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Postilla

PEABODY MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT, U.S.A.

Number 84 August 20, 1964

A NATURAL HISTORY STUDY OF KURKUR OASIS,
LIBYAN DESERT, WESTERN GOVERNATE, EGYPT

I. INTRODUCTION'

CHARLES A. REED

PEABODY MuseUM oF NATURAL History, YALE UNIVERSITY

The Yale Prehistoric Expedition to Nubia was organized in
answer to an invitation from the Government of the United Arab
Republic for all nations to contribute to the campaign to salvage
the monuments of Nubia. The occasion for this intensive inter-
national research program was the building of the High Dam near
Aswan, at the junction of Upper Egypt with Nubia. Whereas most
of the resulting expeditions were historically oriented, excavating
remains of the ancient civilizations of Egypt, the Yale group of
prehistorians, earth scientists and biologists have concentrated
instead on events of the half-million years or more that preceded
the rise of the first ancient civilization in Africa.

One aspect of our research has been the history of the chang-
ing environments throughout the long period being studied by us;
a major key to the study of such paleo-environments is the deter-

‘The second paper in this series on the results of the Yale Nubian Expedi-
tion’s research at Kurkur Oasis will follow shortly: Butzer, Karl W
“Pleistocene Paleoclimates of the Kurkur Oasis, Egypt.” Canadian Geog-
rapher (in press).

i)

Postilla Yale Peabody Museum No. 84

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Fig. 1. Map of Nubia and part of Upper Egypt, with adjacent areas of |
the Western Desert. (After Murray, 1939)

mination of climatic changes, with the facts being derived pri-
marily from the geological evidence. While most of the work of
the Expedition was close to the Nile River, both north and south
of Aswan, and while much can be learned from a study of the
geological phenomena close to the river, yet the Nile is a peculiar
stream and its own complexity makes the unraveling of its past
history a difficult matter. One part of the complexity is the situa-
tion that its drainage is from Abyssinia and East Africa, which
areas have a monsoon climate; the river then runs through the
Sahara Desert and enters a region of Mediterranean climate.

If one is interested primarily in the past environments and the

Viera, wewWitti , wwe

LIBRARY
Scr & 1964

Aug. 20,1964 Natural History Study of Kurkur adi VARS

UNIVERSITY.
prehistoric peoples of Egyptian Nubia, as we were and are, by
virtue of having our studies concentrated there, the paleo-envi-
ronmental history as seen in the sediments and the cycles of ero-
sion and deposition is complicated by tnis factor of the monsoon
influence to the south being superimposed upon the evidences
remaining from the fluctuations of the local climate, this latter
being essentially peripheral Mediterranean.

For a study of the purely local climate, one needs an oasis,
where the environment was and is unaffected by the complexities
of the Nile’s flow. A small oasis would be best; being small, it
would be sensitive to local changes, and the evidences of such
changes could be interpreted by the experienced geologist.

Such an oasis—small, local and fairly accessible—is Kurkur.
Karl Butzer, the Expedition’s geologist for the first season (1962-
1963) of our work (which still continues), had understood the
importance of Kurkur Oasis from the first suggestion that we
might have an Expedition, and the necessity of field work there had
been basic in all of our planning.

West and somewhat south of Aswan, Upper Egypt, across a
part of the eastern Sahara known as Egypt’s Western or Libyan
Desert, lies a small spot of serene and isolated beauty, where
dom and date palms cluster around a few hidden pools in a wadi
bottom, and vegetation of mixed palms, acacias, thorn-bushes and
halfa grass straggles thinly away into the desert along the wadis
radiating from the central pools. This is Kurkur Oasis,° only 62
km from Aswan, but almost totally unknown today to most people
in that industrial city, which now is linked into the modern eco-
nomic and transportation networks of the world and has for-
gotten the caravan trails of yesteryear.

Most of Egypt’s oases in the Western Desert are the by-prod-
ucts of massive blow-outs, the rock having been removed by wind
erosion until the water table is exposed. Kurkur by contrast would

* Specifically, the oasis lies at 23° 54’ 10” N. and 32° 19’ 10” E. (Ball,
1902).

4 Postilla Yale Peabody Museum No. 84

appear to have been formed where a major wadi was eroded from
a plateau down through a scarp (the “Sin el-Kidab”) onto a plain
leading to the Nile, although Said and Issawy (1964) ascribe

KURKUR

Scale . 1:152,000
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Fig. 2 Kurkur Oasis and surrounding area. (After Murray, 1939)

Aug. 20,1964 Natura! History Study of Kurkur Oasis 5

a dominant role in the origin of the present oasis depression to
local solution and deflation during alternate wet and dry periods®
of the Pleistocene.

