The Wadi Hammamat, (Valley of Many Baths’), one of numerous wadis or dry valleys in the Eastern Desert’s rocky highlands, serves as the center stretch of one of the most important routes between the Nile and the Red Sea.
The Wadi Hammamat is located halfway between the Nile and the Red Sea, approximately 60 kilometers from either Quft (ancient Coptos) on the Nile or Quseir (near ancient Myos Hormos). The Hammamat road is one of the shortest Nile-Red Sea routes, therefore, it has been used for millennia and is now dotted with ancient ruins and resting sites, as well as hundreds of rock inscriptions or graffiti. In addition, considerable mining and quarrying have taken place in or near Wadi Hammamat.
The geographical term “Wadi Hammamat” refers to the area from the spring and Roman road station at Bir Hammamat to the natural gate in the mountains at Bir Umm Fawakhir (25°58′−26°35′ N, 33°32′-33°35′ E). The Wadi Hammamat contains quarries for both breccia verde antica, a variegated green stone, and bekhenstone, which was highly valued by the ancient Egyptians. Bekhen-stone, found nowhere else in Egypt, is a Precambrian graywacke with a fine-grained, rough texture. When first cut, the stone is dark gray, but it weathers to a reddish color. The majority of the greater than 400 hieroglyphic and hieratic rock inscriptions in Wadi Hammamat document the activities of expeditions dispatched to gather the valuable bekhen-stone for the pharaohs’ statues, sarcophagi, and building projects.
The Wadi Hammamat’s history, or rather prehistory, predates pharaonic times. Although Paleolithic sites exist in the Eastern Desert, the oldest easily accessible antiquities in Wadi Hammamat are the late Predynastic petroglyphs approximately northeast of the bekhen-stone quarry. These prehistoric rock carvings, like thousands of others in the Eastern Desert, represent hunters, animal traps, ostriches, gazelles, and other game in a style dating back to the late fourth millennium BC based on similarities to designs painted on Gerzean pottery. The abundance of fauna shown, which includes elephants, suggests that the Eastern Desert was more irrigated and vegetated in late prehistory than it is today.
The majority of the hieroglyphic inscriptions are etched on the smooth southeast cliffs facing the principal bekhen-stone quarry. The opposite side of the wadi is cluttered with quarrying waste, including a split, abandoned sarcophagus. The inscriptions usually include a dedication to Min, the Coptos and the desert, or to the Coptic divine triad of Isis, Horus, and Harpocrates, and the block of hieroglyphic text may be topped by an offering scene. The expedition leader’s name and titles are usually included, along with the name of his pharaoh and, on occasion, details about the expedition.
The Wadi Hammamat graffiti is significant because they can be considered historical records of royal activities in a given year, as opposed to other writings such as temple inscriptions, which were intended for a different purpose, namely recording the king’s unchanging duties to the vice versa. The great pyramid builders of the Old Kingdom, Khafre, Menkaure, Djedefre, Sahure, and Unas, left hieroglyphic inscriptions commemorating quarrying excursions. Pepi I of the Sixth Dynasty is particularly well represented, with over eighty graffiti. Graffiti from the First Intermediate Period exists, but its dating is unclear. However, the Middle Kingdom inscriptions are among the most detailed and instructive in the Wadi Hammamat.
Mentuhotep II, III, and IV of the 11th Dynasty are mentioned in around thirty manuscripts, as are Amenemhat and Senusret of the 12th Dynasty. Mentuhotep III’s mission of 3,000 men had the objective of sending a ship to Punt, which is now Eritrea, to acquire incense and other exotic items, but on the way back through the Wadi Hammamat, the expedition quarried bekhenstone for statues. Mentuhotep IV’s long inscriptions are the most important records of his brief reign; they describe his sending of 10,000 troops with enough provisions to bring back a tomb and lid for the monarch. Two “miracles” distinguished the mission. A fleeing gazelle, exhausted, gave birth to her young on the very block chosen for the king.
