Wadi Hammamat (Arabic:وادي الحمامات,romanized: Wādī al-Ḥammāmāt,lit. 'Valley of Many Baths',Coptic:ⲣⲱϩⲉⲛⲧⲟⲩ,romanized: rōhentou,lit. 'India way; gateway to India'[1]) is adry river bed inEgypt'sEastern Desert, about halfway betweenAl-Qusayr andQena. It was a majormining region andtrade route east from theNile Valley in ancient times, and three thousand years of rock carvings and graffiti make it a major scientific and tourist site today.
Hammamat became the major route fromThebes to theRed Sea and then to theSilk Road that led to Asia, or to Arabia and the horn of Africa. This 200 km journey was the most direct route from the Nile to theRed Sea, as the Nile bends toward the coast at the western end of thewadi.
The Hammamat route ran fromQift (or Coptos), located just north ofLuxor, toAl-Qusayr on the coast of the Red Sea. Qift was an important center for administration, religion, and commerce. The cities at both ends of the route were established by theFirst Dynasty, although evidence ofpredynastic occupation also has been found along the route.[2] A number of forts and towers were built along this route by theRomans.[3]
InAncient Egypt, Hammamat was a major quarrying area for theNile Valley. Quarrying expeditions to theEastern Desert are recorded from the second millennia BCE, where the wadi has exposedPrecambrian rocks of theArabian-Nubian Shield. These includeBasalts,schists,bekhen-stone (an especially prized green metagraywackesandstone used for bowls,palettes, statues, and sarcophagi)[4] and gold-containingquartz.[5] TheNarmer Palette, 3100 BC, is one of a number of early and predynastic artifacts that were carved from the distinctive stone of the Wadi Hammamat.
PharaohSeti I is recorded as having the first well dug to provide water in the wadi, andSenusret I sent mining expeditions there.
The site is described in the earliest-known ancientgeological map, theTurin Papyrus Map.[6]
Today Hammamat is famous mostly for its ancient Egyptiangraffiti, as well as that, in ancient times, it was aquarry that lay on theSilk Road to Asia, and is a common destination for modern tourists. The wadi contains many carvings and inscriptions dating from before the earliest Egyptian Dynasties to the modern era, including the only paintedpetroglyph known from the Eastern Desert and drawings of Egyptianreed boats dated to4000 BCE.[7]
Occupying groups from theRoman-Byzantine Periods to theLate Ptolemaic Period operated gold mines near the well Bir Umm el-Fawakhir. Yet, theNew Kingdom of Egypt gold mines at Wadi el-Sid were on a larger scale.[6]: 129, 136–141
A modern asphalt road, theWadi Hammamat road now runs for 194 km through the wadi, making it a vital transport route, and enabling tourists to travel easily between the sites of nearby Luxor and Thebes.[8]
The first European descriptions of the Wadi Hammamat were from the Scottish travelerJames Bruce in 1769, and the RussianEgyptologistVladimir Golenishchev led the first modern study of the inscriptions in 1884–1885.
In 1993,The Pogues wrote a song about it, entitledGirl From The Wadi Hammamat in their albumWaiting for Herb.
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