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

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Transcript
0:05 · six centuries before Christ the inhabitants of the Egyptian Oasis of sewa looked out at the Sahara and held
0:12 · their breaths at the heart of the Oasis was
0:17 · one of the most powerful propaganda weapons of the ancient world the Oracle of Ammon just days away was a mighty
0:24 · Persian Army on a mission to destroy it the Army never arrived engulfed by a
0:30 · sandstorm they were said to have been lost without Trace but is it just legend
0:36 · or terrible truth geologist Tom Bown dreams of solving the mystery of the fate of the
0:43 · army and has a startling new Theory well you told me that you found human skulls
0:49 · where where did they archaeologist Gail McKinnon hopes to find Warriors in tuned in the sand and desert guide W Ramadan
0:56 · is the man they'll depend on to keep them alive amidst the danger of Egypt's great sand
1:03 · sea generations of adventurers have unsuccessfully scoured the desert for
1:08 · the remains of the Lost Army amongst them count llo alashi the
1:14 · model for the so-called English Patient but this Expedition has a
1:21 · dramatic new discovery to investigate published in a Cairo
1:28 · newspaper this photograph of ancient arrowheads has reignited the hunt for the Lost Army suggesting that Legend
1:35 · might after all be fact people were struck by the find in
1:40 · the king the tomb of King tat he was one king can you imagine 5 or 10,000
1:46 · soldiers bronze armor weapons skulls um
1:51 · skeletons possibly chariots everything you can think of it's a huge treasure if
1:57 · you can think of it that way it would be the AR iCal find of the not end of the
2:02 · century but of several centuries
2:13 · [Music]
2:30 · in 539 BC Cyrus King of Persia defeated Babylon founding the largest Empire the
2:36 · world had ever seen when his son cises went on to conquer Egypt in 525 BC he
2:42 · sent an army to attack a small Oasis the rest is history or a tll story
2:51 · [Music]
3:01 · the Greek writer Herodotus was the most famous historian of the ancient world a single paragraph he wrote reads like
3:07 · fiction but may be the only evidence for the Hideous fate of cis's
3:13 · army cis's detached a body of 50,000 men with orders to attack the ammonian
3:20 · reduce them to slavery and burn the Oracle the force started from thieves
3:26 · and may be traced as far as the town of Oasis set days journey across the
3:32 · sand general report has it that when the Army had left Oasis and in their march
3:38 · across the desert had reached a point about Midway a southerly wind of extreme
3:43 · violence drove the sand in heaps over them as they were taking their midday meal so that they disappeared
3:51 · forever I think if cambas Aly were to be found in the desert I think it would spell the end of one of the
3:58 · long-standing Mysteries um in ancient history what happened to cis's Army is Herodotus account really
4:10 · true Tom bar has been obsessed with the mystery of cis's lost Army for decades
4:16 · he's one of many whose imagination has been fired by the lurid tale told by
4:21 · herodias novelists have borrowed the plot adventurers have used the history as
4:27 · inspiration llo alashi the Explorer immortalized as The English Patient
4:32 · spent years searching the Egyptian desert for the Lost Army just before he died in 1951 he told a friend he was on
4:40 · the verge of finding it he said that he had a pretty good idea of where it might
4:48 · be and he also said that he had found certain
4:54 · artifacts he never actually indicated on the map to any of us where exactly he
5:00 · thought this might be he was will very willing to talk about it but not very
5:06 · willing to tell us exactly where to
5:12 · look if alashi did find the lost Army he took the secret of its location to his
5:21 · grave half a century on a Cairo newspaper reported a sensational
5:26 · Discovery in the western desert the paper said that the army of King cises had been found at Last by a geologist Dr
5:35 · Ali barad to archaeologists the claim was highly controversial but in the
5:40 · coffee shops of Cairo they spoke of little else this is an arrowhead to St yeah I
5:47 · think it's an arrowhead and here the expedition's guide W Ramadan translates
5:53 · the article for archaeologist Gail McKinnon okay who who's this guy here
5:58 · that's Dr Al bar he was the boss of this Expedition so he actually took these
6:04 · photographs that we're seeing and identified this area on the map yeah okay what do you think about this story
6:10 · do you really believe uh I believe what I see by my own
6:16 · eyes so you're not quite sure we have to go and
6:23 · see going to Sea will mean a dangerous Journey deep into the Sahara
6:30 · the dry Sands of the desert can preserve bodies and Relics for thousands of years so it's perfectly possible that the
6:37 · shifting Sands could have revealed C's
6:42 · Army Tom and Gail's Expedition will not be the first to try to reach the remote site where Dr Ali Barakat made his
6:50 · discoveries Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities despite being publicly skeptical about a geologist's claims
6:58 · sent archaeologists into the the desert to investigate Dr Barakat was not invited
7:03 · to join them before long the archaeologist Vehicles became irredeemably bogged down Dr barakat's
7:11 · sight remained tantalizingly Out Of Reach and the Mystery
