Qasr el-Labakha

Qasr el-Labakha, or Ain el-Labakha, is an ancient Roman fortress and settlement located north of the Kharga depression, about 50 km from the city of Kharga and about 12 km west of the main Asyut road to the city itself. The site contains two temples, a large fort and a group of decorated tombs.

The fortress of el-Labakha was built at a strategic site at a wadi at the base of the northern escarpment and was garrisoned to guard the crossing of two important ancient caravan routes from the north and the west. The fortress of Qasr el-Labakha resembles the neighbouring fort of Deir el-Munira in architectural style, but is smaller than it; nevertheless, Qasr el-Labakha must have been an imposing sight with its mud-brick walls reaching a height of 12 m with four massive round towers distributed at its corners. The entrance on the eastern side gives access to the interior, which today consists of ruins of collapsed walls and remains of vaulted chambers buried in sand.

Many buildings formerly surrounded the fortress, and to the south there are mud remains of a large well and an ancient spring still surrounded by palm, acacia and tamarisk trees, which supplied water to the fortress and the settlement. The size of the well probably indicates that a large community lived at the site, served by a series of channels cut to carry water to the cultivated fields. The fortress itself has never been excavated, but the area below the western and southern walls was recently the subject of a study carried out by the Supreme Council of Antiquities in cooperation with the French Alpha Necropolis team, who discovered many small statues as well as large quantities of Roman pottery. Qasr el-Labakha was also part of the north Kharga oasis survey carried out by a French team of archaeologists.

Machine-translated from “قصر اللبخة” on the Arabic Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Qasr el-Labakha ranks #7,713 of 8,134 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #36 of the 37 mapped in Egypt. 3 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. See how Egypt compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia (in Arabic) ↗