However, specialists think that nomadic hunter-gatherers began to settle almost permanently in the oasis of Dakhleh in the period of the Holocene (about 12,000 years ago), during new, but rare episodes of wetter times.

[6] The fortified Islamic town of Qasr ad-Dakhla or el-Qasr (Arabic: قصر الداخلة, the Fortress) was built in the 12th century on the remains of a Roman fort in the NW of the Dakhla Oasis by the Ayyubid kings.

Many of the up to four-storey mud brick Ottoman and Mamluk buildings contain blocks of stone with hieroglyphics from the ancient Thoth temple of the nearby site of Amheida.

[1] In August 2017, archaeologists from the Ministry of Antiquities announced the discovery of five mud-brick tombs at Bir esh-Shaghala, dating back nearly 2000 years.

Researchers also revealed worn masks gilded with gold, several large jars and a piece of pottery with unsolved ancient Egyptian writing on it.

[22] At first, the studies of the petroglyphs focused on the eastern part of the oasis, where rock carvings had been documented by archaeologists already before World War II (Herbert Winlock and Hans Alexander Winkler).

Then, under the direction of Michał Kobusiewicz from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, attention was turned to the area of the Central Oasis where 270 new petroglyph sites were recorded.

The current director of The Petroglyph Unit, Paweł Polkowski from the Archaeological Museum in Poznań, extended the area of prospection and created a map showing the distribution of more than 1,300 panels with rock art.

The depictions date from the Prehistory to the Islamic period and include images of animals and people (often pregnant women), hieroglyphs, and Beduin markings.

Its declared aim is to advance understanding of the history of the environment and cultural evolution throughout the Quaternary period in the eastern Sahara, and particularly in the Dakhla Oasis.