Vanished Persian army said found in desert

I thought this was a pretty cool bit of news. For some reason I'm seeing pictures of the movie "300" in my head when I think of the Persian Army...

Let me know what you think!

Source

50,000 soldiers believed buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C.

That must have been one hell of a sandstorm!!!

The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archaeology's biggest outstanding mysteries, according to Italian archaeologists. Bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones found in the vast desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert have raised hopes of finally finding the lost army — 50,000 strong — of Persian King Cambyses II, buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C. "We have found the first archaeological evidence of a story reported by the Greek historian Herodotus," Dario Del Bufalo, a member of the expedition from the University of Lecce, told Discovery News. According to Herodotus (484-425 B.C.), Cambyses, the son of Cyrus the Great, sent 50,000 soldiers from Thebes to attack the Oasis of Siwa and destroy the oracle at the Temple of Amun. Alexander the Great had famously sought legitimization of his rule from the oracle of Amun in 332 B.C., but according to legend, the oracle would have predicted the death of Cambyses.

[edit on 11/9/2009 by x2Strongx]

Pretty interesting discovery if this turns out to be true.

I notice in the pic, the bones are scattered about. I wonder why no one else had ever tried to link the bones to this army. I even wonder why these bones were never collected period.

Seems odd to leave these bones lying about.

Just saw this video on Youtube, what an amazing find!

reply to post by x2Strongx


Thanks for posting this. I must have missed it. Well this is yet another feather in Herodotus' hat.

The more they dig and research the more his detractors have to eat crow.


Source

There are many cases in which Herodotus, not certain of the truth of a certain event or unimpressed by the dull "facts" that he received, reported the several most famous accounts of a given subject or process and then wrote what he believed was the most probable.

Although The Histories were often criticized in antiquity for bias, inaccuracy and plagiarism—Lucian of Samosata attacked Herodotus as a liar in Verae Historiae and went as far as to deny him a place among the famous on the Island of the Blessed —this methodology has been seen in a more-positive light by many modern historians and philosophers, especially those searching for a paradigm of objective historical writing.

Some attacks have been made by various scholars in modern times, a few even arguing that Herodotus exaggerated the extent of his travels and invented his sources.[9]

[edit on 9-11-2009 by SLAYER69]

Wow, sucks to be them!

Seriously, when I was in the Navy, stationed aboard a ship serving in the Persian Gulf, we needed to put up gauze over the ship's AC intake vents just to keep the sand out - and this is while in the middle of the gulf, 25 miles from shore! That sand could get around, believe me.

reply to post by Cyprex


Great find Cyprex!!! Thank you for sharing that video.

I wonder what else the world and the ground swallowed up and we might find in the future... Would love to see the expedition personally!

Awesome find! It boggles the mind that so many remains had not been located before. Granted that a desert with the wind blowing sand over and off of things played a big part. If you think about it at first blush losing a army like that would seem nearly impossible. But if the desert buries it... Man now I wonder what else may be buried in the sand.

What's amazing is that all these bones are on top of each other...

If these bones could talk! It would be amazing to find out that something other than the sand storm took out these 50,000 soldiers.

Very cool, Star and Flag from me.

Something that a lot of people don't know about the Sahara region is that back then in Pre-Roman empire times, much of the Saharan regions were fertile savannahs. Ready for agriculture and settlement!

The Para.

i agree, the videos & the actual find of the 'lost army' is awesome...


now, the way my mid works is that i have a question of just how a sand-storm could annihilate such a massive Army of skilled troops.

50k soldiers are a lot of people, but it seems they were not able to protect themselves from a sandstorm.
Why? didn't they have bedrolls to help them shelter from the storm?
Why? isn't there preliminary evidence that they had camels to aid them in the march across the desert?


i'd say, that the Generals in charge, deserved to be desert carrion, but the troops were not.

in the one video, it suggests that the army disbursed in every direction,
so there must have been many thousands of survivors -- did they assimilate into the local culture? were these army survivors, caught & then 'dispatched' as spies or infiltrators (hung-crucified-beheaded) ?



Then ti have this observation... here it was ~555BCE, and there was this event of extreme weather phenomena... wayyyy before the present 'crisis' of climate-change/global-warming that is supposedly formenting this modern period of ''unprecedented extreme weather'


hey, at 500BC, they had no industrial made greenhouse gasses that turned Nature into an enemy... like the GW crowd is saying is the Only cause for the present extreme weather...
sandstorms that bury a 50k troop Army in a flash some 2,500 years ago
can not be natural, even by todays' standards.

