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On January 8th, 2003, three members of the natural
heritage documentation program team went to Wadi El Rashrash:
an eastern desert wadi system some 60 km south of Cairo. The closest
town to it on the Upper Egypt road is El Saff. We turned east,
five kms South of El Saff onto the mud road parallel to an almost
dried out canal.
We drove off for another half an hour past fields
of vegetables on reclaimed land, and further and further from
the cement factories chimneys! Before we finally arrived at the
wadi mouth and entered the main tributary. This part of the wadi
is wide, with sparse vegetation and a few Acacia trees. Under
one of these Acacias, there were two Bedouins who came to us and
invited us to have tea with them, they live in the nearby village
but are taking their animals to graze in the wadi, and they had
a donkey and a few camels which happily grazed the Acacia trees
giving it the typical umbrella form crown.
The Bedouins belonged to El Massa3eed tribe, they
are originally from the Arabian Peninsula and have settled in
Sinai and the eastern desert. We checked another Acacia and then
drove off to join the "mada2" which will take us to
the Wadi El Rashrash "proper". As we climbed the terrace
to find the "mada2", pottery shards caught our eyes,
we stopped briefly only to find our first archaeological site
of the day with potsherds and lithic artifacts scattered on the
surface, traces of earlier occupation of the wadi at the time
when perhaps water flowed in the river bed!
Our next stop was for lunch, under an Acacia tree (what else!)
near the rocky wadi terraces which served as perfect seats for
the hungry company. Fire was soon lit for our tea and we enjoyed
our simple meal in a perfect setting.
It was now time for us to get to our destination. Wadi El Rashrash
is recorded in the WCMC database on protected areas as Egypt's
first declared protectorate. This has in fact been the royal hunting
reserve and was taken into protection in 1900. The main building
is the royal rest house (with the crown), behind which are three
other buildings serving as servants quarters and kitchens and
complete with pigeon houses for the delicate royal taste for luxury!!
The buildings were adequately built on the upper wadi terrace
and the garden is located wadi bed, with palm and several large
Acacias.
The vegetation in the deep protected wadi is rather
dense and comprises some 20 different wild plant species. And
although we saw no animals, tracks and traces of foxes, hares,
gazelles (and maybe Ibex) were recorded. This was after all a
hunting reserve and the hide built around huge boulders in the
wadi bed not very far from the rest house served as the convenience
required by the royal crown while waiting for the Ibex herd to
come for food.
We walked to the stone-built hide and as we were
admiring the construction surrounding the rocks, the rocks began
to appear more interesting than the building. A closer look at
the boulders revealed the presence of several rock engravings!
We could instantaneously recognize human figures, Ibex, dogs (lions),
camels, horses. We inspected the other boulders to find them all
covered up to their top surfaces with rock art! And the further
we walked up the wadi, the more engravings we found, we now added
the "3ankh" symbol and what looked like nabatean inscriptions
in addition to primitive "Koufi" Arabic writings. A
lot of pictures were taken but it was getting late and we had
to leave before sunset, for we had at least an hour drive before
the first chimney is in sight!
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