In Greco-Roman times Bahariya Oasis was an important stop along the routes that crossed the Western Desert - used for both commercial and military activities. Alexander the Great may have passed through this oasis after he had visited the oracle in Siwa oasis. A temple at Ain el-Tabinieh in Bahariya Oasis is carved with reliefs of Alexander presenting offerings to Amen, and his name appears in cartouches.
About 45 kilometers south of Bahariya oasis on the route to Farafra oasis is the town of el-Haiz, which was briefly investigated in 1940 by Egyptian archaeologist Ahmed Fakhry. Excavations there by the Supreme council of Antiquities (ScA) have uncovered the mud-brick remains of a large Roman Period fortress, next to which is a Roman “palace.” Also at this site (Ain el-Rees) are a Roman Period cemetery, which has only been partially excavated (in 1900), and an early coptic church.
In Roman times Bahariya oasis was a wine-producing region, although more favored wines came from Dakhla and Kharga oases. At Bahariya oasis evidence of a winery has been found to the west of the Roman fortress at Ain el-Rees, where Egyptian archaeologists have identified concentrations of grape seeds and sherds of wine jars. According to Zahi Hawass, who directed the ScA excavations in Bahariya, the largest room in this building was where the grapes were sorted and then washed. The better-quality fruit would have been taken to a processing room, with a depression in the center where the grapes were pressed. There are also the remains of a series of spouts, channels, and basins for making different mixtures/types of wine.
The large Greco-Roman cemetery at Bahariya oasis, known as the “Valley of the Golden Mummies,” was accidentally discovered in 1996 when an ScA guard of Alexander the Great’s temple was crossing the site and his donkey stumbled in a hole - which turned out to be a tomb. Five tombs have been excavated containing 105 mummies and many more are expected to be uncovered. According to Hawass, the mummies date from the time of Alexander to the 4th-5th centuries ad, based on decoration found on them and tomb types. The tombs were carved in the sandstone bedrock, with niches along the sides of a main corridor where the mummies were placed side by side (and if these were full, on the tomb’s floor). The larger tombs were entered by a rock-cut staircase. one tomb consists of a vertical shaft with four chambers at the bottom, the entries of which were carved in the style of a Greek temple - a simpler version of the much more elaborate 2nd-century tombs of the Kom el-Shuqafa in Alexandria.
Four different types of mummies have been found at Bahariya, which probably relate to their socio-economic status (but may also reflect changes through time). of the 105 mummies, 60 have gold-covered masks on their cartonnage casings (plastered and molded linen), and some of them are decorated with gold foil over the chest - these are the highest-status burials (Plate 10.6). The next level of burial consists of mummies wrapped in linen with cartonnage over the upper parts - decorated with painted facial features and images of Egyptian deities. A third type of burial was wrapped in linen that was often arranged in geometrical patterns, but with no painted cartonnage or other decoration. The lowest-status burials were poorly wrapped in linen. In the future it will be useful to have age/sex data for these mummies, as well as paleopathological analyses to identify prevalent diseases, nutritional deficiencies, evidence on bones of stress or accidents, and causes of death. DNA studies may be able to determine genetically related individuals and possibly some diseases.
During the Roman Period Dakhla oasis, to the south of Bahariya and Farafra oases, was also extensively occupied. Since 1978 the canadian Dakhleh oasis Project (DoP), directed by Anthony Mills, has been conducting yearly archaeological investigations there of hundreds of sites, from clusters of Lower Paleolithic stone tools to medieval Islamic structures. Nearly 250 sites dating to the Roman Period have been located, including three large towns, farmhouses, more than 20 temples, industrial sites - and of course rock-cut tombs and cemeteries. A number of these sites have been very well preserved by sand dunes, which covered the structures and preserved their abandoned organic (and inorganic) artifacts. In Roman times the oasis was exploited for its agricultural wealth, and it is likely that as the sand dunes encroached upon human settlements the site was abandoned because of decreasing agricultural yields.
In 1986 the DOP began excavations at the large town site of Ismant el-Kharab (Kellis in Greek), under the direction of Colin Hope (Monash University, Melbourne). In the eastern part of the oasis, Kellis was the cult center of the god Tutu, the son of the goddess Neith - and “Master of Demons" The temple was built of stone, with shrines (including a mammisi) and storerooms of mud-brick. Sandstone altars are still standing in the temple’s forecourt. In two of the shrines were well-preserved wall paintings, and recent conservation of the paintings in the mammisi (Shrine I) under the direction of olaf Kaper (Leiden University) has revealed that different parts of this shrine were painted in two different styles: pharaonic and Roman.
