Strange Stone Circles Hint at a Lost Nomadic Culture of the Sahara Desert

Around 7,000 years ago, a string of severe droughts struck Egypt.

The dry spells were part of an ongoing period of aridification that would continue for thousands of years, turning the once-green country into a sprawling desert. The transition drove many communities closer to the Nile, setting the stage for Egypt’s later pharaonic dynasties. But new research provides insight into a little-known nomadic population that refused to capitulate to the desert’s hostilities—and the mysterious traces they left behind.

Earlier this year, researchers using satellite imagery reported discovering nearly 300 large stone circles scattered across the Atbai Desert, which sits in southern Egypt and northeastern Sudan between the Nile to the west and the Red Sea to the east.

The structures, some of which measured over 200 feet across, provide clues about an early group of cattle herdsmen that preceded and then lived alongside Egypt’s great pyramids and pharaohs.

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The stone circles were not pens to keep animals but rather tombs for “elite nomads,” says Maria Carmela Gatto, a Nubiologist at the Polish Academy of Sciences and an author of the new study, which was published in spring in the journal African Archaeological Review. In a nomadic culture, a place to bury the dead would be a structure worth building. “If you move around, a palace and a temple don’t make sense, but a cemetery is always there,” she says.

The findings fill a “missing blank on the archaeological map of prehistoric Northeast Africa,” says Julien Cooper, an Egyptologist and Nubiologist at Macquarie University in Sydney and lead author of the study.  

Stefano Costanzo, a geoarchaeologist and eastern Egyptian desert specialist at the University of Milan in Italy who was not involved with the research, agrees with the authors that the structures were stone-built tombs. He calls the work “remarkable” and says it helps reveal “the absurd density of funerary monuments in the desert landscape.”

What’s in the Circle?

In 2010, a Polish archaeological mission working in the Atbai of Egypt uncovered one of these large stone circles. Called Wadi Khashab, the monument stretches nearly 60 feet across.

Excavations inside the circle soon revealed it was a massive grave with an adult human buried at the center, and nearby there was a small child who had been buried hundreds of years later. Beyond the central area where the humans were interred, the archaeologists had found remains of domestic sheep and cattle in the same circle. Carbon dating of materials from the graves showed that the structure was likely built around 5,000 B.C. and revisited until around 2,000 B.C.

“We knew that there were likely more of these enclosure burials to be discovered,” says Cooper, citing a handful of similar burials known to researchers since the 1920s. “We suspected that they may have been a regular feature across this desert.”

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To search the Atbai for additional ancient vestiges of these mysterious herdsmen, Cooper and his colleagues turned to satellite imagery.

With the help of a small army of undergrad interns, their survey uncovered 280 stone circles, the majority of which were previously unknown. The circles varied in size from 16 to 270 feet across. The enclosures are spread across over 600 miles of desert but appear clustered around areas that held ephemeral water bodies, including 112 located in the upper Wadi Gabgaba basin. The team estimates that it would have taken one person over 160 eight-hour workdays to complete the larger structures, but a group of 50 likely could have done it in three days.

“This really speaks to a level of social organization and a pooling of resources that sometimes is not considered a hallmark of ancient desert pastoralist cultures far away from fertile rivers,” says Cooper.

Desert Dwellers

The team’s work is part of a recent effort to uncover the cultures that once thrived in the Atbai Desert. The area’s history has remained an archaeological black box given its remote, rocky terrain and surrounding political climate. Much of the desert lies in modern Sudan, where ongoing war and illegal mining operations make excavations dangerous. But the area is also underexplored because of its far more famous neighbors. 

“Since the beginning of Egyptology and Nubiology, most archaeological investigation was based along the Nile,” says Gatto. The Nile is lined with pyramids, large temples, or “the fancy stuff,” as she puts it.

“We are trying to add the desert side of the story to the equation,” she says.

Desert nomads still wander there today, and survey work has uncovered ancient rock art etched onto cliff faces and promontories depicting animals like cattle, giraffes, goats, and dogs. One recently discovered cliff face even depicts a “fleet” of boats, suggesting its creators interacted with Nilotic and seafaring traders. The art dates from the early Neolithic, around 12,000 years ago, to around 3,100 B.C., when Egypt’s first pharaoh, Narmer, consolidated control over Lower and Upper Egypt.

These pastoralist peoples had a particularly strong interest in cattle, says Gatto. “The cattle cult is at this moment in time common everywhere in the Saharan Arabian belt,” she adds.

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Ancient Egyptian records also noted these cattle-herding nomads, whom they called “Medjay.” The Atbai was in what was then Nubian territory and would have been regularly used for mining gold, a mineral that the Ancient Egyptians associated with the divine. The Egyptians heard about these nomads from Nubian traders working in the desert or encountered them while mining the Atbai’s gold-rich rock.  

“Albeit described as shy and elusive, the peoples of the East Nubian Deserts were considered dryland dwellers of legendary navigation and placemaking skills,” says Costanzo.

The new data gleaned from the satellite imagery shows that these cattle pastoralists were also collaborative people who worked together to dot the desert with hundreds of stone structures. The finding shows that Wadi Khashab was not a one-off and provides archaeologists with greater insight into the funerary practices of this under-described, little-known prehistoric culture that made the difficult desert their home.

“When you have tombs and mummies and gold and pyramids, you really want to know the rest of the people,” adds Gatto. “Now is the time.”