New Stuff

For some reason the natural glass in the Great Sand Sea of Egypt is always referred to as silica glass which is odd as all glass is made of silica unless it’s plastic…anyway this natural glass is 98% silica which makes it the purest natural glass in the world. Other glasses, such as volcanic obsidians are lower in silica at 75%.

The natural glass of the Sand Sea is found in a large area stretching from just north of the Gilf Kebir to a few hundred km south of Siwa. The area of highest concentration is small but I’ve found small pieces of glass spread over a long but not wide distance. Mainly the glass is confined to four dune corridors- the ones used by cars storming up from the Gilf to Siwa.

The glass was formed by a giant meteorite hitting the earth it is widely believed.

Dated as being formed 29 million years ago when there was 1000 extra feet of earth/rock covering the earth’s surface; which is why we can’t see the meteorite spot- apparently- though Farouk Al Baz has found a 32 km diameter meteorite spot some hundred km or so south of the main area. This could work- though I doubt if even a comet would blow a hole a 1000 foot deep.

That the glass was formed from a space object is confirmed more or less by the presence of large quantities of iridium and more than a terrestial quota of nickel and other minerals. A massive explosion and impact is needed to make clear glass- if you look at artificial impactites formed by H and A bomb desert tests they look like fulgarite- that nobbly hollow bubbly glassy stuff caused by lightning strikes in sand. To make big lumps of pure glass you’d need the power of a many thousands of H bombs in one spot.

Other mysteries about the sand sea glass: it has no bits of rock adhering- these pure lumps are not found in other tektite sites in Moldovia and Saudi Arabia.

The largest lump found was 57lbs and is in a French Natural History museum. A 10kg lump found by Pat Clayton is in the Cairo Geological Museum- always worth a visit in its dusty shack-like quarters along the Corniche just before Maadi.

I’ve found some 1kg lumps and if you look hard you may too. Someone calculated from the spread of glass that 14 million tons of the stuff would have been generated. You get the feeling that it rises up through the sand over time. Other nice finds include worked pieces of glass- anything from 20,000 to 3000 years old – as Australian Aborigines switched to glass from broken bottles direct from worked stone, it’s hard not to imagine ancient man using glass if he had the chance.

The glass was first mentioned in modern times by traveller Fulgence Fresnel in 1846, though Tutankhamun’s pectoral scarab has been shown to be carved from the stuff, and not from quartz as was thought previously. The scarab, of course, in Egyptian mythology rolls the sun across the sky, so a glass scarab that catches the light kind of fits.

I once was given a piece by Rupert Harding Newman, the last member of the Zerzura club who died only recently. He had collected two big bags of the stuff back in 1935. “I don’t suppose there is any left now,” he said, a little shamefacedly.

Robert Twigger

During one of several days showing computer executives how to navigate in the desert one of them, Per, from Sweden, produced from his backpack what looked like the stone vertebra of a creature at least as large as cow. He’d found it some 3 km back, near an outcrop some 60 km north of Hara Oasis in Egypt. Hara is in the Bahariya depression and Bahariya is famous for dinousar remains, including the notorious spinosaurus feautured to grisly effect in Jurrassic Park III, if you follow that kind of thing. We jumped in the car and went back to check.

What was really interesting apart from the 6 or 7 obvious lines of vertebrae was the fact that a) there were so many remains and b) a group of 18 people had walked past them and through and only one person had noticed. Now we knew what to look for we saw dinosaur bones everywhere.

The concept of ‘search image’is well known to paleotologists. They look at pictures and extant examples of fossils before going to find the real thing. You truly do find what you are looking for.

In our case, of course, no one had a camera, so these few words must suffice. Apart from the vertebrae we found tube like lengths of fossil which suggested those tube like fronds found in the ocean. That this area was under the sea several times in the past is indicated everywhere by the seashells and shark’s teeth easily found.

As we looked at the seemingly vegetable fronds we began to doubt our vertebrae. Were they really dinosaur backbones or just more of the sea tubers? That we had found something was not in doubt. But what exactly?

A return visit with a more knowledgeable person is the obvious answer. And taking pictures might help. For me, though, the experience of driving back over the sand, jumping out, and seeing those bones lined up in the sand was enough. It was the essence of discovery- alone in the desert, miles and miles away from anyone or anywhere, free, finding something new, unwritten about, unphotographed. It was an experience I never want to forget.

Somewhere in the Western desert supposedly lies the remains of a 50,000 strong Persian army. Here is the story behind it:

In 525 BC Cambyses II invaded Egypt in a bad mood. Earlier, he had demanded that a daughter of the Pharaoh Amasis be his wife. He was sent the far less valuable daughter of the Pharaoh’s enemy and predecessor Apries. This angered him enough to invade, which he had probably intended all along anyway.

