A home of their own
After 27 years the Dakhla Oasis Project finally has its own abode. Jenny Jobbins attended the official opening
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Clockwise from top: through the gate to the sun-lit interior; The governor of the New Valley talks to Dakhla Oasis Project Director Tony Mills (centre); Anthropologist Scott Haddon sorting out bones
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Encircling the top of a sandy mound known locally as the hill of Al-Gondi (the soldier) is a mud-brick wall, or rather the outer wall of a complex of buildings, much like a smaller version of the centuries-old citadels that form the core of most oasis settlements in the Western Desert. At the foot of the hill, palm groves stretch away into the distance. The only item to put a date on the timeless setting is the main road that runs past into Mut, the largest town in Dakhla Oasis.
The complex at the top of Soldier's Hill, constructed by local builders in traditional style, is the new dig house of the Dakhla Oasis Project (DOP) and headquarters of its broad archaeological study of the region. The architect, Barry Rowney, an Australian, makes architectural drawings of buildings unearthed during excavations.
For most of its 27 years the DOP has been housed in a rented home in the neighbouring village of Bishendi. The move to its own premises comes thanks to the dream of its members -- particularly the project's Canadian director, Anthony Mills -- and the New Valley governorate which has loaned them Soldier's Hill. Project members moved into the new dig house for the last season (October 2002 to March 2003), even before it was finished.
This season the buildings have been extended and studios are being added for site artists. Mill's wife, Lesley, has been supervising the garden, planting saplings from the Middle and Far East, and seeds she brings from the Mills's hometown in Cornwall. In the courtyard a crimson bougainvillea is in bloom, while the back garden has hibiscus, roses, a neem tree (used to produce mosquito repellent), acacia, jacaranda, flame trees, olives, guava, honeysuckle and scented geraniums, all set alongside neat squares of fuul and spinach. A loofah vine struggles to climb a wall. On either side of the path leading to the door are beds of lemon grass, onions, dill, ghargia (rocket), courgettes, carrots and coriander. Framing the entrance, flowering zinnias and white Madagascan periwinkles.
The bricks used to make the building were made on the spot from the thick, greyish loam that lies on the hill. They lie drying in tidy rows beside the driveway. In winter they will sit there for ten days; in summer they dry more quickly. The builders ferry them in wheelbarrows to the studios at the far end of the complex.
On the wall beside the door a brass plaque announces: "Built with thanks to the generosity of Vodafone and Cairo Barclays." Over the antique door, carved on wood in curling calligraphy just like the lintels placed over the doorways of the Islamic houses and tombs of Qasr Dakhla, is a message that, translated, says:
"In the name of God, the merciful and compassionate, may this house be illuminated with joy for those who look upon it. May happiness be written on its doors. Enter it in peace, and safely, and say: 'Are those who know the same as those who do not know?' These blessed dwellings were established by the scholar Anthony Mills, director of the Dakhla Oasis Project; its plans were drawn by the architect Barry Rowney; it was built by the builder Mansour Bayoumi and the late master Ayman Idris from Al- Mahout, and the master Mohamed Hussein, in cooperation with a group of workmen from Dakhla Oasis, in the [Muslim] year 1428. This lintel was written by Farid Abul-Ibneen El-Mustaqi and made by master Saleh Mohamed Hassan Alam the carpenter."
This all fits like a ship in a bottle into two lines. How it does beggars belief. Poor Master Saleh wonders, too. "Couldn't you have put less text on it?" he protested. "Don't you know I'm old?" The lintel is traditional in every way except one: the carpenter added a fourth name to the traditional three: that of his great-grandfather, Alam, who he believes carved some of the last of the Islamic lintels in Qasr Dakhla.
Qasr Dakhla is one of the DOP's central sites. The project to restore Islamic Qasr Dakhla is run by former director of the Dutch Institute Fred Leemhuis, who joined the DOP only two years ago. So far Leemhuis's discoveries have been both extraordinary and illuminating. While clearing rubble from the first two adjacent houses to be restored he has so far uncovered more than 200 documents recording the affairs and events of the families who lived in them. To illustrate how important this research is to the community, one of the workmen helping with the clearance recognised his grandfather as the addressee of a letter dated 1898. "It's their own past and there's a link with their present life," Leemhuis notes.
The idea of the DOP was conceived in the late 1970s. It came into being in 1978 under the auspices of the Royal Ontario Museum (the ROM), to which Anthony Mills belonged. From the outset it attracted gifted scholars in various fields of archaeology: paleontologists, archeobiologists, paleopathologists, anthropologists, dialectologists, rock carving and hieroglyph specialists, Egyptologists, Graeco-Roman scholars and Islamists, not to mention artists and architects to draw and reconstruct the findings. The DOP makes the savants of Napoleon's expedition look like a troupe of amateurs. Although it began life solely under the ROM, the DOP is now a private enterprise. Current researchers come not only from Canada but also from Great Britain, Australia, Holland, Italy, France, Austria, Germany, Poland, Belgium and the United States.
"We have slowly acquired a whole field of expertise," says Mills, who himself studied at Sir Flinders Petrie's old alma mater, University College London (UCL). Mills is proud of the way the DOP has evolved. "We are doing something that has never been done before in Egypt," he says. "This is a regional project looking at environmental history and human history and the interaction between the two. It involves zoologists, botanists and many different kinds of archaeologists with different interests. Plus all the ancillary people -- the architects and conservators who work for one or a number of us. There is a great deal of interdependence between disciplines and sub- disciplines."
