Some Ptolemaic and Roman Sites in the Central Eastern Desert

Abstract

The University of Delaware conducted numerous surveys in the Eastern Desert between 1987 and 2015. This contribution examines eight sites studied between 1990 and 1999 that lay east of the Nile city of Qena in Upper Egypt. They include mines, quarries, and road infrastructure (forts and accommodations for transport animals) that supported these mineral extraction activities. Sites throughout the region range from pre-historic to Islamic and modern, but this study focuses only on those from the Ptolemaic and Roman periods.

Examination of sites presented here expands our knowledge of the economic importance of this area of the Eas- tern Desert, dominated by mines and quarries and the infrastructure that facilitated exploitation of mineral resources and their transport to the Nile valley city of Qena.