March 27, 2000 -- The wind blowing over the western Egyptian desert may have unveiled a 2,500-year-old mystery. According to the Italian newspaper Corriere delta Sera, the wind probably uncovered the remains of a 50,000-man Persian army swallowed in a sandstorm in 524 B.C. Bronze swords, fragments of human bones, iron knives, a shield and a silver bracelet were discovered some months ago in El-Bahr El-Aazam by a team from the Egyptian geological service. Alerted to the find, the Supreme Council of Antiquities sent in a team of archaeologists to dig before the wind covered the artifacts again. Further details will be given at the International Congress of Egyptologists, opening in Cairo tomorrow, reports the Corriere delta Sera. "As they were at their midday meal, a wind arose from the south, strong and deadly, bringing with it vast columns of whirling sand, which entirely covered up the troops and caused them wholly to disappear." With these words, the Greek historian Herodotus recounts the legendary tale of Cambyses's ill-fated expedition from El-Khargeh to Siwa. The discovery could be the first archaeological evidence of Herodotus' account, not to mention the importance of finding war artifacts - probably well preserved by the desert - of such a large army. Herodotus reported that after the Persian occupation of Egypt in 525 B.C., Cambyses, the son of Cyrus the Great, sent 50,000 soldiers west from Thebes to attack the Oasis of Siwa and destroy the oracle at the Temple of Amun, who, according to legend, would have predicted his death. After walking for seven days in the desert, the army got to El-Khargeh, presumably intending to follow the caravan route via the Dakhla Oasis and Faratra Oasis to Siwa. But after they left El-Khargeh, they were never seen again. The inhabitants of Siwa claimed that the army was swallowed in a sandstorm. It was probably the khamsin - the hot, strong, unpredictable southeasterly wind that blows from the Sahara desert over Egypt. Scholars are thrilled by the news. "Clearly it would be possible for military equipment to survive in good condition in the desert. It might have lain undisturbed for millennia under the shifting desert sands and may have been uncovered by the same process," says Alan B. Lloyd, head of the department of classics and ancient history of the University of Wales Swansea. "But we must not jump to over-hasty conclusions,' Lloyd adds. "Whilst I do not find it in the least implausible that the material should be remains of a military disaster in antiquity, it will need to be carefully studied to establish whether it is Persian and of the right date." Back to Dispatch July 2000 Table of Contents Back to Dispatch List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by HMGS Mid-South This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com