Operating and defending Red Sea harbors and Eastern Desert trails in the Hellenistic and early Roman periods: the case of Berenike
Operating and defending Red Sea harbors and Eastern Desert trails in the Hellenistic and early Roman periods: the case of Berenike

Summary/Abstract: The Hellenistic road network in the Eastern Desert and Red Sea coast of Egypt has been at the nexus of important archaeological research on several sites in the region in the second half of the 20th century. The work was focused at first on the Roman remains of this network, but with time it became evident that the Romans had made use of a system developed in Hellenistic and even earlier, Pharaonic times. French and Italian investigations at Marsa Gawasis, Gebel Zeit and Wadi al-Jarf contributed data on the marine expeditions of Old Kingdom rulers into the Sinai and Middle Kingdom rulers to the Land of Punt. Key information for the Hellenistic period came from the French exploration of gold mines and fortified features at Samut and the fort at Abbad. Of equal importance was the work of a Dutch–American and then Polish–American team at the Hellenistic and Roman coastal harbor of Berenike Trogodytica. This work uncovered remains of a Hellenistic port-base in the Eastern Desert region of Egypt, giving grounds for broadening a general understanding of the daily functioning, logistics, and functional interdependence of the Hellenistic road network in the region, which enabled in turn a comparison with the Roman counterpart. The present paper considers the functioning of this system based on the author’s work in Berenike.

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