The ancient Egyptians knew very well the territory that they inhabited: from earliest times the annual cycle of the inundation had determined the best locations where villages and towns could develop (Butzer 1976), and people had learned to exploit the changing conditions of the river. The landscape was not as static as it is today but changed dramatically from winter to summer - and so did the available space and the possible activities.
Navigation was the most important method for transporting people and goods. Whilst during the dry season this was mainly a north-south business, the inundation greatly increased the number of destinations that could be reached by boat to the east and to the west. A good example of how the Egyptians exploited this substantial change is the choice of the locations to build some of the massive Old Kingdom pyramid complexes (Lehner 1997: 58, 82-3, 142, 231).
The valley, with its relatively uniform but flexible landscape, did not hold many secrets; the case with the deserts was different since in these areas long distances separated settlements and sites of interest. A preliminary knowledge of the territory was essential to travel safely across desert areas, and natural landmarks might prove particularly useful to maintain the right direction. The only geographic map that survives from ancient Egypt dates to the New Kingdom and represents, in fact, an itinerary across the Eastern Desert, namely a section ofWadi Hammamat leading to the gold-mining settlement of Bir Umm Fawakhir (Harrell and Brown 1992). It contains the drawing of a track running along a sequence of wadis bordered by high mountains, the profile of which is drawn flat on either side of the track. Annotations in hieratic provide further information on locations and directions. Originally interpreted as a description of an area meant to identify the settlement (Murray 1942; Goyon 1949), the map is better interpreted as an itinerary to reach it (Baud 1990). As such, it may be considered a precursor of the later Roman itineraria non tantum adnotata sed etiam picta (‘‘itineraries not only annotated but also illustrated’’, cf. Brodersen 2001).
It is possible that similar topographical maps existed to support other long-distance expeditions, even before the New Kingdom. There is evidence that the Egyptians traveled far into the deserts from the earliest times (Ikram and Rossi 2004). From the Old Kindgom we have Khafre’s mining expeditions to Gebel el-Asr, in Nubia (Shaw and Bloxam 1999; Shaw 2000b) and the deposits of jars found along the track linking Dakhla to the Gilf el-Kebir (Kuper 2003) as well as Harkhuf’s accounts of his travels which prove that the Egyptians knew several itineraries to reach the southern land ofYam (Yoyotte 1953; Edel 1955; Dixon 1958; Spalinger 1979a). No evidence of how these routes were recorded survives, but annotated drawings would have been the most logical and convenient method.
World History