7:18 · unresolved a fellow geologist Tom Bown has worked with Ali before he has faith
7:24 · in his judgment and is convinced his claims should be followed up so Tom what's Ellie's background is he an
7:30 · archaeologist or a historian no he's a geologist but he's very widely read so
7:35 · to him I can I can imagine him thinking that peace coming up with what appears to be weaponry and bodies in this area
7:43 · where other people have looked and other people have thought might be the uh hiding place for the residue of km's
7:49 · army then I I think his his views are sincere I think I think that he believes that he
7:55 · has found part of the Lost Army it makes sense in this area is about it could be
8:00 · one of the areas exactly it's all very interesting it'll be wonderful to see uh
8:06 · 's photographs and hear a story yeah I'm still imbued with a little skepticism about the whole thing
8:12 · quite frankly um I'm not really sure what to think about
8:20 · [Music] it the team visit Dr Barakat at his
8:27 · inner city home in Cairo to hear the full story of his
8:32 · Discovery ali um the finds that you made are truly remarkable there's no question
8:37 · and and uh looks like Arrow points possibly a spear Point um a dagger um
8:44 · 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
8:52 · well from here looks like the socket of a spearhead but I can't really there's no scale so I
8:58 · don't really no mhm were there a lot of Bones uh when you got out yes uhhuh
9:04 · after we we find this we found manyi Bones on the ground do you think that
9:10 · the whole Army is out there or do you believe that uh you found some of the
9:16 · army it turns out Ali's finds were made by chance on a brief geological field
9:21 · trip there wasn't time for a full search of the area he's confident another
9:27 · Expedition will confirm that the lost Army really has been found at last and probably from here we we may
9:35 · find the the whole Army probably from this [Music]
9:49 · area 300 Mi up the Nile from Cairo was ancient thieves it was from here that
9:55 · cises launched his desert campaign after his conquest of Egypt in 525
10:03 · BC unfortunately Dr Barakat is unable to join the Expedition much of the western
10:09 · desert of Egypt is a restricted military zone and he's not been granted a permit to revisit the site of his discoveries
10:16 · but he has provided Tom and Gail with his photographs and told them exactly where to
10:27 · look on the western Bank of the Nile the team's Vehicles drivers and supplies are
10:33 · waiting this is the backup and this is the one will drive is the cook he's the most
10:39 · important man here [Music]
10:46 · exactly the journey to the edge of the desert traces a caravan route that would have been old when the Persians marched
10:53 · down it 2 and a half thousand years ago the Persian army was generally
10:59 · composed of a whole number of different ethnic contingents the later accounts of
11:05 · the Persian invasion of Greece say that all the peoples of Asia were represented so it would have been a a very dazzling
11:11 · exciting site if you were uh not on the wrong side of it the Persian army from descriptions we have in other contexts
11:17 · tended not to travel light um the Persian expedition to Greece had a huge
11:22 · baggage train um they even brought um concubines with them as well as um camel
11:28 · train full of of Provisions it was said in that case that the Persians drank all the rivers in Greece
11:48 · dry cises had angered the Egyptian priests by his overthrow of the
11:54 · Pharaoh and as his army set off on the long and dangerous journey to se they may have faced not just the vast
12:01 · waterless expanse of the western desert but also the wroth of the Oracle of
12:07 · sewa the priests were immensely powerful in Egypt you see if you got on the wrong
12:13 · side of the priests you were in trouble and of course many of the
12:18 · oracles um said what the priests wanted them to
12:23 · say and it is possible that the Oracle of siwa uh predicted Doom for this
12:33 · interopa doom and death cis's troops thought they'd left
12:40 · the Nile Valley on a routine Mission they knew that hundreds of miles of terrifyingly waterless desert lay
12:47 · between them and their goal what they didn't know was that they
12:52 · wouldn't be coming back
13:01 · to follow in the footsteps of King K's lost Army the Expedition must first visit
13:07 · kaga which the historian Herodotus called Oasis it was the last place where
13:12 · he said they were seen alive the force which was sent against the ammonian started from thieves and
13:19 · may be traced as far as the town of Oasis 7 days journey across the
13:26 · sand the approach is still dominated by a mud brick Fortress that was already ancient when the Persian Invaders
13:32 · appeared out of the desert well the fort was certainly here in Persian times um so therefore it was quite likely that it
13:39 · was garrisoned so perhaps the first thing that the Persians had to do was they burst into cargo Oasis was reduce
13:44 · this fort it's certainly a certainly commanding view of the entire Oasis and a commanding
13:51 · position Herodotus states that the Army took a week to cover the 130 mi from the
13:56 · Nile Valley to kaga if if they managed to keep up this rate of 18 m a day on
14:02 · foot without any shade in blistering temperatures it would have taken them more than 3 weeks to cross the desert to
14:09 · sewa and that's assuming they marched in a dead straight line in fact Tom is sure that the need
