The Theban Desert Road Survey is an archaeological research project operated in conjunction with the

Egyptian Ministry of Culture The Ministry of Culture of Egypt is a ministry responsible for maintaining and promoting the culture of Egypt. The current minister is Ines Abdel-Dayem, former chairperson of the Cairo Opera and one of six women in the Egyptian Cabinet. Histo ...

's Supreme Council for Antiquities that is being conducted in the Western Desert in

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

that focuses on the ancient connections between Thebes and such settlements as the

Kharga Oasis The Kharga Oasis (Arabic: , ) ; Coptic: ( "Oasis of Hib", "Oasis of Psoi") is the southernmost of Egypt's five western oases. It is located in the Western Desert, about 200 km (125 miles) to the west of the Nile valley. "Kharga" or ...

. The project uses

remote sensing Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation. The term is applied especially to acquiring information about Earth ...

to identify roads and caravan trails that were used in antiquity to identify possible sites of previously unknown communities. Established in 1991 by

Egyptologists This is a partial list of Egyptologists. An Egyptologist is any archaeologist, historian, linguist, or art historian who specializes in Egyptology, the scientific study of Ancient Egypt and its antiquities. Demotists are Egyptologists who speciali ...

Deborah Darnell and her then-husband

John Coleman Darnell John Coleman Darnell is an American Egyptologist. Biography Darnell attributes his interest in archaeology to his mother, who was also had a lifelong interested in archaeology. She grew up in south Alabama and had a particular interest in the Mi ...

, the survey project grew substantially when it gained the support of

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1998. The Theban Desert Road Survey has discovered sites from

Predynastic Egypt Prehistoric Egypt and Predynastic Egypt span the period from the earliest human settlement to the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period around 3100 BC, starting with the first Pharaoh, Narmer for some Egyptologists, Hor-Aha for others, with th ...

, including substantial caches of pottery and other artifacts. The project was begun by Deborah Darnell and

, who started searching along caravan trails in the Western Desert west of

Luxor Luxor ( ar, الأقصر, al-ʾuqṣur, lit=the palaces) is a modern city in Upper (southern) Egypt which includes the site of the Ancient Egyptian city of ''Thebes''. Luxor has frequently been characterized as the "world's greatest open-a ...

in the early 1990s under an approach they described as desert road archaeology.Pringle, Heather
"The Lost City: A discovery in the desert could rewrite the history of ancient Egypt."
''Yale Alumni Magazine'', September / October 2010. Accessed May 13, 2020. Among their discoveries are inscriptions found at

Wadi el-Hol Wadi el-Hol is a valley on the Farshut Road, north-west of Luxor on the Qena Bend, situated on the west bank of the river Nile in Egypt. Rock inscriptions in the valley appear to show the oldest examples of phonetic alphabetic writing discovered ...

, dating back 3,800 years, which are in the

Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Proto-Sinaitic (also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan, the North Semitic alphabet, or Early Alphabetic) is considered the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian ...

, some of the earliest known examples of phonetic alphabetic writing, in contrast to the pictographs used in

Egyptian hieroglyphs Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...

.Baker, Dorie
"Finding sheds new light on the alphabet's origins"
''Yale Bulletin & Calendar'', December 13, 1999-January 17, 2000. Volume 28, Number 16. Accessed May 13, 2020. In 2010,

Zahi Hawass Zahi Abass Hawass ( ar, زاهي حواس; born May 28, 1947) is an Egyptian archaeologist, Egyptologist, and former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs, serving twice. He has also worked at archaeological sites in the Nile Delta, the Wes ...

announced that the team had found a site of a major residential and military center at Kharga Oasis at the end of the Girga Road dating back 3,500 years, the earliest known urban development in the Egyptian desert. The initial finds were made around the year 2000 providing evidence of a Persian outpost near a temple dating to over 2,500 years old, which led the Darnells to conclude that the site must be one of some importance. Other finds at the site showed pottery that indicated that there had been trade over a wide area and that there had been intensive baking operations and "large-scale ceramic production", all signs that the site had been a major settlement in antiquity. Wilford, John Noble
"Desert Roads Lead to Discovery in Egypt"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', September 6, 2010. Accessed May 13, 2020. At the site named Umm Mawagir ("mother of bread molds" in

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

), the Darnells discovered a substantial cache of bread molds, grinding stones and other baking implements, with a total of 1,000 lb of objects found, more than enough material to be "baking enough bread to feed an army" at a site with a population in the thousands during the period from 1650

BCE Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the or ...

to 1550 BCE, a thousand years before any other known settlement in the area of the Kharga Oasis. The site "completely explains the rise and importance of Thebes", as that city's control over the oasis communities to its west at Kharga and

Dakhla Oasis Dakhla Oasis (Egyptian Arabic: , , "''the inner oasis"''), is one of the seven oases of Egypt's Western Desert. Dakhla Oasis lies in the New Valley Governorate, 350 km (220 mi.) from the Nile and between the oases of Farafra and Khar ...

allowed it to retain control of the area and to avoid the incursions of the

Hyksos Hyksos (; Egyptian '' ḥqꜣ(w)- ḫꜣswt'', Egyptological pronunciation: ''hekau khasut'', "ruler(s) of foreign lands") is a term which, in modern Egyptology, designates the kings of the Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt (fl. c. 1650–1550 BC). T ...

who controlled the

Nile Delta The Nile Delta ( ar, دلتا النيل, or simply , is the delta formed in Lower Egypt where the Nile River spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of the world's largest river deltas—from Alexandria in the west to Po ...

to the north and the

Nubia Nubia () (Nobiin: Nobīn, ) is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the first cataract of the Nile (just south of Aswan in southern Egypt) and the confluence of the Blue and White Niles (in Khartoum in central Sudan), or ...

n people of

Kerma Kerma was the capital city of the Kerma culture, which was located in present-day Sudan at least 5,500 years ago. Kerma is one of the largest archaeological sites in ancient Nubia. It has produced decades of extensive excavations and research, in ...

to the south.Baker, Dorie
"Ancient 'Lost' Egyptian City Discovered By Yale Archaeologists"

press release dated August 26, 2010. Accessed May 13, 2020.

Publications

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References

{{Reflist 1991 establishments in Egypt Projects established in 1991 Archaeology of Egypt Egyptology Proto-Sinaitic script Western Desert (Egypt) Thebes, Egypt Projects in Africa