Français – عربي – ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ – English
After the Persian conquest of Egypt, in 525, the Persian Emperor Cambyses II sent an army of 50.000 men to take control of the Siwa oasis. His army never reached the oasis: it was entirely lost in the desert, without a trace.
According to Greek historian Herodotus, Cambyses wanted to take control of the oracle of Ammon, in Siwa. His army left Thebes (Luxor), traveled through the desert for seven days, and was last seen in the Dakhla Oasis. As they were half-way to Siwa, an immense sandstorm buried them all. This narrative is not fully historical: no sandstorm can submerge such a large army! The legend of the sandstorm might have been invented by the inhabitants of Siwa themselves, as a sign of divine protection.
Several expeditions in the Egyptian desert have recently tried to find traces of this lost army. The most well-known expedition, in 1983-1984, was led by American journalist Gary Chafetz, who was supported by Harvard University and The National Geographic Society. He discovered around 500 burial mounds, some of them containing bones, which were dated around 1.500 BCE, around 1.000 years before the Persian invasion of Egypt. The only timely element is a sphinx statuette found in the Sitra Oasis (East of Siwa), which seems to be of Persian provenance. However, nothing indicates that this sphinx was left there by the lost army of Cambyses.
In Summer 2000, a team of geologists from the University of Helwan, in Cairo, while looking for oil, found metal fragments looking like weapons and human remains that they believed to be the lost army of Cambyses. The Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities announced an expedition to study this site. However, no further information has been published since.
Some specialists also believe that this army cannot be found because if was never lost. It is possible that is was trapped and defeated by the Egyptian rebel chief Petubastis. Later on, the Persian Emperor Darius, who defeated Petubastis, invented the legend of the sandstorm to hide this defeat.