14:16 · to find water would have made the journey even longer so the Persian started here in
14:22 · look or and crossed 130 Mi of open desert to get here at cargo Oasis and
14:27 · 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
14:34 · away so what they would do almost certainly would be to go to the last
14:40 · water before the open desert Y and they Lo last water before the open desert in any direction that they would take from
14:46 · here would be anamur the tiny Oasis of ayamur is an
14:51 · easy driveway but for the Persian foot soldiers the slog through the unforgiving desert would have been a
14:57 · taste of things to come when they started out they might have been fairly cocky because they had a
15:04 · force that they knew would be able to overthrow any tiny Oasis Village of which they must have captured hundreds
15:09 · in the establishment of the of the Persian Empire and so this would be nothing more than a than a raid or a a
15:15 · routine mission for them but they had no idea what they were up against and what they were going to
15:21 · face the Western desert of Egypt is dry even by the standards of the Sahara in
15:28 · summer temperatures can soore above 50° Centigrade this is no place to be far
15:34 · from home after 3 days on the March the
15:39 · Persians would have been exhausted I'm sure that even between cargo Oasis and this point that water
15:46 · was already being rationed they're beginning to realize that water is running out few palm trees
15:53 · in a hole with some water in it it must have looked very very good to Thirsty soldiers having marched the 80 km from
16:03 · [Music]
16:12 · cargo if the Persian army did stop at aamu there's every chance they'd have left something
16:19 · behind we've collected a number of potri shards laying around on the surface of
16:26 · the landscape around the Oasis and these represent different types of cooking pots water jars carrying vessels for
16:34 · food Stone in some cases painted Potter glazed pot Tre and these represent
16:42 · different periods from the fonic really through to contemporary times to modern
16:48 · 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
16:55 · you'd probably need to excavate this area to be able to tell for sure Tom has worked out the logistics of
17:03 · the Army's stay here to be a viable source of water for such a large Force I believe that the
17:10 · spring must have been larger to really attract them unless they were prepared to stay here for several days and make
17:17 · the best use of the water supply they could fill everything up to the outset give everyone a good rest let everybody
17:23 · tank up on water before the March started again
17:34 · if they did stop at this at this Watering Hole it may well have been the last water that the Persians saw it
17:43 · all from aaur onwards all food and water has to be transported for the Persians
17:49 · this must have been a huge burden the logistics make it virtually certain that cis's Army could not have been as vast
17:56 · as herodias said 50,000 is a great many people to take on
18:03 · what in effect was Desert travel from one newes to
18:08 · another uh because apart from watering the soldiers you've got to water all the
18:14 · pack animals as well with Decades of experience in the desert Tom B has calculated that a
18:22 · minimum of 3,000 tons of food and water would have been needed for 50,000 men to
18:27 · survive the March to se one as with most such figures that we
18:33 · 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
18:40 · before one actually gets to the accurate figure and that's particularly true of Persian armies which are always
18:45 · exaggerated in terms of their size it said in other cases that millions of men took part in Persian
18:51 · Expeditions the Army was probably at the most 5,000 strong Tom ban has a new
18:57 · Theory which has the soldiers running out of luck and water in a place where no one has looked before he believes the
19:04 · Persian lack of understanding of the local geography LED them far to the south of their intended destination
19:10 · directly into the great sand sea I suspect that the Persian army setting out into the desert would not
19:17 · really have known what was there they were at the far extreme of their empire here they didn't have a very developed
19:23 · sense of space didn't have three-dimensional maps and I think they probably would have had little idea of
19:28 · what they were finding at the other end the Great Sand sea stretches over
19:33 · 100,000 square miles with Junes up to 500 ft high it's one of the least known
19:38 · and most treacherous places on Earth one of the few to have experienced
19:44 · it is oil prospector Mike Rondell it's like being in a raging ocean there is no
19:49 · way out there's no civilization there's absolutely no way to call and if you're
19:55 · stuck you don't survive it's a simple that you can survive for 2 days or 3
20:00 · days and then you don't that's it you're finished Gart rals in 1874 was the first
20:07 · Western Explorer to survive the journey through the Dune
20:13 · field by the 1930s Motorcars were making the first tentative foray into the great
20:19 · sand sea the most celebrated of the Explorers was the real English Patient count laslo
20:26 · al- mashi he went through the great San sea I think three or four times and he knew
20:34 · the Libyan Desert and the Sahara pass of Sahara and the Egyptian desert I mean
20:40 · probably better than anybody the Arabs they called him the father of the
