The Derfaui well, located twelve hours walk southeast of Quseir, for example, will not run dry even after five years without rainfall . Nowadays, two wells in the vicinity of Berenike are in use. One is located in the salt marsh south of Berenike and consists of a large trench. Its water is clear but tastes salty. The other well is located 1 km west of Berenike. The water table is almost 4 m below the surface and is potable despite its turbidity. The nomads give this water to their livestock. The water they use themselves is sourced from a more remote well in the mountains. Food and water are also used as grave offerings, examples of which are sugar, salt, and tomato purée . But also packets of cigarettes, wrapped in pieces of cloth, are regularly seen. Isolated graves still have stone pans that can be filled with water to put corvines in the right mood. Recently, such pans have become rare, as they are collected for putting them on the market.The availability of fuel is indispensable for preparing food and making coffee or tea, and for warmth during cold winter nights. Basically, both wood and dung come into consideration as sources of fuel. The production of dung cakes, a mixture of dung and threshing remains, is still practiced in rural areas of the Near East. According to the Ma’aza bedouins,blueberry containers who live in the northern part of the Eastern Desert, dung of ruminants such as camels is clean and can be used as fuel, if no wood is available . The use of dung by the Ababda nomads has not been observed.

But as nomads become increasingly settled, the availability of fuel becomes a critical factor. In order to preserve the present populations of trees, Ababda nomads only use dead wood for making charcoal. The author once experienced that a large living branch from an acacia tree, painfully cut off by a helpful inspector of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, was refused by our Ababda guide for preparing the meal. As long as the tradition of using dead wood is maintained, the linking of the amount of dead wood to the population size is of crucial importance and indeed comparable to the degree to which the carrying capacity of the sparse vegetation set bounds to the size of the animal flocks. An alternative solution is the import of fuel or the use of living wood. The latter choice will, inevitably, threaten the current vegetation. Hobbs also states some occasions in which Ababda nomads charcoaled trees outside their own territory, a practice for which they are still blamed by their neighbors. Gathering wood occupies an important place in daily life. During surveys, nomads take their time about collecting suitable pieces of plants. At the very start of a two-week camp at Wadi Shenshef, the nomads almost immediately started with collecting considerable amounts of firewood. This investment proved to be quite deliberate as they could start cooking soon after they had stopped working.

To make a fire, a quick-burning annual and some branches of a woody plant species are needed. The annual plant is used as a starter. Good starters are dead specimens of Zilla spinosa and Zygophyllum coccineum. The former one is predominantly used in the mountainous area, where it is widely distributed in the wadis, whereas the latter is a good alternative in the fl at coastal area. The bushy annual is trampled down, covered by wood, and set on fire. Before matches became available, the fire was started with the help of a piece of fl int and a steel fire lighter. These typically shaped fire lighters are widespread, both geographically and historically. Highly inflammable material was used for catching the sparks, such as the dried hair tufts from Leptadenia pyrotechnica, which probably owes its specific epithet to this use . The blazing, short fire is sufficient for the branches to catch alight. Only when the wood has completely turned into charcoal is the heat used for cooking and making coffee or tea. At first sight this seems a waste of energy, all the more because of the calorific inefficiency of conversion from wood , but a charcoal fire is easy to handle and keeps producing heat for many hours. Trees may become endangered if their exploitation is not balanced with their natural regeneration. This is not only true for a popular species such as twisted acacia , but also for soft-wooded species such as Avicennia marina , Ta m a r i x aphylla, and T. nilotica . Zahran and Willis emphasize that the softness of both Tama rix trees eventually acts to their disadvantage. The trees had been easily gathered in former times, resulting in an under representation in the present vegetation.

