ABSTRACT
The Nile Valley is a narrow ribbon of agricultural land cutting through the NorthAfrican desert, and the oases of the Western Desert are but small islands of water and cultivable land afloat in a sea of rock and sand.1 The majority of the territory that fell easily within the control of the pharaonic state was desert. This Red Land greatly exceeded the small areas of Black Land, as the Egyptians well understood, and they neither ignored nor feared either the rocky and mountainous wilderness to their east, or the even more awesome wastes to their west. The deserts contained many major routes, linking the Nile Valley with the oases and even more remote areas; they were the repository for most of the mineral wealth of Egypt and Nubia;2
and the stones and minerals from these desert areas were the physical foundations for the architecture and economy of the pharaonic state.
