Roman roads in Egypt

A map of the 17,008 km of known Roman road in this country, drawn solid, dashed or dotted by how certain the route is.

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Key
  • Certain Well documented, mapped to within about 50 to 200 m
  • Conjectured Known road, course less precisely documented
  • Hypothetical Route not pinned down, or existence uncertain
  • Secondary road Thinner line, any certainty

How accurate are these lines? Most Roman road routes on this map are approximate. The Itiner-e project, which supplies the data, classes most of them as Conjectured, so read a line as a best estimate of where the road ran rather than a surveyed route.

Roman roads in Egypt at a glance

Egypt has about 17,008 km of Roman road in the Itiner-e atlas, mapped as 407 segments. That puts it 5th among the 39 countries with Roman roads in the dataset. Only 3% of it is classed as certain; 68% is conjectured and 29% is hypothetical. 3 roads here have a well-known name, and the longest is Via Hadriana. 297 Roman places (towns, forts, ports and stops) lie along the roads.

  • 17,008 kmof Roman road
  • 407segments
  • 3named roads
  • 297Roman places
How certainLength (km)Share
Certain4613%
Conjectured11,56268%
Hypothetical4,98629%

Certain: well documented, mapped to within about 50 to 200 m. Conjectured: known road, course less precisely documented. Hypothetical: route not pinned down, or existence uncertain.

See how the empire's borders changed →

Named Roman roads in Egypt

The longest is the Via Hadriana, with 825 km of it in Egypt.

RoadLength in Egypt (km)
Via Hadriana825
Via Maris227
Hodos Myshormitike188

Roman places in Egypt

297 Roman places lie on or beside the roads here. These 60 are the most important. Names come from the Pleiades gazetteer.

  • Cabalsi
  • Wadi Belih
  • Deir el-Atrash
  • Memphis
  • Panopolis
  • Apollonopolis Magna
  • Badia
  • Contra Syenem
  • Didymoi
  • Latopolis
  • Pelusium
  • Semna
  • Hibis
  • Hydreuma to epi tou Paneiou
  • Matula
  • Paraetonium
  • Quseima
  • Berenice
  • Klaudianon
  • Myos Hormos?
  • Syene
  • Antinoopolis
  • Diospolis Mikra
  • Gypsaria?
  • Kysis
  • Nechesia?
  • Qasrawet
  • Qattar
  • Tiberiane
  • Umm Balad
  • el-Qasr
  • Abu Ghalqa
  • Abu Greiya
  • Abu Rahal
  • Abu Zawal
  • Abydos
  • Ammon
  • Bousiris
  • Coptos
  • Deir Kebir Wadi Ma'amal
  • Herakleopolis
  • Hermopolis Magna
  • Hermopolis Mikra
  • Kaine
  • Kellis
  • Krokodilopolis
  • Lykopolis
  • Mothis
  • Oxyrhynchus
  • Rhinocolura
  • Shea'leq
  • Sile
  • Taya
  • Terenouthis
  • Vetus Hydreuma
  • Wadi Safaga
  • el-'Aras
  • el-Saqqia
  • Abu Gariya
  • Alexandria

Towns near Roman roads in Egypt

These are the larger towns in Egypt that lie within 5 km of a Roman road line on the map (not counting the hypothetical lines). Being close to a Roman road does not make a town Roman, but it shows where the old routes still pass by today.

  • Cairo
  • Alexandria
  • Giza
  • Shubrā al Khaymah
  • Suez

Source

Road lines: Itiner-e (CC BY 4.0). Places: Pleiades (CC BY 3.0). Lengths are measured along the road lines inside the Egypt boundary. See all data sources and licences.

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Countries it shares roads with

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