The Dakhleh Oasis Project 

Scientists at the Dakhleh Oasis Project have been researching this ancient landscape since 1978. Through almost four decades they have studied the movement of humans across this part of the Sahara; they have uncovered lost towns swallowed by desert sands; found ancient wooden books and hundreds of papyrus documents and personal letters. All these discoveries are revealing the daily lives and unusual religious practices of a forgotten people.

 

For half a million years our ancestors have left a record of their journey through this land, which has sometimes been verdant, sometimes desert, but has always provided a dramatic backdrop for the natural art gallery they left behind—from prehistoric rock art to Roman wall paintings.

 

The DOP is unique in its scope and breadth of study. Its consortium of scholars includes archaeologists, anthropologists, zoologists, botanists, geophysicists, environmentalists, Classicists, Islamists, Egyptologists, conservators, artists and photographers. More than a hundred scientists come to the DOP each winter season. The project’s work has been publicised by the BBC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

 

 

(Past + Present)

Director: Dr Pawel Polkowski, Posnan Museum,
Prof. R S Bagnall, Classicist Amheida Director. New York University
Emeritus Prof. Rufus Churcher, Palaeontologist, zoologist. University of Toronto.  Victoria B.C.
A/Prof. Colin Hope, Excavator at Mut el-Kharab and Ismant el-Kharab.  Monash University, Melbourne
Prof. Olaf Kaper, Egyptologist, epigraphic specialist.  Leiden University
Ewa Kuciewicz, Rock Art specialist, Cracow, Poland
Emeritus Prof. Maxine Kleindienst, Old Stone Age Africa specialist. University of Toronto
Prof. Fred Leemhuis, Islamicist. University of  Groningen, Netherlands
Dr Mary MacDonald, Holocene Prehistory specialist; University of Calgary
Prof. Anthony J. Mills, excavator at ‘Ain Birbiyeh Temple and ‘Ain el-Gazzareen. University of Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum
John O’Carroll, Artist, Cornwall
Emmeritus Professor Manfred Woidich, Dialectologist. University of Amsterdam
Adam Zielinski, Stone conservator.  Hamilton, Canada
Dr. Hab. Ursula Thanheiser, University of Vienna, Archaeobotanist
Professor Tosha Dupres, Physical Anthropology
Dr Peter Sheldrick, M.D, Physical Anthropology
Dr Gillian Bowen, Christian Egypt, Monash University
Professor Iain Gardener, Manichaean Studies
Professor Klaas Worp, Greek, Leiden University
Dr Helen Whitehouse, Art Historian, Oxford University
Dr Ashten Warfe, Monash University

Achievements

Scientists at the Dakhleh Oasis Project have been researching this ancient landscape since 1978. Through almost four decades they have studied the movement of humans across this part of the Sahara; they have uncovered lost towns swallowed by desert sands; found ancient wooden books and hundreds of papyrus documents and personal letters. All these discoveries are revealing the daily lives and unusual religious practices of a forgotten people.

 

For half a million years our ancestors have left a record of their journey through this land, which has sometimes been verdant, sometimes desert, but has always provided a dramatic backdrop for the natural art gallery they left behind—from prehistoric rock art to Roman wall paintings.

 

The DOP is unique in its scope and breadth of study. Its consortium of scholars includes archaeologists, anthropologists, zoologists, botanists, geophysicists, environmentalists, Classicists, Islamists, Egyptologists, conservators, artists and photographers. More than a hundred scientists come to the DOP each winter season. The project’s work has been publicised by the BBC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

 

Oldest books ever found.  +360 AD.
500,000 years-old remains of human activity
+ 600 archaeological sites
Extinct faunal species
Meterorite impact zone, dated by lithics
Neolithic developments about 500 years before similar events in Nile Valley
18 monographs published, several hundred scientific articles
100s if not 1000s of rock art depictions
Old Kingdom trading/exploration settlement
7 stone temples of historical periods
Cretaceous extinct animals, dinosaurs discovered
Shoreline of Tethys Ocean discerned
Roman fort beneath Islamic village of el-Qasr.
Restoration Medieval Islamic village
Restoration of Deir el-Hagar Roman temple
Study of ancient botanical records from 6th to 1st millennia
New turtle for Egypt.  Cretaceous. Discovery 2015.
Publication of results: 16 monographs; hundreds of scientific articles.
Excavation of ‘Ain Birbiyeh temple.  Augustus Caesar date.  New deity- Amun-Nakht

