The Claim
There’s an ancient oasis city lost within the Sahara desert.
Zerzura is one of the lesser known places when it comes to ancient lost cities, with the more popular ones being of south American or Egyptian nature, but the fact no one has found it yet is exiting, that’s if it even existed in the first place of course.
The city itself is supposed to be built around a large oasis, somewhere only a few days walk west of the Nile in either Egypt or western Libya. It has been described as being made from white washed stone, and containing houses of a luxurious nature, as well as a large amount of gold decorations.
The first account of the city comes from a scribe to the ruler of Benghazi, who in the early 1300’s wrote down the story of a traveller who was recalling his experience of finding the city. Apparently this traveller was walking through the desert for 5 days looking for one of his lost camels with a group of people from his village.
After getting trapped in a violent sandstorm which killed his companions, he became lost after the land had changed from the storms effects and started to walk in what he thought was the right direction. After several days he was found by 2 fair skinned men who took him to the city of Zerzura, which he said was accessed by a valley in between 2 large mountains, and gave him food and water.
This travelled said he escaped during the night and when asked why he would need to do so became nervous. The guards were ordered to search him and found a large gold decorated, gem ring which he couldn’t explain how he got. After sending the man out into the desert to be killed for stealing, the ruler sent some of his guards out to find the city, though they were unsuccessful.
The next source is an interesting one, which comes from an ancient manuscript from the 15th century called “Kitab al Kanuz”. It talks about the city of Zerzura and refers to it as “The Oasis of little birds”, describing the stone work as pure white and being the home of a sleeping king and queen. But then again the manuscript also talks about how the place is guarded by black giants and the author of the original writing is unknown, though the date of the manuscript has been confirmed.
The first mention of Zerzura in Europe didn’t happen until 1835, when an English Egyptologist named John Gardner Wilkinson mentioned the city in one of his book. He spoke to a man from Egypt who claims he found the city by accident after travelling for several days through the desert. He said he found numerous ruins and unusual stone work for the area, and a large oasis surrounded by palm trees.
He said the city is located about 5 days west of the track that connects the Farafra and Bahariya oases. This account turned out to be more than just a story when a group of explorers went out to find the city, and although they didn’t find Zerzura, they did find a number of the previously unknown oases that the man mentioned to Wilkinson.
In the early 1900’s numerous expeditions were mounted to find the city, with one in 1929 including a small fleet of Ford model A trucks to cover more ground, but non were successful.
So does Zerzura even exist?
Well the chances of it existing as described are very small, and since the people who live there are supposed to be fair skinned, suggesting they were European it makes it even more unlikely, as there were no white ancient advanced cultures in Africa, with the exception of the Romans for a brief period.
However there are ancient ruins being discovered all the time in Egypt, and there’s also the possibility that the people describing it were massively over-exaggerating, making the real Zerzura possibly being nothing more than just a well-off village in the desert.
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