Water resources and their management in the Eastern Desert of Egypt from Antiquity to the present day

Abstract

Since the last great period of aridification of the Sahara about 5,000 years ago, crossing or inhabiting the North African desert regions has meant being able to locate, maintain and protect watering points that are essential nodes in the exchange networks. These challenges are particularly important in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, which separates the Nile Valley from the Red Sea, because there are no perennial oases, nomadic populations have long escaped the control of successive states, and routes are constrained by topography. The region has nevertheless maintained a strategic importance, at least since the predynastic period and up to the present day, for its natural resources (particularly mineral and mining resources and, to a lesser extent, vegetation) and for its essential place in travel and trade networks (Red Sea ports and access to the African coast and the Indian Ocean, pilgrimages to Mecca). Since the voyage of James Bruce in 1769, many European and North American travelers and explorers have traversed the Eastern Desert of Egypt and produced accounts and maps, the critical analysis and cross-checking of which make it possible to better assess the ways in which water was managed from the 18th to the 20th centuries. They thus allow us to document very precisely the period before the introduction of motorized vehicles and hydraulic pumping and to establish comparison points with earlier periods and with current networks. When combined with archaeological and ancient textual data in a regressive approach, these elements open up new perspectives for the diachronic study of the Eastern Desert watering points.