Mission: Fail

            Imagine being a soldier somewhere in the western Egyptian desert about 2,500 years ago. You have been walking for about a week with 50,000 others, you have been sent on a mission to attack and destroy the Oasis of Siwa and the Temple of Amun. You get ready to set out the next day, but you never get to see the sunset on that day, you drown in the desert.

            One of the lasting mysteries of ancient history has been the disappearance of the Persian army about 2,500 years ago. Herodotus wrote years later that the army had been swallowed by the sand and caused them to disappear instantly. Years passed by and the story became a tall tail and almost faded from existence. In 1996 explorers were working near Siwa and saw some items sticking out of the sand, a few broken pots and some human bones. Further investigation revealed more human remains, hundreds if not thousands of years old. The archeologists decided to investigate local Bedouin stories of a sea of white bones that would appear when the winds blew a certain way. The stories turned out to be true, a mass grave dating back to the time of the disappearance and held artifacts that were Persian in design.

            Those archeologists had, by accident, discovered what happened to an ancient army that almost disappeared from history. I find it amazing that people today are still uncovering mysteries of the ancient world, ones that we had thought of as fiction. It is sad that the army was overtaken by a sandstorm on their journey and they scattered in panic, but they have a happy ending in that they are now free from their sandy graves and can be given proper burials.


http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/cambyses-army-remains-sahara.html