Harry Thurston - Secrets of the sands: the revelations of Egypts everlasting oasis

OF THE

HARRY THURSTON

ARCADE PUBLISHING NEW YORK

Copyright 2003, 2012 by Harry Thurston

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

Published by arrangement with Doubleday Canada, a division of Random House Canada Limited

Text image: a refyt bird from the temple at Deir el-Hagar

Photographs on pages 34, 55, 120, 300 and 340 are used with the permission of the Royal Ontario Museum. Copyright ROM.

All other photographs are used with the permission of the photographer: Alan Hollett, page 6; Anthony J. Mills, page 72; Lech Kvzyzaniak, p. 93; Harry Thurston, pages 140, 279, 316 and 355; Catherine Thurston, pages 161, 183, 371 and 373; Stephen Homer, p. 210; Colin Hope, p. 233; and Peter Sheldrick, page 259.

Illustrations are used with the permission of the artist John OCarroll, www.johnocarroll.co.uk

Text on page 42 is from Mixed Memoirs by Gertrude Caton-Thompson. Copyright 1983 by Erskine Press.

Text on page 133 is from Man in Nature, Historical Perspectives on Man in His Environment by N.B. Millet. Copyright ROM.

Text on page 359 is from Pillar of Sand, Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? by Sandra Postel. Copyright 1999 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to correct any errors or omissions in future editions.

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-61145-734-6

Printed in the United States of America

I offer a special thanks to artist John O Carroll for use of the wonderful drawings that grace the book

for Catherine and Meaghan who shared this journey, with love

Neolithic petroglyphs (John OCarroll)

PART II: THE GARDEN
C.400,000 12,000 B.P.

PART III: CROSSERS OF THE SAND
12,000 4000 B.P.

PART IV: LORDS OF THE WEST
C.2700 332 B.C.

PART V: A CURSE OF SAND AND SALT
332 B.C. 700

THIS BOOK COULD NOT HAVE BEEN WRITTEN WITHOUT THE co-operation of many members of the Dakhleh Oasis Project (DOP), who guided me through the desert and half a million years of human time on Earth. I must first acknowledge the support of the late Founder of the DOP, Geoffrey Freeman, and express my regret that he did not live to see this tribute to his vision. And I want wholeheartedly to thank Tony Mills, Director of the DOP, for making me welcome in Bashendi and cheerfully arranging and aiding my research at all stages; also, sincere thanks to Lesley Mills for creating a lovely environment in which to work. I am no less grateful to the following members of the DOP for the time and effort they freely expended in the field and afterward to help me better understand the significance of their research: C.S. Rufus Churcher, Maxine Kleindienst, Mary McDonald, Colin Hope, Gillian Bowen, El Molto, Peter Sheldrick, Ursula Thanheiser, Johannes Walter, Klaas Worp, Olaf Kaper, Marcia Wiseman, Alicia Hawkins, Tatyana Smekalova, Lech Krzyzaniak, Robert Giegengack, Jennifer Smith, Roger Bagnall, Jim Knudstad, Rosa Frey, Dan Tuck, Caroline McGregor, Manfred Woidich, Iain Gardner, Jennifer Thompson, Alan Hollett, Laurence Blondaux, Amanda Dunsmore, Richard Mortimer, Natasha Dodwell, Edwin Ted Brock, and Ines Tauber. Also, heartfelt thanks to Nick Millet and Roberta Shaw of the Royal Ontario Museum for their moral and practical support throughout the project. As well, I am grateful to Art Aufderheide of University of Minnesota, Duluth, School of Medicine; Ryan Parr, Paleo-DNA Laboratory, Lakehead University; Ian Brookes of York University; Henry Schwarcz of McMaster University; Georges Soukiassian of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology; and Rudolph Kuper of the Heinrich-Barth Institute. Special thanks to Saad Muhammad for making accommodation and travel arrangements in Cairo, Mansour Beyumi Sayed for his fine cuisine and mazbut, and Ashraf Leltrabishi, Chief Inspector of Antiquities, Sohag Sector, for facilitating my research in the Dakhleh Oasis. I must also thank the National Geographic Society for permission to interview the DOP Prehistory Group whose research it funds.

Neither would this book have been possible without the patient and able guidance of my editors: John Pearce, Kendall Anderson, Suzanne Brandreth, and Rick Archbold. Thank you all. Also, I am grateful for the unwavering support of my publisher, Maya Mavjee, and my agent extraordinaire, Dean Cooke.

As always, deepest gratitude to my wife, Cathy, and daughter, Meg, who lived with this book and its writer for what must have seemed like ages.

Support for the Dakhleh Oasis Project may be paid as follows:

In the USA (specify the Dakhleh Oasis Project):
Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities
c/o Dr. E. Cruz-Uribe
University of Northern Arizona
Flagstaff, AZ 86011

In Canada (specify the Dakhleh Oasis Project):
The Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities
P.O. Box 578, Station P
Toronto, Ontario M5S 2T1

In the UK:

John Ruffle, Charman, The Dakhleh Trust

Rockcliffe House, Kirk Merrington, Co. Durham DH16 7HP

I HAD NO IDEA WHAT THEY COULD BE WHEN I FIRST LAID EYES on them. At a distance they looked like great red serpents, half buried, coiling through the sands.

These strange formations reared up at the far western edge of the Dakhleh Oasis in Egypts Western Desert. Here, the oasis fieldsso intensely green they almost hurt the eyesend, giving way to mountains of yellow sand. Ranges of dunes receded into the Great Sand Sea: thousands of square miles of sand, more sand, and still more sand, and beyond, only Libya and the Sahara, desert stretching all the way to the Atlantic coast.

I was standing by a single upright column in the courtyard of a ruined Roman Age temple known locally as Deir el-Hagar, or The Stone Convent. Scrawled on the column were various graffiti of nineteenth-century travellers who had ventured to this far western outpost. Most prominent were the members of the German expedition of Gerhard Rohlfs, their finely scripted names etched into the soft sandstone. At the bottom was the date: 1874.