The oasis lies in an area of marine sediments, Cretaceous to
Eocene in age. (The following description of the stratigraphic
succession is abstracted from Said, 1962, as modified by personal
communication with Dr. Said.) The major topographic feature is
the Sin el Kidab which, to the south of Kurkur, is capped pri-
marily by the Thebes limestone (lower Eocene). At Kurkur and
to the north, however, this Eocene limestone has been eroded to
the west except for a few outlying remnants such as the top of the
Gebel Garra. At Gebel Garra and along the Sin el Kidab north-
ward the Esna Shales (Paleocene) underly the limestone, but
south and wes: these shales change laterally into a carbonate
facies, which here becomes indistinguishable from the Chalk for-
mation (Paleocene). At Kurkur the uppermost part of the Chalk,
probably in part comparable to the Esna Shales in position and
time, is also eroded to the west, and the oasis is incised into the
lower part of the Chalk.

Four to five meters of highly fossiliferous sandy limestone,
widely discussed in the older literature as “Kurkurstufe,” under-
lies the Chalk and is exposed in places in the bottom of the main
wadi in the southern part of the oasis. Said (1962) had thought
the Kurkurstufe to represent the base of the Chalk, but now
(1964) he considers it instead to lie below the Chalk and oc-
cupy “. . . a Stratigraphic position similar to that of the Dakhla
shales to the north and east. In this respect the Kurkurstufe
replaces the upper part of the Dakhla shale unit rather than the
Chalk rock unit... .” If true, the Kurkurstufe would seem neces-
sarily to be uppermost Cretaceous, as are the Dakhla shales, and
the change represents one more ep-sode in the frequent transfers
in the geological literature of this thin but highly fossiliferous bed
between Cretaceous and Paleocene. These Dakhla shales (the
“Exogyra overwegi” beds of many older authors; the “foliated
marls” of Cuvillier, 1935) would seem not to be represented
*It is my personal opinion that the amount of water draining from the

Kurkur area at diferent times in the Pleistocene would seem quite suf-
ficient to account by erosion alone for the creation of the present wadi
system, in part of which the oasis lies, without the necessity of presuming

that alternate solution and deflation has occurred, unless there is good
geological evidence for these latter phenomena.

6 Postilla Yale Peabody Museum No. 84

otherwise in Kurkur oasis, but are well-known from the face of
the scarp at Gebel Garra. Below the Dakhla shales lie the mas-
sive beds of the Nubian sandstone (Cretaceous); to the west of
the Sin el Kidab these sandstones underly all the strata mentioned
above, but to the east they form the surface of a gently sloping
plain to the Nile.

The scarp of the Sin el Kidab also forms the boundary between
the physiographic areas of the more elevated “Lower Nuba Table-
land” to its west and the “Lower Nuba Plains” between itself and
the Nile to the east (Shata, 1962). Kurkur thus lies almost on
the boundary between these two phys-ographic areas, but since
most of the vegetation of the oasis does not grow in the deepest
and steepest part of the wadi, at the scarp’s edge, but is slightly to
the west and north, in the wider and higher part, the oasis is
definitely on the eastern edge of the Lower Nuba Tableland.

Kurkur is one of Egypt’s smallest oases, with a central mass of
27 clumps of dom palms clustered in an oval area no greater than
25 by 30 meters. The whole of the vegetated area is in the form
of a Y with a crooked base; the two upper branches of the Y are
wadis of gentle declivity draining from the north and northwest
and meeting approximately 360 meters to the north of the main
mass of palms. The crooked base of the Y is the main wadi, which
descends gently to the south for a few hundred meters, and then
cuts down through the Sin el Kidab more steeply to the east.
The north and northwest wadis extend outward into the desert
with vegetation diminishing from palms to acacias to scattered
grass and camel-thorns, but some parts of the main wadi below
the oasis and across the Lower Nuba Plain to the Nile are densely
carpeted with living camel-thorn, indicating the persistence of
underground water down the wadi.

The earlier geological studies on Kurkur and adjacent areas
were concentrated on stratigraphic problems of the Upper Creta-
ceous and Lower Tertiary and on identification of the invertebrate
marine fossils contained in those strata (see Cuvillier, 1935, for
a summary). Only passing mention (chiefly by Ball, 1902) was
made by these earlier authors of Quaternary geology and history.
However, as outlined in my introductory paragraphs, the Quater-
liary aspects of the region are of particular importance and
interest to prehistorians, and so it was upon Quaternary prob-

Aug. 20,1964 Natural History Study of Kurkur Oasis 7

lems that the members of the Yale University Prehistoric Expedi-
tion focused while at Kurkur, 8-12 March, 1963.

