Finding The Remains Of 50,000 Persian Soldiers That Vanished In A Sandstorm | The Lost Army

six centuries before Christ the inhabitants of the Egyptian Oasis of sewa looked out at the Sahara and held their breaths at the heart of the Oasis was one of the most powerful propaganda weapons of the ancient world the Oracle of Ammon just days away was a mighty Persian Army on a mission to destroy it the Army never arrived engulfed by a sandstorm they were said to have been lost without Trace but is it just legend or terrible truth geologist Tom Bown dreams of solving the mystery of the fate of the army and has a startling new Theory well you told me that you found human skulls where where did they archaeologist Gail McKinnon hopes to find Warriors in tuned in the sand and desert guide W Ramadan is the man they'll depend on to keep them alive amidst the danger of Egypt's great sand sea generations of adventurers have unsuccessfully scoured the desert for the remains of the Lost Army amongst them count llo alashi the model for the so-called English Patient but this Expedition has a dramatic new discovery to investigate published in a Cairo newspaper this photograph of ancient arrowheads has reignited the hunt for the Lost Army suggesting that Legend might after all be fact people were struck by the find in the king the tomb of King tat he was one king can you imagine 5 or 10,000 soldiers bronze armor weapons skulls um skeletons possibly chariots everything you can think of it's a huge treasure if you can think of it that way it would be the AR iCal find of the not end of the century but of several centuries [Music] in 539 BC Cyrus King of Persia defeated Babylon founding the largest Empire the world had ever seen when his son cises went on to conquer Egypt in 525 BC he sent an army to attack a small Oasis the rest is history or a tll story [Music] the Greek writer Herodotus was the most famous historian of the ancient world a single paragraph he wrote reads like fiction but may be the only evidence for the Hideous fate of cis's army cis's detached a body of 50,000 men with orders to attack the ammonian reduce them to slavery and burn the Oracle the force started from thieves and may be traced as far as the town of Oasis set days journey across the sand general report has it that when the Army had left Oasis and in their march across the desert had reached a point about Midway a southerly wind of extreme violence drove the sand in heaps over them as they were taking their midday meal so that they disappeared forever I think if cambas Aly were to be found in the desert I think it would spell the end of one of the long-standing Mysteries um in ancient history what happened to cis's Army is Herodotus account really true Tom bar has been obsessed with the mystery of cis's lost Army for decades he's one of many whose imagination has been fired by the lurid tale told by herodias novelists have borrowed the plot adventurers have used the history as inspiration llo alashi the Explorer immortalized as The English Patient spent years searching the Egyptian desert for the Lost Army just before he died in 1951 he told a friend he was on the verge of finding it he said that he had a pretty good idea of where it might be and he also said that he had found certain artifacts he never actually indicated on the map to any of us where exactly he thought this might be he was will very willing to talk about it but not very willing to tell us exactly where to look if alashi did find the lost Army he took the secret of its location to his grave half a century on a Cairo newspaper reported a sensational Discovery in the western desert the paper said that the army of King cises had been found at Last by a geologist Dr Ali barad to archaeologists the claim was highly controversial but in the coffee shops of Cairo they spoke of little else this is an arrowhead to St yeah I think it's an arrowhead and here the expedition's guide W Ramadan translates the article for archaeologist Gail McKinnon okay who who's this guy here that's Dr Al bar he was the boss of this Expedition so he actually took these photographs that we're seeing and identified this area on the map yeah okay what do you think about this story do you really believe uh I believe what I see by my own eyes so you're not quite sure we have to go and see going to Sea will mean a dangerous Journey deep into the Sahara the dry Sands of the desert can preserve bodies and Relics for thousands of years so it's perfectly possible that the shifting Sands could have revealed C's Army Tom and Gail's Expedition will not be the first to try to reach the remote site where Dr Ali Barakat made his discoveries Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities despite being publicly skeptical about a geologist's claims sent archaeologists into the the desert to investigate Dr Barakat was not invited to join them before long the archaeologist Vehicles became irredeemably bogged down Dr barakat's sight remained tantalizingly Out Of Reach and the Mystery unresolved a fellow geologist Tom Bown has worked with Ali before he has faith in his judgment and is convinced his claims should be followed up so Tom what's Ellie's background is he an archaeologist or a historian no he's a geologist but he's very widely read so to him