Black Genesis

by Robert Bauval

  2

  WANDERLUST

  The journey of Hassanein Bey, graduate of Oxford University and now Secretary of the Egyptian Legation in Washington . . . a distance of 2200 miles, has been characterized by the Director of Desert Survey, Egypt, as “an almost unique achievement in the annals of geographic exploration.”

  EDITOR, “CROSSING THE UNTRAVERSED LIBYAN DESERT,” NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, SEPTEMBER 1924

  To him who has the wanderlust, no other actuating motive for exploration is needed than the knowledge that a region is unknown to civilized man.

  AHMED HASSANEIN BEY, “CROSSING THE UNTRAVERSED LIBYAN DESERT,” NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, SEPTEMBER 1924

  OXFORD GENTLEMAN, QUEEN’S LOVER, AND DEEP DESERT EXPLORER

  When we think of the Arabian deserts and their rolling landscape of golden dunes, for most of us what comes to mind are romantic figures such as Lawrence of Arabia, Omar Sharif, or even Rudolf Valentino. Few will think of Ahmed Hassanein Bey*3 or even know who he was. It may come as a surprise to many, then, that according to the Royal Geographical Society of London, Hassanein Bey is ranked as the greatest desert explorer of all times, so much so that the director of the desert survey of Egypt at that time referred to Hassanein’s desert exploration as “an almost unique achievement in the annals of geographic exploration.”

  So who really was Ahmed Hassanein Bey, and why is he important to our investigation into the origins of the pharaohs?

  Ahmed Hassanein was born in Cairo in 1889. He was educated at an English private school, as was then customary for well-to-do families in Egypt. As a young man, he was sent to England to complete his gentleman’s education at Balliol College, one of the most prestigious institutions of Oxford University. The very stiff-upper-lip education that he received there would serve Hassanein well for the diplomatic career he was destined to pursue in Egypt. Described by his peers and biographers as an exotic blend of court official, diplomat, Olympic champion (he represented Egypt in Brussels in the 1920 Olympics and in Paris in 1924), photographer, writer, politician, royal tutor (to the future King Farouk) and an incurable romantic (among his amorous conquests was the lovely Queen Nazli), Hassanein was the last of the great desert explorers. He also had an excellent family pedigree: he was the son of an eminent scholar of Al Azhar Islamic University as well as the grandson of Egypt’s last admiral and naval hero. Endowed with such impeccable breeding and education, as well as having wit, charm, and panache, Ahmed Hassanein was to become one of the most influential figures in Egypt, holding no less than the high ranks of chief of the Diwan and chamberlain to King Farouk. It is said that the young king was so dependent on Hassanein that the latter’s untimely death in 1946 triggered the demise of King Farouk, which finally led to his abdication and exile in 1952. Tall, slender, romantic, charming, polite, and dashingly handsome, Hassanein’s true passion, however, was not politics or glamorous women but the open desert or, to be more specific, the great Egyptian Sahara. This passion would eventually drive him to undertake the most daring of desert expeditions and to discover one of the most mysterious places on earth.

  He was always deeply loyal to the king of Egypt and a fervent believer in Egypt’s sovereignty and independence—thus it is ironic that it was Hassanein’s British education that would open doors for him and earn him a place of honor among famous explorers such as Burton, Stanley, and Livingstone. Oxford’s Balliol College had—and still has—an illustrious reputation in molding promising young men into world leaders. It has an old boy’s listing that reads like a who’s who of famous men: it includes kings, national presidents, prime ministers, top authors, famous scientists, and Nobel laureates. Hassanein mingled comfortably in such elite company and was a sporting hero with the university’s fencing team. During his stay at Oxford, he made friends with many future diplomats—in particular, with Francis Rodd, the son of Sir Rennell Rodd, Britain’s ambassador to Rome and its representative at the League of Nations. Francis would later become a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and serve as president from 1945 to 1948. This connection was to be extremely useful in bringing Hassanein’s desert exploits to the attention of this prestigious society. Ironically, however, his friendship with Francis Rodd would also bring Hassanein into contact with a certain lady who was to cause him much public embarrassment, as we will soon see.

