﻿NO. I NATIVES OF KHARGA OASIS HRDLICKA 9 



named, as well as Beadnell, quotes the Egyptian census statistics as 

 to its population respectively in 1897 and 1907. 



Brugsch, Sayce, and Beadnell also give historical data concerning 

 the Oasis. The original inhabitants are regarded as of Libyan 

 (Berber) origin. Beadnell's work, 1 as also that of Ball, contains 

 much interesting data concerning the Kharga wells and underground 

 water tunnels, but no special observations are recorded on the 

 inhabitants of the Oasis. The few references accorded them in this 

 and other publications represent them as rather a backward, mild, 

 and somewhat impotent people. 



The physical anthropology of the Kharga people, especially, is as 

 yet a virgin ground. But there is also a dearth of scientific informa- 

 tion on the living Egyptians of the valley, though valuable series of 

 observations on the latter have been published by Chantre and more 

 recently by Myers of Cambridge. 



4. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS, AND INFORMATION 

 GATHERED BY THE WRITER 



ENVIRONMENT 



The shallow depression of the Kharga Oasis is an uneven, barren, 

 predominantly sandy waste, partly surrounded or cut into by equally 

 barren rocky scarps or hills. It is covered over a great area with 

 moving sand-dunes, and spotted with smaller or larger patches of 

 green within the waste : the watered ground and native settlements. 

 Some of these patches are near enough each other to be within sight, 

 but others are separated by large areas of the desert, forming really 

 separate oases. 



The largest of these inhabited and cultivated portions is that of 

 the principal village or town, named also Kharga, and it was in this 

 village and the neighborhood that the writer made his observations. 



The life in the Oasis depends entirely on the water obtained from 

 artesian wells, which are of native and to a large extent of ancient 

 make, and which tap deep supplies in the Nubian sandstone that 

 forms the floor of the whole depression. The water thus obtained 

 makes possible the existence of a few moderate groves of date palm 

 and of some gardens with olive as well as orange trees, and it serves 

 for the irrigation of a limited extent of ground used for agricul- 



Beadnell, H. J. L. : An Egyptian Oasis, 8°, London, 1909, pp. 66-67. 



