Selima Oasis is an

oasis In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environmentSudan located west of the Third Cataract of the

Nile The Nile, , Bohairic , lg, Kiira , Nobiin language, Nobiin: Áman Dawū is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa and has historically been considered ...

and the ancient site of

Amara West Amara, usually distinguished as Amara East and Amara West, is the modern name of an ancient Egyptian city in Nubia, in what today is Sudan. Amara West is located on the west side of the Nile, eastern Amara, on the eastern side of the Nile. The to ...

. It lies along the

Darb al-Arbaʿīn Darb ( fa, درب) is a village in Chelo Rural District, Chelo District, Andika County, Khuzestan Province, Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is ...

(Forty Days' Road), a desert track linking Kordofan with

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 Med ...

. Just to the north of Selima, the track splits into a northern route going to Kharga Oasis and a northwestern route going to

Dunqul Oasis Dunqul Oasis is an oasis near the First Cataract of the Nile in southern Egypt. It lies southwest of modern Aswan. Considered one of the important oases of Ancient Egypt, it was used by General Weni as a staging point for military incursions i ...

Richard Lobban Richard A. Lobban, Jr., husband of Dr. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, is an anthropologist and early pioneer in social network modeling, archaeologist, Egyptologist, Sudanist, foreign policy expert, human rights activist, mentor, father, and beekeeper ...

, ''Historical Dictionary of Ancient and Medieval Nubia'' (Scarecrow Press, 2004), p. 347.

Geography

Selima lies at the base of an escarpment of

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The J ...

and

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

rock. Around 8300 BC, a freshwater lake formed over the site with depths of . The surrounding vegetation was

savannah A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to ...

at the time. The remains of lacustrine fauna and of

Palaeolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός '' palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...

artefacts have been recovered from the site. Around 4300, it transitioned to a saltwater ''

sabkha A sabkha ( ar, سبخة) is a coastal, supratidal mudflat or sandflat in which evaporite-saline minerals accumulate as the result of semiarid to arid climate. Sabkhas are gradational between land and intertidal zone within restricted coastal p ...

'' and by 2700 it had dried up. Today it lies over the

Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System The Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS) is the world's largest known fossil water aquifer system. It is located underground in the Eastern end of the Sahara desert and spans the political boundaries of four countries in north-eastern Africa. N ...

.Friederike Jesse, Coralie Gradel and Franck Derrien
"Archaeology at Selima Oasis, Northern Sudan: Recent Research"
''Sudan & Nubia'', No. 19 (2015), pp. 161–169 The flora of Selima is not particularly varied and includes grasses ('' Desmostachya bipinnata'' and ''

Imperata cylindrica ''Imperata cylindrica'' (commonly known as cogongrass or kunai grass ) is a species of perennial rhizomatous grass native to tropical and subtropical Asia, Micronesia, Melanesia, Australia, Africa, and southern Europe. It has also been introduc ...

''), reeds (''

Phragmites australis ''Phragmites australis'', known as the common reed, is a species of plant. It is a broadly distributed wetland grass that can grow up to tall. Description ''Phragmites australis'' commonly forms extensive stands (known as reed beds), which may ...

''), camelthorn ('' Alhagi maurorum''), date palm (''

Phoenix dactylifera ''Phoenix dactylifera'', commonly known as date or date palm, is a flowering plant species in the palm family, Arecaceae, cultivated for its edible sweet fruit called dates. The species is widely cultivated across northern Africa, the Middle Ea ...

''), dom palm (''

Hyphaene thebaica ''Hyphaene thebaica'', with common names doum palm (Ar: دوم) and gingerbread tree (also mistakenly doom palm), is a type of palm tree with edible oval fruit. It is a native to the Arabian Peninsula and also to the northern half and western pa ...

'') and several species of tamarisk (''

Tamarix The genus ''Tamarix'' (tamarisk, salt cedar, taray) is composed of about 50–60 species of flowering plants in the family Tamaricaceae, native to drier areas of Eurasia and Africa. The generic name originated in Latin and may refer to the Ta ...

''). Although upwards of 2500 date palms were counted in the oasis in 1902, just over 1000 were found in 2011. Dates have never been an important part of the economy of the oasis.

History

Selima has been in use for millennia as a waypoint for travellers to bypass the Second Cataract. Pottery of the

Mesolithic The Mesolithic (Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymo ...

Early Khartoum culture has been found at Selima. The Egyptian official Harkhuf almost certainly used it on his trading missions to

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, ...