  Hassanein returned to Egypt on the eve of World War I and was immediately recruited as private secretary to General Maxwell, British commander in chief of the Egyptian forces. When Maxwell left Egypt in 1916, Hassanein joined the Ministry of Interior, where, according to British intelligence, he was instrumental in squelching an anti-British riot in Upper Egypt during the so-called Revolution of 1919. Meanwhile, Hassanein maintained his sporting interests. In 1920 he was captain of the Egyptian Olympic fencing team and won for them a bronze medal. It was during this time that King Fouad I appointed Hassanein personal tutor to the crown prince, the future and ill-fated Farouk, who, it was said, practically worshipped him. The king’s mother, the lovely Queen Nazli, fell deeply in love with Hassanein, and they eventually married secretly in later years.

  Hassanein’s fascination with the Sahara began in 1916, when, along with his old Balliol friend Francis Rodd, he was sent on a very delicate mission by King Fouad to pacify the Senussi Bedouins of the Libyan Desert. The Senussi were a confederation of Bedouin tribes in Libya who were deeply religious and had sided with the Ottoman Turks against the British in World War I. As such, they were a serious and nagging threat to Egypt’s western borders with Libya. This threat had forced the Anglo-Egyptian army to mobilize thousands of troops to protect the western frontier—troops that should have been put to much better use in fighting the Turks elsewhere. Against all odds, Hassanein managed to persuade the Sennussi tribes to unite and adopt as their leader a pro-British chieftain, Sayed Idris (the future King Senussi I of Libya). The Senussi stronghold was the oasis of Kufra located nearly 800 kilometers (about 497 miles) inland from the Mediterranean coastline. In 1879 only a German explorer, Gerhard Rohlfs, had managed to reach it, but even he was not allowed to enter the oasis; he was chased away by the aggressive and fanatical Senussi. Hassanein made up his mind that he and Francis Rodd would be the first foreigners to enter Kufra.

  The inspiration for it [the journey to Kufra and beyond] dated from 1916, when I went . . . on a mission to Sayed Idris el Senussi, at Zuetina, a tiny port near Jedabya in Cyrenaica. One of the purposes of the mission was to effect an agreement with Sayed Idris, as head of the Senussi and the most influential chief in Cyrenaica, which should prevent in the future Badawi [Bedouin] raids across the western frontier of Egypt. At Zuetina I renewed acquaintance with Sayed Idris whom I had already met, through his friendship for my father, when he was returning from [a] pilgrimage to Mecca in 1915. I told Sayed Idris of my ambition and desire to make the journey to Kufra, which had been visited only once by a stranger from across the desert’s border, the intrepid German explorer Rohlfs in 1879. Sayed Idris was sympathetic with my desires, and asked me to let him know when I was ready to make the expedition. He promised to give me all the help he could in my undertaking. Early in 1917, in continuation of the same mission to the Senussi, I met their head again at Akrama, near Tobruk, and told him that I was still determined to make the journey. I proposed to go as soon as the end of the war should set me free. Sayed Idris again encouraged my determination and renewed his promise of co-operation. There was with me then on the same mission Mr. Francis Rodd, an old Balliol friend. We discussed the proposed expedition together, and agreed that we would be companions in it. At the close of the war Mrs. McGrath [a friend of Francis] brought me a letter of introduction from Mr. Rodd. She wanted to join us on the journey.1

  Mrs. McGrath turned out to be none other than the notorious writer and traveler Rosita Forbes. When she was introduced to Hassanein in Cairo in 1920, she had already been divorced three years and had since traveled around the world. During the war she had been an ambul
ance driver in France and was awarded two medals for bravery, and she had also served as a journalist and informer for British intelligence in Damascus. In Cairo, Rosita moved in high circles and had befriended Colonel Lawrence Cornwallis, better known as Lawrence of Arabia. Rosita and Lawrence apparently met in secret, suggesting they had more than a casual friendship. Rosita also knew the celebrated author and adventurer Gertrude Bell.

