Dachla
Coordinates: 25 ° 31 ' N , 29 ° 10' E
The depression ad-Dachla (English ad-Dakhla, Arabic الداخلة ad-Dāchla , DMG ad-Dāḫ (i) la ) is one of the five western depressions of Egypt and is located in the Libyan desert west of Charga and about 200 km southeast of Farafra .
Details
Dachla is the furthest oasis from Cairo in Egypt . The oasis is located in a depression surrounded by rock formations and has around 30,000 hectares of cultivated area. Dachla is linked to the other depressions of the Libyan desert by daily bus connections. The oasis comprises two cities (Mut and Qasr) and 15 other settlements in an area of 2000 km², in which around 75,000 people live (2003 estimate). Mut is the largest city, with 15,000 inhabitants. In the east, the villages of Tineida , al-Bashandi and Balat stand out. Roman graves can be found in al-Baschandi, for example the grave of Kitines. The old town of Balat has small, narrow and covered streets.
The most important industry of the oasis is the (deficit) agriculture. The products mainly include dates, olives, millet, rice, wheat and barley. Clover and alfalfa are also grown as animal feed, and fruits such as wine, guavas, citrus fruits, apricots, oranges, pomegranates, plums and figs are produced. Handicrafts are only practiced in addition to agriculture. The only alternative line of business is government administration and, to a lesser extent, tourism.
history
Already since the Pleistocene the depression ad-Dachla was populated almost continuously.
There is evidence that Egyptians lived in Dachla since the 5th dynasty . Since the 6th dynasty it has been administered by a head of the oasis . The administrative seat was on the site of today's Qila 'el-Dabba ( Arabic قلاع الضبة, DMG Qilāʿ aḍ-Ḍabba), the cemetery in Ain Asil .
One of the most important finds from the late period is the Dachla stele from the 22nd dynasty , which was found in 1984 by the British HG Lyons near the town of Mut . She reports on disputes over water use.
Like all of the other five western valleys, Dachla was densely populated during Roman times . The fertile Dachla supplied Rome with urgently needed grain.
Around Dachla there are ruins of Coptic churches from the 4th century in various places . A Teilislamisierung sat around 1000. Chr., But there was never an Arab conquest.
As early as 1820, the geographical position of Dachla was determined by Frédéric Cailliaud and Letorzec .
A German expedition led by Gerhard Rohlfs , with the aim of exploring the Libyan desert in the winter of 1873/1874, stopped at the oasis. This Rohlfs expedition consisted of a number of well-known scientists. One of the results was the creation of an accurate map of the whole Dachla oasis. The expedition had a surveyor in Wilhelm Jordan . Jordan was a teacher of geodesy at the Karlsruhe Polytechnic and editor of a surveying journal. Another specialty of the company was the inclusion of photography. The photographer Philipp Remelé made around 150 negatives of the oasis. But not only landscape photographs were taken, also a series of portraits of the residents of Dachla. Rohlfs also drew attention to the numerous ancient remains of settlements, fields and wells near the Deir el-Hagar temple . Rohlfs and the members of the expedition went to numerous ruins in the vicinity of the oasis. A large number of artifacts, piles of pot shards, fragments of stone vessels, smaller bronze objects and coins were found.
Remelé, who stayed in Dachla, was commissioned by Rohlfs with the excavation of the temple Deir el-Hagar, while Rohlfs set off further into the unexplored desert. The temple was exposed, written on and also documented photographically. Remelé came to the conclusion that the temple was destroyed by an earthquake, but at that point it was already abandoned. The botanist Paul Ascherson and his assistant M. Korb from Munich examined the gardens of the oasis for plants and insects. Although the expedition did not include a zoologist, Korb was able to bring together a collection of 400 numbers due to his skills. Ascherson found a total of 186 wild plant species. The result of the investigations was that the weed vegetation of the oasis deviates from that of the Nile valley, but that its characteristic features correspond to that of the Mediterranean countries. In geological terms, too , knowledge was gained by expedition member Karl Alfred von Zittel , Professor of Geology at the University of Munich. On a column of the Deir el-Hagar temple there is a graffito with the names of the expedition participants.
Expeditions financed and organized by the Geological Survey reached the oasis in 1897. In 1916, Dachla was briefly occupied by the Sanussi before they were driven out again by the British.
Attractions
To the west lies the city of Mut , which is the largest settlement in the oasis. It has a well-stocked ethnographic museum. Qasr ad-Dachla is the most important Islamic settlement in the Dachla depression and was built on a Roman fort. The up to four-story houses were built from adobe bricks. The stone blocks with hieroglyphics built into the houses come from the Thoth temple in Amheida and were dragged here. Further sights are the approx. 2000 year old tombs of Qarat al-Muzawwaqa , which belonged to the Roman city of Amheida, and the Roman temple of Deir al-Hagar , which was dedicated to the Theban triad.
