Dakhla (Arabic: داخلة‎) is an oasis in Egypt, the center of a district in New Valley Governorate. The oasis is located in the Libyan Desert, about 350 km west of the Nile Valley, between two other oases – Farafra and Kharga. There are 17 villages in the oasis with a total population of about 70,000 inhabitants. Main settlements:
Mut The center of the oasis, named after the goddess of the Theban triad. Ethnographical museum. Population 20,439 inhabitants (2006).
El-Qasr Medieval clay city-fortress. Center of Folk Crafts.
Calamoun
The oasis extends 80 km from west to east and 25 km from north to south. There is a small airport.

The local fellahs grow mulberries, date palms, figs and citrus fruits in a constant struggle against the advance of the sand dunes.
In the Dakhla oasis in the Quseir Formation, paleontologists discovered the remains of a sauropod dinosaur of the species Mansourasaurus shaninae (MUVP 201) from the clade Lithostrotia, who lived ca. 80 million years ago (Campanian).

History
prehistoric period
The beginning of the settlement of the oasis took place as early as the Pleistocene, when nomadic tribes settled there and the local climate was more humid. About 60,000 years ago, the Sahara became drier, becoming a barren desert (less than 50 mm of precipitation per year). However, scientists believe that the settlement of Dakhla continued into the Holocene (about 12,000 years ago), during infrequent periods of increased humidity. The dry climate does not mean a complete lack of water sources; the Libyan desert still has significant reserves of groundwater. The first settlers of the oasis had access to surface water sources.

pharaonic period
The first contacts between the state of the pharaohs and the oasis began around 2550 BC. e.
938 (Year 5 Sheshonq I) – Egyptian official Vaikheset erects the “Great Stele from Dakhla”.
After 1800
The first European traveler to discover Dakhla was Sir Archibald Edmonstone, this happened in 1819. After him, several more travelers visited there, but only in 1908 the first Egyptologist, Herbert Winlock, left behind more or less systematized notes about sights. Detailed studies began in the 1950s thanks to Dr. Ahmed Fakhri, and also in the late 1970s through the efforts of the French Institute of Oriental Archeology and the Dakhla Oasis project.

Paleogenetics
For samples from of the Roman Christian cemetery en:Kellis 2 (K2), the mitochondrial haplogroup U1a1a was identified. This result indicates that the Middle Eastern influence previously identified at Abusir el Melek was also present in the south of Ancient Egypt at ancient Kellis during the Roman Christian period.