How much of Bahariya Oasis can one see in a weekend? Jenny Jobbins discovers a wealth of natural and historical treasures Click to view caption Bahariya -- in ancient times known as the Northern Oasis -- is 350kms southwest of Cairo along a road not paved until 1978. Until then few outsiders visited the oasis, but now that the journey has been reduced to a four-hour drive more and more callers arrive as each year passes. Even the road to Bahariya is interesting if you like playing "Spot the petrified log". They begin about 150kms from Cairo, and at least two of them are huge. There used to be an entire forest here, many of the trees still upright, but sadly looters and careless road workers have depleted these natural treasures. Like so many things in Egypt they survived the aeons -- in their case many millions of years -- only to be plundered in the last few decades. On the left hand side of the road going towards the oasis runs a railway track which services the Managim iron mine in Bahariya. It was early afternoon before we reached the line of casuarinas which marks the checkpoint and the entrance to the oasis. After that there seems nothing but desert for several miles -- in reality there are three or four small villages, but these are some way off the road. Soon, however, the landscape begins to look a little green and there are other signs of life. We had reserved rooms at the International Hot Spring Hotel near the outskirts of Bahariya's capital, Bawiti. Peter Wirth, who comes from Germany, opened the hotel seven years ago. An expert in Japanese economy by profession, Wirth was drawn to the Western Desert by the mineral-rich hot springs which are similar to those he had come to appreciate in Japan. He says the only tourists who can jump straight into these hot springs are the Japanese. He and his lovely Japanese wife Miharu host visitors from Egypt and all over the world, many of whom are embarking on Western Desert expeditions which Wirth also organises. The hotel nestles at the foot of a steep sandstone escarpment, and there are steps to the top for the intrepid. As soon as we arrived I was tempted to climb them, but I was daunted by the height. However, children occasionally come in useful on trips, and I persuaded my friends' nine-year-old son Fadi -- who is usually delightful whether useful or not -- to join me. He was quite a help on the difficult bits and we hung on to each other on the way down. A trip to Bahariya isn't complete without a stop at Bayyoumi's roadside table in central Bawiti for soup or tea -- anyone who is anyone in the Western Desert hangs out there. We called in before supper, and were lucky enough to come across the ace explorer Samir Lama with his wife Wally and their group from Germany. They were setting out on a three-week trip which would include the Gilf Al-Kebir. It is such things that whet the appetite for future trips and make one wish one had more than just a few days. The people who live in the oases of the Western Desert are of varied origin, and include Nile Valley dwellers, Libyans and Bedouin who have immigrated here over time and mingled with the indigenous oasis dwellers. It would be fascinating to do some DNA tests on modern inhabitants and compare them with the recently-discovered mummies. Bahariya has probably been inhabited since the dawn of history, but strangely no human traces have been found dating from earlier than the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 BC). This is also the period when the first written records of the oasis appear. While the oldest tomb found here dates from the 18th Dynasty (1550-1295 BC), the oasis seems to have enjoyed greater prominence from the 26th Dynasty (664-525 BC) on through the Roman era, and the wealth of monuments left from this time is still being discovered. Wirth had arranged a four-wheel drive vehicle for us, with driver, and our first stop next morning was the Antiquities Department, a small building in front of the Antiquities Museum. This was to buy tickets -- one ticket allows access to almost all the monuments in Bahariya apart from the Golden Mummies. (These famous antiquities, I need hardly mention, were discovered in 1996 when a donkey belonging to an antiquities guard stepped through the ground into a tomb -- the donkey survived and subsequent photos show it looking very cosseted and well-groomed, as so it should.) The museum, which is installed in a former warehouse, contains three splendid gilded mummies in glass cases and an ungilded baby (or so the guard assured us, though because the face had been shaped with a snout to resemble a Horus beak it looked more like a baboon to me). Also on display are a headless sphinx, a clay urn and the base of a pedestal from the Temple of Alexander bearing a Greek inscription. From there we went to the 26th-Dynasty tombs cut into the rock in the small hill of Qarat Qasr Selim. There are two tombs: those of a merchant, Zed-Amun-ef-ankh, and his son Bennentiu. The entrance to both tombs