I can I can imagine him thinking that peace coming up with what appears to be weaponry and bodies in this area where other people have looked and other people have thought might be the uh hiding place for the residue of km's army then I I think his his views are sincere I think I think that he believes that he has found part of the Lost Army it makes sense in this area is about it could be one of the areas exactly it's all very interesting it'll be wonderful to see uh 's photographs and hear a story yeah I'm still imbued with a little skepticism about the whole thing quite frankly um I'm not really sure what to think about [Music] it the team visit Dr Barakat at his inner city home in Cairo to hear the full story of his Discovery ali um the finds that you made are truly remarkable there's no question and and uh looks like Arrow points possibly a spear Point um a dagger um and lots and lots of human bones kale what does that look like to you a lance pointer a knife blade can't see it too well from here looks like the socket of a spearhead but I can't really there's no scale so I don't really no mhm were there a lot of Bones uh when you got out yes uhhuh after we we find this we found manyi Bones on the ground do you think that the whole Army is out there or do you believe that uh you found some of the army it turns out Ali's finds were made by chance on a brief geological field trip there wasn't time for a full search of the area he's confident another Expedition will confirm that the lost Army really has been found at last and probably from here we we may find the the whole Army probably from this [Music] area 300 Mi up the Nile from Cairo was ancient thieves it was from here that cises launched his desert campaign after his conquest of Egypt in 525 BC unfortunately Dr Barakat is unable to join the Expedition much of the western desert of Egypt is a restricted military zone and he's not been granted a permit to revisit the site of his discoveries but he has provided Tom and Gail with his photographs and told them exactly where to look on the western Bank of the Nile the team's Vehicles drivers and supplies are waiting this is the backup and this is the one will drive is the cook he's the most important man here [Music] exactly the journey to the edge of the desert traces a caravan route that would have been old when the Persians marched down it 2 and a half thousand years ago the Persian army was generally composed of a whole number of different ethnic contingents the later accounts of the Persian invasion of Greece say that all the peoples of Asia were represented so it would have been a a very dazzling exciting site if you were uh not on the wrong side of it the Persian army from descriptions we have in other contexts tended not to travel light um the Persian expedition to Greece had a huge baggage train um they even brought um concubines with them as well as um camel train full of of Provisions it was said in that case that the Persians drank all the rivers in Greece dry cises had angered the Egyptian priests by his overthrow of the Pharaoh and as his army set off on the long and dangerous journey to se they may have faced not just the vast waterless expanse of the western desert but also the wroth of the Oracle of sewa the priests were immensely powerful in Egypt you see if you got on the wrong side of the priests you were in trouble and of course many of the oracles um said what the priests wanted them to say and it is possible that the Oracle of siwa uh predicted Doom for this interopa doom and death cis's troops thought they'd left the Nile Valley on a routine Mission they knew that hundreds of miles of terrifyingly waterless desert lay between them and their goal what they didn't know was that they wouldn't be coming back to follow in the footsteps of King K's lost Army the Expedition must first visit kaga which the historian Herodotus called Oasis it was the last place where he said they were seen alive the force which was sent against the ammonian started from thieves and may be traced as far as the town of Oasis 7 days journey across the sand the approach is still dominated by a mud brick Fortress that was already ancient when the Persian Invaders appeared out of the desert well the fort was certainly here in Persian times um so therefore it was quite likely that it was garrisoned so perhaps the first thing that the Persians had to do was they burst into cargo Oasis was reduce this fort it's certainly a certainly commanding view of the entire Oasis and a commanding position Herodotus states that the Army took a week to cover the 130 mi from the Nile Valley to kaga if if they managed to keep up this rate of 18 m a day on foot without any shade in blistering temperatures it would have taken them more than 3 weeks to cross the desert to sewa and that's assuming they marched in a dead straight line in fact Tom is sure that the need to find water would have made the journey even longer so the Persian started here in look or and crossed 130 Mi of open desert to get here at cargo Oasis and their General TR regardless of how they went was to the Northwest see what would be clear off the map way up here 405 mil away so what they would do almost certainly would be to go to the last water before the open desert Y and they Lo last