Qila al-Dabba and Ayn Asil, Balat
The Old Kingdom capital of the Dakhla Oasis — mud-brick mastabas of the governors and the ruins of their walled town.
A pharaonic outpost in the desert
Near the village of Balat, in the east of the Dakhla Oasis, lie the remains of the oasis's capital in the Old Kingdom, in the late third millennium BC. The town of Ayn Asil, enclosed by thick mud-brick walls, was the seat of the governors of the oasis, who ruled this distant outpost on behalf of the pharaohs of the Sixth Dynasty, controlling trade routes across the Western Desert. Excavations have uncovered the governors' palace, administrative buildings, workshops, houses and chapels dedicated to the cult of the governors, as well as clay tablets inscribed with administrative records.
The mastabas of Qila al-Dabba
A short distance from the town lies the necropolis of Qila al-Dabba, where the governors were buried in large mastaba tombs built of mud brick — among the largest mud-brick mastabas in Egypt. Their burial chambers, built of stone and decorated with reliefs and inscriptions, have yielded rich funerary equipment, offering a rare picture of how a provincial elite in a remote oasis followed the customs of the royal court on the Nile.
Excavation
The site has been excavated since the 1970s by the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology (IFAO). The nearby old village of Balat, with its medieval mud-brick houses and covered lanes, can be visited on the same trip.
Exhibo editorial
It takes a leap of imagination to stand among these great mud-brick mounds and picture them as the tombs of governors who ruled a desert outpost for the pharaohs over four thousand years ago. But that is what they are — and they are enormous, the biggest mud-brick mastabas in Egypt, rising out of the sand at the edge of the oasis.
Walk among them in the morning light, then visit the ruins of the walled town of Ayn Asil and the medieval lanes of old Balat nearby. It's a glimpse of how far the reach of Old Kingdom Egypt extended into the Sahara.
How to find it
Balat lies about 35 km east of Mut, the main town of the Dakhla Oasis, on the road towards Kharga. The site of Qila al-Dabba and Ayn Asil is signposted near the village; the ticket office is at the entrance to the necropolis.
