Abstract
Venturing off west of ‘Ain al-Lebekha, a Roman settlement site that lies approximately 29 km north of the town al-Kharga and that by the second century CE, included, among other things, a small military fort and some religious buildings (Rossi 2013, 331–6), the ancient traveller found himself in a matrix of desert paths, now known as the Darb ‘Ain Amur (Ikram and Rossi 2013; Rossi and Ikram 2013, 276–8). Since their first prehistoric uses, this network of paths (Figure 1) has never stopped negotiating the everchanging sandy terrain, in search of safe passages eventually to Dakhleh Oasis. In