is down a sheer shaft, but the Managim iron mine has generously donated excellent iron and wooden steps which makes access an easy affair. We entered Bennentiu's tomb first: the effect of the brilliant earth-tone colours was startling. Four thick, square columns support the roof. The walls are painted in vivid Indian reds and ochres with figures of the deceased with leopard skin-clad priests and an array of gods -- among them Anubis, Osiris, Horus and the Sons of Horus, Thoth, Maat, Sekhmet and Amun. The soul of the deceased is weighed against the feather of Maat, the goddess of justice, and the goddess Sekhmet entertains Ra with her sistrum (lyre) in his solar boat with paint so fresh it is as if he only climbed into it yesterday. Unfortunately there were four gaping holes in the decoration: the guard told us that some years ago a local schoolteacher hacked them away and hauled them up the shaft. Luckily he was caught with the stolen blocks at Cairo Airport and they were recovered, but they are now in the Egyptian Museum and have not been returned to the site. It seems the tomb was plundered in antiquity and reused in Roman times. The Romans carved two small rooms behind the original false doors leading off from the sides. Two corpses were found in one of the rooms, but they had not been embalmed and had crumbled to a fine powder. Zed-Amun-ef- ankh's tomb was also robbed and reused. Clearly the son intended to outdo the father: Zed's tomb was slightly less ornate, but distinguished by its unusual round pillars and squat false doors. Our next stop was Ain Al-Muftillah, once the main water source of the old capital of the oasis -- the town later called Qasr -- and perhaps situated at what was then the town centre. Now the site is part of the desert and is guarded by an iron fence. From the gate a path leads to four adjoining, 26th- Dynasty chambers which today are conserved under a wooden ceiling and a mound of sand. The first chamber was discovered in 1901 by Georg Steindorff and the others in 1939 by Ahmed Fakhri, who carried out excavations and believed them to be four separate chapels. They are now understood to form one temple. Painted on the walls are the whole gamut of gods together with the High Priest Zed-Khonsu-ef-ankh and his brother Sheben-Khonsu, governor of the town: obviously they were a rich family to commission such a building. This was very much a "local" temple: one of the "chapels" was dedicated to the dwarf god Bes, god of childbirth and the happy home. (This is not to be confused with the Temple to Bes in Bawiti which was discovered by a resident in 1988). We were astonished to find several people in the temple, and they were definitely not tourists. The guard told they were restoration students on a study opportunity programme. They sat, all young people, half a dozen of each sex, scrupulously dressed (the girls veiled head to toe in black); the boys sat in one chamber and the girls in another. By this time it was well into the afternoon and the sun was strong, but the day was too short for us to take a pause. The next stop was in a lovely setting about three miles east of the old capital, Qasr. This is a part of the oasis where the sand is strewn with grasses and date palms -- much as the rest of the Sahara must have been in its Savannah days when ostrich and hartebeest, giraffe and elephant roamed the plains. This was the Temple of Alexander, the only temple known to have been built for him in Egypt. Its location is interesting: did Alexander pass this way? Qasr was the gateway of an ancient track to Siwa, and he might have chosen this route -- via Wadi Natroun -- for his return route from Siwa to Rhakotis (the future Alexandria). The temple is built of sandstone and mud brick; it is quite large with 45 rooms, but was never completely finished. The Valley of the Golden Mummies in only 300 metres from the temple, and Supreme Council of Antiquities Secretary-General Zahi Hawass believes this extensive graveyard exists because the Graeco-Romans wished to be buried within the temple's protective sphere. Sadly the temple, which like so much else in the Western Desert oases was discovered and excavated by Ahmed Fakhri, has been weathered by the elements and most of the inscriptions and reliefs have vanished. It is also being poorly restored, without any attempt to mask the renovation. We had to squeeze past several workmen on scaffolding who were filling in the cracks between the stone blocks -- and over the edges. When we asked them what they were doing and what the mixture was; they replied that they didn't know: they had just been sent the mortar from Cairo and told to get on with it. We moved on to the Golden Mummies. There has been so much hype about these that I think we were expecting to see more mummies with gilded masks. Alas, we had already seen them -- in the museum. Most of the rest of the mummies are exceedingly plain. You need to have a pretty strong stomach to view the burial chambers: we saw two. Each