In Canada, the United States, Great Britain and Australia the DOP is a registered charity, but funding comes from all areas. "We seek funding from institutions in all the countries from where we have people," Mills says. Members are required to bring their own funding and pay for room and board.
The new dig house has many conveniences. It is more spacious, more convenient, more remote from the village -- and thus more conducive to work -- and it has hot showers. Although one or two members remark that they miss the hot springs at Bishendi, the team of Australian archeologists from Monash University staying here while they conduct a survey at the nearby Roman city of Kellis, are not complaining. All day long they are handling mummies, carefully extracting them from their sandy graves and sorting the rags in which they were wrapped, and they return every afternoon tired, grubby, and eager for a hot shower.
DOP members stress that Mills has a talent not only for finding experts who are top in their field, but also people with good social skills and who fit in with the group. There is an emphasis on sharing and communication: researchers are not encouraged to keep things up their sleeve. The DOP's main gathering room, with its roaring log fire, becomes a sanctuary where members sit in a circle to discuss the day's events before being called to supper, which is taken at two long tables -- each presided over by Mills or Lesley. Afterwards the circle regroups beside the fire.
Mills himself is keen to open his season at the Old Kingdom site he is excavating south of Qasr Dakhla in the village of Al-Moushir, where he has found many potsherds and flints. "They used flints right down to the Roman period," he says. "Any farmer could pick up a piece of flint and shape it into a tool. This is largely ignored by Egyptologists."
Before he can get down to work, however, he must supervise the finishing touches to the dig house and the grand opening by the governor of the New Valley, Medhat Abdel-Rahman. Preparations have been going on for some time, though sadly most dignitaries from Cairo have sent their regrets owing to EgyptAir's withdrawal of flights to Kharga Airport while planes ferry pilgrims to the hajj. The alternative means a 12-hour bus ride, or a long car journey, but last-minute inclement weather in Cairo has put paid to this. Only one guest has braved the overnight bus, and his journey was delayed for three hours when a torrential thunderstorm, followed shortly by a sandstorm, brought desert traffic to a halt.
Down in Dakhla, hit much later by the storm, the day dawned with a cool, sandy wind. It had been raining. If rain in a desert oasis sounds incongruous, then rest assured that rain can and does come, and it can have disastrous and far-reaching consequences. The mud-brick citadels in many of the Western Desert oases -- Shali in Siwa, Al- Qara, Qasr Farafra, Qasr Dakhla and Balaat -- are just some of the towns with tightly woven streets that were deserted after being worn or damaged by rain. And if not by rain, by sand -- the desert elements are quite unrelenting. One town -- and it cannot have been the only one -- that was deserted not because of rain but because it was blanketed by a sand dune was the Christianised Roman city of Kellis where the Australians are working, which was abandoned in about 300 AD.
But on this day the dig house was lucky. While the windswept hosts waited for the arrival of their guests in a yellow mist of sand, news was arriving to say the weather was much worse in Cairo. It was disappointing: the DOP's staff, Taha, Hosni and Hamida, overseen by the project's major-domo Mansour Bayoumi, had been up all night preparing mountains of food. Now they were dusting away sand. The rest of the DOP researchers, dressed in their smartest gear, emerged from their rooms where they had been huddled all morning. Guests trickled in from next door: Columbia House, Columbia University's brand new project headquarters. The researchers from there, many of them undergraduates, compared their billet with the DOP's.
Columbia House's director Roger Bagnall arrived to line up and await the governor's cavalcade with Mills and his wife and DOP members Leemhuis and Olaf Kaper of the Dutch Institute; Colin Hope, Gillian Bowen, Ashten Warfe and the team from Monash; Scott Haddon from UCL; architect Rowney; and artists John O'Carroll and John Keays. By the time the governor and his escort arrived everyone had overcome his or her disappointment and was looking forward to lunch. As people do in situations of minor adversity, the dignitaries displayed much humour and fortitude as they struggled with their speeches against the wind. The governor noted the importance of the project to the people of the area. "This project reveals the lives of our grandfathers," he said, promising to help in any way he could. "But we can't do anything about the weather."
Mills expressed his delight at having their own house after 27 years, thanks to the generosity of the governorate, and he thanked people for coming "in spite of the little breeze". The weather even relented enough to allow a brief photo opportunity before everyone hurried indoors for lunch.
After lunch the governor was taken on a tour of the researchers' offices and accommodation: pottery rooms, bone rooms, studios and private rooms. He much admired the flowing lines of the honey- coloured walls, the soft contours of the lounge and the natural steps and angles. After a presentation ceremony with cake and tea, with everyone crowded into the lounge, he went next door to pay a visit to the new Columbia House.
Afterwards one of his entourage, remarking on the facilities there, was heard to say: "Over at the American house, they do it the American way. But here they do it our way." There could be no more fitting compliment for a project that is local in every way.
Sites in Dakhla and elsewhere in the Western Desert are mostly fragile structures of mud brick and are easily damaged by tourists and sightseers. All sites may only be visited with permission from the Antiquities Department and accompanied by an inspector.
