“Like Wringing Water from a Stone!” Information Extraction from Two Rock Graffiti in North Kharga, Egypt

In the course of the last ten years, the North Kharga Oasis–Darb Ain Amur Survey team, led by Salima Ikram (American University in Cairo), has been exploring a network of interconnected desert paths in Egypt’s Western Desert, known as Darb Ain Amur. These marked paths run between Kharga Oasis and Dakhla Oasis, linking them to Darb el-Arbain, a notorious caravan route facilitating contacts between Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa since prehistoric times. Ancient travelers using the Darb Ain Amur spent several days in the midst of the Western Desert and were thus forced to use areas around sandstone rock outcrops as makeshift stopovers or camping sites. During these much-needed breaks, ancient travelers identified accessible, inscribable surfaces on the towering sandstone massifs and left on them their personalized markings. In this essay, I examine two short rock graffiti carved by such travelers in a site north of Kharga Oasis, focusing on the types of information one may extract from such ancient epigraphic materials.