Some footage from the Discovery Channel about the lost army of Cambyses in the Egyptian desert. Man, just look at all those bones!

http://news.discovery.com/videos/archaeology-ancient-lost-army-found.html

On a side note, I do hope my entries about scientific and scholarly discoveries are drawing as much attention as the freaky stuff I find like Giant Carnival Wiener Slide. Sometimes I like to exercise the few brains I've got by talking about something intelligent, you know! ;)

Wow, it's like something out of an Indiana Jones movie for real.

Lost army of 50,000 Persian warriors from 525 BC found in Egyptian desert. This is an AMAZING find -- the story, as told by Herodotus in his Histories, was seen as a legend for centuries (about 2500 years, actually) and yet here is the proof!

The story for those who don't know is simple: after Kurush (Cyrus the Great) conquered the lands that became the Persian Empire, he died while fighting 'Amazons' (probably Scytho-Sarmatians) in Central Asia. The empire went to his son Kambujiya; Cambyses, to the Greeks and us. According to legend Cambyses was a bloodthirsty egomaniac on a level with Caligula. He invaded Egypt, worked mayhem on the country, desecrated the temples, and even slew the sacred Apis bull by some accounts. Only the Oasis of Siwah refused to acknowledge his rulership, so the angry tyrant sent an army 50,000 strong to bring the priests to heel. The army was supposedly destroyed by a sandstorm. And now they may well have been found again.

Hmm, I wonder, as these guys are Persians/Iranians, will the site belong to Egypt (where it's located) or Iran (where they romanticize the glory days of Achaemaenid Persia)?

And is it wrong of me to say that I wish that I could have been the one to get that unearthed "beautiful" sword? To me the idea of holding something in my hands that was last held by someone 25 centuries before I was born is almost breathtaking.

The legend of Cambyses' lost army was also used for at least one heroic fantasy story I know of by Richard Tierney, in his 'Simon of Gitta' stories. In it, we learn that the army was actually destroyed by a Lovecraftian horror from a world called Arrakis -- a giant sand worm.

Best all!