Bahariya Oasis

Bahariya is a depression in the Western Desert about four hours from Cairo, with palm and olive groves, springs and a main town at Bawiti, and it is the usual base for trips into the deserts south of it. It has its own antiquities: the Valley of the Golden Mummies, found in 1995 when a donkey stumbled into a shaft and found a Graeco-Roman cemetery holding a very large number of gilded mummies, some now displayed locally, along with tombs of Twenty-Sixth Dynasty officials and a temple of Alexander the Great, the only one known in Egypt bearing his name as pharaoh. Hot and cold springs are used for bathing, and Gebel Dist and the Black Mountain give views over the depression.

History

The depression has been inhabited since the Neolithic: a hunter-gatherer site at El Heiz has yielded grindstones, arrowheads and ostrich eggshell, and a Czech team led by Miroslav Bárta found an Old Kingdom settlement at Qarat el-Abyad. Rock inscriptions date from the Middle Kingdom on, the tomb of Amenhotep called Huy was built at the end of the 18th Dynasty, and in the 26th Dynasty the oasis flourished, as its chapels and tombs show. The Graeco-Roman period was prosperous too: Alexander the Great dedicated a temple to Ammon here, and some Egyptologists think he passed through on his way back from the oracle at Siwa. The Graeco-Roman necropolis known as the Valley of the Golden Mummies was found in 1995, its excavation beginning in 1999, with some thirty-four tombs excavated, and the Romans built a large fort at Qarat el-Toub. An asphalt road to Cairo was finished in the early 1970s, bringing electricity, cars and television, and in 2019 and 2021 archaeologists found 5th-century churches and monks' cells (Wikipedia, Bahariya Oasis).

What's there

• Golden mummies from the Roman cemetery - gilded cartonnage on display locally.
• A temple naming Alexander - the only one in Egypt where he appears as pharaoh.
• Hot and cold springs - bathing pools among the palm groves.
• Views from Gebel Dist - the whole depression from the black-capped hills.

When to go

October to April; summer is severe. Two to three days, usually as the base for a White Desert overnight. Winter nights in the desert are genuinely cold. Buses run from Cairo daily.

Things to know

Bawiti is a plain town with limited services and basic accommodation. Only a small selection of the golden mummies is on display. Desert trips must be booked with licensed operators and permits are required for some areas. Springs vary in cleanliness.

Nearby

The Black Desert is immediately south; the White Desert lies beyond it.

Key facts