20:45 · sanss many of the driving techniques still used by desert drivers today were
20:50 · pioneered by al- Masashi such as reducing tire pressure to increase Traction in the soft
20:57 · sand in the flat corridors between the dunes high speeds could be achieved but
21:02 · crossing the soft sand of the dunes themselves created huge problems for even the most expert
21:10 · drivers in the 1930s rert Harding Newman was one of
21:16 · them and one appalling occasion in 35 when we got into a belt of Dunes it
21:24 · took us all day to do 10 miles
21:34 · you got to be careful that you don't go over the top before you know what the
21:41 · other side is like because you could have got into a sort of sand pit of
21:47 · loose sand which you wouldn't have got the car out of but going down you want
21:52 · to keep a car very straight and then just you get near the bottom you
21:58 · accelerate and we Luck get
22:04 · out Tom and Gail are beginning to realize the Expedition is going to be even tougher than they
22:11 · imagined but hard as it is in four-wheel drives on foot the 400m journey to seiwa
22:17 · must have been a nightmare for the Persians could cises really have risked
22:23 · losing an army just to attack a small Oasis and its Oracle it seems a crazy
22:29 · decision cambis has the reputation in herod's account of not only being a stereotypical Tyrant but also being
22:35 · 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
22:42 · 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
22:47 · suppose um in the Greek's eyes you could say that cis's attack on sewa was a
22:53 · decision that he only thought was a good idea when he was drunk perhaps he ought to wait till the morning
23:00 · whatever cis's reasoning he sent his men to their [Music]
23:15 · deaths the early explorers gave the name the Church of the spirits of the Lost
23:20 · Persian army to this rock when the wind blew the Explorers
23:28 · fancied they heard it Keen a lament boning the Folly of sending out men into
23:33 · the Land of the Dead as they Retreat further and further from water I'm sure that the that the
23:39 · 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
23:47 · talk after a few days they'd be muted and they'd realize the Grim circumstance no more
23:53 · jolity and they're going also into an area that that's reputed to be full of ghosts
23:59 · [Music] as the Persians headed west into the unknown and a certain death the scribes
24:07 · of conquered Egypt invoked the Gods in all their elemental
24:13 · power open are the double doors of the Horizon unlocked are its bolts clouds
24:20 · darken the sky the stars rain down the constellations stagger the bones of the
24:26 · hellhounds tremble
24:39 · this is the place that King cis's Army never reached the lovely Oasis of
24:45 · sewa where they thought it should be they found instead an ocean of sand
24:51 · according to Tom bound the Persians had got their geography wrong
24:57 · [Music] when they set out on this Expedition
25:03 · they'd been in Egypt maybe a year and they were probably unfamiliar with the with the country geographically this is
25:08 · what got them into trouble because any map that they would try to follow would lead them to
25:15 · disaster Tom believes the Persians inability to calculate longitude was their undoing the modern map has sewa
25:22 · far to the northwest of kaga Oasis on a bearing of 310° but in B's time seawa was thought
25:30 · to be on the much more southernly bearing of 289 de slap bang in the
25:35 · middle in fact of the great sand [Music]
25:44 · sea the team has picked up Salah zidan a beding guide to help them find their way
25:50 · through the dunes the seemingly gentle landscape he warns can change in an instant once a
25:57 · sandstorm begins to blow his advice is to camp in the Sheltering Lee of a rocky outcrop or
26:05 · but we're in this area here which is an area of alternating longitudinal Dunes
26:11 · Tom has worked out a plan for searching his chosen area for the remains of the army the 289 de bearing coming up from
26:19 · cargo Oasis enters the dunes right here at this point or enters the sand sea
26:24 · right here at this point and if the Persians actually made it to this point and believe they should continue on a
26:29 · little bit further along that bearing that would put them in this quadrangle and this quadrangle is sort of a natural
26:35 · CUA Sac it would draw them deeper and deeper into the sand sea without them really knowing it how how do you intend
26:41 · to do it Tom I mean how do you see usem to do is to is to Roar down the Dune
26:46 · corridors and do essentially what is but hopping go from but to but Circle the but looking for pottery remains or other
26:53 · or other alanus fragments that people have brought in and whenever we find something get out and take a look at
27:02 · [Music]
27:13 · [Music] them I don't think that the Army died in
27:18 · 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
27:24 · anything in the time that we have are places that they stopped on route where they Camp briefly w we want to Circle
27:31 · those bees over there it is beautiful isn't itated
27:38 · Hills Tom is sure that cis's Army like the team themselves would have camped or
27:44 · rested in the shelter of the butes you always want to know where you've come from and where you're going
27:50 · this is something to me that's very human and so butes would be a natural place to hold up for your your morning
