Mysteries of the Libyan Desert

by W. J. Harding King

The nut of a dom palm that I dug up, and the trunks of some palm trees that had been built into the walls, showed that, at one time, there must have been a plentiful supply of water in the neighbourhood. The place was probably a small fortified station built, or at all events occupied, during Ptolemaic times, to protect the well, which from its position on “the long road” must once have been of considerable importance.

The existence of fossilised tree-trunks and old river-beds in the Libyan Desert shows conclusively that, in the remote past, this portion of the world must have been a well-watered country. But whether this desiccation reached its limit before historical times, or whether it is still going on is one of the most disputed points in connection with this district. The failure of the well at Bu Gerara may, of course, have been due to some purely local cause, which was not apparent. But in the absence of some explanation as to its nature, this little abandoned settlement affords a very strong argument in favour of the view that the water supply—apart from that derived from the artesian wells—has failed appreciably in comparatively recent times, owing probably to a decrease in the rainfall. From this point of view, our discovery was of some importance, though the place itself was of no consequence at all.

But it was found by following instructions in Qwaytin’s book of treasure. Works of this description, to put it mildly, are regarded in Egypt with a considerable amount of incredulity. This scepticism, I own, I fully shared—until my discovery of Bu Gerara.

Since then, however, I have taken a different view of the case, and believe that the almost universal suspicion with which these books are regarded, may not, after all, be entirely justified, and that part of it at least is due to the strong prejudice that so often exists towards any native beliefs or customs that do not admit of a ready explanation, or that savour in any way of the occult, or of buried riches.

These books of treasure, it is true, are mostly written by natives of the astrologer class, who clearly expect their readers to rely largely upon charms and various occult means to discover the hidden riches to which they profess to give the key. Many of them lived in the Middle Ages, but the race has not died out. There are hundreds of the same class of men still to be found practising their arts on the credulous natives of Egypt, and one of the principal subjects upon which they are even now consulted is the recovery of buried treasure. There is a sheykh el afrit (ruler of spirits) in almost every village, to whom the inhabitants resort to induce him by means of the pool of ink, or some similar method, to foretell the future or to guide them to where treasure has been buried. Some of them perhaps believe in their own powers, but the majority are probably little more than impostors. So far, so bad.

But there appears to be a very fair amount of grain among all the chaff contained in these books, for in many cases they not only refer to places, such as Esna, which are perfectly well known, but they describe the roads that lead to them, when these roads are still in use.

For this reason I think they are worth careful—or perhaps it would be better to say cautious—consideration. It is true that in many cases they mention places and describe roads which perhaps were perfectly well known at the time when the books were written, but that cannot now be identified; but this proves nothing. There are many old sanded-up wells, little deserted oases and small outpost stations of the Roman and other periods, such, for instance, as Bu Gerara, scattered about in the desert, and the vestiges of many old roads are still to be seen, whose ultimate destination is now unknown, but which, I believe, lead to these abandoned oases, which very probably, in the fifteenth century, when the book of Johnson Pasha’s that has already been referred to was written, were populous villages and oases; but which, owing to failure of the water supply, the encroachment of the sand, or to some other cause, have long since become deserted.

On these grounds I believe these books contain—among a great deal that is useless except as a curiosity—some valuable information as to old places in the desert that have long since been lost to sight, and whose very names may now be forgotten, information that is of a geographical character.

Why not? Is it the age of the book, or the fact that the descriptions in it are associated with magic and hidden treasure, that presents the difficulty? If it be the former, ask any archæologist whether he would hesitate to look for the site of some ancient city, because the only references to it were to be found in some old papyrus or temple hieroglyphics; besides, did not the Royal Geographical Society have a paper read before them on the identity of the Garden of Eden with Mesopotamia? The description that led to the identification being taken from the Book of Genesis, which was written long before any of these books were thought about.

If it be the treasure that presents the difficulty, has there not been endless discussion among geographers as to the identity of the Wakwak Islands and other places, mentioned in the “Arabian Nights,” a large proportion of the stories in which have no pretensions to be anything more than fairy-tales—and certainly there is enough buried treasure mentioned in them to satisfy the most ardent fortune hunter in Egypt.