Kurkur Oasis does not now have any flowing water; indeed,
of the two wells reported by Ball the northern one is at present
sanded in. However, at different periods in the past (presumably
entirely within the Pleistocene), there has been much more local
water, derived in part from greater rainfall than at present and in
part released by lime-bearing springs which built up local deposits
of tufa and travertine. As discussed above, Dr. Karl Butzer, chief
geologist for the Expedition, believed that the study of the local
tufa terraces, which may mark successive periods of long-term
greater rainfall,* and that the study of other geological phenomena
at Kurkur, would help to clarify the sequences of climatic changes
in Upper Egypt and Nubia throughout the Pleistocene and Recent.

At the time of Ball’s visit in 1901, there were two existing
wells, which he called north and south. Neither he nor anyone
else seems to have noted a third well, now dry, which I found
hidden in a cluster of palms near the mouth of the north wadi.
This well was large enough (6 meters across and almost 3 meters
deep) to be a walk-in type, with a staircase of cut palm logs
down the west side. Perhaps it was used at the time of a military
occupation of the late nineteenth century. The northern of the
two wells reported by Ball and the one being used for irrigation
in 1934 (Evans-Pritchard, 1935) is now sanded in and was
already sanded in by 1937 (Mursi, personal communication).

In the area where Ball mentions a “south well” there are, how-
ever, two small wells (pool is a more accurate description of
each) approximately 100 m and 120 m down-wadi (south) from
the central cluster of palms, and in 1963 two of our group dug a
third well in this area. In two places further down-wadi we found
dried mud indicating former seeps, and Evans-Pritchard (1935)
also found some pools not mentioned by Ball. However, the two
pools found by our group have every appearance of permanance;
each is approximately 2.0 meters in diameter. The surface is

*I am personally of the opinion that no pluvial period of any duration
or intensity has occurred in this area since the stabilization of the Sin
el Kidab, that is, possibly since the early Pleistocene (Said and Issawy,
1964), as so few erosion-wadis have cut back into the scarp. One would
expect that pluvial periods, even if with a low annual rainfall, would
have resulted in the Sin el Kidab and the Lower Nuba Tableland being
deeply incised by wadis, carrying away the annual run-off.

8 Postilla Yale Peabody Museum No. 84

about a half meter below ground-level, and the pools are shallow,
from 25 cm to 40 cm deep. These pools are surrounded by scat-
tered palms and high coarse grass. A clump of cattails (Typha
australis) grows luxuriantly adjacent to and directly south of the
southern of these two pools.

The source of the water at Kurkur remains to be determined.
Ball (1902) is the author who has discussed this problem most
thoroughly; he noted particularly that the water at Kurkur, 330
meters above sea-level, is much higher than is the water in the
larger oases (Kharga, Dakhla, Baharia, etc.), where it comes
from the Nubian Sandstone and is rarely found above 120 m.
Thus the water table at Kurkur is either higher than it is to the
north and west and occurs in one of the strata overlying the
Nubian Sandstone, or the water is derived from a source other
than a water table. If a water table exists at Kurkur at 330 meters
elevation, to be intersected by the wadi at that level, one would
expect that there would be other seeps or springs along the face
of the Sin el Kidab at similar levels, but except at Kurkur and
Dungul Oases there are none.

Hume (1908, 1913) definitely believed in the presence of such
a high water table, overlain by permeable strata and underlain by
an impermeable one, which situation he thought a constant one
over a wide area, explaining the occurrence of water at several of
the smail oases of the Western Desert (Kurkur, Dungul, Nakheila,
and Bir Murr). Later (1925, p. 134) he again considered this
problem of the water at Kurkur; while still thinking an imperme-
able limestone layer to be a factor in maintaining a high water
table, Hume admitted that in general no source existed for the
water supposedly carried on such a stratum and stated that partic-
ularly at Kurkur there was no catchment area sufficient to main-
tain the water supply as found.

An alternative suggestion made by Ball is that water comes
from local rain, which occasionally falls during the winter months.
Ball experienced such a rain’ and noted that the rock in the bot-
* This particular rain, on Jan. 25, 1901, was actually part of a devastating

flood which elsewhere in Upper Egypt did tremendous damage (Hume,

1925, p. 83). Kurkur, however, was on the edge of the area of rainfall,

as Ball (1902, p. 33) mentioned only casually a “slight rainfall.’ A ter-
rific flood must have occurred another time at Kurkur, however, for a

hundred or more palm logs and palm tops have been washed down
Kurkur wadi; one finds them strewn for some seven kilometers, in places

Aug. 20,1964 Natural History Study of Kurkur Oasis 9

tom of the wadi of Kurkur Oasis was quite impervious, keeping
the water on the surface. Kurkur, however, is near the southern
limit of the Mediterranean winter rains, so that the rainfall is
usually sparse; the weather-station at Aswan records an annual
mean of only 3 mm. An annual mean tells only part of the story,
however, as rainfall in this area is highly erratic and there may be
none in some years. If the oasis depends entirely on a supply of
ground-water derived from local rainfall, one would expect that
supply to fail sometimes, whereas by all records the water level in
the pools appears to be quite constant®. The continued presence
of cattails indicates that the water has never failed entirely since
they began growing there.