27:55 · drink of water or your campsite at night not only because they offer shade and Shelter From the wind but also because
28:03 · there's something more homey about a than there is about some Baron flap that's radiating heat
28:08 · waves one of the things Tom hopes to find are the remains of water jars that CIS soldiers would have carried I
28:16 · imagine most of their water was carried in gbas which are water skins they would also have a tremendous amount of
28:21 · Crockery with them and if any of this was used for carrying water it would be discarded as the water was exhausted
28:29 · in the 1930s al- Masashi hoped that this pile of ancient water jars found beside
28:34 · a but would prove that C's Army passed this way but analysis of them proved
28:40 · inconclusive one of the fascinating things about desert is that when when something is dropped it just stays there
28:46 · forever because life a it's very dry there's no one particularly to pick it
28:52 · up and carry it away cuz the first person who went there is probably you're probably the second person since he was
28:57 · there um and things just are frozen in
29:03 · time in the vastness of the western desert even huge objects can lie
29:08 · undiscovered for years despite intensive
29:13 · searches the US bomber the lady beg good crashed here in 1943 it took 15 years to find her
29:24 · [Music] when search parties eventually arrived
29:30 · they found the wreck remarkably well preserved so too many miles away were
29:36 · the bodies of the crew they died with their boots on just like the
29:50 · Persians perhaps one of the most frightening things uh regarding a the forced march on foot for the common so
29:58 · Soldier would be that they never knew where they were going they never knew how far it was to their objective and
30:04 · that that must be very frightening well as they're starting to
30:09 · run out of water U they're becoming more and more apprehensive the apprehension turning to alarm that turning to fear
30:18 · and finally Panic you can picture extreme cases of what might happen men
30:23 · might be slaughtered so that people would drink their blood or or cut open their bladders and drink their ear
30:28 · anything to get any moisture as the end comes Madness would take over urine
30:33 · might help them for a while but the blood would be deadly because it's still sailing but I can easily imagine this
30:43 · happening with the Army already weakened by thirst the great Sandstorm described
30:48 · by Herodotus could have been the last straw when the men had left Oasis and in
30:54 · their march across the desert had reached a point about mid way a southernly wind of extreme violence
31:01 · drove the sand in heaps over as they were taking their midday meal so that they disappeared
31:08 · forever in ancient times cataclysmic weather was seen as the work of the Gods
31:14 · the Oracle of sewa was reputed to house a sacred stone which when touched by the priests would unleash a sandstorm
31:21 · against its enemies Prime amongst them the army of King cises
31:28 · cises is notorious for his supposed acts of sacrilege his violence against
31:34 · temples in Egypt and that is seen in the sources very clearly um as being a
31:39 · pattern of crime that has to be punished and I think the sandstorm is being implicitly seen as divine retribution
31:45 · 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
31:52 · very difficult to imagine what it's like you can't see you can't
31:59 · breathe and there's a hell of a wind and you know that if you stay still
32:06 · you will be buried in a very very short space of time you're being sandblasted if you
32:13 · 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
32:18 · you can't really breathe you feel you're being drowned then if you lie down the
32:24 · 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
32:30 · mean that's it's very very quick and not particularly Pleasant way to
32:35 · go I think it's perfectly possible that an army could be wiped out by a sandstorm comparative material suggests
32:40 · that these are fairly terrifying events and it gets to a great temperature in the desert in those kind of
32:46 · circumstances with the south wind blowing so it's by no means impossible once covered by sand it's
32:52 · possible for bodies to survive well preserved for centuries indeed millennia
32:58 · this is the perfect environment for preservation of organic and inorganic
33:04 · material um merely because it's so hot and dry body for example the drain a
33:10 · fluid fairly rapidly and become naturally mummified if we happen to find
33:15 · the army or part of the army there could very well be preservation of bodies in the 1930s Rupert Harding
33:22 · Newman's Expedition uncovered a well preserved skeleton not evidence of camb his army had turned out but the even
33:30 · more ancient body of a woman perhaps 5,000 years old so he had left excavated
33:36 · she had AEL necklace on her wrists and on her ankles
33:42 · and on her tummy she had a complete belt we eventually found she had had 8 and2
33:48 · pound weight of was shelf beads on
33:54 · her after a day and a half of fruitless search Tom and Gail stumble upon their
34:00 · first bones he saying it's around more than
34:07 · 100 years more than 200 years 200 years from 100 to 200 years how you know that
34:14 · experience how long you think it is well it's very difficult to tell how
34:19 · long it's been out here depends on the weather conditions and the environment of the time yeah but he's used for
