Rome beyond The Southern Egyptian Frontier

Abstract

Sir Mortimer Wheeler's now well-known survey of Roman exploration and trade beyond the imperial frontiers, though it describes the Red Sea and transSaharan traffic, does not cover one frontier across which Roman trade and Roman travellers often passed, namely the southern frontier of Egypt.* It was important, for this route up the Nile or across the adjacent deserts was, and had been since the Pyramid Age, one of the principal avenues to the wealth of central Africa, though fluctuating in use at different periods. From Egypt, Rome penetrated more deeply into Africa than from any other part of the continent, and more deeply than any European power until well into the nineteenth century. The territory south of the frontier, moreover, lying today partly in Egypt but mainly in the Sudan, is archaeologically one of the most extensively explored areas in Africa; in the north, this is largely because of the need to anticipate the flooding of ancient sites (especially those of the later periods, nearer the river) which followed the raisings of the Aswan Dam between the two World Wars.