water before the open desert in any direction that they would take from here would be anamur the tiny Oasis of ayamur is an easy driveway but for the Persian foot soldiers the slog through the unforgiving desert would have been a taste of things to come when they started out they might have been fairly cocky because they had a force that they knew would be able to overthrow any tiny Oasis Village of which they must have captured hundreds in the establishment of the of the Persian Empire and so this would be nothing more than a than a raid or a a routine mission for them but they had no idea what they were up against and what they were going to face the Western desert of Egypt is dry even by the standards of the Sahara in summer temperatures can soore above 50° Centigrade this is no place to be far from home after 3 days on the March the Persians would have been exhausted I'm sure that even between cargo Oasis and this point that water was already being rationed they're beginning to realize that water is running out few palm trees in a hole with some water in it it must have looked very very good to Thirsty soldiers having marched the 80 km from [Music] cargo if the Persian army did stop at inamura there's every chance they'd have left something behind we've collected a number of potri shards laying around on the surface of the landscape around the Oasis and these represent different types of cooking pots water jars carrying vessels for food Stone in some cases painted Potter glazed pot Tre and these represent different periods from the fonic really through to contemporary times to modern day it's very hard to say if they stayed here I mean they may have just watered not even camped overnight or if they did you'd probably need to excavate this area to be able to tell for sure Tom has worked out the logistics of the Army's stay here to be a viable source of water for such a large Force I believe that the spring must have been larger to really attract them unless they were prepared to stay here for several days and make the best use of the water supply they could fill everything up to the outset give everyone a good rest let everybody tank up on water before the March started again if they did stop at this at this Watering Hole it may well have been the last water that the Persians saw it all from aaur onwards all food and water has to be transported for the Persians this must have been a huge burden the logistics make it virtually certain that cis's Army could not have been as vast as herodias said 50,000 is a great many people to take on what in effect was Desert travel from one newes to another uh because apart from watering the soldiers you've got to water all the pack animals as well with Decades of experience in the desert Tom B has calculated that a minimum of 3,000 tons of food and water would have been needed for 50,000 men to survive the March to se one as with most such figures that we get in ancient sources we have to be fairly skeptical um it's often said that um one should take off a zero or two before one actually gets to the accurate figure and that's particularly true of Persian armies which are always exaggerated in terms of their size it said in other cases that millions of men took part in Persian Expeditions the Army was probably at the most 5,000 strong Tom ban has a new Theory which has the soldiers running out of luck and water in a place where no one has looked before he believes the Persian lack of understanding of the local geography LED them far to the south of their intended destination directly into the great sand sea I suspect that the Persian army setting out into the desert would not really have known what was there they were at the far extreme of their empire here they didn't have a very developed sense of space didn't have three-dimensional maps and I think they probably would have had little idea of what they were finding at the other end the Great Sand sea stretches over 100,000 square miles with Junes up to 500 ft high it's one of the least known and most treacherous places on Earth one of the few to have experienced it is oil prospector Mike Rondell it's like being in a raging ocean there is no way out there's no civilization there's absolutely no way to call and if you're stuck you don't survive it's a simple that you can survive for 2 days or 3 days and then you don't that's it you're finished Gart rals in 1874 was the first Western Explorer to survive the journey through the Dune field by the 1930s Motorcars were making the first tentative foray into the great sand sea the most celebrated of the Explorers was the real English Patient count laslo al- mashi he went through the great San sea I think three or four times and he knew the Libyan Desert and the Sahara pass of Sahara and the Egyptian desert I mean probably better than anybody the Arabs they called him the father of the sanss many of the driving techniques still used by desert drivers today were pioneered by al- Masashi such as reducing tire pressure to increase Traction in the soft sand in the flat corridors between the dunes high speeds could be achieved but crossing the soft sand of the dunes themselves created huge problems for even the most expert drivers in the 1930s rert Harding Newman was one of them and one appalling occasion in 