One of the biggest concentrations of Egypt's Prehistoric rock art is found to the east of the Nile, in the wadis (dry valleys) that dissect the hills and plains between the Wadi Hammamat to the north and the Wadi Barramiya to the south. In the space of just five months, between October 2000 and February 2001, three teams of dedicated volunteers carried out a systematic survey of this remarkable region. They succeeded in locating and recording over 100 new sites of rock art, previously unknown to archaeology. The results, comprising many thousands of individual scenes, are presented here for the first time. They open up a fascinating and largely unexpected window on Egypts past, and on the beginnings of civilisation in north-eastern Africa.

The Proceedings of Red Sea Project III held in the British Museum, London, in October 2006. Contents: 1) Environment, landscapes and archaeology of the Yemeni Tihamah (R. Neil Munro and Tony J. Wilkinson); 2) The formation of a southern Red Sea seascape in the Late Prehistoric Period: Tracing cross-Red Sea culture-contact, interaction, and maritime communities along the Tihamah coastal plain, Yemen, in the third to first millennium BC (Lamya Khalidi); 3) Products from the Read Sea at Petra in the Medieval Period (Stephan G Schmid and Jacqueline Studer); 4) Continuing studies of plants and animals and their Arabic names from the Royal Danish Expedition to the Red Sea, 1761-1763 (F. Nigel Hepper); 5) Coral reef conservation and the current status of reefs of the Ras Mohamed National Park in the northern Red Sea and Gulf of Aqabah (Steve McMellor and David J Smith); 6) How fast is fast? Technology, trade and speed under sail in the Roman Red Sea (Julian Whitewright); 7) Warships in the Red Sea, An Outstanding Phenomenon (Sarah Arenson); 8) Features of Ships and Boats in the Indian Ocean (Norbert Weismann); 9) Decorative Motifs on Red Sea Boats: Meaning and Identity (Dionisius A. Agius); 10) The Red Sea Jalbah. Local Phenomenon or Regional Prototype? (James Edgar Taylor); 11) Charting a Hazardous Sea (Sarah Searight); Red Sea Harbours, Hinterlands and Relationships in Preclassical Antiquity (Kenneth A. Kitchen); 12) Sea port to punt: new evidence from Marsa Gawasis, Red Sea (Egypt) (Kathryn A. Bard, Rodolfo Fattovich and Cheryl Ward); 13) The Arabaegypti Ichthyophagi: Cultural Connections with Egypt and the Maintenance of Identity (Ross Iain Thomas); 14) Aila and Clysma: The Rise of Northern Ports in the Red Sea in Late Antiquity (Walter Ward); 15) Shipwrecks, Coffee and Canals: the Landscapes of Suez (Janet Starkey); 16) What is the Evidence for External Trading Contacts on the East African coast in the first millennium bc? (Paul J.J. Sinclair); 17) The 'Arabians' of pre-Islamic Egypt (Tim Power); 18) Red Sea and Indian Ocean: Ports and their Hinterland (Eivind Heldaas Seland); 19) Bishops and Traders: The Role of Christianity in the Indian Ocean during the Roman Period (Roberta Tomber); 20) Arabic Sources for the Ming Voyages (Paul Lunde); 21) From the White Sea to the Red Sea: Piri Reis and the Ottoman conquest of Egypt (Paul Starkey).