The second “miracle” was a rare flash flood that exposed a source of pure water, which is critical in a hyperarid desert. The expedition’s leader, who boasted of doing everything without losing a single life, was the vizier Amenemhat, who most likely took the throne as Amenemhat I. A less remarkable graffito depicts a quarrying expedition on his behalf, while another inscription carved during the reign of his son, Senusret I, describes 17,000 soldiers despatched to acquire stone for sixty sphinxes and 150 statues.
Sobekhotep IV and Sobekemsaef represent the Second Intermediate Period, however, it is surprising that the New Kingdom pharaohs are not well documented prior to the Ramesside Period. The few inscriptions contain just the names and titles of Ahmose, Amenhotep II, Amenhotep IV, Seti I, Ramesses II, and Seti II.
Queen Hatshepsut’s historic journey to Punt is thought to have followed a more northerly route across the Wadi Gasus. The Turin Papyrus, discovered in Deir el-Medina during the reign of Ramesses IV of the 20th Dynasty, has the most notable New Kingdom reference to the Wadi Hammamat. The papyrus is a map that could be interpreted as indicating the way to the bekhen-stone quarry in Wadi Hammamat and the gold and silver mines a little further east. Only one inscription can be dated to the Third Intermediate Period and a few to the Late Period, but these do include some of the most notable names of the time: Shabako, Amenirdis, Taharka, Psamtik I and II, Neko II, Amasis, Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes.
The last hieroglyphic inscriptions come from the time of Nectanebo II of the 30th Dynasty, but the record continues with a sequence of demotic texts in the neighboring Paneion. The latter is a sheltered bay in the cliffs that appears to be used as a shrine for Pan, the desert’s patron. The walls are now covered in graffiti, with the earliest dating back to the 23rd Dynasty, although the bulk are demotic or Greek writings from the Ptolemaic and Roman times. During the Ptolemaic period, there was a dramatic renewal of interest in desert routes leading to the Red Sea and ultimately East Africa.
The increasing activity was fueled at least in part by the need for elephants, which were the equivalent of tanks in their day, to fight the Seleucid monarchs of Syria. Though quarry exploitation has decreased, Ptolemy II is mentioned in one graffito, and desert roads, such as the Wadi Hammamat and Berenike trails, have been improved and equipped with new wells, cisterns, and way-stations. Building on the Ptolemaic infrastructure, the Romans pushed the desert commerce even farther. Their camel caravans, big study ships, and recently obtained knowledge of the monsoons allowed them to sail to Africa, possibly as far as Dar es-Salaam, to Aden and the Spice Coast, and on to the tip of India on a regular basis.
The Roman road system includes the remnants of a fortified watering station at Bir Hammamat, a well-preserved (but partially reconstructed) circular well, and intervisible signal towers on mountain peaks along the Hammamat route. Although the bekhen-stone may not have been extensively mined, the breccia verde antica outcrop most likely was, as evidenced by massive, rough-hewn, abandoned blocks. An inscribed naos in the neighboring bekhen-stone quarries, on the other hand, dates a finely constructed temple with a series of side rooms to Tiberius’ reign. Graffiti from Augustus, Nero, Titus, Domitian, Antoninus, Maximinus, and maybe Hadrian supplement Tiberius’ inscription.
At the close of the second century AD, the Roman empire had so many internal challenges that the costly, far-flung Red Sea trade and its desert routes became too difficult to maintain, and records became correspondingly scant. Later activity in the Eastern Desert is unquestionably documented, including Byzantine towns and forts at Abu Sha’ar, Berenike, and Bir Umm Fawakhir, medieval trade and pilgrimage routes through the Wadi Qena to the north or the Wadi Qash just south of the Wadi Hammamat, and the thirteenth-fourteenth-century Mamluk port at Quseir el-Qadim.
However, the old quarries in Wadi Hammamat were eventually abandoned at the end of the second century AD, along with the associated dwellings, temples, and shrines. Three millennia of quarrying, traffic, and cutting rock inscriptions—some of which were already ancient to the Romans—have all but halted. Read More – Chariot – Ancient Vehicle for Pleasure or for War