35 when we got into a belt of Dunes it took us all day to do 10 miles you got to be careful that you don't go over the top before you know what the other side is like because you could have got into a sort of sand pit of loose sand which you wouldn't have got the car out of but going down you want to keep a car very straight and then just you get near the bottom you accelerate and we Luck get out Tom and Gail are beginning to realize the Expedition is going to be even tougher than they imagined but hard as it is in four-wheel drives on foot the 400m journey to seiwa must have been a nightmare for the Persians could cises really have risked losing an army just to attack a small Oasis and its Oracle it seems a crazy decision cambis has the reputation in herod's account of not only being a stereotypical Tyrant but also being drunk and mad he even tells a story which I think we have to take with a pinch of salt which is that the Persians when they're making decisions um have to think something is a good idea both when they're drunk and when they're sober I suppose um in the Greek's eyes you could say that cis's attack on sewa was a decision that he only thought was a good idea when he was drunk perhaps he ought to wait till the morning whatever cis's reasoning he sent his men to their [Music] deaths the early explorers gave the name the Church of the spirits of the Lost Persian army to this rock when the wind blew the Explorers fancied they heard it Keen a lament boning the Folly of sending out men into the Land of the Dead as they Retreat further and further from water I'm sure that the that the will of the men was beginning to break what were once men who would March and step and F and play drums and sing and talk after a few days they'd be muted and they'd realize the Grim circumstance no more jolity and they're going also into an area that that's reputed to be full of ghosts [Music] as the Persians headed west into the unknown and a certain death the scribes of conquered Egypt invoked the Gods in all their elemental power open are the double doors of the Horizon unlocked are its bolts clouds darken the sky the stars rain down the constellations stagger the bones of the hellhounds tremble this is the place that King cis's Army never reached the lovely Oasis of sewa where they thought it should be they found instead an ocean of sand according to Tom bound the Persians had got their geography wrong [Music] when they set out on this Expedition they'd been in Egypt maybe a year and they were probably unfamiliar with the with the country geographically this is what got them into trouble because any map that they would try to follow would lead them to disaster Tom believes the Persians inability to calculate longitude was their undoing the modern map has sewa far to the northwest of kaga Oasis on a bearing of 310° but in B's time seawa was thought to be on the much more southernly bearing of 289 de slap bang in the middle in fact of the great sand [Music] sea the team has picked up Salah zidan a beding guide to help them find their way through the dunes the seemingly gentle landscape he warns can change in an instant once a sandstorm begins to blow his advice is to camp in the Sheltering Lee of a rocky outcrop or but we're in this area here which is an area of alternating longitudinal Dunes Tom has worked out a plan for searching his chosen area for the remains of the army the 289 de bearing coming up from cargo Oasis enters the dunes right here at this point or enters the sand sea right here at this point and if the Persians actually made it to this point and believe they should continue on a little bit further along that bearing that would put them in this quadrangle and this quadrangle is sort of a natural CUA Sac it would draw them deeper and deeper into the sand sea without them really knowing it how how do you intend to do it Tom I mean how do you see usem to do is to is to Roar down the Dune corridors and do essentially what is but hopping go from but to but Circle the but looking for pottery remains or other or other alanus fragments that people have brought in and whenever we find something get out and take a look at [Music] [Music] them I don't think that the Army died in one big plop in one area with just piles of bodies and and everything that was left what we're more likely to find than anything in the time that we have are places that they stopped on route where they Camp briefly w we want to Circle those bees over there it is beautiful isn't itated Hills Tom is sure that cis's Army like the team themselves would have camped or rested in the shelter of the butes you always want to know where you've come from and where you're going this is something to me that's very human and so butes would be a natural place to hold up for your your morning drink of water or your campsite at night not only because they offer shade and Shelter From the wind but also because there's something more homey about a than there is about some Baron flap that's radiating heat waves one of the things Tom hopes to find are the remains of water jars that CIS soldiers would have carried I imagine most of their water was carried in gbas which are water skins they would also have a tremendous amount of Crockery with them and if any of this was used for carrying