Previous Descriptions of Archæological Remains — Mr. Lythgoe’s Excavations — Dr. Ball’s Report — Article by Professor Sayce — Prehistoric Period — Earliest Historical Records — Persian Domination — The Army of Cambyses — Temple of Hibis — Græco-Roman Period — Qasr el Ghuâta — The Roman Emperors — Proclamations on the Temple of Hibis — Qasr Dush — Nadûra — Ruins at Ain Amûr — Qasr Zaiyan and the Town of Tchonemyris — Roman Fortresses — Dêr el Ghennîma — Qasr Lebekha and Um el Dabâdib — Monasteries — Watch-Tower in Bellaida — Introduction of Christianity — The Christian Necropolis — Representations of Biblical Scenes and Personages — Embalming — Celebrities banished to the Oasis — The Columbaria — Olympiodorus describes the Fertility of the Oases under the Romans.
The archæological remains of the oases have been referred to, and in some cases described in more or less detail, by most of the travellers who have left any records of their journeys in the Libyan Desert. Among the latter may be mentioned Cailliaud, Hoskins, Schweinfurth, and Brugsch. At the same time, compared with the antiquities of the Nile Valley, those of the oases have received scant attention; indeed, it is only within the last year or two that any systematic excavations have been undertaken. At the present time Mr. Lythgoe, assisted by Mr. Winlock, is excavating in the neighbourhood of the Christian Necropolis, for Mr. Pierpont Morgan, on behalf of one of the American museums, and the results promise to be of the greatest interest and importance. It is to be hoped, therefore, that, in a few years, we shall be in possession of a detailed and authoritative account of the history of the oasis during the last few thousand years, as it must be admitted that the only information available at the present day is woefully scrappy and in many respects unreliable. Ball, in his report on Kharga published in 1900, gave an excellent summary of all that was at that time known concerning the antiquities, together with a number of useful plans of the chief buildings. Since that date, with the exception of a press article by Professor Sayce, little, if anything, has been published.
Without making any pretensions to special archæological knowledge, I shall attempt to give a brief sketch of the past history of the oasis, at the same time drawing the reader’s attention to the distribution and general characters of the more important remains.
Although the oasis of Kharga was doubtless inhabited in prehistoric times, as, indeed, is shown by the existence of flint implements of Palæolithic type on the surrounding plateaux, and also to a lesser extent within the depression, no graves referable to the prehistoric period of Egyptologists—i.e., the period immediately preceding that known as the first dynasty, when Menes united Egypt about 3,300 B.C.[4]—have as yet been discovered. But while it is known that the Egyptian kings claimed the allegiance of the inhabitants of the oases as far back as the eighteenth dynasty (1545-1350 B.C.), the earliest known monumental records in Kharga date from a much later period—i.e., the twenty-seventh dynasty—when Egypt was under Persian domination.
It was at this time that Cambyses, in an endeavour to subdue the inhabitants of the outlying oases, lost a large portion of his army in the Western Desert, probably somewhere to the west or north-west of Kharga. The Persian monarch had recently defeated the Egyptian king, Psammetikh III., at Pelusium, and made Egypt a Persian province. On his arrival at Thebes some 50,000 men were detached from the main army proceeding to Ethiopia, and ordered to march against the Ammonians and burn the oracular temple of Jupiter Ammon. This abortive expedition into the Libyan Desert is described by Herodotus (‘Thalia,’ 26) as follows:[5]
“The men sent to attack the Ammonians started from Thebes, having guides with them, and may be clearly traced as far as the city Oasis, which is inhabited by Samians, said to be of the tribe Æschrionia. The place is distant from Thebes seven days’ journey across the sand, and is called in our tongue ‘the Island of the Blessed.’ Thus far the army is known to have made its way; but thenceforth nothing is to be heard of them, except what the Ammonians, and those who get their knowledge from them, report. It is certain they neither reached the Ammonians, nor ever came back to Egypt. Further than this, the Ammonians relate as follows: that the Persians set forth from the Oasis across the sand, and had reached about half-way between that place and themselves, when, 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. Thus, according to the Ammonians, did it fare with this army.”
