Wadi Abu Subeira (WAS) is a dry valley (wadi in Arabic) in the Egyptian Eastern Desert that opens into the Nile Valley, about twelve kilometres north of the city of Aswan. Its coordinates are 24° North and 32° East. The Wadi Abu Subeira follows a generally east-west progression and extends for about 55 kilometres into the desert. It is subsequently connected to a network of other equivalent valleys, which ultimately allow progression to the Red Sea, some 250 kilometres (as the crow flies) from the Nile Valley. It thus provides a natural passageway between the Nile Valley at the First Cataract and the Red Sea. It also offers, 38 kilometres before its mouth, a connection with the wadi Khrait, which runs from north to south, and makes it possible to reach Kom Ombo, some 30 kilometres to the north, without having to travel through the valley. In the section we are interested in here, it has a maximum width of five hundred metres and is bordered by cliffs on either side that are about one hundred metres high.
This passageway seems to have been used since prehistoric times, like a certain number of other wadis in the Eastern Desert, the most famous of which is the Wadi Hammamat, near Luxor.
If the concession opens at the intersection with Wadi Umm Ushsht, it ends to the east at the intersection with Umm Rakba and Sikket Umm Rakba. Two archaeological concessions have been granted by the Egyptian Supreme Antiquities Service, centred on the course of Wadi Abu Subeira. The one covering the mouth of the wadi in the valley, called "West Concession", with an area of about 20 km² was granted to an Egyptian team, from the Aswan Directorate of Antiquities, led by Adel Kelany. Work on this concession began in 2005. It is adjoined by a second concession, called "East Concession", granted to a Franco-Egyptian team, led by Gwenola Graff. It covers an area of 34 km². Work in this concession has been ongoing since 2013.
 
 
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Collection

EN : The publication of the unpublished corpus of engravings from Wadi Abu Subeira is based on the presentation of more than a thousand engraved panels discovered from all periods. This is a very large documentary collection that is being made available to the scientific community and the general public.

The presentation of the documentary sources on the one hand, and the context, analyses and interpretations to which they have been subjected on the other, have been separated to make them easier to handle. The digital medium makes the documents more easily accessible, searchable and reusable, when the result of the accompanying scientific work is available in a printed edition in English and in an open access digital version in French and Arabic.

FR : La publication du corpus inédit des gravures du wadi Abu Subeira repose sur la présentation de plus d’un millier de panneaux gravés découverts, toutes périodes confondues. Il s’agit d’un fonds documentaire de très grande ampleur qui est mis à disposition de la communauté scientifique et du grand public.

La présentation des sources documentaires d’une part, le contexte, puis les analyses et les interprétations dont elles ont fait l’objet d’autre part, ont été séparées pour être plus manipulables. Le support numérique permet aux documents d’être plus facilement accessibles, consultables et réutilisables, quand le résultat du travail scientifique qui l’accompagne est disponible dans une édition imprimée en anglais et en version numérique open access en français et en arabe.

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