What little we know about Cambyses from Herodotus and Babylonian fragments indicates a cruel and chaotic character, frequently drunk. He killed his brother Smerdis before invading Egypt simply as a precaution against usurption while away on his campaign. It was a wise but not sufficient precaution- while he was away the Magian Gautmata impersonated Smerdis and was accepted throughout Asia as ruler of Iran.

Cambyses also killed his sister after a disagreement over a lettuce. To compound his crimes with incest, she also happened to be his other wife. His wife/ sister were eating dinner with him. She asked if he preferred his lettuce with or without its leaves. Cambyses said he preferred it stripped, whereupon his wife/sister said he had treated the house of his father Cyrus as he had the lettuce. Enraged, Cambyses kicked her in the stomach and being pregnant she had a miscarriage and died.

It is not certain if Cambyses came by chariot to Egypt or camel. If camel, it could be his invasion that marked their introduction to Egypt. As he had co-opted Arab soldiers to water and provision his invasion it is likely he brought with him at least some of the first camels.

There were no camels before this time. Tutankamun’s scarab pectoral was probably recovered by a donkey Caravan heading towards Siwa. Remains of donkey roads in the Western desert have been found by Carlo Bergmann, south west of Dakhla Oasis leading as far as the Gilf Kebir so it is not inconceivable that Cambyses, if unsure of the camels his Arabs were riding, was mounted on an ass.

Cambyses defeated the Egyptian army of Amasis’ son, Psammetichus III, and though he adopted the costume and actions of the Pharaohs he is recorded as being “in great contempt of them’. Eager for more conquests Cambyses proceeded up the Nile with his eye on Kush, Napata and the Land of Punt, Ethiopia. He came unstuck before he reached Punt when he tried to invade Nubia and was defeated by Nastesen the Nubian king. An inscription in Napata (now in the Berlin Museum) reads how he defeated ‘Kambasuden’ and took all his ships.

It was largely the terrain that defeated them. At first reduced to eating pack animals and then grass, an order was finally given that one soldier in ten should be killed and eaten. This was too much even for Cambyses and he ordered the failed expedition return to Thebes.

Cambyses was mad with anger at the Nubians but took out his frustration on the Priests of the Oracle of Amun Ra at Siwa. They refused to agree to his sudden and despotic claim to rule Egypt. Siwa was a long way from the Nile and the Priests were used to their freedom.

Cambyses had a strategic mind but was wildly optimistic and ill prepared. His disagreement with the high Priests of the Oracle led to the dispatch of his famous Lost Army. Instead of sending them by River and Sea he sent them the long, and to his mind, cunning, way round through the desert.

The force sent to conquer the Siwans started from the Nile at Thebes and proceeded to Kharga, a journey then of seven days. There mission was to seize the people of Siwa, enslave them, and burn the Oracle.

Herodotus records that they left ‘The Oasis’, which was Kharga, 50,000 strong but were lost somewhere in the great sand sea. He reports a tradition of the Siwans that the army were buried in a sand storm just south-east of Siwa, probably in the uppermost part of the Sand sea in the proximity of the oases of Sitra and Bahrein- which were occupied at the time and even today contain the remains of tombs- but not of 50,000 men.

Cambyses, if he did send 50,000 men into the desert, sent them to their death through lack of water if anything. Such an army would need 8,000 gallons of water a day even in winter. There could be no question of a prolonged desert journey unless the army was very strung out indeed. It is more likely he sent a smaller force which conceivably could well have perished trying to go from Farafra to Siwa via the old route from Ain Della to Sitra oasis.

When he heard of their failure Cambyses was supposed to have been so enraged that he executed an Apis Bull at Memphis, which was a mighty insult to the cow worshipping Egyptians. Later accounts, based on recently found inscriptions suggest this was mere propaganda designed to rally support against Persian rule. In any case it seems that around this time, 530 BC, Cambyses went mad and soon after died of gangrene of the thigh. Another oracle, in Buto in the Nile Delta predicted this death. He had no sons or daughters.

Guessing the fate of Cambyses Lost Army remains a popular pastime for desert travellers. Some have doubted Herodotus and put the destination of the Lost Army as far apart as Dakhla or even Asyut. Almasy spent a good deal of time looking in the Great Sand Sea but died before he found anything. Every few decades a new expedition is mounted. Recent research has tended to confirm the original story told to Herodotus.

In 2000 Helwan university geology department found arrow and spear remains in the Great Sand Sea. Excited by this various archeologists and geologists including Gail McKinnon and Tom Brown have searched for Cambyses army and found little apart from what are almost certainly Roman army remains. Brown has plotted a possible route but has downgraded the army to a more likely 10,000. The hunt continues.