World’s Oldest Paved Road
Discover authentic desert adventure from the route to the Qasr El Sagha temple all the way to the ancient basalt quarries of Widan El Faras passes by an ancient road that is reputedly the oldest paved road in the world. The road is dated along with quarry activity as Old Kingdom, with a possibility of it being of Neolithic age; at Widan El Faras the road is fully visible on the surface.
The road’s main trunk runs along the foot of the Gebel el-Qatrani escarpment, below the quarry and is joined in several places by short branches coming from different parts of the quarry. The pavement has a uniform width of about 2 m. It is made from a single course of dry-laid, unshaped pieces of whatever stone was close at hand: basalt and sandstone near the quarry, and sandstone, limestone and silicified wood elsewhere. The total length of the road, including all its branches is nearly 12 km, the last ten of which follow a nearly straight and mostly downward course from Widan el-Faras to its final destination on the shore of an ancient and now extinct lake. The ancient road stands elevated partially above the desert due to relative wind erosion estimated at 3 cm a century.
