called these Roman fortified wells (monastery), (village) or diminutive or (

caravanserai A caravanserai (or caravansary; ) was an inn that provided lodging for travelers, merchants, and Caravan (travellers), caravans. They were present throughout much of the Islamic world. Depending on the region and period, they were called by a ...

Construction, use and history

are fortified water supply posts in the Eastern Sahara. According to

Strabo Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-si ...

they had wells or

cistern A cistern (; , ; ) is a waterproof receptacle for holding liquids, usually water. Cisterns are often built to catch and store rainwater. To prevent leakage, the interior of the cistern is often lined with hydraulic plaster. Cisterns are disti ...

s: * A had either one large cistern or several smaller ones, and they could be supplied by runoff from neighbouring mountains. The cisterns were built out of bricks or stones, coated with waterproof plaster, and almost certainly covered to protect them from

evaporation Evaporation is a type of vaporization that occurs on the Interface (chemistry), surface of a liquid as it changes into the gas phase. A high concentration of the evaporating substance in the surrounding gas significantly slows down evapora ...

. Some may have received water conveyed through channels from nearby springs. In at least one , hydraulic tanks and troughs were found. Wells were located at the bottom of funnels dug into the sand, and later wells often included water sweeps or water wheels. The use of water wheels in is unproven, however. * Commonly, the fortifications formed square-shaped buildings with dimensions of with one gate to the outside, although circular or unfortified or embanked are also known. The structures had one gate to the outside, towers with stairs at the corners, and several rooms facing an interior courtyard that contained the wells or cisterns. The rooms, presumably covered with roofs made out of plant material, were presumably used as barracks while animals remained within the courtyard. The were situated along trade routes. Apart from water supply, they might have been used as trading monitoring posts for tax collection purposes, as

garrison A garrison is any body of troops stationed in a particular location, originally to guard it. The term now often applies to certain facilities that constitute a military base or fortified military headquarters. A garrison is usually in a city ...

s and also as military-representative structures. Some were used as water sources to irrigate land, and to supply water for the port of Berenice Troglodytica (Berenike). The fortifications served to protect the well from desert sand. These forts are attested by Pliny, in texts found through the Eastern Desert, reports of individual transports, as well as in the Antonine Itinerary and the Tabula Peutingeriana. While Strabo mentions that the first ones were built by Ptolemy II, most were built by the Romans between the first and second century AD on the old Egyptian routes between the Nile Valley and the

Red Sea The Red Sea is a sea inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. Its connection to the ocean is in the south, through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden. To its north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and th ...

, after the earlier Ptolemaic trade route between Edfu and Berenike was largely abandoned. Reportedly, Emperor

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 ...

fortified many , which thus became , presumably because indigenous people began to use

camel A camel (from and () from Ancient Semitic: ''gāmāl'') is an even-toed ungulate in the genus ''Camelus'' that bears distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. Camels have long been domesticated and, as livestock, they provid ...

s for raids. They were later often repaired or reconstructed. Today many are either destroyed or buried by sand, some were restored in the early 20th century.

Roads with hydreumata

They are found along the old roads that lead to Berenike and Myos Hormos. These ports were part of the Roman-Indian trade routes and were active during the era of the early

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

, when as many as hundred ships departed from Berenike every year, and are mentioned in ancient accounts like the ''

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea The ''Periplus of the Erythraean Sea'' (), also known by its Latin name as the , is a Greco-Roman world, Greco-Roman periplus written in Koine Greek that describes navigation and Roman commerce, trading opportunities from Roman Egyptian ports lik ...

''. Traffic through these routes increased after the discovery of the

monsoon A monsoon () is traditionally a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation but is now used to describe seasonal changes in Atmosphere of Earth, atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annu ...

winds and was mostly by caravan, without wagons. These ports were not self-sufficient, instead relying on supplies brought to them overland from the Nile Valley, as contemporary records indicate. The roads were not paved nor did they feature milestones, sometimes they were not even cleared of rocks on the roadway. Numerous branch roads connected the roads with each other and with sites like quarries. Caravans on average would have reached each after two days from the last one; Strabo reports that some travel occurred during night. The two roads to Berenike and Myos Hormos have distinct architectures, which may be due to them having different strategic importance to the Romans, as the Koptos-Myos Hormos route may have doubled as an internal military border. Additionally, there are non- buildings along the roads, as well as

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

mines.

Examples

Among the are: * Bi'r Nakheil, el-Duwi (; which also featured semicircular towers), Seyala, el-Hamrah, el-Zerkah (, ), Bir Umm Fawakhir, el-Hammamat (), el-Muweih (, ), Qasr el-Banat, el-Laqeita (, after a palm grove that still exists today) and el-Matula on the road from Myos Hormos ( Quseir) to Koptos ( Qift). * Along the road from Berenike to Koptos one finds Wadi Abu Greiya (, sometimes misread as ), (sometimes identified as Wadi el-Khashir, which is improbable), Abu Ghusun (), , ad-Dweig (), Wadi Gerf (), (which could be either Bezah or Wadi Abu Greiya), Wadi Dagbagh (, of unknown etymology), (; with an associated rock shelter) and Khasm el-Menih (). Another is off-road at Siket (). * On the Via Hadriana between Berenike and Antinoöpolis there are at Abu Sha'ar al-Bahri (), Abu Sha'ar al-Qibli (), Abu Gariya (), Wadi Safaga (), Quei (), Marsa Dabr/Marsa Nabiyah () and Wadi Lahma (). There are also forts, cisterns, camps and other kinds of stop along this road. Other small lie along the Edfu (Apollonopolis Magna)-Berenike road at Abbad, Abu Rahal, Abu Midrik (), Rod al-Legah, Seyrig and Umm Gariya. Their occurrence has been reported from west of the Nile as well, in particular late Roman oasis fortifications, but not from

Numidia Numidia was the ancient kingdom of the Numidians in northwest Africa, initially comprising the territory that now makes up Algeria, but later expanding across what is today known as Tunisia and Libya. The polity was originally divided between ...

. In the

Libyan Desert The Libyan Desert (not to be confused with the Libyan Sahara) is a geographical region filling the northeastern Sahara Desert, from eastern Libya to the Western Desert (Egypt), Western Desert of Egypt and far northwestern Sudan. On medieval m ...

, Roman-era resemble but were fortified grain-houses.

References

Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

External links

Ancient History Sourcebook: Pliny: ''Natural History'' 6.96-111. (On India)
*{{cite book , last1=Brun , first1=Jean-Pierre , last2=Faucher , first2=Thomas , last3=Bérangère , first3=Redon , last4=Sidebotham , first4=Steven , title=THE EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT DURING THE GRECO-ROMAN PERIOD: ARCHAEOLOGICAL REPORTS , series=Institut des civilisations , date=2018 , publisher=Collège de France , location=Paris , isbn=9782722604889 , url=https://books.openedition.org/cdf/5230 , access-date=Jan 3, 2021 Near East in classical antiquity Oases