The Kufra, sometimes spelt “Kufara,” group of oases lie south-west of Siwa, but owing to its distance from all civilization Kufra was never of any importance historically or politically, though comparatively lately it has become a convenient retreat for some of the Senussi sheikhs. Quite a number of natives who had recently been in Kufra visited Siwa during the time that I was there, and when I questioned them, and various Siwans who knew Kufra well, they all described it as being very thinly populated, less fertile and very inferior to the Siwa oasis—from their point of view. When I discussed the possibilities of visiting it they were exceedingly surprised at the idea of anybody wishing to see Kufra, which they described as being “muskeen”—wretched—but at the same time they said that the people in Kufra would certainly not object to anybody going there, as it was in no way a sacred place like Jerabub used to be at one time. At Kufra there is no strange metropolis like that of Siwa, and as recently as 1854 an English traveller who visited Jalow and Augila stated that Kufra was practically uninhabited, except during a certain month of the year when natives from the other oases went there in order to gather the dates.
There is a great fascination in travelling over unexplored desert; somehow I always had the feeling that perhaps beyond the rocky skyline, or perhaps over the next ridge of sand-hills, there might possibly appear the languidly swaying palm trees of some unknown oasis. Nobody has penetrated into the heart of this desert, and it is not beyond the realms of possibility that there are oases, either inhabited like the lost land of Atlantis or like the mysterious desert cities that the story-tellers describe to their evening audience in the market-place, hidden away among those unmapped plains of the Sahara.
There are still great possibilities of excavating at Siwa, and in the outlying oases, which have been even less explored, but I myself had neither the leisure nor the money to do any serious digging. In many parts of the oasis, sometimes in the middle of a palm grove, one finds what appear to be the foundations of ancient buildings, made of well-squared stones; and many of the rock tombs, especially in the cliffs of the more distant oases, still contain mummies. I examined a number of them myself, but with no luck, as they were, apparently, of a very inferior class and had no ornaments buried with them. Near some of them there were broken earthenware pots of an antique shape not made in Siwa to-day. All the tombs whose entrances are visible in the Hill of the Dead, the great rock mausoleum outside Siwa town, have been rifled many year ago and nothing is left except scattered bones, skulls and scraps of grave wrappings. A few of the finest tombs have been converted into dwellings by some poor Siwans who are courageous enough to brave the demons of the hill in order to secure a freehold residence, cool in summer and warm in winter, and scented with the
“——Faint sweetness from some old
Egyptian fine worm-eaten shroud
Which breaks to dust when once unrolled.”
But on the whole Siwans strongly disapprove of interfering with the tombs, although they firmly believe that some of the hills near the town contain hidden treasure, more valuable
“Than all Bocara’s vaunted gold
Than all the gems of Samarcand.”
All the more obvious places, such as the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter Ammon, at Omm Beyda, have been thoroughly dug about, but after spending some time in the oasis one comes across various places that appear to be untouched—virgin soil for the excavator.