water it would be discarded as the water was exhausted in the 1930s al- Masashi hoped that this pile of ancient water jars found beside a but would prove that C's Army passed this way but analysis of them proved inconclusive one of the fascinating things about desert is that when when something is dropped it just stays there forever because life a it's very dry there's no one particularly to pick it up and carry it away cuz the first person who went there is probably you're probably the second person since he was there um and things just are frozen in time in the vastness of the western desert even huge objects can lie undiscovered for years despite intensive searches the US bomber the lady beg good crashed here in 1943 it took 15 years to find her [Music] when search parties eventually arrived they found the wreck remarkably well preserved so too many miles away were the bodies of the crew they died with their boots on just like the Persians perhaps one of the most frightening things uh regarding a the forced march on foot for the common so Soldier would be that they never knew where they were going they never knew how far it was to their objective and that that must be very frightening well as they're starting to run out of water U they're becoming more and more apprehensive the apprehension turning to alarm that turning to fear and finally Panic you can picture extreme cases of what might happen men might be slaughtered so that people would drink their blood or or cut open their bladders and drink their ear anything to get any moisture as the end comes Madness would take over urine might help them for a while but the blood would be deadly because it's still sailing but I can easily imagine this happening with the Army already weakened by thirst the great Sandstorm described by Herodotus could have been the last straw when the men had left Oasis and in their march across the desert had reached a point about mid way a southernly wind of extreme violence drove the sand in heaps over as they were taking their midday meal so that they disappeared forever in ancient times cataclysmic weather was seen as the work of the Gods the Oracle of sewa was reputed to house a sacred stone which when touched by the priests would unleash a sandstorm against its enemies Prime amongst them the army of King cises cises is notorious for his supposed acts of sacrilege his violence against temples in Egypt and that is seen in the sources very clearly um as being a pattern of crime that has to be punished and I think the sandstorm is being implicitly seen as divine retribution attacks on the Oracle get met with this kind of response if you've never been in the desert in the sandstorm you it's very difficult to imagine what it's like you can't see you can't breathe and there's a hell of a wind and you know that if you stay still you will be buried in a very very short space of time you're being sandblasted if you look what sandblasting does to a bridge and paint work it does that to you and your face and your eyes and you can't you can't really breathe you feel you're being drowned then if you lie down the sand piles up against you and if the sandstorm goes on as it can do for two or three 3 days you're dead and buried I mean that's it's very very quick and not particularly Pleasant way to go I think it's perfectly possible that an army could be wiped out by a sandstorm comparative material suggests that these are fairly terrifying events and it gets to a great temperature in the desert in those kind of circumstances with the south wind blowing so it's by no means impossible once covered by sand it's possible for bodies to survive well preserved for centuries indeed millennia this is the perfect environment for preservation of organic and inorganic material um merely because it's so hot and dry body for example the drain a fluid fairly rapidly and become naturally mummified if we happen to find the army or part of the army there could very well be preservation of bodies in the 1930s Rupert Harding Newman's Expedition uncovered a well preserved skeleton not evidence of camb his army had turned out but the even more ancient body of a woman perhaps 5,000 years old so he had left excavated she had AEL necklace on her wrists and on her ankles and on her tummy she had a complete belt we eventually found she had had 8 and2 pound weight of was shelf beads on her after a day and a half of fruitless search Tom and Gail stumble upon their first bones he saying it's around more than 100 years more than 200 years 200 years from 100 to 200 years how you know that experience how long you think it is well it's very difficult to tell how long it's been out here depends on the weather conditions and the environment of the time yeah but he's used for seeing such things from different eras yeah but he might be used to seeing such things but you can't say it's one or 200 years old because it's older than he is I just don't think that you can look at the bones and say give a chronological age merely because it does depend on the weather so let's drive to the front maybe you find the rider okay let's do that it's funny sometimes you go long stretches without finding any bones or anything even even ologists which I am go long stretches without finding any fossils but uh and