ABSTRACT
Rather than isolating Egypt and Nubia from the outside world, the deserts east and west of the Nile Valley provided the perfect foundations for a network of roads, across which products, messengers, armies, and ideas passed between Nilotic centers and desert cultures. Particularly well preserved are sites and routes linking the Thebaid to the southern oases in the west and the small but significant hub of southwestern desert routes radiating out of Kurkur Oasis to the southwest of Aswan. Both of these networks of roads and outposts reveal physical evidence for the importance of the early Middle Kingdom of Egypt – and in particular the reign of Monthuhotep II (ca. 2061–2010 BC) – in developing and formalizing the pharaonic state’s increasing interest in desert traffic. Archaeological and epigraphic remains associated with the Girga Road in particular combine to reveal something of the motivations and mechanisms behind ancient Egyptian development and control of caravan routes through the Nile Valley’s desert hinterlands.
