Strabo describes the arid lands between Egypt and Meroe. Nubia was sparsely inhabited and consisted of ‘a long, narrow, winding stretch of river-land, with a population that was not well equipped for warfare, or any other kind of life’.41 Aethiopians from Meroe dominated most of Nubia, but other population groups inhabited the region and they still preserved some level of independence. The Nubae (Nubians) mostly occupied the west banks of the Nile and the sand-dune fringes of the Sahara. Lands to the east side of the river were subject to the Blemmyes who inhabited rocky and mountainous terrain on the frontiers of the Eastern Desert.42
The Roman Dodekaschoinos extended barely seventy miles south of Syene, but this territory gave the Empire control of at least ten Nubian settlements. It also secured Roman access to the main gold mines in the deserts of northern Nubia. At the southern limit of the Dodekaschoinos was the town of Hiera Sycaminos (modern Maharraqa) which became the outer frontier of this militarised Roman territory.
Travellers began their journey into Nubia from Syene where they docked their river craft and made a land crossing around the rapids that formed the First Cataract. The geographer Strabo was familiar with the southern Egyptian frontier and he travelled to the region with the Roman governor Aelius Gallus. The governor's party disembarked from their river craft at Syene and boarded wagons that took them across a level plain of hard earth.43 But most people probably walked the four-mile distance by using an ancient footpath that followed the banks of the Nile. Ancient travellers were vulnerable to sudden attack from bandits and desert nomads on this stretch of their journey, so the footpath was flanked by a large defensive wall. This was probably first built during the Twelfth Dynasty of Egyptian Pharaohs in the Middle Kingdom Period (19911786 BC). The wall was improved by subsequent rulers and by the Roman era it consisted of two parallel mud-brick facades filled with granite rubble. With the addition of parapets, the wall was up to thirty feet high and nearly nine feet wide. From this fortified walkway Roman troops could watch the surrounding desert and supervise the travellers crossing back and forth between Egypt and Nubia.44
The defended footpath ended at the banks of the Nile opposite the island-site of Philae. On this stretch of the river the Roman army maintained a permanent fortified camp to guard the frontier. Roman troops possibly occupied a dozen outposts in the Dodekaschoinos by restoring a range of ancient fortresses established by the Pharaohs and the Ptolemais. These garrisons guarded important temple buildings on the banks of the Nile and monitored the movement of people approaching Egypt. Most Roman outposts were on the west bank of the Nile, suggesting that the main threat to these garrisons came from nomads from the Eastern Desert. Some of these settlements had small satellite posts on the east bank of the river that were probably connected by bridges. There was also a series of small Roman watchtowers on hilltops overlooking the river valley. Graffiti confirms that Roman sentries were stationed at these posts and would have signalled to the garrisons if trouble was sighted.45
World History
