Egypt's Widan Al-Faras: The world’s oldest road all but forgotten

Close to Fayoum lies the world’s oldest surviving paved road, threatened by oblivion and neglect

by Mohammed Elrazzaz, Saturday 22 Feb 2014

“The pyramids and temples of the Egyptian Old Kingdom (early mid-third millennium BC) are testament to an epoch of global significance in the evolution of monumental stone architecture. The basalt quarries of Widan Al-Faras and gypsum quarries of Umm es-Sawan (…) were key production sites in the foreground of this transformation to largescale stone quarrying.” — Elizabeth Bloxam and Tom Heldal

You can think of it as an ancient cultural landscape, or you can think of it as a fossil landscape. One thing is certain: it is the world’s oldest surviving paved road, and — if nothing is done to protect it — it will eventually vanish completely.

Widan Al-Faras quarry road was built some 4,500 years ago in the area situated north of present-day Lake Qarun.

As we approached Widan Al-Faras area ("ears of the mare"), easily recognisable by its twin peaks, we knew we had a tough task ahead: locating a road in the middle of nowhere and stretching into infinity. The road was built for moving blocks of basalt from the Widan Al-Faras mines to the shore of the ancient Lake Moeris, the bigger ancestor of Lake Qarun. The road ended in a quay not far from Qasr Al-Sagha Temple, an Old Kingdom temple still standing north of Lake Qarun. From there, the basalt was moved via Bahr Youssef to the Nile, and from there to the Giza Plateau, where it was used in building sarcophagi and floors of mortuary temples around the Giza Pyramids.