In modern times considerable doubts have arisen as to which oasis was the objective of this army, and certainly the description of Herodotus is such as to admit of various conclusions being drawn. Rohlfs considers that Dakhla, not Siwa, was its goal, and remarks that, however light-headed Cambyses might have been, he could hardly have been so foolish as to have chosen Thebes as the starting-point of an army destined for Siwa. The same writer points out that a temple dedicated to Ammon does exist in Dakhla, and that the distance of the latter oasis from Thebes corresponds with the ten days mentioned by Herodotus. Vivien de St. Martin (“Le Nord de l’Afrique dans l’antiquité,” 1863, pp. 40-41) had, some twelve years previously, come to somewhat similar conclusions.
Ascherson, on the other hand, regards it as highly improbable that Dakhla, which was hardly known and certainly of little importance in the time of Cambyses, could have been the objective of so dangerous and difficult an undertaking, and points out, moreover, that the temple of Ammon in that oasis dates from much later (i.e., Roman) times. He further remarks that Parthey (‘Das Orakel und die Oase des Ammon,’ Abhandl. der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin, 1862, S. 131-194), in a contemporaneous work, had already met the objections raised by Vivien de St. Martin. According to the ancient maps the distance from Memphis to Siwa was much the same as that from Thebes to Siwa. No reliance, moreover, can be placed on the distances given by Herodotus. Judged with reference to Thebes, the country of the Ammonians certainly agrees more or less with the position of the oasis of Dakhla; but considered in relation to Augila (a place which has retained its name unchanged up to modern times), it corresponds with the modern Siwa, where the well-known oracular temple of Jupiter Ammon actually existed.
It seems to me quite reasonable to suppose that Cambyses only decided on the despatch of this expedition after reaching Thebes, and from there the route, via Kharga, Dakhla, and Farafra, would be fairly direct, and have the advantage of passing through oases, well provided with water and food-supplies, separated by marches not exceeding four days. Possibly, moreover, the ‘oasis’ through which the army is recorded to have safely marched may not have been Kharga at all, but Baharia, or even Farafra, either of which would have been reached by striking into the desert along one of the roads leaving the Nile Valley in the neighbourhood of Assiut or Mellawi; this would have been quite a likely route for an army starting for Siwa from Thebes, as over a third of the distance would have been along the fertile plains bordering the Nile.
The evidence, however, seems to favour the view that the army proceeded westwards from Thebes, and passed safely through Kharga, possibly also through Dakhla; in those days the latter may have been coupled with Kharga, as it was later, when the two together were called the Great Oasis. As it is impossible to imagine a body comprising 50,000 men being destroyed by a sandstorm, I am inclined to agree with Hoskins that the army was purposely misled and sacrificed by the guides, with the object of preventing the capture of Siwa and the destruction of the far-famed temple of Jupiter Ammon. In the deserts to the north and west of Dakhla immense accumulations of sand cover, without a break, thousands of square miles of country; only one or two possible tracks cross this lonesome wilderness, and these, following narrow troughs hemmed in by hills of sand, are invisible even from the distance of a few hundred yards. Only a party thoroughly acquainted with desert travelling could hope to penetrate this region, and nothing would be easier than to encompass the loss of a large and unwieldy army among these terrible dunes. It seems probable, moreover, that this body of troops was as ill-equipped and badly led as the main army which at the same time was marching southwards to Ethiopia. Led by circuitous routes till they reached a point many marches distant from the nearest well, worn out by the incessant clambering over endless ridges of soft sand, their stores of water and food exhausted, their tracks obliterated by the ever-moving sand, the fate of the unfortunate soldiers, deserted at the last by the treacherous guides, could not long have remained in doubt.