When access to the river was denied, the oases routes could be used. The Abisko inscriptions of Tjehemau, a Nubian mercenary working during Nebhepetre Mentuhotep’s visit to Wawat, provide data (Darnell 2003; 2004). He traveled through the western desert, where lengthy pathways leading to and from the Kurkur oasis southwest of Aswan have recently been analysed. In fact, the Eleventh Dynasty’s expansion into Nubia was dependent upon this oasis (Darnell 2003; 2004). Another route from the Shatt er-Rigal, a locality well known from a famous rock inscription of Nebhepetre, merged with the Darb Bitan and then proceeded to the Kurkur oasis. A second path, the Darb Gallaba, operated between the Nile and the plateau region where Kurkur is situated. Control over oases and the interlinking roads was necessary for the southern expansion of Thebes and offered a pathway over which Nubian soldiers could be recruited. Texts of Antef I and II describe Theban activity in the western desert, but in this case directed northwards.
Dakhla Oasis was already under direct Egyptian administration by the Sixth Dynasty. Governors, whose titles implied sailing (see below), organized the area and successfully operated distant routes. Harkhuf, leaving the Nile at Abydos on his way to the kingdom of Yam, followed the ‘‘Oasis Road’’ for seven months, a route which snaked south through the Dakhla Oasis and its settlement at Balat, past the Dunqul Oasis, until it ended at the Kharga Oasis. The trek, named the Abu Ballas Trail after its center at Ballas, was used by the Egyptian traders but also provided state control of all desert caravan traffic (Kuhlmann 2002).
There was a difference in emphasis between the western expeditions commencing in the Fourth Dynasty and the forays that were reorganized in the Eleventh. By the
Figure 23.2 Model Nubian soldiers from the Middle Kingdom tomb of Mesehti, Assiut. Photograph Robert Partridge. Courtesy the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Middle of the First Intermediate Period the army was composed of distinct military contingents. Antef II and Mentuhotep II sent rapidly moving columns of foot-soldiers to gain quick access to the oases closest to the Nile. Thebes was blocked from control of the Nile waterway by three other polities: Wawat, or Lower Nubia, which was eventually subsumed under Amenemhet I of the Twelfth Dynasty; the powerful kingdom of Kerma farther south (Kush); and Herakleopolis in the north (O’Connor 1993: 37-44; Kemp 1989: 166-78).
World History