then sometimes you have a a bonus of them and who knows on walking back to the car we might SP spy something you can never [Music] tell a full search of even this small part of the Great Sand sea would take months running low on time and with only a dead camel to show for their efforts the team Retreat to the nearest Oasis for the time being Tom's search area is keeping its Secrets the team turned their thoughts to the move north towards the Hidden Valley where Dr Barakat uncovered the arrowheads daggers and human bones which he thinks are the remains of cis's army I'm not sure about um Ali's location I've got no idea what to expect the photographs we saw and Kyo were very tantalizing I think just the word I would use it's actually something tangible something that has been found whatever he's found it's of Interest it may be a u an Islamic Cemetery from the Middle Ages it may be um an out a Garrison of Roman soldiers or it may be a remnant of the Persian army but just no way to tell until we're actually at the spot [Music] if Dr Barakat really has found the Army then it seems the Persians didn't get their geography wrong after all the place where they perished would show that they were on the right route to sewa but poignantly died just short of safety Dr barakat's Discovery places cis's Warriors amongst almost impossible Dunes even today only the most powerful Vehicles stand a chance of penetrating them the Egyptian archaeological Expedition failed to get through Tom and Gail may be the first to find the extra evidence that could prove Dr barad Sensational claims we're following a pair of tracks it could well be Al we're we're headed straight in the direction it's supposed to be 370 M ahead of us should be just right over this hill 160 that's a short nine iron that is yeah is it is this is it this is the very same place yeah yeah that looks like his photograph doesn't it it looks very much like his photograph right on it Tom and Gail must compare the landscape with the photographs given them by Dr Barakat in order to locate the exact spot of his discoveries now this is the place all right there's a huge boss of rock there that sticks out sort of an eye in the middle of it Ali barot probably took his photograph from almost exactly where I'm standing he specifically pointed out this undercutting ledge as a place where they found a great great amount of material and he described it to me as millions of bones that he thought were all of animal origin until he started finding human skulls instead of Ms of human skulls however the team finds an ancient pot Gail is intrigued by the discovery but there's not much to go on and there's a a small piece of black um paint here remnants of a design on the side but the pot is not distinctive enough to be dated on the spot so we still have our work cut out for us but it is interesting that we found something in Ali's area fairly rapidly clearly somebody was here with a pot either full of something or emptied of something [Music] the wind is beginning to pick up Salah is anxious that a storm is brewing there's only just time for Gail to identify where the arrowheads were found here this yeah there are the stones there in the phra see the size of the Hole by the size of the metal detector AR head's obviously not here anymore and I believe that it's gone off to CYO hasn't it all the objects first so essentially that's their first pit there are only animal bones to be seen there's no sign of the piles of human bones and skulls as described by Dr barad so do you think a sandstorms coming Tom look at the Horizon no okay as the wind increases in intensity the Team Heads back to the relative safety of the campsite it was near here in 1935 that llo alhi the real English Patient nearly died of thirst when trapped by a sandstorm that raged for eight days and nights hello this is for Ali Barakat Ali Barat yeah Ali Barakat Tom is anxious to call Dr Barak cat as his claim that he found human bones is now in doubt hello Ali this is Tom how are you thank you we we're in the middle of a sandstorm yeah you told me that you found human skrulls where did they come from to the north westest the first s of the first site look for the higher area you will find bones great great number of bones great numbers of Bones as night Falls and conditions deteriorate the team speculates whether it was a storm like this that did for the Army I'm not sure that 5,000 men could be completely covered in sand I'm still not convinced that I don't I don't believe they were I believe that they come to this area perhaps and they're hit by a very violent Sandstorm God knows how many of them were left I can see a sandstorm of that magnitude on exhausted men who are dying of thirst uh breaking them up into groups disor them and eventually not burying them all you know in a huge Sandstorm no that's that's too apocalyptic but but uh certainly playing a major role in the destruction of it I still want to go back to Ali's site oh I do too tomorrow morning yeah y by morning the sandstorm has blown itself out they return to the site of Ali's discoveries with his new directions they locate some bones straight away and they are human well I've got two fragments of two long bones the um thigh bone and a bone of the lower leg essentially along with a