Word: desertion
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...with rumors and fantastical hearsay of ants that dig for gold, rings that make their bearers invisible and winged serpents that patrol remote mountain passes. But recent excavations in western Egypt by a team of Italian archaeologists may have unearthed traces of this long-lost army, entombed in the desert for some 2,500 years. (See TIME's photo-essay "Tutankhamun: The Boy King...
...earring seen as similar to equivalent ancient Achaemenid, or Persian, jewelry has also been recovered. "We are talking of small items," said Alfredo Castiglioni to reporters this week. "But they are extremely important as they are the first Achaemenid objects ... dating to Cambyses' time, which have emerged from the desert sands...
Over the years the twins have shown a knack for finding ancient glories thought lost. In 1989, they uncovered the ruins of the legendary Egyptian city of Berenike Panchrysos, a desert town once allegedly paved with gold. The first breakthrough in the hunt for Cambyses' army came in 1996, when the Castiglioni brothers ran across a cache of Persian arrow tips and dagger blades beneath a rock outcrop not far from the oasis of Siwa - near the modern-day Egyptian border with Libya and the site of the sacred Amon temple, whose oracle was worshipped by Greeks and Egyptians alike...
Many adventurers, particularly in the 19th century, sought to find proof of their passing, plying the traditional caravan routes through the desert in the hope that the Persians had succumbed to the sandstorm and perished somewhere along the way. In the 1930s, the most famous man who searched for the army was László Almásy, a Hungarian aristocrat who, in his wanderings, claimed to find the mythical oasis of Zerzura - "the oasis of little birds" - and became the subject of Michael Ondaatje's best-selling novel, The English Patient. (Read about Egypt's pyramids in danger...
...Castiglionis reckoned that Cambyses' army must have taken a different route from Thebes into the desert than the one explored by earlier generations of archaeologists. Geological surveys they conducted over a new stretch of terrain further afield from the old caravan track revealed dried-up wells and pieces of earthenware pottery from Persian water pots. The army may have taken this alternative path through the desert in order to surprise the defenders of the Amon temple, but were stopped short by the unforgiving Saharan khamsin wind, which triggered sandstorms that scattered and eventually destroyed the attacking troops. The Castiglionis' team...