34:25 · seeing such things from different eras yeah but he might be used to seeing such
34:30 · 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
34:37 · the bones and say give a chronological age merely because it does depend on the
34:44 · weather so let's drive to the front maybe you find the rider okay let's do
34:51 · that it's funny sometimes you go long stretches without finding any bones or anything even even ologists which I am
34:59 · go long stretches without finding any fossils but uh and then sometimes you have a a bonus of them and who knows on
35:07 · walking back to the car we might SP spy something you can never
35:12 · [Music] tell a full search of even this small
35:18 · part of the Great Sand sea would take months running low on time and with only a dead camel to show for their efforts
35:25 · the team Retreat to the nearest Oasis
35:32 · for the time being Tom search area is keeping its Secrets the team turned
35:37 · their thoughts to the move north towards the Hidden Valley where Dr Barakat uncovered the arrowheads daggers and
35:44 · human bones which he thinks are the remains of cis's
35:49 · army I'm not sure about um Ali's location I've got no idea what to expect
35:56 · the photographs we saw and Kyo were very tantalizing I think just the word I
36:01 · would use it's actually something tangible something that has been found whatever he's found it's of Interest it
36:08 · may be a u an Islamic Cemetery from the Middle Ages it may be um an out a
36:14 · 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
36:21 · the spot [Music]
37:01 · if Dr Barakat really has found the Army then it seems the Persians didn't get their geography wrong after
37:08 · all the place where they perished would show that they were on the right route to sewa but poignantly died just short
37:15 · of safety Dr barakat's Discovery places cis's Warriors amongst almost impossible
37:22 · Dunes even today only the most powerful Vehicles stand a chance of penetrating them the Egyptian archaeological
37:29 · Expedition failed to get through Tom and Gail may be the first to find the extra evidence that could prove Dr barad
37:36 · Sensational claims we're following a pair of tracks
37:43 · it could well be Al we're we're headed straight in the direction it's supposed
37:48 · to be 370 M ahead of us should be just right over this hill 160 that's a short
37:55 · nine iron that is yeah is it is this is it this is the very same place yeah
38:03 · yeah that looks like his photograph doesn't it it looks very much like his photograph right on
38:10 · it Tom and Gail must compare the landscape with the photographs given them by Dr Barakat in order to locate
38:17 · the exact spot of his discoveries now this is the place all
38:22 · right there's a huge boss of rock there that sticks out sort of an eye in the
38:28 · middle of it Ali barot probably took his photograph from almost exactly where I'm
38:33 · standing he specifically pointed out this undercutting ledge as a place where they found a great great amount of
38:40 · material and he described it to me as millions of bones that he thought were all of animal origin until he started
38:47 · finding human skulls instead of Ms of human skulls
38:54 · however the team finds an ancient pot Gail is intrigued by the discovery but
39:01 · there's not much to go on and there's a a small piece of black
39:07 · um paint here remnants of a design on the side but the pot is not distinctive
39:13 · enough to be dated on the spot so we still have our work cut out for us but it is interesting that we found
39:18 · something in Ali's area fairly rapidly clearly somebody was here with a pot
39:24 · either full of something or emptied of something
39:31 · [Music]
39:37 · the wind is beginning to pick up Salah is anxious that a storm is brewing there's only just time for Gail to
39:44 · identify where the arrowheads were found here this yeah there are the stones
39:49 · there in the phra see the size of the Hole by the size of the metal detector
39:55 · AR head's obviously not here anymore and I believe that it's gone off to CYO
40:01 · hasn't it all the objects first so essentially that's their first
40:09 · pit there are only animal bones to be seen there's no sign of the piles of
40:14 · human bones and skulls as described by Dr
40:19 · barad so do you think a sandstorms coming Tom look at the Horizon no okay
40:33 · as the wind increases in intensity the Team Heads back to the relative safety of the campsite it was near here in 1935
40:42 · that llo alashi the real English Patient nearly died of thirst when trapped by a
40:47 · sandstorm that raged for eight days and nights hello this is for Ali Barakat Ali
40:53 · 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
41:01 · Ali this is Tom how are you thank you we we're in the middle of a sandstorm yeah
41:08 · you told me that you found human skrulls where did they come from to the north
41:15 · westest the first s of the first site look for the higher area you will find
41:21 · bones great great number of bones great numbers of Bones as night Falls and conditions
41:28 · deteriorate the team speculates whether it was a storm like this that did for the Army I'm not sure that 5,000 men
41:36 · 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
41:42 · come to this area perhaps and they're hit by a very violent Sandstorm God knows how many of them were left I can
41:48 · see a sandstorm of that magnitude on exhausted men who are dying of thirst uh
41:55 · breaking them up into groups disor them and eventually not burying them all you