  It was Francis Rodd who introduced Rosita to Hassanein, and, according to some who knew them both, Rosita had an instant crush on the dashing and romantic Hassanein, but if there was any truth in this, neither Hassanein nor Rosita ever made it known to others. It seems that Hassanein and Francis Rodd decided to take Rosita along on their proposed expedition to the forbidden oasis of Kufra. At the last minute, however, Francis dropped out, and although Hassanein must have had second thoughts regarding taking along an unmarried foreign woman in these uncharted and dangerous parts of the Sahara, especially one as liberal and feisty as Rosita Forbes, Rosita somehow had her way. Amazingly, even Sayed Idris granted permission to Hassanein to take Rosita to Kufra—on the conditions, however, that Rosita wear Arab dress and be passed off as Hassanein’s Muslim wife.

  The journey to Kufra and back took three months. It was fraught with danger and drama, and, according to some, the alleged romance between Hassanein and Rosita had turned sour. No sooner had they returned to Cairo in January 1921, than Rosita and Hassanein parted company. Rosita returned to her notes and alone wrote a book, The Secret of the Sahara: Kufara, which was published a few months later in London. In the book, Rosita unabashedly presents herself as the leader of the expedition, and Hassanein is demoted to a glorified guide. Hassanein was too much of a gentleman to complain about this, and, to his credit, he always spoke highly of Rosita. In any case, any doubts that Rosita might have furthered about Hassanein’s leadership and abilities as an explorer were soon to be dispelled, for he was already planning—this time, singlehandedly—his next expedition into the deep Sahara. This expedition would make the Kufra journey with Rosita look like a stroll in a London park.

  THE LOST OASIS

  In the winter of 1922, hardly a year after the events with Rosita Forbes, Hassanein headed for the small Egyptian port of Sollum near the Libyan border. From there, he set out on what later would be hailed as one of the greatest desert journeys of all time—and this time there was no Rosita to steal his thunder. This time, too, Hassanein was under the full patronage of King Fouad I of Egypt and King Idris I of Lybia. This amazing and never-to-be-repeated journey is told in full in Hassanein’s paper read at the Royal Geographical Society in London and also published in the society’s journal in October 1924. Hassanein tells how he first led a camel caravan from the town of Sollum on the Mediterranean coast inland to the oasis of Siwa and from there to Kufra. After a short stay at Kufra, he took the caravan southward into totally unchartered and unexplored territory.

  There were also vague stories of the two “lost” oases of Arkenu and Uwainat lying well to the eastward of the trade route to Wadai. Those oases were almost mythical, situated as they are on no route that is travelled even by Badawi [Bedouins] or Blacks. I determined that I would go to the Sudan by way of the “lost” oases. If I could find my way to them and place them definitely on the map, it would be something worthwhile doing. . . . After leaving Kufra, the chief adventure of the expedition began. Here at last I was plunging into the untraversed and the unknown. What lay ahead? It was not the possible dangers of the journey, which made my nerves tingle and caused my spirits to mount with exhilaration—dangers are merely a part of the day’s work in the desert. It was the realization that I was to explore hidden places; that I should go through a region hitherto untrodden by one of my own kind, and make, perhaps, some contribution, small though it might be, to the sum of human knowledge.2

  Hassanein reached the first of the lost oases, Arkenu, after eight days of marching in blistering heat at daytime and bitter cold at night. This was a grueling trek, which he described as “the worst stretch of the entire journey.”3 After a few days in Arkenu, Hassanein set south toward the other lost oasis of Jebel Uwainat. He and his party traveled only at night due to the unbearable heat of day at this time of year. His Bedouin guide used the age-old tradition of night travel by navigating with the stars—which was, almost certainly, the same method used by the prehistoric people of Nabta Playa when they roamed the vast Sahara thousands of years earlier.