The basis for Ball’s idea, however, was the erroneous one that
the wadis draining into the oasis had no outlet; he thought the
valley to be a closed catchment basin. Actually, all of the wadis
involved are natural drainage ‘channels with definite declivities,*
a fact first noted in 1927 (Uhden, 1930), and made clear by
Murray (1939; see his map of Kurkur facing p. 103, and also
the map of Kurkur Quadrangle, Survey of Egypt, no. 12/72.)
Any rainwater not immediately absorbed into the substrate would
thus be drained away.

To me, at least, the idea that the present water of the oasis is
derived solely from present rainfall is difficult to believe. Since the
surrounding desert, which gets the same meagre and erratic rain-
fall as does the Kurkur area, supports no plant life, we would have
to assume that the drainage-area of the wadis running into the
oasis would trap and carry enough water to maintain the present

lodged in the rocks of the wadi walls. Indeed, it was the sight of these
palm logs down-wadi that first gave Murray (personal communication)
the idea that Kurkur Oasis could not be a closed catchment basin (as both
Ball and Cuvillier maintained), before he had ever seen the oasis. The
flood that carried these palm-trunks necessarily antedates 1934, when
Cuvillier first photographed them.

° The statement of Leuchs (1913, repeated by Hume, 1913) that water at
the time of his visit was 6 meters below the surface must certainly be a
typographical error, as no important fluctuation of any extent in the
levels of the pools has been noted by others. Further, a fall of 6 meters
in the water level would probably have taken several years to happen,
during which time the cattails and many of the palms would have died.
I suggest that Leuchs intended 0.6 meters.

“it is curious that Ball, usually a most accurate observer, would make and
publish such a strange error. I can only remark that in the few days he
was at Kurkur he did an extraordinary amount of careful and detailed
work, and he can certainly be excused the lapse of one small error.

10 Postilla Yale Peabody Museum No. 84

flora in the oasis proper. Some of the acacias and thorn bushes
might survive on such a meagre and erratic water supply but the
palms and cattails most probably could not; indeed palms are not
found elsewhere along the scarp except at Dungul (where wells
also exist), and cattails are not present even there.

An alternative suggestion concerning the source of water at
Kurkur (and presumably at Dungul, too) is that the springs lie
atop a fault line (such a fault at Dungul was suggested by Hume,
1908), and that the water rises from a deeper source than a local
water-table (Shata, personal communication).

Any conclusions concerning the origin of the present water at
Kurkur Oasis must be reached in the light of the evidence that in
the past there have been produced massive deposits of tufas and
travertines, not only at Kurkur but also at Dungul. At Kurkur
many of these tufas were spring-derived*; the fossil mounds built
up at the sites of the former springs, with their hollow feeder
pipes’ are obvious features of much of the area. These tufas were
deposited at successive periods of geological time, which periods
of deposition alternated with drier periods during which water
ceased or flowed in diminished quantities. During one of the
later periods of flow, at least, the wadi must have carried water
all the way to the Nile, as molds of fossil clams (Corbicula sp.),
common in the Nile, were found in the tufa of a former spring,
close to the present base-level of the main wadi of the oasis.
Whether these periods of alternate flow and lack of flow were due
to local or sub-continental changes in water supply, or whether
such changes can be correlated with world-wide climatic changes
of the Quaternary can only be determined by detailed geological
study. Dr. Karl W. Butzer is in charge of, and will publish upon,
these geological aspects of our investigations.

As part of a prehistoric expedition, the members of our group
were naturally concerned about evidences of past human life. The
oasis is not now inhabited, although it is visited sporadically by
camel herders after there has been rain. Formerly, some caravans

~The last phase of deposition of the tufas, according to Said and Issawy
(1964), was in one or more temporary lakes in the bottom of the oasis,
presumably in a late Pleistocene period.

* These central feeder pipes to the springs, often partially or entirely filled
with incentric rings of tufa, were mistakenly identified as remains of
plant stems by some of the authors who have written about Kurkur.