42:01 · know in a huge Sandstorm no that's that's too apocalyptic but but uh
42:06 · certainly playing a major role in the destruction of it I still want to go back to Ali's site
42:13 · oh I do too tomorrow morning yeah y by morning the sandstorm has blown
42:19 · itself out they return to the site of Ali's discoveries with his new directions they locate some bones
42:25 · straight away and they are human well I've got two fragments of two
42:32 · long bones the um thigh bone and a bone of
42:38 · the lower leg essentially along with a piece of occipital over
42:44 · there and there's a piece of the Jawbone so essentially this body is not
42:51 · in situ I don't think it's a burial could it be someone who crawled under
42:57 · here and died here no I don't believe it be that um
43:04 · merely because I'm just too suspicious of the the the runoff here from the
43:11 · upper area Gail believes the Bones have merely been washed Down Under the ledge
43:16 · from a burial above but Tom is not convinced I'm kind
43:21 · 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
43:27 · bit of shade before expiring the team splits up to look for the great numbers of human bones
43:34 · described by Dr barad Tom is quite Keen for it to be a soldier from the Persian
43:39 · army but you know it could possibly be a bedin it could possibly be modern no bone out here that is identified as
43:46 · human is necessarily the Persian army on a last look round Tom has made a
43:54 · new and exciting discovery like another piece of skull a couple of
44:02 · pieces one here one over there it's obviously been out here a long time cuz
44:07 · you can see the surface of the skull is starting to erode and crack and weather
44:14 · away oh Tom we've got another one over here further fragments of bone and skull are scattered all around it's not an
44:21 · army but it might be a group of stragglers I've got skull scatter here
44:26 · over the hill Hill and there's stuff under the Rock Cut ledge so uh it doesn't make any sense to me at
44:33 · the [Music] moment Gail still doubts whether the
44:41 · discoveries have much significance but Tom is far more confident that their finds vindicate Dr Barakat and that this
44:48 · is the last resting place of King cis's Army if indeed we have found some tiny
44:56 · remnant of that Army and that is proven I think it would be a phenomenally interesting contribution to
45:05 · ancient history I think if evidence were found that confirmed Hero's story it would be
45:11 · one extra little Brick in the Wall to prove that he was in fact quite reliable and that his sources weren't just any
45:18 · old hearsay one extra little Brick in the Wall to support herod's credibility
45:24 · and his reputation as the father of History
45:30 · the weapons which could be the first concrete evidence that the tale of cis's lost Army is true are now in
45:38 · Cairo apparently Dr Barakat handed them over for expert scrutiny at the headquarters of Egypt's Supreme Council
45:45 · of Antiquities ever since then official Silence has
45:51 · reigned to try to find out what's going on Tom and Gail head to the ministry of culture
45:59 · The Minister's archaeological adviser says the findes must be somewhere in the system but his first reaction is to be
46:04 · doubtful about their significance this looks like a knife or a dagger and this looks like an
46:11 · arrowhead okay they could be from the army of Kus they could be from any army
46:17 · beginning from the most ancient time from the bronze ages if you like until say 3 3 400 years ago so you cannot
46:25 · really judge you know these things this without having the context regardless of their
46:32 · lack of context it would be possible for someone who is an expert in Persian Weaponry to look at the objects and
46:39 · determine whether or not they are of Persian origin they might be 100% Persian but even though I found their P
46:45 · 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
46:50 · many questions you can ask and I'm afraid the answers will be just mere conjecture the British museum in London
46:58 · houses a world famous collection of ancient Persian Weaponry as a result perhaps nobody is in a better position
47:05 · to assess Dr barakat's discoveries than curator Dr John Curtis he examines the
47:10 · photograph of the dagger first uh it's in rather bad condition uh
47:16 · I'm afraid it's um heavily corroded I think it is possible that it could be a
47:21 · short sword of Persian date to really be conclusive about this I'd need to have
47:27 · the piece in my hands and be able to examine it now these bronze arrowheads
47:32 · are extremely interesting they're of a type um that we call um three-winged and
47:39 · arrowheads like this actually are very common in the Persian period and indeed they were probably standard issue um to
47:47 · the uh to the Persian army um I've got some examples here absolutely the type
47:54 · that we would expect the army of K devices to be using and they're exactly the same as the ones in the
48:03 · photograph is one of the greatest Mysteries of the ancient world which has inspired generations of desert explorers
48:11 · on the verge of being solved at last we have the most promising new leads to
48:16 · come about in a century in terms of looking for the Lost Army and I think that Alli spine should definitely be
48:22 · followed up on somebody needs to mount an expedition go back back to the sites
48:28 · do some excavations there is something there

