Aha, nice. This brings up the whole Herodotus debate once again:

Father of History or...

Father of Lies.

+1 for History i suppose.

Not a suprise.

I've been in sandstorms in the middle east. No where to go when you are in the middle of the desert. Easy to get lost.

The sandstorms in the sahara can last for days. 50,000 men with armor, weapons and clothes will take 2-3 gallons a day for each man minimum. If they were caught in the middle of the desert for a sandstorm that lasted for an extended period of time then they could easily have run out of water and died of dehydration.

[edit on 9-11-2009 by badgerprints]

What would be interesting would be to find out exactly how many bodies are out there in the sand. Maybe the 50,000 men was really only 5,000 men, after all, politicians have exaggerated claims since the beginning - to place fear into their enemy.

Anyways, I bet there is all sorts of ancient artifacts buried out there in the sands of the Sahara for all eternity. Strange to think about.

[edit on 9-11-2009 by harrytuttle]

Nice story, I'll flag this one. I hope they find some more weapons though because one dagger and a few arrow tips don't really represent 50,000 soldiers.

The Hamsin is not an unusual weather phenomenon. The name comes from the Arabic word or "fifty", meaning it comes around about 50 days during the year. A massive sandstorm is not unusual. What is unusual is for there to be 50,000 troops caught in the middle of it.

I'm sure some of the troops sought shelter among the natural formations, where they apparently were buried anyway. Those who dispersed likely died as well, only not right with the other troops. Someone must have survived to tell of the sandstorm.

As for not finding the bones - well, even the Sphinx was buried by sand at one point, just the head sticking out. The sands move around, covering and uncovering things. That, plus this route being little used, could easily explain why no one found these guys before now. Well, actually, I guess they did - the Bedouins were talking about them.

When I was looking at the photo, it didn't seem that the bones were really piled up all that much. OTOH, I wonder where their armor went. Maybe people came later, took the weapons and armor, and piled the bodies (or bones) into a mass grave or something.

Interesting archaeological find. I've read a translation of Herodotus's histories. He is a very interesting writer from a number of points of view. What struck me most about him is how contemporary he sounds. People of his era were much the same as they are now. Marco Polo is a similar writer in some ways. There are fanciful things in both writers work but there is more truth in both than is generally acknowledged, IMHO.

Well, that took a while.

Incredible story and I really look forward to seeing how this all pans out. If it turns out not to be the case, another mystery will arise - why are there so many dead in one place?

That's really cool. I wonder if it really is the long lost army. I cant imagine just walking through the sahara let alone through a dust storm.

I dont believe there were 50,000 of them either. Thats an enormous number to provide food & water for. We'd be hard pressed to do it with modern equipment in the Sahara. There's no way that desert oases could provide enough for so many; thats why the people who have lived there historically have been nomads - to move on when the ground water is depleted.
Still, maybe it was overconfidence that killed them & the sandstorm was just "the straw that broke the camel's back!"

Nice post berenike, that dagger is a classic find, I'm looking forward to what researchers will continue to dig up at this location.

I've followed this story in archeological mags for a while before this discovery. They have definately found the army or at least part of it. In a sandstorm troops could be separated with distances of 20 miles between them before dying. The whole area is a goldmine of information! 5000 or 50,000, it matters not. There was an army that disappeared and this is it.

Originally posted by berenike

See one such storm coming into the Israeli Negev desert from Sinai (advancing with the speed of appr. 40 mph). According to the photographer Eviathar ben Zedeff, the sand wall is over 4,000 ft high:

It's like a tsunami made of sand!
Imagine that thing coming against you in the middle of the desert with nowhere to hide nor anything to protect you against it...

and it sure looks like the 'hand of god'

Amun was effectively Zeus.
That's how Egypt realized the God responsible of weather and thunder of the land. His offsprings were responsible for things related to the natural environment and relative to humans like agriculture, health etc etc.
The Persian kings expanding from the east to the west defied these forces, like symbolically Cambises never bothered to pledge his respect in the temple/oracle/political/religious center of the region which mysteriously had a great connection with the Mediterranean 12 Gods pantheon and Egyptian Gods. His army now lays buried underneath the sand. Alexander the Great never made the same mistake in expanding from west to the east he also pledged to honor the Gods by deeds to the local populations he would be visiting. Not surprisingly many times he met no resistance across his campaign like the local populations figured out somehow not that he meant no harm but on the contrary his presence would ensure through effort and determination an upgrade in their civility status related to God worship. He made the nexus of religious centers same faith that he was sharing stronger.

What was the underlying mechanisms that condemned all Persian efforts in conquering the West and on the contrary helped the West to conquer the East? This is the greatest political and religious mystery of our times. In searching the meaning of all this we can certainly relate up to modern wars and modern history. we really don't know in what reality we do live in since we seem that we are oblivious to this sort of mechanism that works for or against us at any instance. I literally scorn to all the new age atheist approach towards everything human and natural while there are so much evidence on why humans recognized and enforced religions. We as humans since we tend to forget, we are bound to make mistakes all over again but eventually we will learn. Sometime..

[edit on 11-11-2009 by spacebot]