Mysteries of the Libyan Desert

by W. J. Harding King

From Dongola a road runs five days south-west to Bu Senata—a well belonging to the Kebabish tribe.

Four days farther west-south-west, and Jebel Maydob is reached. From there, five days due west, and the road comes to Bu Zibad, and, three days farther west, reaches the Howash Valley.

It was not until long after I had been given this route that I heard of the existence of old Dongola, which lies some sixty-five miles about south-south-east of the better-known new Dongola.

When plotted on a twenty-mile-a-day basis from either of these places, the road is considerably in error, if the position of Maydob can be relied upon. The route starting from old Dongola closing, however, much better on to Maydob than the one from new Dongola. The positions on the map are those found by plotting the information, without adjustment from new Dongola. Upon this route, too, depends the portion of the Wady Howash, lying to the north of Kowora (q.v.).

The description given to me of the Wady Howash was extremely interesting. It was said that the sides of the wady in places were covered with coloured paintings, and that it contained numerous ruins of burnt brick, probably Meroitic in origin, and in addition many statues—colossi apparently—and pits in the ground containing ashes covered with stone slabs—possibly these were funerary pits containing human remains. The Bedayat country generally was reported as containing many stone-built ruins (ders), and to have numerous rock inscriptions and “Roman”—i.e. artesian—wells, like those in the western oases of Egypt, and seems likely to prove a valuable field for future archæologists.

Among the remaining places shown on the map the following may be mentioned. My informants were all Arabs, or Sudanese living in Egypt, so the names are those in use among the Arabic-speaking bedawin and may differ from those used by tribes speaking another language, such as the Tibbus, Bedayat and other Sudanese races.

Dendura: This is Rohlfs’ alternative name Zerzura—“the oasis of the blacks.” I concluded that Zerzura, if it exists at all, is a different place from Dendura. The latter was described as being as large as Dakhla Oasis, and as lying just to the west of an enormous longitudinal dune that is almost impassable, seven days due west from Bu Mungar (see also Zerzura).

Dunes: All the dune belts of the Libyan Desert are said to run from north to south. In the neighbourhood of Dakhla Oasis they were found to run 352° mag., and if, as I heard, they run parallel with the Tollab-Tikeru road, the belts appear in reality to converge slightly towards the north. Possibly the prevailing wind blows from a more easterly quarter as one proceeds westwards from Egypt, as the influence of the hot air rising from the Arabian deserts would be less felt in the western part of the Libyan Desert. Towards the Central Sudan it appears to approximate to the direction of the north-east trades normally found in these latitudes, for Commandant Tilho found the prevailing wind in Borku to blow from this direction. A dune belt that is easy to cross is said to commence about two hours to the west of Erbayana, near Kufara Oasis, and to extend for three days—I was told four—to the westward, and to die out before reaching the latitude of Bushara. A belt was also reported to exist about two hours to the west of Erwully. This belt, though about the same width as the one farther north, lying to the west of Erbayana, is perhaps only sand banked up by the Tibesti hills, though from its position it looks like the continuation of the belt near Kufara, with which it is exactly in line; Tilho’s paper confirms the existence of a great dune field as far as Ertha and Borku, and also to the south of Wady Dom. The line of dunes following the Tollab-Kufara road is said to start close to the west of Kebabo, and to be about a day’s journey in width from east to west. The belt is said to go to the Sudan, and to die out in the vegetation of Wanjungat. Between Wanjunga and Demi, Tilho found a “little chain of sand dunes, about fifty feet high, stretching from north-east to south-west, and extending from five to six miles in breadth,” which appears to be the end of the belt described by my informant.

The dune belts form a useful check upon the accuracy of the data given me. One I saw at the end of our journey to the south-west of Dakhla, near Jebel Abdulla, is apparently the northern continuation of that which runs from El Atrun to “the Egyptian Oasis.” The southern portion of the line of dunes lies farther west than the part that I saw; but a map constructed from native intelligence can hardly be expected to be very accurate, and, assuming the prevailing wind in the neighbourhood of El Atrun to blow from a direction approximating to north-east, as found by Tilho in Borku, the line of dunes would be certain to curve round somewhat towards the west at its southern extremity. The belt near Dendura is almost exactly in line with the one reported in the neighbourhood of Owana; so, too, is the wide belt to the west of Erbayana with the similar dune-field west of Erwully. Sand-free intervals in these sand belts are not uncommon, and the dying out of this belt about the latitude of Bushara that was reported to take place, may only be the commencement of one of these gaps, the line of dunes becoming continuous again farther to the south.

“Egyptian Oasis”: An Ebday (i.e. one of the Bedayat tribe) who was a friend of one of my guides, told him he had once ridden from Merga (q.v.) with two hagins (i.e. riding camels) for five days north, following the dune belt (I was also told that the distance was ten long days from Merga with an ordinary caravan). He had then climbed a very high black hill lying in the dune belt and had seen in the distance under a cliff a huge oasis, containing a number of olive trees and much terfa. He was too far off to see if it were inhabited, and was afraid to go in, because he said it was an “Egyptian Oasis,” and he feared that he would be killed if he did so. Another Arab told me that a cousin of his was riding along the top of a scarp about eight days somewhere to the south of Dakhla, when he saw below him a very large oasis, containing a number of olive trees, palms and wells. There was one very big ruined town that did not seem to be inhabited and a few ezbas (i.e. hamlets), in which a few people were to be seen. I was also told that this place was from seven to ten days from Dakhla Oasis.