11

Aug. 20, 1964 Natural History Study of Kurkur Oasis

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12 Postilla Yale Peabody Museum No. 84

used the oasis as a stopping place between Edfu, on the Nile to
the north, and Dungul to the south. In the late nineteenth century,
at the time of the Mahdi domination of the Sudan, an Egyptian
military outpost of Ababde tribesmen*’ was established at Kurkur
but was subsequently withdrawn. Hurst (1910), Uhden (1930)
and Evans-Pritchard (1935) have recorded sporadic attempts of
Ababde families to maintain themselves at the oasis, but neither
they nor caravan visitors nor the military have left much evidence
of their respective occupations except occasional hearths and much
camel and donkey dung.

The major occupation definitely was prehistoric. We discovered
one Middle Paleolithic group of artifacts in a wadi bottom and
located 16 surface sites with Upper Paleolithic assemblages. These
latter were either on top of scarps above the oasis or on lower

rominances between wadis in the general depression of the oasis.
The Upper Paleolithic artifacts are of the “Khargan” type, as
reported from Kharga Oasis by Caton-Thompson (1952). Of the
16 sites mentioned, we collected eight entirely and one-half the
area of another site, the largest one.

One would expect that the “Neolithic Wet Period” (Butzer,
1958) would have been an optimum time for human occupation.
but we located only one piece of Neolithic-type pottery from this
period. However, there may be more sherds and other evidences
of Neolithic inhabitants which we failed to find, since Said and
Issawy (1964) mention Neolithic artifacts found by members of
their group at Kurkur in January, 1963. Mr. David Boloyan will
study, and publish on, the archeological material collected, and
Mr. Boloyan and I intend to add a further note on a game-trap
of unknown age but complex pattern, constructed with lines of
stones so arranged as to direct animals being chased into a small
enclosure, where they could be killed. The trap was presumably
built for gazelles, which are still present at the oasis.

In addition to the studies on the Quaternary geology and pre-
historic archeology, collections were made of Pleistocene inver-
tebrates and plants (preserved in some of the tufas) and of Recent

"The Ababde or ’Ababda are a tribe living in the Red Sea hills, to the
east of the Nile; they are a non-Arab group who have successfully main-
tained their identity from a time before the Arabic conquest of North
Africa. Indeed, Murray (1935, p. 11) speaks of them as resembling the
pre-dynastic Egyptians.

Aug. 20,1964 Natural History Study of Kurkur Oasis ‘iS

mammals, reptiles, birds, insects and plants. Observations upon
some of these materials will be published by different members
of the Expedition in subsequent numbers of this series.

HISTORY OF EXPLORATION AND SCIENTIFIC
RESEARCH AT KURKUR OASIS

1. The Franciscan father Theodor Krump may have been the
first European to visit the oasis, in December, 1700. (Uhden,
1930; Evans-Pritchard, 1935). However, Uhden states that
Krump’s journal is so vague that nothing of value regarding
Kurkur can be derived from it.

2. William Willcocks, chief engineer for the first Aswan Dam,
certainly visited Gebel Garra, studied the stratigraphy, and col-
lected marine invertebrate fossils from Gebel Garra and from
areas between Gebel Garra and Kurkur. (Fourtau, 1913. gave
the date of these studies as 1891-1892.) Willcocks briefly men-
tioned both Kurkur and Dungul (Willcocks, 1899, p. 6), but
when or for what duration he visited them I have not been able
to discover. Ball (1902) stated definitely that Willcocks had been
at Kurkur and in the same sentence said the same for the inver-
tebrate paleontologist K. Mayer-Eymar, a statement repeated by
Evans-Pritchard (1935).

3. A man named Sickenberger and some of the engineers
working on the first Aswan Dam collected fossils at Gebel Garra
and/or Kurkur, about which Mayer-Eymer was publishing as
early as 1896 (Cuvillier, 1935).

4. John Bail, January, 1901, (Ball, 1902). Ball’s study not
only was, but remains, one of the most thorough for the oasis.
He was the first to locate the area accurately, working from
known triangulation points on the Nile, and he was also the first
to establish accurate elevations. His geological observations are
basic to all later studies, and his topographical map is the basis
for those of most later authors who have published a map. Since
he had only ten days for the round-trip from Aswan, spent two
days traveling each way by camel, and also explored the region of
Gebel Garra, his labors at Kurkur—seemingly with the help of
only a single assistant—were prodigious.

14 Postilla Yale Peabody Museum No. 84

5. W. F..Hume (Hume, 1908,.1911,. 1913). Stattingsim
January, 1908, Hume made a circuit from Tomas on the Nubian
Nile through Dungul, Nakheil, Dush (and Kharga Oasis gen-
erally), Kurkur, and back to the Nile at Edfu. His published
observations on Kurkur, specifically, are few, nor does he men-
tion the date of his visit. The trip was made by camel.