The sparseness of T. nilotica in the southern part of the Red Sea coast is considered to be the result of over exploitation, its wood being used as a source of fuel for centuries. Nomads are aware of their potential over exploitation and special rules have been issued to establish at least a status quo .Most of the Ababda nomads still have a pastoral lifestyle by keeping domestic livestock, and most of their traditional material culture was, until recently, based on these animals. They have sheep, goats, camels , donkeys, and chickens. It is the job of women and girls to look after the animals. Domestic dogs are used for protecting sheep and goats, both during the daytime while herded by woman and children, and at night, even when the animals are stored in enclosures. That this is not effective when dogs are in heat may not be surprising. Donkeys and camels are used as pack animals, but are replaced more and more by motor vehicles, of which mechanical Toyota pickup trucks manufactured in 1974 are very popular. Nevertheless, transport by camels remains necessary when the inner part of the Eastern Desert has to be reached, although camels are better adapted to sandy than stony environments. Sheep are kept for their wool, and goats are suppliers of milk and hair. Women spin and weave wool and hair, that of camels the strongest and goat hair the weakest. Women carry out the weaving inside or immediately outside the house, and carpets are made on a ground loom. Sheep and goats are slaughtered on special occasions and provide Ababdas with meat and skins. Skins, which are also available from camels and wild animals such as gazelles, are used for a variety of products, including building material for tents; leather articles for storage of food; clothes and luxury items; garments such as sandals, amulets, necklaces ; belts and sheaths for knives and swords; household goods such as pillows ; pan holders , and headrests ; and camel saddles and trappings such as decorated belts. The shape of the leather bags is characteristic of their use. Skin sacks used for storing the food and the equipment for cooking and making coffee and those used for churning are normally made from complete skins of sheep or goat. Those for storing clothes and the like are made from camel skin and can be sealed with a lock and key. The fringes of these bags are decorated with printed designs and colored triangles, nowadays mostly made from plastic. Small leather bags , used for keeping valuables, are mostly well decorated with beads and cowrie shells. Water scoops are made from circular pieces of leather.The Ababda nomads depend to a great extent on the desert vegetation. This vegetation in turn is directly influenced by the availability of water and the grazing intensity. Because of the short growing season, the vegetation is especially vulnerable to overgrazing by herds of sheep and goats. These herds are allowed to graze in the wadis, but not on the mountain hills, as goats at high altitudes develop a deadly disease that is possibly caused by either a tick borne protozoan or trypanosome . Apart from this indirect type of protection,best indoor plant pots plants themselves have also developed responses to predation. The most striking feature in this respect is the presence of thorns. This kind of defense may be developed as soon as plants such as Fagonia spp., Zilla spinosa, and Acacia tortilis germinate. Nevertheless, camels in particular are capable of browsing such spiny plants, an adaptation that also makes it possible to graze and browse in periods when vegetation cover is minimal due to prolonged drought. Fagonia and Z. spinosa are late bloomers and adapted to more drought. They do not seem to take advantage of the availability of much water in spring as was experienced during the excavation season in 1997. The adaptability of A. tortilis to predation is illustrated by the hard seeds that leave the gastrointestinal tract without damage . The same is probably also true for the extreme hard fruits of Z. spinosa. Other species, such as Panicum turgidum and Cyperus conglomeratus, have hard culms that protect these plants to some extent from grazing.

Schweinfurth states that the former species is therefore only first choice for camels. Sheep and goats prefer more palatable grasses, such as Dichanthium foveolatum and Cenchrus ciliaris. Cyperus conglomeratus is also capable of sprouting from rhizomes. Another defense mechanism against herbivory is the presence of repulsive metabolites in the plants’ tissue. Some plants produce aromatic metabolites. According to Schweinfurth , donkeys spurn aromatic species such as Pulicaria undulata. Other species are unpalatable because they taste bitter, sour, or salty. A good example is Zygophyllum coccineum, which has a bitter and salty taste and therefore remains untouched by all animals despite its high water content. The contribution of wild plant species to the nomads’ food supply is of limited value as only a few species are edible and the vegetation is scarce most years. Young leaves from Rumex vesicarius do not taste sour and are eaten raw as a salad. Bebawi and Neugebohrn state that leaves of Chenopodium murale are eaten in Sudan. Also fruits of Glossonema boveanum are eaten in an immature stage of development. By then, the seeds are still undeveloped and the spines on the fruits are small and soft. The fruits have a nice taste that is similar to that of a nut. According to Drar , it is just the contents of the ripe fruits that are eaten by the Ababda nomads. Several plants are collected for making tea. Osborne states that Ababda nomads make tea from the dried leaves of the fragrant Pulicaria undulata. He also informs us that the nomads use the dried leaves of Senna italica to make a purgative tea. A tea made from Anastatica hierochuntica is recommended to ease childbirth . According to Osborne , seeds of Aizoon canariense are cooked into a gruel, as an Ababda nomad who collected the plants told him. Judging by the very small size of the seeds, this practice however seems dubious. From Saudi Arabia it is recorded that bedouin children sometimes eat young fruits of Neurada procumbens and that, in former times, seeds of Panicum turgidum were collected as famine food . In addition to edible plants, the vegetation of the Eastern Desert also offers some plants with a miscellaneous use. The woolly flowers of Aerva javanica were formerly used by nomads from the Eastern Desert and Saudi Arabia for stuffing pillows and donkey saddles . The relatively large plants of A. javanica bear densely flowered spikes that are easily gathered in reasonable quantities. Also after seed ripening, when flowers fall to the ground and form large concentrations under the lee of the plants, they are easy to collect. Leather pillows from the Ababda nomads living around Berenike, which could be checked by the author, only contained rag and indicate that this kind of exploitation is diminishing. Also the floss from the seeds of Calotropis procera, which is easily gathered from the large fruits, is sometimes used as stuffing material . The roots of A. javanica can be used as a toothbrush. This is also true for the midribs of the date palm leaves, which are cut into small sections for this purpose. The branches of the toothbrush bush , from which large populations are present in Wadi Gimal and Wadi Umm Athl, are commonly used for this purpose.