  The manner in which a Bedouin guide finds his way across the desert at night is a source of wonder to the uninitiated. In a region, which provides no familiar landmarks, he depends solely upon the stars. As we were proceeding in a southwesterly direction during most of our night trekking the polestar was at the guide’s back. He would glance over his shoulder, face so that the polestar would be behind his right ear then take a sight to a star to the south in that line. He would march for perhaps five minutes with his eye riveted on this star, then turn and make a new observation of the polestar; for, of course, the star to the south was constantly progressing westward. He would then select a new star for guidance and continue.4

  It took an overnight trek to reach the western flank of the lost oasis of Jebel Uwainat. There, he was confronted by a huge rocky massif sprouting out of the flat desert like a giant iceberg: “The range in that vicinity rose in a sheer cliff from the desert floor. Heaped against it were masses of boulders, which through the ages had been worn smooth by the grinding, polishing action of wind and sand. It was as if here were piled the arsenals of Stone-Age giants whose weapons had been gargantuan slings.”5

  At Jebel Uwainat, Hassanein “found ample supplies of water in the deep-shaded recesses of the cliffs.”6 Usually, in these parts of the remote desert, water is found in very deep underground aquifers that are often far too deep to be reached by simply digging wells. Here at Jebel Uwainat, however, the water was at the surface, coming from the occasional rain that trickled down the rocks and collected in natural pools. Hassanein found four such pools (called uwyun, literally “eyes” in Arabic, and hence the name Uwainat, meaning “many eyes”), which had water that was “cool and of good quality.”7 In the days that followed, Hassanein and his men circumnavigated the outer rim of the Uwainat massif, and at night, they camped in the dry wadis (valleys) and always assumed that they were completely alone in this strange wilderness. One morning, however, as Hassanein woke up, standing before him was a young Black woman holding a bowl of milk in offering. She was slender and very beautiful, and Hassanein at first thought he was having a dream. The woman spoke a strange language, which Hassanein’s guide recognized as being of the Tebu people, pastoral nomads known to have once roamed this part of the Sahara. The young woman offered to take them to the king of Uwainat. He turned out to be a Black man called Herri who claimed to rule over some one hundred and fifty Tebu who lived there. King Herri spoke of mysterious rock carvings of animals and men not known in this part of the Sahara, and Hassanein was taken to see them.

  The animals are rudely drawn, but not, unskillfully carved. There are lions, giraffes, ostriches, and all kinds of gazelles, but no camels. The carvings are from a half to a quarter of an inch deep and the edges of the lines in some instances are considerably weathered. “Who made these?” I asked Malakheni, the Tebu. He expressed the belief that they were the work of the jinn [demons]. “For,” he added, “what man can do these things now?” What man among the present inhabitants, indeed! Here is a puzzle, which must be left to the research of archeologists. Suffice it to say that there are no giraffes in this part of Africa now, nor do they live in any similar desert country anywhere. Perhaps even more significant is the absence of camels from the drawings. If they had been native to the region at the time that the carvings were made, surely this most important beast of the desert would have been pictured. But the camel came to Africa from Asia not later [than] 500 BCE. Can these carvings antedate that event? Or has the character of this country undergone such astonishing modification to ha
ve converted into desert a fertile region in which the giraffe roamed, and the camel was not a familiar burden-bearer? With the inspection of these rock carvings, my hasty exploration of Uwainat was concluded.8

  Figure 2.1. The tebu of the Sahara photographed by Ahmed Hassanein, 1923. Courtesy of SaharaSafaris.org/hassaneinbey.

  Figure 2.2. King Herri of Unwainat photographed by Ahmed Hassanein, 1923. Courtesy of SaharaSafaris.org/hassaneinbey.

  Hassanein turned down an offer by Herri to show him more of these rock carvings. He felt that it was not wise to linger too long in these uncertain circumstances. Hassanein did realize, nonetheless, the great importance of his discovery, for he later wrote: “[I]t was in Uwainat that I made the most interesting find of my 2,200-mile journey. I had heard rumors of the existence of certain pictographs on rocks . . . on the evening of our arrival I set out to find them.”9 As we will see, what Hassanein had discovered, although he himself never knew this, was the first irrefutable evidence of a prehistoric presence of humans in this remote part of Egypt. Many decades later, scholars would begin to see in them the origins of the pharaohs and, quite possibly indeed, of civilization as we know it.