Searching for the Right Words. What Happened in Kharga in the Fourth Century AD?

The aim of this paper is to stimulate a discussion on the reasons behind the major building operations that took place in the Kharga Oasis in the 4th c. AD—Kharga being one of the five major oases of Egypt’s western desert and lying in the middle of a relatively dense network of caravan routes. The antiquities of the area were little known until relatively recently: after a first wave of studies in the 1980s and the 1990s, it was possible to suggest a first interpretation. The amount of information retrieved in recent years makes now possible to update the state of our knowledge: the ensuing picture is still largely incomplete but is nevertheless useful to confirm already established directions of research and to suggest new ones.