The four "Great Desert Circuit" oases are situated along a dead, prehistoric branch of the Nile, and depend on springs and wells tapping the great aquifer beneath the Libyan Desert. In 1958 the government unveiled plans to exploit this, irrigate the desert, and relocate landless peasants from the overcrowded Nile Valley and Delta to the " New Valley " ( El-Wadi el-Jedid). A special New Valley Governorate was set up to run Kharga, Dakhla and Farafra oases, in collaboration with the Giza Governorate, which administers Bahariya Oasis.

 

Work on the New Valley began in the 1970s, but the project has since been scaled down: investments proved costlier than expected, and doubts surfaced about the subterranean water table. Previously it was thought to be replenished by underground seepage from Lake Chad and Equatorial Africa, whereas nowadays it's believed to be a finite geological legacy, sufficient for between one and seven hundred years. As a result, the oases have been caught in mid-stride, partly modernized but unsure of their long-term viability. Hopes of prosperity and fears of decline still turn on the caprices of hydrology and the wits of the oasis people, as they have since ancient times