By Jill Kamil Treasures from the Roman period have been transported for exhibition at the Egyptian Museum in conjunction with the fifth conference of the Dakhla Oasis Project (DOP), which opened last Saturday. It was fitting introduction to an international gathering, at which presentations related to current fieldwork revealed how dramatically our knowledge of life in the oasis has increased in recent years. Although the DOP, under the directorship of Anthony Mills of the Royal Ontario Museum, has been ongoing since 1977, Dakhla is the least known oasis of the Western Desert -- or it was until this week. The conference organised by the Netherlands- Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC) in collaboration with the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) and the Egyptian Museum has remedied that. Fred Leemhuis and Olaf Kaper of the NVIC invited scholars who have excavated and studied in Dakhla and the surrounding desert, as well as in neighbouring oases, to talk about their fields of specialisation, and the response was exceptional. In addition to members of the DOP, Dutch, French, German and Egyptian experts presented papers on subjects that ranged from Paleolithic and Neolithic activities to relatively recent 19th-century houses; from rock art and graffiti to Greek texts; and from pottery to temples to burial grounds. Papers were given on such diverse subjects as children and childhood as revealed in studies at a Kellis cemetery, infant weaning and feeding, evidence of arthritis within the Dakhla community, and magic. Archaeologists from the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) in Dakhla excavated the necropolises of Bir Talata Al-Arab and Ayn Al-Gedida, and carried out conservation of the Bir Al-Shaghala tombs. "We have held such gatherings every three or four years, in several different countries," Mills said in the opening speech. "This fifth conference is, appropriately, being held in Cairo which is especially convenient for our Egyptian colleagues." The five oases of the Western Desert -- Siwa, Bahariya, Farafra, Dakhla and Kharga -- run, like the Nile Valley, in a south-north direction. So far Dakhla has revealed the earliest historical remains and is the oasis with the most complex history. Like the others there is evidence of substantial Roman occupation -- indeed the oasis appears to have been heavily populated with urban areas, Roman farms and cemeteries. These extensive agricultural areas on the very fringes of the Roman Empire were undoubtedly intended to provide a major part of the grain that Rome demanded of Egypt. About 25 Roman-period temples have been found, the best-preserved being the one known as Deir Al-Hagar, which a team led by Mills cleared and restored in the 1990s. Unlike the other oases, however, Dakhla also has significant Old Kingdom remains. It was an important centre when Egyptians expanded their territory, probably in search of natural resources in the desert. The late Ahmed Fakhry, famed for his studies of the oases of the Western Desert, first discovered the ancient capital of Ain Asil, and after his death the area was excavated by a French archaeological mission. They established that eight successive governors of the oasis resided in a fortified garrison there, surrounded by a defensive mud brick wall with watch towers. The palace of the oasis governments has been found, together with texts written in cursive hieroglyhphics, and, on the hilltops, even graffiti left by soldiers who manned the observation posts. Dakhla Oasis is dominated on its northern horizon by a wall of rock. The present capital, Mut, was named after the ancient goddess of the Theban triad, while Al-Qasr -- originally a Roman citadel -- was the mediaeval capital of the oasis. Old Qasr is a labyrinth of mud-walled alleys with elaborately-carved wooden lintels, and there is also an Ayyubid mosque. Excavation of the many sites of Dakhla Oasis runs parallel with conservation. "This is part of our agreement with the SCA which we consider good practice," Mills said, who went on to explain that this was no easy task. In places it involved delicate work on thousands of plaster fragments requiring careful protection of the plaster where it remained in situ; the many loose fragments also required storage, conservation, recording and matching. Where the plaster survives on the wall, it is protected with a dry wall of bricks and a new roof over the whole room to prevent unauthorised access. Conservation work at Al-Qasr is rather different. Here it involves a degree of reconstruction, using original materials and techniques and guidance from skilled local builders. From the surviving walls and other elements the local artisans are able to suggest the original form of the house, the disposal of rooms and the siting of windows and doors. At the same time they are passing on their skills and knowledge to a new generation who will be responsible for the maintenance of these newly-reconstructed houses. There is a traditional local belief that archaeologists are there only because they expect to find gold, and some sites have been interfered with after the excavators have left at the end of the day. Luckily an attempt to pre-empt archaeologists at the Ain Al-Gazzarin excavation just a few days before they began their last season had a less damaging outcome. "Someone dug a pit in almost exactly the place where we had planned to investigate," Tony Mills told Al-Ahram Weekly. "In this case we were able simply to enlarge it and clean up the sides and bottom to examine the stratigraphy. It is not often that these illicit excavations are so well placed." In his keynote address, Colin Hope of Monash University in Melbourne spoke about the "Romanisation and Christianisation of the Egyptian countryside". A short documentary film entitled Al-Qasr, City of Mudbricks was screened. Hope's series of reflections concentrated on two aspects of the oasis. The first was to present a series of images of Ismant Al-Kharab (ancient Kellis), which he likened to Pompeii, in an effort to better understand Roman activity in the oasis; the second was to reveal the spread of Christianity in Dakhla by revealing a series of excavated houses "of which there are good Roman parallels". Kellis was occupied for three or four centuries and, in a typical Egyptian temple dedicated to the local god Tutu and founded in the Late Ptolemaic period, a mixture of classical and Pharaonic images are apparent, both in the architectural remains and in the objects that have survived. "The temple was protected by extensive drifts of sand, as a result of which, apart from the temple complex, large villas, two-story mud-brick houses, and fourth-century churches have survived," Hope said. Textile fragments, glass and ceramic objects, and pottery were carefully removed from the soil. The most significant discovery of all from Kellis is a codex written in Greek on thin sheets of wood bound together with string. It is an agricultural account book and lists the goods and services provided by tenant farmers of Kellis over a period of four years. These objects were brought to the Egyptian Museum for exhibition along with several others from the storerooms which have never before been put on display. Wafaa El-Seddiq, director of the museum who organised the exhibition, said that it would remain open for several weeks. Among the exhibits are a set of glass vessels from the Roman period, a painted glass jug of extraordinary beauty, and a fascinating if somewhat crudely-painted anthropoid wooden coffin. "After nearly 30 years of research we know more about this oasis than ever before, and for the first time these results are presented at a scientific conference in Cairo," Mills said. He added that the studies being carried out at Dakhla were a far cry, in terms of a scientific approach, from the research and excavations of earlier times.