piece of occipital over there and there's a piece of the Jawbone so essentially this body is not in situ I don't think it's a burial could it be someone who crawled under here and died here no I don't believe it be that um merely because I'm just too suspicious of the the the runoff here from the upper area Gail believes the Bones have merely been washed Down Under the ledge from a burial above but Tom is not convinced I'm kind of a romantic I'd like to believe that this is a Persian Soldier some poor soul who crawled under here to get a his last bit of shade before expiring the team splits up to look for the great numbers of human bones described by Dr barad Tom is quite Keen for it to be a soldier from the Persian army but you know it could possibly be a bedin it could possibly be modern no bone out here that is identified as human is necessarily the Persian army on a last look round Tom has made a new and exciting discovery like another piece of skull a couple of pieces one here one over there it's obviously been out here a long time cuz you can see the surface of the skull is starting to erode and crack and weather away oh Tom we've got another one over here further fragments of bone and skull are scattered all around it's not an army but it might be a group of stragglers got skull scatter here over the hill Hill and there's stuff under the Rock Cut ledge so uh it doesn't make any sense to me at the [Music] moment Gail still doubts whether the discoveries have much significance but Tom is far more confident that their finds vindicate Dr Barakat and that this is the last resting place of King cis's Army if indeed we have found some tiny remnant of that Army and that is proven I think it would be a phenomenally interesting contribution to ancient history I think if evidence were found that confirmed Hero's story it would be one extra little Brick in the Wall to prove that he was in fact quite reliable and that his sources weren't just any old hearsay one extra little Brick in the Wall to support herod's credibility and his reputation as the father of History the weapons which could be the first concrete evidence that the tale of cis's lost Army is true are now in Cairo apparently Dr Barakat handed them over for expert scrutiny at the headquarters of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities ever since then official Silence has reigned to try to find out what's going on Tom and Gail head to the ministry of culture The Minister's archaeological adviser says the findes must be somewhere in the system but his first reaction is to be doubtful about their significance this looks like a knife or a dagger and this looks like an arrowhead okay they could be from the army of Kus they could be from any army beginning from the most ancient time from the bronze ages if you like until say 3 3 400 years ago so you cannot really judge you know these things this without having the context regardless of their lack of context it would be possible for someone who is an expert in Persian Weaponry to look at the objects and determine whether or not they are of Persian origin they might be 100% Persian but even though I found their P I still have my question marks how did they come what are they part of what's the critics that were found there's so many questions you can ask and I'm afraid the answers will be just mere conjecture the British museum in London houses a world famous collection of ancient Persian Weaponry as a result perhaps nobody is in a better position to assess Dr barakat's discoveries than curator Dr John Curtis he examines the photograph of the dagger first uh it's in rather bad condition uh I'm afraid it's um heavily corroded I think it is possible that it could be a short sword of Persian date to really be conclusive about this I'd need to have the piece in my hands and be able to examine it now these bronze arrowheads are extremely interesting they're of a type um that we call um three-winged and arrowheads like this actually are very common in the Persian period and indeed they were probably standard issue um to the uh to the Persian army um I've got some examples here absolutely the type that we would expect the army of K devices to be using and they're exactly the same as the ones in the photograph is one of the greatest Mysteries of the ancient world which has inspired generations of desert explorers on the verge of being solved at last we have the most promising new leads to come about in a century in terms of looking for the Lost Army and I think that Alli spine should definitely be followed up on somebody needs to mount an expedition go back back to the sites do some excavations there is something there

Channel: Real History

Views: 628,278

Keywords: Real History, ancient history buffs, ancient mysteries, ancient persia, ancient ruins, ancient warfare, ancient world exploration, archaeological expedition, archaeology adventures, forgotten battles of history, historical discovery, historical investigation, historical legends, history buffs delight, legendary battles, lost in history, lost in time and sandstorms, mysterious disappearance, oracle of amun, unsolved historical events, vanished without a trace

Id: 1dbJPzdJz6I

Length: 49min 21sec (2961 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 12 2024