6. H. E. Hurst (1910). Hurst visited Kurkur in December,
1909, on his way to Dungul as a member of a magnetic survey
party. The duration of his stay at Kurkur was not stated. At the
time of his visit the oasis was inhabited by a single Ababde family
and their few animals. His observations on Kurkur have little of
scientific value, but he does make the most interesting observa-
tion that Kurkur at that time was quite a resort for tourists from
Aswan, which statement I do not find elsewhere. However, this
curious situation, if true, may form the basis for a most intriguing
paragraph in a presently-popular guide-book to Egypt (Ziock,
1962, p. 338): “The visitor who has enough time at his disposal
might do worse than make an excursion of some days to go to
the Kurkur oasis, about 31 miles from the Nile Valley. It takes
about a week to do the outward and homeward trip on a camel
or on horseback; tents, provisions, and water must be taken.
Dragomans can furnish information and prepare the caravan.”
These sentences certainly read more like something out of the
Edwardian period than they do for the modern space-age.

7... Kurt Leuchs (Leuchs, 1913a, b)..This trip was of@@
days, presumably by camel, from Aswan. The author was accom-
panied by his wife. His route led first to Gebel Garra and then
to Kurkur. Here, his geological observations added little to those
made by Ball, except that he did note that the tufas extended
much further from the present oasis than Ball had indicated.
However, he was the first to publish on prehistoric artifacts, with
a paragraph of description (1913a) of a Paleolithic working-place
discovered in the northern part of the oasis. He noted also that
the tufas antedated the artifacts, since the latter were found atop
the former.

8. Richard Uhden (1930). Uhden visited Kurkur in October,
1927, probably on the 21st-23rd inclusive, on his way to Dungul
by camel. He discussed the changeable position of Kurkur on maps

Aug. 20,1964 Natural History Study of Kurkur Oasis 15

prior to Ball’s survey and added some geological observations of
his own. At the time of his visit the oasis was inhabited by some
Ababde, who had been living there since 1925.

9. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, the well-known social anthropolo-
gist, took a pleasure trip by camel from Aswan to Dungul Oasis
in January, 1934 (Evans-Pritchard, 1935). He stopped at Kurkur
a day and two nights, leaving the morning of January 13. He fol-
lowed Ball (1902) in his discription, and mentioned that an
Ababde family came each year in the summer to pasture their
sheep, goats and camels and to grow some vegetables by irriga-
tion from the north well. As he left, Evans-Pritchard looked back
regretfully on this “delightful little oasis,” an experience identical
with that of each member of our group.

10. Jean Cuvillier (1934, 1935). This expedition followed
Evans-Pritchard into the oasis by not more than two days at
least, seemingly without being aware that another European had
recently preceded them there. Cuvillier’s expedition occurred be-
tween the 12th-16th January, 1934, but since he started by car at
Edfu 200 km away and followed the caravan trail up the west
side of the Nile and since he also stopped at Gebel Garra, the
time allowed for Kurkur must have been brief. Cuvillier may
have been the first to try to reach Kurkur by car, although Evans-
Pritchard mentioned seeing tracks of automobiles along the camel
trail between Gebel Garra and Kurkur. Actually Cuvillier did not
get his automobiles into the oasis proper but walked the last few
kilometers; indeed the approach directly up-wadi as he tried it is
impossible for a car.

He published a good resumé of prior work with a rather com-
plete bibliography and summarized all earlier discussions of prob-
lems of stratigraphy and marine invertebrate fossils, but his de-
scriptions of all of the tufas having been formed in a lake and
his misinterpretations of the vents of springs as paleo-botanical
specimens indicate his preoccupation with matters other than the
Quaternary. His major interest was in early Tertiary stratigraphy
and the associated invertebrate fossils; of those latter he made an
excellent collection.

11. The Survey of Egypt (1937-1938). Khalaf Mursi, whom
{ visited in Cairo in December, 1963, was the chief cartographer

i6 Postilla Yale Peabody Museum No. 84

of the topographic map of Kurkur Quadrangle, Survey of Egypt
sheet no. 12/27, at 1:100,000, which is still the standard map of
the area. The cartographic survey was done under the direction of
G. W. Murray, who (1939) alluded briefly to Kurkur in an
interesting description oi various topographic and _ historic fea-
tures of this and adjacent areas of Egypt and Sudan. Mursi (per-
sonal communication) has told me that his group was the first
to locate the automobile track into the oasis, and was the first to
get their cars all the way to the oasis proper. They used standard
pick-up trucks with no special gears or transmissions. At the
time of their arrival in late 1937, Mr. Mursi says, the north well
was sanded in, quite as we found it in 1963.

12. In 1939, Mr. Mohammed Wasfi, then Governor of Kharga
Oasis, drove by automobile from Kharga to Kurkur and then on
to Aswan (Khalaf Mursi, personal communication).

