Discovery of oases
The oasis of baharyia
The oasis of Baharaya occupies a 2000 km² depression. Agricultural center mattering in the Antiquity, it prospered until IVth s before declining with the Roman power.
Today Bawiti is the main city. A necropolis of more than 200 well kept Greco-Roman mummies was dug up by archaeologists.
The oasis possesses numerous sources of warm water and cold water (Bir al-Muftella, Bir al-Ramla, Bir al-Ghaba, Bir al-Mattar, the Roman sources of Al-Bishmu).
The oasis of Farafra
The oasis of Farafra is the smallest of the lybique desert. Of Bedouin origin, most of his inhabitants immortalize still certain secular traditions. The small brick houses floods of the main city, Qasr el-Farafra, contain all wooden doors endowed with medieval locks.
The city incites to the stroll in its magnificent gardens. The oasis produces dates, figs, apricots, guavas, oranges, apples, sunflower seeds and olives.
The oasis of Kharga
Kharga, the vastest and the most modern of oases is held in a depression about 30 km wide and 200 km long. The administrative centre, el-Kharga, was formerly a stage on the road of "Forty days" between Sudan and Egypt. Since the 60s, she suffered from the dream of the planners (enormous buildings in concrete and glass, wide boulevards)…
To see: the museum, the temple of Hibis dedicated to Amon (VIth s BC), the Christian necropolis of Bagawat (fall Coptic to dome dating the IVth in IVth s, chapel of the Peace, chapel of the Exodus), Deir el-Kashef (early Christian vestiges).
The oasis of Siwa
Wherever from we come, it is necessary to swallow hundreds of kilometers of desert sometimes rocky, sometimes sandy training dunes which wave in the infinity. Siwa turns out to be a big oasis which extends over approximately 30 km long and 20 km wide, surrounded with two big lagoons which give him a magic air.
Siwa is stuffed with curiosities and with historic sites: the beautiful vestiges of former two typical villages, Shali in the North of the oasis and Aghurmi in the South, the temple of Amon, Adrar n lmuta "the mountain of the deaths", a mountain in which we dug graves and which dates the year 664 BC, without forgetting the museum in which we can find some tracks of the long history of Siwa.
The oasis of Dakhla
The oasis of Dakhla was born from 600 sources and natural water sources. She knew a continuous human setting-up since the Prehistory. In the Neolithic, she sheltered a gigantic lake and rock paintings indicate the presence of elephants, buffaloes and ostrichs. His picturesque brick-built villages believed are held in the middle of fields and of luxuriant orchards. The oasis produces some rice, some wheat, mangoes, oranges, olives, dates and apricots…
To see: the ethnographical museum, the old town of Mout (ruins of the citadel, the medieval Muslim cemetery), the sulphurous warm sources, the medieval city of el-Qasr (entrances of periods Mameluke and ottoman, wooden girders of locust tree carrying engraved registrations, mausoleum of the sheik Nasr el-Din), Balat (typical alleys, Pharaonic vestiges), the graves of el-Muzawaka (ptolémaïques and steelyards).
Published on 03/07/2010
