Bahariya Oasis, Egypt

Bahariya and Eden Camp

Siwa Oasis was easy going enough and I thought I would spend more time there than I did. But after a German traveler showed me pictures of Eden Camp, at Bahariya Oasis, with hot springs in it, facing the Black desert, I knew I had to head there.

On the plus side, the trip to Bawiti, 280 miles from Cairo, on asphalted road that cut through Egypt's western desert, was a quick five hours travel, compared to the eleven long hours to Siwa. Bahariya Oasis is located in a depression covering over 1,500 square miles, surrounded by black hills made up of ferruginous quartzite and dolorite. I saw those mountains everyday from Eden Camp as I bathed on its quite ferruginous hot springs twice daily.

I joined an Egyptian group of travelers on a half a day tour around Bawiti's sites. I even got them to buy me some boxes of dates filled with almonds and olive oil – Egyptian price - at one of the several merchants in town.

We started our tour by visiting the Golden Mummies at the Bahariya Antiquities and Archaeological Center. The surrounding area and the building looked like an unfinished testing center of sorts, blood testing or chemical hazards, it is hard to tell, but the room where the mummies were laying down in an eternal sleep was more “normal.” That is, if we can attach any sense of familiarity to bodies covered in gauze with death gypsum masks stuck to their faces. They are supposed to depict lifelike faces of real people, but I must say they looked eerie. And there were baby mummies too, the first I have ever seen.

These mummies were found at the 'Valley of the Mummies', the seven-mile strip of desert around Bahariya where 5,000 - 10,000 mummies are still being excavated, the largest cache of mummies ever discovered.

Then we visited the tombs of Zad-Amun ef-Ankh and his son Bannentiu. They were rich merchants from the 26th dynasty. We descended a 30 feet steep staircase before ducking through low entrances into the main halls. The color of the frescoes looked like freshly painted bright yellow and blues, but I trust that they are the original colors of 2,500 years ago. The paint used was natural, taken from trees I was told.

I was lucky that the Egyptian family I was traveling with was fluent in English and could translate what our guide told us. Most often than not, at other temples, pyramids and tombs, I could mostly get incomprehensible half sentences, that tried to piece together stories that didn't always jive with the little I know of Egyptian history.

On these tombs, the story of afterlife, the heart of the deceased being weighted at judgment day, including some bribe to a dog who was guarding the gate to heavens, is told by figures on the walls. Thoth, in one of his dual forms as Ibis, serves as scribe of the gods, keeping meticulous track of the deceased deeds while living, only to have the whole process thwarted by a meal of a goose, given to the dog who guards the gates, to lighten the deceased's sins. This must be the basis for the bribe system so common around the around the world until current days.

Thoth, in his second form as baboon in the underworld, the god of equilibrium, re-checks that the scales are exact when weighting the deceased's heart against the feather. So, there is always a happy ending, similar to a Christian asking the priest to forgive his sins by praying a number of rosaries. Sin hasn't necessarily been an obstacle to a heavenly spot in the afterlife.

Then we visited the Temple of Alexander the Great, about 2 miles further down the road. I was disappointed to see that it was such a small temple with the wall carvings almost gone. I was told that originally, there was no ceiling to the temple and the exposure to wind and rain destroyed the carvings somehow. Now the temple sports a wooden roof to protect it. But it was nice to see the place where Alexander stopped on his way to Siwa Oasis, to consult the Oracle of Amun, the one I had just visited.

Outside the temple, there were ruins of the stone rooms where Alexander's army stayed. We also saw some objects, such as some pottery, old coins and other antiquities laying around outside the temple. From the distance, we could see the Valley of Mummies. Maybe I will be back one day to see what comes out of the excavations.

Finally, we stopped by the great salt lake in town before driving through some very odd looking conical shaped mountains and heading out to Eden Camp for a very late lunch.