 The Lost Army of Cambyses as imagined byBenson John Lossing andWilliam Barritt. | |
| Date | c. 525 BC |
|---|---|
| Location | Western Desert, Egypt (near Siwa Oasis) |
| Participants | Army ofCambyses II (approx. 50,000 Persian soldiers) |
| Outcome | Entire force disappeared; fate remains unknown |
TheLost Army of Cambyses was, according to anancient Near Eastern legend, a massive fighting force of 50,000 Persian soldiers that disappeared in theWestern Desert of Egypt in 525 BC. They had supposedly been sent byCambyses II to subjugate theOracle of Amun at theSiwa Oasis, but were never seen or heard from again after becoming engulfed in asandstorm. Around this time, Cambyses, who had succeededCyrus the Great as theKing of Kings of theAchaemenid Empire, was leading thefirst Persian conquest of Egypt.
According toHerodotus 3.26, the Persian kingCambyses II sent an army of 50,000 men to threaten theOracle of Amun at theSiwa Oasis around 525 BC.[1] These soldiers had made it halfway across theWestern Desert when they were all buried by a catastrophicsandstorm.[2][note 1]
Although manyEgyptologists regard the story as apocryphal, people have searched for the remains of these legendary Persian soldiers for years, including the Hungarian adventurerLászló Almásy, on whom the 1992 novelThe English Patient is based. In January 1933, the British military officerOrde Wingate searched unsuccessfully for the Lost Army's remains in what was then known as theLibyan Desert.[4]
From September 1983 to February 1984, the American journalist and authorGary S. Chafetz led an expedition to search for the Lost Army, having been sponsored byHarvard University, theNational Geographic Society, theEgyptian Geological Survey and Mining Authority, and theLigabue Research Institute. The six-month search was conducted along theEgypt–Libya border, in a remote area of 100 square kilometres (39 sq mi) of complex dunes to the southwest of the uninhabitedBahariya Oasis, approximately 100 miles (160 km) to the southeast of theSiwa Oasis. The US$250,000 expedition had at its disposal 20 Egyptian geologists and labourers, a National Geographic photographer, two Harvard Film Studies documentary film-makers, three camels, anultra-light aircraft, andground-penetrating radar. The expedition discovered approximately 500tumuli but no artifacts. Several tumuli contained bone fragments.Thermoluminescence later dated the fragments to 1500 BC, approximately 1,000 years earlier than the Lost Army. A recumbent wingedsphinx carved inoolitic limestone was also discovered in a cave in the uninhabitedSitra Oasis (betweenBahariya and Siwa Oases); its provenance appeared to be Persian. Chafetz was arrested when he returned to Cairo in February 1984 for "smuggling an airplane into Egypt" even though he had the written permission of the Egyptian Geological Survey and Mining Authority to bring the aircraft into the country. He was interrogated for 24 hours. The charges were dropped after he promised to "donate" the ultra-light to the Egyptian Government. The aircraft now sits in the Egyptian War Museum in Cairo with a caption that claimed it was from an Israeli spy.[5][6]
In the summer of 2000, aHelwan University geological team, prospecting for petroleum in Egypt's Western Desert, came across well-preserved fragments of textiles, bits of metal resembling weapons, and human remains that it believed to be traces of the Lost Army of Cambyses. The Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities announced that it would organize an expedition to investigate the site, but released no further information.[7]
In November 2009, two Italian archaeologists, Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni, announced the discovery of human remains, weapons, a sliver bracelet and earrings which date to the era of the Persian army. The artefacts were located nearSiwa Oasis.[1]According to these two archaeologists this is the first archaeological evidence of the story reported by Herodotus. While working in the area, the researchers noticed a half-buried pot, some human remains, and what could have been a natural shelter.[8] However, these "two Italian archaeologists" presented their discoveries in a documentary film rather than a scientific journal. Doubts have been raised because the Castiglioni brothers also happen to be the two film-makers who produced five controversial Africanshockumentaries in the 1970s (includingAddio ultimo uomo,Africa ama, andAfrica dolce e selvaggia).[9]The Secretary General of the EgyptianSupreme Council of Antiquities,Zahi Hawass, has said in a press release that media reports of the discovery "are unfounded and misleading" and that "The Castiglioni brothers have not been granted permission by the SCA to excavate in Egypt, so anything they claim to find is not to be believed."[10]
As a result of his excavations at theDakhla Oasis, in 2015 Olaf E. Kaper of theUniversity of Leiden argued that the Lost Army was not destroyed by a sandstorm, but rather ambushed and defeated by a rebel Egyptian pharaoh,Petubastis III. Petubastis was later defeated by Cambyses' successorDarius the Great, who purportedly invented the sandstorm story in order to remove Petubastis and his rebellion from Egyptian memory.[11][12][13]
InAssassin's Creed Origins the Lost Army of Cambyses was found by a scholar just north ofKaranis, however, the excavation was abandoned due to the civil war betweenCleopatra andPtolemy and its location was once again lost.
W.E. Johns used the story of the Lost Army in his novelBiggles Flies South.[14]Biggles and his companions search for the army’s remains (and find some mummified warriors) but meet descendants of Persian soldiers still living in an oasis in the Libyan desert.
[1] As for those who were sent to march against the Ammonians, they set out and journeyed from Thebes with guides; and it is known that they came to the city of Oasis, inhabited by Samians said to be of the Aeschrionian tribe, seven days' march from Thebes across sandy desert; this place is called, in the Greek language, Islands of the Blest.
[2] Thus far, it is said, the army came; after that, except for the Ammonians themselves and those who heard from them, no man can say anything of them; for they neither reached the Ammonians nor returned back.
[3] But this is what the Ammonians themselves say: when the Persians were crossing the sand from Oasis to attack them, and were about midway between their country and Oasis, while they were breakfasting a great and violent south wind arose, which buried them in the masses of sand which it bore; and so they disappeared from sight.
— Herodotus, The Histories 3.26.1-3 (tr. Godley)[3]