13. G. H. Awad and Bahay Issawy collected Paleocene fossils
at Kurkur in 1958 for the Department of Geology at the Uni-
versity of Aiexandria.

14. The Desert Institute (Shata, 1962). As a part of the field
work for the geomorphological survey of Lower Nubia, members
of the field party of the Desert Institute visited Kurkur oasis for
two days in the latter part of January, 1962. They did not succeed
in getting their cars up the scarp over the road pioneered in 1938
by the Survey of Egypt but had to walk in.

15. The Geological Survey of Egypt (Said and Issawy, 1964).
In late January, 1963, a party led by Dr. Rushdi Said spent a
little more than a day at Kurkur to make plans for a more detailed
geological study at some later time. They were accompanied by
Dr. Fred Wendorf of the Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe.
The members of this group, using standard pick-up trucks with
no special gears, drove all the way into the oasis.

16. Yale University Prehistoric Expedition to Nubia; 8-12
March, 1963. At the time of our work in Kurkur we were not
aware that the area had recently been visited by parties from the
Desert Institute and the Geological Survey of Egypt. Our group
consisted of the following:

Aug. 20,1964 Natural History Study of Kurkur Oasis Lf

Official representative from the
Department of Antiquities,
United Arab Republic Farouk Gomaa

TTC |, he a Mohammed Said Suliman

Earth-Scientists . ae _. Karl W. Butzer
Carl Hansen

Archeologist a David S. Boloyan

Biologists oe Charles A. Reed (Director)
Thomas Lovejoy
Egbert Leigh
Medical zoologist (from U.S.
Navy Medical Research ‘Unit
NaS, Cave) 2.........~ Ebrahim Hilmy

Lest the assumption be made that archeology was neglected
and geology and biology overstressed, it must be understood that
our earth scientists, as prehistorians, are archeologically oriented;
they worked with Boloyan for two days. Additionally, I located
sites and collected archeological artifacts for two days and Leigh
and Hilmy also collected intensively under Boloyan’s direction
for shorter periods.

For transport we had a small Willys jeep from the U.S. Naval
Medical Research Unit no. 3, Cairo, and Yale Univeisity’s large
(10-passenger) Land Rover. The latter was seriously overloaded,
with six people, water, gasoline, food, collecting equipment, tent,
etc. Both cars had low-range transmissions and four-wheel drives,
which equipment we found necessary. Even so, at the point where
the track goes up and over the scarp of the Sin el Kidab to reach
the Nuba Tableland, the Land Rover had to be unloaded and
sand-tracks used (with all hands pushing) to negotiate the steep
pull in soft sand and loose rock. (By contrast, the Geological
Survey of Egypt uses standard Ford pickups with extra-size tires,
and by report go anywhere they wish in the desert on either side
of the Nile. They had, earlier in the year but unknown to us,
negotiated this same steep pull where we had so much trouble. )

18 Postilla Yale Peabody Museum No. 84

17. Yale University Prehistoric Expedition to Nubia and U. S.
Naval Medical Research Unit no. 3 (NAMRU-3, with head-
quarters in Cairo). Three biologists (Ibrahim Hilmy, Chris Maser,
and David Crockett) collected animals and plants at Kurkur
Oasis, December 24-28, 1963, as part of NAMRU’s long-range,
inter-continental epidemiological! research program. Their observa-
tions and collections were entirely biological, supplementing those
of the Yale group of the previous March and also being more
thorough. Transport was again provided by one car from NAMRU
and the Land Rover from the Yale Expedition. Mr. Hilmy re-
ported that the oasis had been visited by people with cars since
he had been there with the Yale group in March, which activity
may represent part of the routine patrol work of the “Desert
Police” or Frontier Guard of the Egyptian military and not neces-
sarily have been an unreported scientific party.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The research of the Yale Prehistoric Expedition to Nubia for
the season of 1962-1963 was supported by Grant no. G-23777
from the National Science Foundation and Grant no. SCC-29629
from the United States Department of State. The Expedition’s
field-research for the season of 1963-1964, during which time
the biological assistants Chris Maser and David Crockett con-
ducted further biological study at Kurkur Oasis, was additionally
supporied by Grant no. GS-309 from the National Science Foun-
dation and by grants from the University Museum of the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research, from the Society of Sigma Xi and the
Scientific Research Society of America, and from the Higgins
Research Fund of Yale University. To all of these sources we are
most grateful, for without any one of them our research would
have been seriously hampered, if not made impossible. Many
pecple in the UNESCO office in Cairo and in the Government of
the United Arab Republic aided our general program, but for our
work at Kurkur specifically I must thank Col. Ahmed Abd-el
Wahab, commander of the Frontier Office in Aswan in the spring
of 1963. He understood the importance of our work, recom-
mended a most able and interesting guide to us, and issued the

Aug. 20,1964 Natural History Study of Kurkur Oasis 19

passes which allowed us to travel in the Western Desert. Lastly
I give thanks to those good companions, the members of the Yale
Expedition who were unfailingly cheerful and industrious beyond
the normal call of duty under difficult conditions of transport and
living.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ball, John, 1902. On the Topographical and Geological Results of a
Reconnaissance-survey of Gebel Garra and the Oasis of Kurkur.
Egypt, Survey Department, Public Works Ministry, Cairo. 1-40, 7 pls.