. Traveller's descriptions of the oasis date back to the 16th century and all describe the place as having easy access to water. Potable water is found below the surface. In the early 19th century,

Frédéric Cailliaud Frédéric Cailliaud (9 June 1787 – 1 May 1869) was a French naturalist, mineralogist and conchologist. He was born, and died, in Nantes, where he was the curator of the Natural History Museum of Nantes from 1836 to 1869. He travelled in E ...

found three wells in use at Selima and three wells are still in use today. The archaeologist William Boyd Kennedy Shaw, who visited Selima during his circuit of the

Libyan Desert The Libyan Desert (not to be confused with the Libyan Sahara) is a geographical region filling the north-eastern Sahara Desert, from eastern Libya to the Western Desert of Egypt and far northwestern Sudan. On medieval maps, its use predates t ...

in 1935, called it the "loveliest of all the Libyan oases". Only minor

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscape ...

work was done at Selima in the 1970s and 1980s. The first major excavations were undertaken by the Selima Oasis Project in 2011, 2013 and 2014. Atop a mound about southeast of the oasis vegetation lies the Beit es-Selima, the ruins of an ancient multi-roomed stone structure. Carbon dating and

potsherd In archaeology, a sherd, or more precisely, potsherd, is commonly a historic or prehistoric fragment of pottery, although the term is occasionally used to refer to fragments of stone and glass vessels, as well. Occasionally, a piece of broken p ...

s put the building in use during the Nubian early (AD 600–850) and classical (AD 850–1100) Christian periods. Most pottery recovered was wheel-made and a few decorated pieces were from

Aswan Aswan (, also ; ar, أسوان, ʾAswān ; cop, Ⲥⲟⲩⲁⲛ ) is a city in Southern Egypt, and is the capital of the Aswan Governorate. Aswan is a busy market and tourist centre located just north of the Aswan Dam on the east bank of ...

. Although not originally fortified, the building dominates the surrounding countryside and in the early 20th century was used a police watchtower or fort (''tabia'') by the Anglo-Egyptian administration. Theories about its purpose abound. It has been described as a tavern on the Darb al-Arbaʿīn managed by a warrior-princess named Selima and as a Christian

convent A convent is a community of monks, nuns, religious brothers or, sisters or priests. Alternatively, ''convent'' means the building used by the community. The word is particularly used in the Catholic Church, Lutheran churches, and the Anglic ...

.Friederike Jesse, "Fending off the Desert Dwellers – The Gala Abu Ahmed Fortress and other fortified Places in the South Libyan Desert", in Dietrich Raue (ed.), ''Handbook of Ancient Nubia'' (De Gruyter, 2019), pp. 1069–1092. The Catholic missionary

Theodor Krump Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor. List of people with the given name Theodor * Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher * Theodor Aman, Romanian painter * Theodor Blue ...

described it as the ruins of an eight-celled monastery when he passed through in 1700. Support for this theory may come from the '' Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam'', a 10th-century Persian geography, which describes two monasteries as lying "in the desert between the Nuba and the Sudan".Derek Welsby, ''The Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia. Pagans, Christians and Muslims Along the Middle Nile'' (British Museum, 2002), p. 86. On and around the Beit es-Selima are numerous inscriptions and engravings. These include writing in

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a 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. E.Watson; Walte ...

and

Libyco-Berber The Libyco-Berber alphabet or the Libyc alphabet (modern Berber name: ''Agemmay Alibu-Maziɣ'') is an abjad writing system that was used during the first millennium BC by various Berber peoples of North Africa and the Canary Islands, to write an ...

, but not

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

or Coptic. Some signs might be camel brands or tribal markings. There are also a few figural engravings. They show that Selima was in contact with the Kharga Oasis, the

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 ...

and the Darfur. In 1928, the archaeologist Thomas Leach reported that salt was mined at Selima by groups who came by donkey and camel from Sukkot,

Argo Island Argo Island (also: ''Island of Arkô'' and ''Jezira Argo'') is an island of the Nile in Sudan. The island contains a town of the same name and the Nubian Nubian may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Nubia, a region along the Nile r ...

and the Mahas. The salt caravans followed a track from Sagiat el-Abd in the Nile valley. According to

oral tradition Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (1985 ...

recorded in the vicinity of the

Dal Cataract In Indian cuisine, ''dal'' (also spelled ''daal'' or ''dhal''; pronunciation: , Hindi: दाल, Urdu: ) are dried, split pulses (e.g., lentils, peas, and beans) that do not require soaking before cooking. India is the largest producer o ...

in 2014, the last salt caravan took place in 1980. Today there is a military post, a police office and a customs station at Selima. Most traffic passing through is going to or coming from

Libya Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Su ...

References

{{coord, 21.366667, N, 29.316667, E, display=title Oases of Africa Geography of Sudan Nubian architecture in Sudan