contained two or three dozen mummies -- adults and children -- arranged, Roman style, in family rows with the feet pointing to the walls and the heads to the central aisle. The mummies were wrapped in linen almost blackened by age and embalming fluids. Some had plaster faces with the features delineated in black, on others bones and hair poked through. Exposure to the elements is not helping these mummies see eternity through: one tomb reeked of death, the other of formaldehyde. I had a quick look and left. There are said to be 10,000 more mummies in this necropolis. Let's hope the others can be left in peace. Our last call of the day was at the oldest tomb found so far in Bahariya, the Tomb of Amenhotep at Qarat Al- Hilwa -- no relation, of course, to the Pharaohs of the same name but an 18th-Dynasty governor of the oasis. Most of our group -- even Fadi's mother, who is usually the last one to drop out -- found this a disappointment. But I was fascinated by the erosion of the mound -- and hence the tomb, now exposed to the sky since its roof has weathered away. Many reliefs were left (again, the blocks had been crudely rebuilt or reinforced with mortar). A neighbouring tomb had suffered even more. It had lost almost everything and could only be distinguished as a tomb by its four squat, central pillars. Unless the mound is roofed over there will be nothing left of these in a matter of years. We arrived exhausted at the hotel, where Fadi splashed in the hot spring tub while the grown-ups had a well-earned rest. That evening Peter and Miharu hosted a Bedouin dinner with Bedouin music and dancing to a full house of tourists, mostly from Germany. There was a delicious buffet: I really liked the food at the hotel, which was Egyptian in style but lighter and more delicately flavoured. It lacked that authentic and not-so- subtle pool of greasy ghee which gives Europeans heart attacks at the first peek. Next morning we set out at 6.45am to do some more sightseeing before breakfast. The date harvest was in full swing, but only the agricultural workers were awake: the rest of Bahariya was sleeping. We wanted to find the old but elusive triumphal Roman arch: according to Cassandra Vivian, in the early part of the 19th century the crown was described as resting on all four pillars, but in the 1870s there were only two. We wondered what might be left. A policeman on duty in Bawiti directed us to the old market place, where goods and slaves used to be traded after their journey by caravan, and there we parked and asked again for the "Qasr Rumani". Two very small boys were sent to take us through the maze of old houses towards the gardens and the Spring of Bishmu, but there we lost our bearings and had to ask again. This time a man with a towel round his neck (the spring is still very much used by the locals) directed us to the Bishmu Hotel and there, as one does, we encountered some friends from Cairo. No one there knew quite where the arch was, though, so we found our way back to the gardens and there a man on a donkey offered to take us. The arch is on the left hand side of a lane running down from a ruined part of Old Qasr, and is half hidden behind a fence with an iron door which is tied firmly shut with twine. The man who built the fence had helped himself liberally to stone blocks from the arch. We decided to trespass and untied the door, carefully treading round the edges of the planted seed beds. Much of the stone pedestal remains, towering 30' high, but all but the base of one of the four grand columns have collapsed or been demolished. After breakfast it was time to begin the drive back to Cairo. We hadn't seen everything in the oasis. There was still the English mountain, topped by a fort built by a British Captain during World War I to keep a look out for invading Senussi and from where, not surprisingly, one has a stunning view of the oasis. There were also the Temple of Hercules, the ruins of the Roman village and fortress at Qaseir Muharib and, in Bawiti, the highly entertaining Oasis Heritage Museum. But it's always good to have an excuse to go back. Practical information Tickets for the Golden Mummies should be obtained in Cairo. A ticket to visit the other antiquities described is obtainable from the Antiquities Department Headquarters at the Museum. Foreign tourists LE30, Foreign students and residents LE15, Egyptians LE1. International Hot Spring Hotel, Bawiti. Half Board LE85.00 per person in a double room, LE95.00 single. Tel: (02) 847 2322. E-mail: [email protected]. Website: www.whitedeserttours.com Four-wheel drive vehicle with guide/driver from LE150 per day. Buses leave from Turguman Square at 7.00 and 8.00am daily. Fare LE13 plus LE1 baggage fee and LE1 toll. Upper Egypt Bus Company: 576 0261. Suggested reading The Oases of Egypt Vol 2: Bahariya and Farafra, Ahmed Fakhri, AUC Press, 1974, reprinted 1983. The Western Desert of Egypt, Cassandra Vivian, AUC Press, 2000. The Valley of the Golden Mummies, Zahi Hawass, AUC Press, 2000.