Publications

A brief list of Publications published by project members and about the project:
Please note these are also available to order online from www.oxbowbooks.com

 

Edwards, W.I., C.A. Hope, and E.R. Segnet,  Ceramics from the Dakhleh Oasis.  Preliminary Studies.  Burwood, 1987

 

K.A. Worp (ed), Greek Papyri from Kellis I,  Oxford, 1995

 

Gardner, Iain,  Kellis Literary texts I,  Oxford, Oxbow, 1996

 

Worp, K.A., and A. Rijksbaron (eds), The Kellis Isocrates Codex, Oxford, Oxbow, 1997

 

Bagnall, Roger S., The Kellis Agricultural Account Book, Oxford, 1997

 

Churcher, C.S., and A.J. Mills, Reports from the Survey of the Dakhleh oasis 1977-1987,Oxford , 1999

 

Hope, C.A., and A.J. Mills, (eds), Preliminary reports on the1992-1993 and 1993- 1994 Field Seasons,  Oxford, 1999

 

Gardner, Iain, Anthony Alcock  and Wolf-Peter Funk, Coptic Documentary texts  volume 1, Oxford, 1999

 

Marlow, C.A. and A. J. Mills,(eds), The Oasis Papers.  Proceedings of the First Internatuional Symposium of the Dakhleh Oasis Project,  Oxford, 2001

 

Hope, Colin A. And Gillian E. Bowen (eds), Preliminary Reports on the 1994-1995 to 1998-1999 Field Seasons, Oxford, Oxbow, 2002

 

Bowen, Gillian E and Colin A. Hope, (eds), The Oasis Papers 3 Proceedings of the Third International Conference of rthe Dakhleh Oasis Project, Oxford, 2003

 

Kaper, Olaf E., The Egyptian God Tutu,  Leuven, 2003

 

Worp, K. A., (ed), Greek Ostraca from Kellis, Oxford, 2004

 

Schijns, Wolf, with Olaf Kaper and Joris Kila, Vernacular Mudbrick Architecture in the Dakhleh Oasis and the Design of the Dakhleh Oasis Training and  Archaeological Conservation Centre,  Oxford, 2008

 

Wiseman, Marcia, F., (ed), The Oasis Papers 2, Proceedings of the Second  International Conference of the Dakhleh Oasis Project,  Oxford, 2008

 

Thanheiser, Ursula, Times of Change.  Environment and Subsistence in Late Prehistoric Dakhleh Oasis, Vienna, 2008

 

Bagnall, Roger S., Paola Davoli and Colin A. Hope (eds), The Oasis Papers 6, Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of the Dakhleh Oasis Project, Oxford, Oxbow, 2012

 

Dakhleh Oasis and the Wester Desert in Egypt under the Ptolemies, Janes C R Gill – Oxbow Book

 

Harry Thurston – Island of the Blessed: The Secrets of Egypt’s Everlasting Oasis

 

James C. R. Gill – Dakhleh Oasis And The Western Desert Of Egypt Under The Ptolemis, 2017

 

Ashten R Warfe – Prehistoric Pottery From Dakhleh Oasis Egypt, 2018

 

M. Kobusiewicz. The Production, Use and Importance of Flint Tools in the Archaic Period and the Old Kingdom of Egypt, Archaeopress Egyptology 12,  2015

 

Pawel Lech Polkowski, Krajobraz i sztuka naskalna.  W palimpsescie egipskiej Oazy Dachla, [Landscape and Rock Art.  In the Palimpsest of the Dakhleh Oasis]   Poznan, 2016

 

PLUS an uncounted number of articles in scientific journals world-wide

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