Butzer, Karl W., 1958. Quaternary stratigraphy and climate in the Near
East. Bonn. Geog. Abh., 24: 1-157, 16 text-figs., 4 maps.

Caton-Thompson, G., 1952. Kharga Oasis in Prehistory. University of

London, The Athlone Press. i-xx, 1-213, 129 pls., 38 text-figs.

Cuvillier, Jean, 1934. Expédition de la Faculté des Sciences de l'Université
Egyptienne a l’Oasis de Kourkour (Désert Libyque). Bull. Soc. Ro.
Géog. Egypte, (n.s.), XVIII: 348-350.

——_—_——, 1935. Contribution a la géologie du Gebel Garra et de
l’Oasis de Kourkour (Désert Libyque). Bull. Soc. Ro. Geog. Egypte
(n.s.) XIX:127-153, 10 pls., 4 text-figs., 1 map.

Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 1935. A trip to Dungul Oasis. Bull. Fac. Arts,
Univ. Egypt, I11:24-56, 8 figs.

Fourtau, René, 1913. Les “Gara-Kurkur Series.” Bull. Inst. Egypte, ser.
V, t. VII(1):20-24.

Hume, William Fraser, 1908. The southwestern desert of Egypt. Cairo
Sci. Jour., I1:279-286, 314-325, 1 map.

, 1911. The effects of secular oscillation in Egypt during the
Cretaceous and Eocene periods. Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc., London,
LXVII (1):118-148, pl. VI.

—, 1913. Gebel Garra, Kurkur Oasis, and Gebel Borga. Cairo
Sci. Jour., VII:116-118.

, 1925. Geology of Egypt. Vol. I. The Surface Features of
Egypt, their determining causes and relation to geological structure.
Survey of Egypt, Government Press (Cairo). i-xliv, 1-408, 122 pls.

Hurst, Harold Edwin, 1910. A journey in the Western Desert of Egypt.
Cairo Sci. Jour., IV, 268-278, 1 pl., 1 map.

Leuchs, Kurt, 1913a. Eine Reise in der siidlichen Libyschen Wiiste: Gebel
Garra, Oase Kurkur, Gebel Borga. Peterm. Geogr. Mitt., LIX
(1):190-191, 1 map.

, 1913b. Geologisches aus der siidlichen Libyschen Wiste:
Gebel Garra, Oase Kurkur, Gebel Borga. N. Jahrb. f. Min., Geol. u.
Pal., Stuttgart, 1913, B. II, 38-48.

Murray, G. W., 1935. Sons of Ishmael: A Study of the Egyptian Bedouin.
George Routledge and Sons (London). i-xv, 1-344, Frontispiece, 31
pls., 10 text-figs., 4 maps.

, 1939. The road to Chephren’s Quarries. Geog. Jour., XCIV
(2):97-114, 4 pls., 4 maps.

Said, Rushdi, 1962. The Geology of Egypt. Elsevier Publishing Company
(Amsterdam). i-xvii, 1-377; 71 figs.

and Bahay Issawy, 1964. Preliminary results of a geological
expedition to Lower Nubia and to Kurkur and Dungul Oases, Egypt.
pts Preh. Nubia, Mus. New Mexico, no. 1:1-28, 12 text-figs., 2
tables.

20 Postilla Yale Peabody Museum No. 84

Shata, A., 1962. Remarks on the geomorphology, pedology and ground
water potentialities of the southern enterence to the New Valley. Part
One: The Lower Nuba Area, Egypt, U.A.R. Bull. Soc. Geogr. Egypte,
XXXV:273-299, 4 pls., 6 figs., 5 maps.

Uhden, Richard, 1930. Reise von Deb6ot in Unternubien nach des Oasen
von Kurkur und Dungul. Peterm. Geogr. Mitt., LXXVI:184-188, pl.
XII.

Willcocks, William, 1899. Egyptian Irrigation. Second Edition. E. and F.
N. Spon, Ltd. (London). i-xxvii, 1-485, 46 pls., numerous text-figs.

Ziock, Hermann, 1962. Guide to Egypt. Lehnert and Landrock (Cairo).
1-367.

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