Cutting across one of the massive bends in the River Nile the Korosko Road greatly reduced the distance and journey time between southern Egypt and central Sudan. As such it was widely used by travellers, merchants and government officials at least in the 19th century. Whether it was used as an invasion route however, is much less clear. To investigate this question it is essential to look at the archaeological evidence along the road itself, to consider the aims of the invaders and the possible advantages of using the road. It is also essential to evaluate the impact of the changing climate in the Egyptian and Sudanese Eastern Desert over the last several millennia which will have had a major impact on the feasibility of moving large numbers of troops through, what is today, inhospitable desert.
The nature of the road also needs to be considered. It is far from the modern concept of a road being little more than a series of ill-defined, and in many places totally invisible, tracks which only have in common their point of departure from the Nile at Korosko and the region where they rejoin the Nile between Berber and Abu Hamed.
