Traveling the desert edge: The Ptolemaic roadways and regional economy of Egypt's Eastern Desert in the fourth through first centuries BCE.

The present study is the first archaeologically based examination of the economic and cultural dynamics of Egypt's Eastern desert in the Hellenistic period (332--31 BCE). Using unpublished archaeological material in an investigation of this understudied region, it offers a more diverse conceptualization of ancient economic practice at the regional level and the intersection of the Ptolemaic economy with other cultural factors. This investigation emerged in response to long-standing notions about the conquest and subsequent colonization of Egypt by Greeks in the Hellenistic Period. Drawing on extensive archaeological survey undertaken since 1992 and independent ceramic analysis, this project brings together the material evidence for a road network in the southern half of Egypt's Eastern Desert, which was part of a developing system of long-distance trade and transport implemented during the Hellenistic period. This study provides a chronology of settlement, site use and abandonment that for the first time illuminates the intensity and scale of developments in the Eastern Desert under the Ptolemies. These conclusions are the result of a re-dating of the ceramic sequence from the Eastern Desert and a reconsideration of settlement and travel patterns along these trade routes. Taken with the limited historical and papyrological material from this region, these new insights suggest a highly variable chronology of usage along the desert roads and considerable flexibility in the economic and administrative arrangements in the region. Although foregrounding the economic implications of this material, this study also takes the Eastern Desert under consideration from an innovative cultural history perspective. The model resulting from the archaeological investigations is weighed in conjunction with an analysis of the real and 'imagined' landscape of southern Egypt, as articulated by Greek geographers and travel-writers during the sixth through first centuries BCE. Taken with the patterns revealed by the archaeological study, an analysis of these sources suggests that although resource acquisition and economic gain were undoubtedly important reasons for desert settlement, the exploration of the Eastern Desert during the Hellenistic period was likely influenced by an interest in documenting exotic and liminal portions of the Ptolemaic countryside during the third and second centuries BCE.Ph.D.Ancient historyArchaeologySocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/125086/2/3186636.pd