In the central part of the town are a number of mud-brick houses with courtyards that were built in blocks, many of which have been preserved up to their roofs.
Rectangular rooms were barrel-vaulted, and on the interior walls there were niches, shelves, and cupboards (without wooden doors, which had been removed). Four houses which have been excavated can be dated to the late 3rd to late 4th centuries ad, based on dated coins, dates which appear in texts of contracts, and the types of ceramics excavated.
Recently at the northern end of the town (Area B) Hope has excavated a large, multi-roomed residence in which well-preserved wall paintings have been revealed, with two rooms containing fragments of plaster sculptures of human figures, one of which was a statue of the goddess Isis. These statues are in classical style as are the painted wall decorations, which include ceiling paintings in Room 1a of the deities Isis-Demeter and Serapis-Helios (Figure 10.4).
Kellis was the center of the regional economy, which was based on the local agriculture, and there is evidence of a wide range of transactions that took place there. In House 3, 206 coins were excavated along with an enormous quantity of texts: two intact wooden codices (books), 44 inscribed wooden boards, and ca. 3,000 fragments of papyri. One of the codices is a detailed four-year record of a farmer’s accounts. The accounts are of commodities received, including barley, wheat, fodder, sesame, wine, and pigs. Some of the recorded commodities were not produced in Egypt in Dynastic times, including cotton, olive oil, and chicken.
Texts from the excavated Kellis houses are in Greek, coptic, and Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic that was written in Syria/northern Mesopotamia (and was the language used in a large corpus of texts of Eastern Christianity). The Kellis texts provide information about the local economy, including documents about loans, and business and legal affairs. Religious texts also point to the existence of two different (and contemporaneous) religious communities at Kellis - a Christian one and that of an eastern religion, Manichaeism. Evidence of
Figure 10.4 View inside a 2nd-century elite house (Structure B/3/1, Room 7) showing the collapsed roof, at the Dakhla oasis site of Ismant el-Kharab (ancient Kellis). Source: © c. A. Hope.
The early Ghristian community is also provided by two excavated churches (the “East churches”). The larger one, a two-aisled basilica, is preserved to a height of almost 4 meters and has artifacts which date to the early 4th century.
Several cemetery areas are also associated with Kellis, including vaulted mausolea of one or more chambers. A cemetery to the northwest of the town in an area of low hills contained multiple burials in single-chambered tombs, which date to the 1st-2nd centuries. A few of these burials were covered with painted and gilded cartonnage cases similar to contemporaneous ones from Bahariya Oasis.
Another Roman Period cemetery in the western part of Dakhla Oasis, at el-Muzzawaqa, contains hundreds of tombs which were excavated into three hills. The double-chambered tomb of Petosiris, which dates to the early 2nd century, is decorated with remarkably well-preserved paintings. Scenes in the inner chamber include a Greco-Egyptian zodiac, the weighing of the heart before Osiris, and the goddess Isis giving a libation to the deceased’s ba. In the outer chamber Petosiris is depicted wearing a pink Roman toga, next to which is a vertical hieroglyphic inscription with exhortations to his ba.
Also in Dakhla Oasis, excavations have been conducted since 2004 at the site of Amheida (the ancient town of Trimithis) by an expedition now from New York University under the direction of Roger Bagnall. Located in the northwestern part of the oasis, Amheida has ceramic evidence dating from the Old Kingdom onward, but in the Roman Period it became an urban center with surrounding agricultural settlements producing olive oil, wine, dates, and figs. Excavations include an elite house of the 4th century with wall paintings, which has been recreated for visitors near the site entrance. Although the temple to the god Thoth on the “temple hill” dates to the 1st century, reused blocks from the Third Intermediate Period and Late Period have also been found there. Architectural conservation has also been part of the project, including the consolidation and rebuilding of a 1st-century mud-brick pyramid monument in a cemetery area that is located to the south and east of the town.
The remarkably well-preserved finds, of mummies from Bahariya oasis, and towns, texts and cemeteries from Dakhla oasis, demonstrate the rich archaeological evidence still to be unearthed in Greco-Roman sites in the Western desert.
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