Building a Model to Reconstruct the Hellenistic and Roman Road Networks of the Eastern Desert of Egypt, a Semi-Empirical Approach Based on Modern Travelers’ Itineraries

Louis Manière,Maël Crépy,Bérangère Redon

doi:10.5334/jcaa.67

Abstract

The Egyptian Eastern Desert, the part of the Sahara Desert that connects the Nile and the Red Sea, is rich in natural resources and meshed with multiple networks. The adoption of the camel as the main mode of transportation in the 1st millennium BC, faster and with a greater load capacity than humans or donkeys, dramatically changed the logistics used to cross this difficult terrain. Our objective, therefore, is to understand and reconstruct circulation in the region during Antiquity through location factors and the evolution of roads. For this purpose, a least-cost network specific to camel movements has been created for this arid and mountainous region. The network is based on the reconstructed itineraries of modern travelers (18th and 19th centuries) who crossed the region under similar conditions to ancient ones. These routes and the travelers’ diaries have enabled us to analyze the main travel constraints; they provide a set of data to calibrate the different movement factors of camel caravans and to validate the calculated least cost paths. The modeled network takes into account transport infrastructures, navigation conditions in plain areas, difficulties of the terrain surface, and the topographical constraints specific to camels. This methodological paper details our approach from the description of movement factors, their mapping, and their use in least cost algorithms to the creation of a network covering 253 archaeological sites and 204 desert watering places. It aims to provide the archaeological and GIS communities with the method and tools to reproduce itineraries based on the hypotheses of movement and empirical data. For this purpose, the data is available and documented by a data paper.

Highlights

RECREATING ANCIENT DESERT NETWORK ITINERARIES WITH SPATIAL MODELINGThe Desert Networks project (DN) was started in 2017 as a way to study the networks that once meshed Egypt’s Eastern Desert, from the middle of the 2nd millennium BC to the end of the 3rd century AD (Late Roman period)
In order to overcome the lack of sources for determining the general factors of movement in the Eastern Desert in ancient times, this study proposes to extrapolate data from the analysis of the itineraries of modern travelers (18th to early 20th centuries), which can be documented more precisely, and apply them to ancient routes
The current DN network provide routes reflecting the reality of the terrain between many archaeological sites, rather than a virtual and largely simplified network, which can be used in a variety of ways (Figure 13)

Summary

Introduction

RECREATING ANCIENT DESERT NETWORK ITINERARIES WITH SPATIAL MODELINGThe Desert Networks project (DN) was started in 2017 as a way to study the networks that once meshed Egypt’s Eastern Desert (on the region, see Brun et al 2018; Sidebotham 2011), from the middle of the 2nd millennium BC (beginning of the New Kingdom) to the end of the 3rd century AD (Late Roman period). Our ultimate aim is to reconstitute the organization of human networks (e.g. state networks, such as those of the soldiers protecting the caravans, or which brought together the thousands of people employed in the great imperial quarries of Mons Claudianus, as well as the more tenuous solidarity networks which for decades linked the desert’s inhabitants) and economic networks (by tracing the circulation of goods within the region, and their integration into the great contemporary economic networks, from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean) For this purpose, and as an initial step, we defined the spatial foundations of this study in order to focus on the reconstruction of the Eastern Desert’s physical networks. This approach to understanding human movement requires an analysis of the general movement factors of societies and archaeological evidence of mobility (Murrieta-Flores 2010)

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Conclusion