An Ancient Persian Military Base Discovered in Northern Israel [12/29/2018]
Mystery Surrounding Lost Army of Persian King Cambyses II May Have Been Solved [06/21/2014]
Archaeologists May Have Found Remains of Lost Persian Army [11/12/2009]
Is this the legendary lost Persian army [11/09/2009]
Legendary Lost Persian Army Found in Sahara [11/09/2009]
Adventurer crosses sands that conquered a king [01/27/2006]
Photo Series: Persepolis, Iran - Capital of Persian Empire [History] [08/27/2004]
Swallowed by the Sands [08/21/2004]
Tourists To Look for Ancient Persian Army [02/16/2004]

I've watched this before, probably not on YouTube, this is a nice fresh transfer (or rip), probably of interest.

The rest of the Cambyses keyword, sorted:

The other GGG topics added since the previous digest ping, alpha:

And all 50,000 of them registered as Democrats and voted 6 times in the last election.

“Don’t bother to complain about the video length, lack of a synopsis,...”

Your post 2 is too long...should have snyopsized it.

Interesting story, but they found diddly.

Not your fault it’s a false/grossly exaggerated video title, but thanks for posting the transcript.

It would still be necessary to visit the sites in person, but it seems to me that using lidar would be a lot more effective and tons quicker than risking life and not covering much ground at any one time, particularly given the size of the territory to be searched.

Yeah, I saw that video, but already knew nothing has ever been found, so why bother? Not that bored.

I had almost the same reaction to your post.

bump

It was aliens...

https://i.imgflip.com/7kl5v.jpg

Did they look on oak island? 😂

I scanned your Comments in #1. Way too long to actually read.

Please excuse me if you already wrote about this.

One feature of death in a sandy desert is that bodies dis-articulate.

This was not widely known or understood before World War II, when numerous pilots and soldiers were lost in the Sahara Desert.

First, the motion of the sand is abrasive and removes all the soft tissue from a dead body within a couple years.

Second, the skeleton is pulled apart (dis-articulated) and scattered, in all directions, once again by the motion of the sand.

First encounters with this scenario in areas where there were no carnivorous predators were a shocking mystery to many European and North American army units.

Your posting like a zeeper?
Good way to lose a audience.

Now that was a post sc!

This reminds me of a clip I saw on utube last nite of a tornado in the desert on the coast in Tunisia

Very rare

“In 524 BC, a force of 50,000 Persian soldiers”

For the record, that was a BOATLOAD of soldiers back then. Equivalent to 2 million today (by percentage of world population).

Historians are keen to exaggerate.

The Persians in their heyday had a great ability for putting together large armies and supporting their movements. The foolish "must have been exaggerated by adding a zero" nonsense is, uh, foolish nonsense.

They bridged the Bosphorus at least twice (once during their attempt at conquering the rest of Greece, another time when they marched around and tried to corner and control the Scythians) and during the latter also bridged the Danube.

As in all successful ancient empires, on a fresh venture they used a massive force to overwhelm their enemy, and set up local governance. In the two examples above, they did neither. :^)

I've wondered why the Persians didn't use ships to move their forces to a point along the coast and cut the marching distance to Siwa to about 40% of overland route from the Nile. Logistical support would have been much simpler as well. Cambyses had used naval forces in his conquest of Egypt, but the Persians never seem to have developed a permanent navy, hiring ships from among conquered peoples seems to have been their expedient.

The later Roman Empire famously recovered a beached Carthaginian vessel and copied it in the hundreds, then equipped their vessels with special gangplanks, turning their sea battles into land battles. Not until Augustus did the Romans establish a permanent navy, building at least five major naval bases and obliterating piracy.

One thing that's worth considering is that the Persians were used to deserts, being hemmed in to an extent, and also had a well-trained, experienced, disciplined standing army.

Damn, you know a lot!