the 1960s during salvage operations in connection with the
construction of the Aswān Dam on the Nile River. Archae-
ologists discovered two types of roads. One type consisted
of stretches where all of the rock was removed and placed in
low mounds at the edge of the roadway to form a border. Th e
sand was smoothed aft er the rocks were removed. Th e width
of the roads varied depending on the terrain, but generally
these roads were about 30 feet wide. In some places, such as a
4-mile stretch of road that ran west from the Nile River at the
city of Denduz, this type of road was built on sandstone bed-
rock. It is clear that the rock borders were deliberately placed
to mark the route, for they are found in places where there is
no loose rock, so they had to have been carried into position
over some distance.
Th e other type of road, an example of which was found
running from the city of Dakkah to Kalabsha, is marked not
by lines or piles of loose rock but by pairs of stone markers.
Th ese markers are roughly 1 foot in diameter and up to 3 feet
tall, but in nearly every instance one of the markers is taller
than its pair. Pairs of markers occur at roughly even intervals
of a mile.
Th ese roads, however, were not constructed in the mod-
ern sense of the word. Rather, they were more in the nature
of clearings, with loose rock and other obstacles moved away.
Th e fi rst engineered roads in Africa were built by the Ro-
man Empire, which required a complex system of roads and
bridges for trade, administration, and military transport.
Th ese roads were built using methods that were surprisingly
modern, with packed underlayments and crowning to allow
water to run off. One of the most important Roman roads
in Africa was the coastal highway that ran from Alexandria
in Egypt all the way west to the coast off Gibraltar in Spain.
While the road no longer exists, its existence is documented
in itineraries from the time. Stretches of the highway were
constructed in the centuries prior to the Common Era; the
road was completed at about the end of the fi rst century c.e.
Although these roads were built by the Romans, they were
used by Africans, even aft er the Romans withdrew, for trade
and travel.
One of the signal achievements of the Roman Empire was
bridge construction. While many of Rome’s bridges in North
Africa and elsewhere were constructed of timber (and thus do
not survive), others were constructed with stone and concrete.
With the exception of crude log bridges and perhaps suspen-
sion-type bridges made with vines, the bridge did not arrive in
Africa until the Romans expanded into the continent.
EGYPT
BY MARK ANTHONY PHELPS
Roads, in the sense of paths that have been cleared by humans
to facilitate travel and transport, arrive with of urban living.
Footpaths existed from the moment that humans discovered
other humans. With the advent of agriculture and the rise
of urban areas, larger paths were needed to transport larger
loads of goods longer distances. Th ese early paths would fol-
low the terrain that off ered the least diffi culty for travel. Oft en
these ancient paths have become modern roads. Th e function
of roads has remained constant throughout history. Goods
are transported, salesmen carry their wares, people visit fam-
ily members and others, pilgrimages are made, diplomatic
embassies travel, offi cial messengers bear royal documents
and goods, and armies move from place to place. Th e bulk of
transport in the Nile Valley was naturally done by means of
the river. Given the annual inundations, or periods of fl ood-
ing, the paths were generally buried every year. Dried canals
served as pathways and roadways. Th ere are a number of
roads outside the valley that have been preserved.
Th e best-explored road system in Egypt is that which
connects the oases of the Western Desert. Th is road was the
subject of intense study from 1992 to 1997, under the auspices
of the Luxor-Farshut Desert Road Survey. Th is road system
connects a number of oasis sites, which in turn connect to
more distant oases and to the Nile Valley. Human activity
along these roads is known from Paleolithic times (up to 7000
b.c.e.). Given that there were no wheeled vehicles until the
Tw e l ft h Dynasty (ca. 1991–ca. 1783 b.c.e.), the traffi c for most
of the history of this road was by foot or by donkey. Later in-
scriptions and artwork point to the use of horses on the route,
probably as part of a royal courier service.
Like any road of its nature, this road had a number of
forts. Th e forts served two purposes. First, they were there
to collect taxes for the royal treasury, presumably at nome,
or province, boundaries. Second, they were there to provide
security, both for individuals and for the kingdom. Th e pres-
ence of soldiers would discourage travelers from avoiding
the tolls. Also, soldiers could keep some sense of order in the
region by protecting against desert raiders and by guarding
access to the oasis wells. Further, they could serve as watch-
men on the alert for the movement of rebels and other hostile
groups. Towers became employed more frequently by later
Hellenistic and Roman armies.
Likewise like any road of its nature, this route preserves
both the graffi ti of the literate segment of the population and
stelae and inscriptions that date from the advent of writing to
modern scribbles. Among these writings is a signifi cant in-
scription from the time of the unifi cation of Upper and Lower
Egypt. It is written on behalf of the ruler known as the Scor-
pion (end of the fourth millennium b.c.e.). Th e inscription
seems to record the use of the road to outfl ank the armies of
Naqâda by the Scorpion’s army from Abydene.
Th e Wadi Hammamat forms a natural pathway from the
Nile to the Red Sea and has long served as a way for trade
between Upper Egypt and points south in the Nile Valley.
A road dating to the Predynastic Period (ca. 5300–ca. 3000
b.c.e.) connected the port of Sawaw to the Nile at Coptos
(present-day Qift ). Th e presence of quarries and gold mines
created a demand for the roadway as well. Road systems grew
up a rou nd Ni le cata rac ts, genera l ly consist i ng of roads at least
16 feet wide. Th ese roads enabled cargoes of any size to be884 roads and bridges: Egypt