Nobody can estimate the number of inscriptions that have been lost because there was no one to find them in time (Ûába 1974, p. 242).
The ªAlamat Tal Road, leading to the Gebel Qarn el-Gir caravansary, may be seen as the right (northern) branch of an inverted “Y” of ancient routes leading in and out of the Thebaïd. The left branch of this road sys- tem is a route connecting the Gebel Qarn el-Gir post with the escarpment behind Western Thebes. At the Theban terminus of the route is another stopping point, embellished during the early Seventeenth Dynasty by the construction of a small chapel, constructed at least in part of sandstone (see Darnell and Darnell, forthcom- ing b, for the road and the Theban terminus). The greatest concentration of ancient material on the Farshût Road, and one of the most extensive ancient sites in the Western Desert, is at the Wadi el-H˘ôl, where the road ascends and descends the high plateau near the middle of the Qena Bend of the Nile.
Wadi el-H˘ôl was roughly the midway point of the distance to be covered by travelers cutting across the Qena Bend along the Luxor-Farshût desert road and is likely to have been the normal halting point for travelers not continuing directly between points near Thebes and Hou. The Wadi el-H˘ôl is also somewhat of a crossroads, and as such could also be expected to have some sort of shrine or memorial.1 The official nature of the most for-
mal of the monuments that had survived until recently at the site, a large rock-cut stela of Sobekhotep III, sug- gests that the stela is located here as a statement of official control at a point crossed by several desert tracks.2
In the 1930s, Terence Gray and Hans Winkler discovered a group of inscriptions and rock art in the gebel far behind Hou. Winkler designated the site by the name of a nearby wadi, the Wadi el-H˘ôl. The site is not actu- ally part of that wadi, however, and considering the horrors of the modern vandalism within the actual wadi of ancient activity, we have retained the name the Wadi el-H˘ôl for the unnamed wadi. Two photographs appeared in Hans Winkler’s Rock-Drawings of Southern Upper Egypt, the publication of his work for the Sir Robert Mond Desert Expedition of the Egypt Exploration Society (pls. IX, 2, and X, 1). The numerous hieroglyphic and hieratic inscriptions at the Wadi el-H˘ôl received simply a tantalizing reference: “rarely has such a mass of hi- eroglyphic (sic) inscriptions been found at one site.”3 In 1951 Macadam — based on a photograph and notes by
Newberry — published the most “monumental” of the inscriptions at the Wadi el-H˘ôl, the stela of Sobekhotep III.4 In 1994 the Theban Desert Road Survey began to work at the site, and we now know that the Wadi el-H˘ôl
was not a remote and isolated location during the height of pharaonic antiquity. Our discoveries of a sandstone chapel of Antef V and the statue of a general of the Second Intermediate Period at the Theban terminus of the Farshût Road demonstrate that the Wadi el-H˘ôl was once the bustling center of a great highway. This desert route connected Thebes with Hou and Abydos in the north, and — via the Gebel Qarn el-Gir caravansary — with the oases of Kharga and Dakhla in the Western Desert.
Several hundred inscriptions and depictions, in four major concentrations (Areas A–D; see pls. 60–70), cover the limestone cliffs of the Wadi el-H˘ôl site. Sometime after Gray and Winkler completed their cursory ex-
Council for Antiquities. The Theban Desert Road Survey has photographed and studied these pieces.
5. Note the legend recorded in Senn 1969, p. 230.
6. For preliminary accounts of our work at the Wadi el-H˘ôl, see Darnell and Darnell 1994a; idem 1995; idem 1996a; idem 1996b, pp. 40 –41.
7. See the comments of Winlock 1940, pp. 137– 61.
8. See ◊erny™ 1947, pp. 54 (§C no. 11 and §D no. 20), 55 (§F no. 28), and remarks at the end of p. 57.
9. See W. M. F. Petrie 1901 and Sowada 1996, pp. 89–96, with references to more recent work focused almost exclu-
sively on predynastic remains along the margin of the culti- vation.
10. Norman Davies 1923, pl. 26, lines 11–12, of the royal or- der.
11. Compare the use of the epithet h≥k≥|-Èwnw of Ramesses III
as the name of Medinet Habu in the Graeco-Roman period; see Thissen 1989, p. 144.
12. The name T¯mbw could be Libyan or Nubian; compare a
word for “fly” (Orel and Stolbova 1995, p. 551, no. 2652); “side” (Armbruster 1965, p. 84c, 4th word); “two” (Böhm 1988, p. 57, §31).
amination of the site, certain inhabitants of Halfaya Bahri became aware of the existence of ancient remains at the Wadi el-H˘ôl. When we first relocated the site, we found evidence of vandalism, and several times since then we have physically chased thieves away from the site. Local legends of gold in the mountains of the vicin- ity perhaps may have contributed to the vandalism.5 Alas, despite several arrests, intentional and often wanton
destruction continues at the Wadi el-H˘ôl. With the support of the Antiquities officials, however, we have now photographically documented all of the depictions and inscriptions at the Wadi el-H˘ôl. Of these we have thus far made facsimile copies for over 250, and we shall continue until nothing is left to copy.6 Forty-five of the rock
inscriptions and rock art at the Wadi el-H˘ôl are published herein.
Although there are both earlier and later inscriptions, the bulk of the texts, and certainly the more elaborate of these, date from the late Middle Kingdom and the early Second Intermediate Period. The distribution of in- scribed material is similar to that at Wadi Shatt er-Riga¢l, which contains some earlier and later inscriptions, but the majority date from the early Middle Kingdom, trailing off during the later Middle Kingdom and the Thir- teenth Dynasty, with fewer yet from the New Kingdom.7
The references to priests in several of the inscriptions at the Wadi el-H˘ôl appear to show that many of the official travelers through the Wadi el-H˘ol were attached to temples. These men may have belonged to that class of official who administered desert routes and passes for temple domains (Koenig 1979, p. 200; Edel 1983, pp. 170 –71), overseeing passage and perhaps collecting imposts. There are a few inscriptions in a natural shelf to- ward the top of Gebel Qarn el-Gir, but only a few may show the names of visitors we also know from the Wadi el-H˘ôl. Thus far we have not yet located another inscription station along the main track where one may hope to find the names of the same people and chart their progress, as one may follow the scribe Nebnetjeru, son of Hori, as he makes his way along Wadi el-Allaqi.8
When we have published them all, these inscriptions may help us understand something of the importance of H˘w.t-S˙m/Diospolis parva between the end of the predynastic and the beginning of the Late Period.9 In fact,
those published here attest several scribes of Hou, refer to the house of life at Hou, and demonstrate in fact how Hou came to be called Diospolis parva. The names of the stablemaster and the grain accounting scribe, along with the signature of Romaª at the high desert station, reveal close epistolographic and economic connections between Thebes and Hou during the New Kingdom.
We have not yet identified an ancient name for this site in any of the inscriptions at the Wadi el-H˘ôl. One notes with interest, however, the names T≤mbw and ª|-b|w belonging to Medjoy outposts, mentioned in the royal letter in the tomb of Nebamun (TT 90).10 The second of these names, ª|-b|w, could well derive from the Horus
name of Amenemhat III. If so, that toponym may well refer to a late Middle Kingdom outpost in the desert west of Thebes,11 and the Wadi el-H˘ôl would certainly be an excellent candidate for identification with that outpost,
considering the number of inscriptions at the Wadi el-H˘ôl that specifically write the Horus name of Amenemhat III.12