That's a lot of toothless skulls!

Herodotus is indeed an interesting individual and as we discover more, it turns out that he was fairly accurate to begin with.

His writings are a good starting point for uncovering old mysteries.

As for sandstorms, they are perilous. And let's not forget that professional armies weren't the common thing in that day. Armies were made up of hordes of conscripts drawn from the surroundings as the core marched towards it's objective, gathering members along the way from farmers, drovers, the unemployed, even slaves.

Here's some information on Wikipedia Cambyses of Persia

The death of Cambyses According to most ancient historians, in Persia the throne was seized by a man posing as his brother Smerdis, who had really been killed by Cambyses some three years previously. Some modern historians consider that this person really was Smerdis, the story that he was an impostor was created by Darius after he became monarch. Whoever this new monarch may have been, Cambyses attempted to march against him, but died shortly after under disputed circumstances. According to Darius, who was Cambyses' lance-bearer at the time, he decided that success was impossible, and died by his own hand March 522. Herodotus and Ctesias ascribe his death to an accident. Their story is that while mounting his horse, the tip of his scabbard broke and his sword pierced his thigh - Herodotus mentions it is the same place where he stabbed a sacred cow in Egypt. He died of gangrene of the bone and mortification of the wound. Some modern historians suspect that Cambyses may have been assassinated, either by Darius as the first step to usurping the empire for himself, or by supporters of Smerdis .[5][6] According to Herodotus (3.64) he died in Ecbatana, i.e. Hamath; Josephus (Antiquites xi. 2. 2) names Damascus; Ctesias, Babylon, which is absolutely impossible.[7] Cambyses was buried in Pasargadae. The remains of his tomb were identified in 2006.[8] [edit]The Lost Army of Cambyses According to Herodotus, Cambyses sent an army to threaten the Oracle of Amun at the Siwa Oasis. The army of 50,000 men was halfway across the desert when a massive sandstorm sprang up, burying them all. Although many egyptologists regard the story as a myth, people have searched for the remains of the soldiers for many years. These have included Count László Almásy (on whom the novel The English Patient was based) and modern geologist Tom Brown. Some believe that in recent petroleum excavations, the remains may have been uncovered.[9] Two Italian archaeologists, Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni, claim to have discovered the remains of the Persian army near Siwa Oasis. [10]

Source: Wikipedia

S & F ! Great find. Thanks for taking the time to post this. I'll have to take a look at the video later and brush up on the back story.

The bones are probably those who have Opposed the NWO lol. Jk But that is crazy i dont understand how that can be.

Sounds like the work of God.

Originally posted by x2Strongx
reply to post by Cyprex

 

Great find Cyprex!!! Thank you for sharing that video.

I wonder what else the world and the ground swallowed up and we might find in the future... Would love to see the expedition personally!

Interesting yes. But a great find? No.
Its not hidden, its all over MSN.

reply to post by Parallex


Well, no. Much of the sahara was, at the time, about the same. Perhaps it was slightly smaller i nthe south, and there may have been more sahel. But the africa of the ROmans - the Mediterranean shore - was about all that was livable. And mass agriculture changed that - irrigation made the soil salty due to all the minerals being brought up out of the ground, and actually made the desert spread very fast.

The Romans saw the Sahara lunge northwards in their lifetimes, and perhaps they even knew it was because of their farming techniques.

reply to post by x2Strongx


My first concern was why now? Why haven't they been found before by someone on a passing camel? Could be that the sand shifted recently to reveal the bone pile.

My other concern was as someone mentioned why did they all end up in a pile?
The only time I recall bones in a large pile is when someone put them there like in the European churches during the middle ages. It is possible that the army assembled the dead into one area. Or that large groups of soldiers huddled together in the storm and died en mass. Usually, however, strong wind storms tend to scatter the victims but in this case there were 50,000 soldiers so some may have died together in groups while others were cast to the winds.

I agree, star and flag for great stories like these. I love seeing detailed old arrow heads and swords and spear heads. Demonstrates the command the smithies had of metalurgy and craftsmanship.

Also, its neat seeing pieces of the historical puzzle being put in place by great finds like this. Cudos to the risk taking archaeologists who dared to push and forward different theories of possible travel routes based on Egyptian occupation and other less obvious factors. Out of box thinking- nice.

Just what ufology needs in it's scientific community.

Hope they find the mother load.