La route de Myos Hormos: L'armee romaine dans le desert Orientale d'Egypte.

• Author: Sidebotham, Steven E.
• Position: Book review

La route de Myos Hormos: L'armee romaine dans le desert Orientale d'Egypte. Edited by HELENE CUVIGNY. Fouilles de l'IFAO, vol. 48/1-2. Two volumes. Cairo: INSTITUT FRANCAIS D'ARCHEOLOGIE ORIENTALE, 2003. Pp. xliv + 688, illus. (paper).

These two tomes document several seasons of archaeological survey and excavation conducted by the IFAO along the ancient route linking the Roman, and likely Ptolemaic, port of Myos Hormos on the Red Sea coast of Egypt with the Nile emporium of Coptos. An epigraphic (overwhelmingly ostracological) study of the sites predominates, with other archaeological data playing a secondary role. Analysis of some ostraca from the same team's recent excavations at the Roman fort (praesidium) of Didymoi (modern Zeydun/Khashm al-Meniyah) on the ancient route linking Berenike on the Red Sea to Coptos is included, as are those published previously by other projects from Wadi al-Fawakhir and Wadi al-Hammamat, which are also situated on the Myos Hormos-Nile road. There are pertinent references to the famous Nikanor Ostraca Archive of the late first-century B.C.-third-quarter first-century A.D. and ostraca and papyri from excavations at Myos Hormos.

The volumes provide a wealth of information on the route and the praesidia and signal towers (skopeloi) that dot its length. Limited excavations at some of the praesidia point to initial construction between the Flavian (69-96 A.D.) and Trajanic-Hadrianic (A.D. 98-138) periods prompted by an upsurge in the Rome-Red Sea-Indian trade passing between Myos Hormos and Coptos, and by a major increase in "barbarian" activity and attacks at that time. Earlier in the first century A.D., when security issues were not a major concern, the wells (hydreumata) and stations on the road seem to have been unfortified. The 2,400 or so ostraca--surprisingly few if any papyri were found--reveal much about the garrisons and the civilian inhabitants, and various facets of their personal and professional lives. Ninety-five percent of the ostraca are written in Greek with Latin a distant second; there are two in Nabataean and a few in Demotic. Other contemporary texts written in various Semitic languages as well as in Greek and Latin appear carved on rock faces near the forts and along the road. The garrisons comprised both Greek and Latin speakers; the bulk, however, appear to have been native Egyptians. Not all orders and decrees from ranking officials were transmitted in Latin; Greek was used for...