Director: Roger Bagnall

Amheida, in the Dakhla Oasis in Egypt's Western Desert, has been settled since the Old Kingdom and perhaps much earlier--finds around the site suggest that people were in the area already in the Palaeolithic period. But most of what's visible on the surface is of the Roman period, before the abandonment of the ancient city of Trimithis, probably at the end of the fourth century CE.

Excavations, which are sponsored by New York University and Columbia University, began in 2004. So far work has concentrated on a rich house of the fourth century with wall paintings, an adjoining three-room school, a smaller house, and the temple of Thoth on the top of the highest hill. Roman baths lay under the large house and the school. The excavation is the center of a semester-long undergraduate program in Egypt. Annual reports and information about the student program can be found at www.amheida.org.

The Amheida site