Climate table
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Average monthly temperatures and rainfall for Dachla
Source: wetterkontor.de
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literature
(sorted chronologically)
- Olaf E. Kaper: Archaeological research of the Rohlfs'schen expedition in the oasis Dachla (1874). In: Caris-Beatrice Arnst, Ingelore Hafemann, Angelika Lohwasser (eds.): Encounters. Ancient cultures in the Nile Valley. Festival ceremony for Erika Endesfelder, Karl-Heinz Priese, Walter Friedrich Reineke and Steffen Wenig. Wodtke & Stegbauer, Leipzig 2001, ISBN 3-934374-02-6 , pp. 233-251 ( online ).
- Gerhard Rohlfs : Three months in the Libyan desert. Kassel 1875, reprint Bonn 1985, Cologne 1996.
- Jürgen Osing (arrangement) and a .: Monuments of the Dachla oasis from the estate of Ahmed Fakhry. In: Archaeological Publications. Volume 28, von Zabern, Mainz 1982.
- Lisa L. Giddy: Egyptian Oases. Bahariya, Dakhla, Farafra and Kharga During Pharaonic Times . Aris & Phillips, Warminster 1987, pp. 10-13, 39 f., 41 f., 140-147, 166-289 .
- Frank Bliss : Economic and social change in the "New Valley" of Egypt: on the effects of Egyptian regional development policy in the oases of the western desert (= contributions to cultural studies . No. 12 ). 2nd Edition. Political Working Group Schools, Bonn 1989, ISBN 3-921876-14-1 .
- Frank Bliss: Artisanat et artisanat d'art dans les oasis du désert occidental Egypt. Publications of the Frobenius Institute (= publications of the Frobenius Institute ). 1998, ISBN 3-89645-204-5 .
- Article in Kathryn A. Bard (Ed.): Encyclopedia of the Archeology of Ancient Egypt. Routledge, London 1999, ISBN 0-415-18589-0 .
- Michel Valloggia: Dakhla Oasis, Balat. Pp. 216-19.
- Anthony J. Mills: Dakhla Oasis, Dynastic and Roman sites. Pp. 220-22.
- Colin A. Hope: Dakhla Oasis, Ismant el-Kharab. Pp. 222-26.
- Mary MA McDonald: Dakhla Oasis, prehistoric sites. Pp. 226-29.
- Philipp Remelé : Photographs from the Libyan Desert - An expedition by the Africa explorer Gerhard Rohlfs in the years 1873/1874. Publisher: Museum Schloss Schönebeck, Edition Temmen, Bremen 2001, ISBN 3-86108-791-X .
- Joachim Willeitner : The Egyptian oases: cities, temples and graves in the Libyan desert. von Zabern, Mainz 2003, ( Ancient World , special issue; Zabern's illustrated books on archeology ), ISBN 3-8053-2915-6 .
- Günter Hölbl: Ancient Egypt in the Roman Empire; 3: Sanctuaries and religious life in the Egyptian deserts and oases (= Zabern's illustrated books on archeology ). von Zabern, Mainz 2005, ISBN 3-8053-3512-1 , p. 66-95 .
- Carolien van Zoest, Olaf Ernst Kaper: Treasures of the Dakhleh Oasis. An exhibition on the occasion of the fifth International Conference of the Dakhleh Oasis Project . Netherlands-Flemish Institute, Cairo 2006 ( openaccess.leidenuniv.nl [PDF]).
Web links
- Historical map u. a. with places in the Dakhla oasis
Individual evidence
- ↑ Local Model - Dakhla Oasis. Chapter 7, p. 94, sundoc.bibliothek.uni-halle.de (PDF).
- ^ Wilhelm Spiegelberg : A stele from the Dachel oasis. In: Recueil de travaux relatifs à la philologie et à l'archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes. (RecTrav), Vol. 21, 1899, pp. 12-21, panel; Alan Henderson Gardiner : The Dakhleh stela. In: Journal of Egyptian Archeology. (JEA), Volume 19, 1933, pp. 19-30, pls. V-VII.
- ↑ Olaf Ernst Kaper: Archaeological research of the Rohlfs expedition in the Dachla oasis. (1874) For: Encounters - Ancient Cultures in the Nile Valley Festive gift for Erika Endesfelder, Karl-Heinz Priese, Walter Friedrich Reineke, Steffen Wenig. Wodtke & Stegbauer, Leipzig 2001, ISBN 3-934374-02-6 , pp. 233-251.
