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OASIS OF EGYPT

Springing up from arid deserts and desolate, isolated locations, oases have been vital in providing life and sustenance to all forms of creatures, animals and humans alike since ancient times. Here are 10 of the most incredible and magnificent oases in the world

Bahariya OasisEl-Waha, el-Bahariya, or Bahariya (meaning the “northern oasis”) is an oasis in Egypt about 300 miles (500 kilometers) from Cairo, set in the lowest point in Egypt in a depression covering over 1250 sq. miles (2000 sq. kilometers), and the least technologically advanced Oasis in the country

The Bahariya Oasis and much of today’s Libyan Desert was once the floor of an immense ocean, but since approximately 3,000 BC to now, very little rainfall graces the area, so groundwater is its life blood.

Most of the villages and cultivated land can be seen from the top of the 165 foot (50 meter) high Jebel al-Mi’ysrah, along with the massive dunes which threaten to engulf some of the older settlements

Bawiti is the largest village in the oasis and the administrative center with its picturesque hillside quarter overlooking lush palm groves irrigated by the Ain al-Beshmo — a natural spring carved from the rock in Roman times which gushes water at 90 degrees F (30 C). Qasr is Bawiti’s neighboring twin village, and the near-by village of al-Qast was built on the remains of a 26th dynasty temple at Qarat Hilwah where you can still see tombs with paintings dating from the same period.
To the east, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) away are the villages of Mandishah and el Zabu. A smaller village called Aguz lies between Bawiti and Mandishah. Harrah, the eastern most village, is a few kilometers east of Mandishah and el Zabu.

The ruins of a temple to Alexander the Great is located within the Bahariya Oasis where it’s believed by some Egyptologists that the Greek conqueror passed through Bahariya while returning from the oracle of Ammon at Siwa Oasis. Excavations of the Greco-Roman necropolis — known as the Valley of the Golden Mummies — began in 1996 with about 34 tombs that have been excavated from the area

The local Wahati people are the descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the oasis, Bedouin tribes from Libiya and the north coast, and other people from the Nile Valley who came to settle in the oasis

The local Wahati people are the descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the oasis, Bedouin tribes from Libiya and the north coast, and other people from the Nile Valley who came to settle in the oasis

The White Desert of Egypt is located 28 miles (45 kilometers) north of Farafra. The desert has a white, cream color and is inundated with massive sparkling white chalk rock formations created as a result of sandstorms.
The main settlement is Qasr Farafra, with about 5,000 inhabitants living within its single village. Areas of the village have complete quarters of traditional architecture, simple, smooth, unadorned, and all in mud color.

The oldest identified settlements go back to Roman times, with indications to have been part of ancient Libya rather than the Ancient Egyptian culture and civilization.
There are several hot springs near Farafra including Bir Setta, and even a small lake named El-Mufid lake

Ein Gedi OasisEin Gedi is an oasis located west of the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, some 400 m. below sea level, close to Masada and the caves of Qumran in the West Bank, and known for its springs and rich diversity of flora and fauna. It has an internationally acclaimed botanical garden covering an area of 24.7 acres with more than 900 species of plants from all over the world.

Ein Gedi is mentioned several times in biblical writings, such as the Song of Songs. According to Jewish tradition, David hid from Saul in the caves here. Book of Joshua enumerates Ein Gedi among the cities of the Tribe of Judah in the desert Betharaba, but the Book of Ezekiel shows that it was also a fisherman’s town.
A kibbutz, founded in 1956, is located about a kilometer from the oasis that offers various tourist attractions and takes advantage of the abundance of natural water to cultivate produce. Prior to the founding of the kibbutz, the Ein Gedi area had not been permanently inhabited for 500 years

The indigenous Jewish town of Ein Gedi was a major source of balsam for the Greco-Roman world until its destruction by Byzantine emperor Justinian as part of his persecution of the Jews in his realm. A beautiful synagogue mosaic still remains, including a Judeo-Aramaic inscription warning inhabitants against “revealing the town’s secret” to the outside world — the methods for extraction and preparation of the much-prized balsam resin.
Between the 13th century and the Israeli War of Independence, Ein Gedi was inhabited at various times by both Jews and Bedouin Arabs.
In April 1848, Lieutenant William Francis Lynch led an American expedition down the Jordan River into the Dead Sea and renamed it George Washington Spring.

Ein Gedi National Park is one of the most important reserves in Israel, situated on the eastern border of the Judean Desert on the Dead Sea coast, covering an area of 6,250 acres, which was founded in 1972. The elevation of the land ranges from the level of the Dead Sea at 1,371 feet 418 meters) below sea level to the plateau of the Judean Desert at 655 feet (200 meters) above sea level.
The National Park has 2 spring-fed streams with flowing water year-round — Nachal David (David Stream) and Nachal Arugot (Arugot Stream), as well as 2 other springs, the Shulamit and Ein Gedi springs. Together the springs generate about 3,000,000 cubic meters of water a year which is used for agriculture and bottled for consumption.
The park is a sanctuary for many types of plant, bird and animal species. The many species of resident birds are supplemented by over 200 additional species during the migration periods in the spring and fall.

Al-Hasa OasisFamed for being the largest groundwater-fed oasis in the world and possibly the most fascinating, the Al-Hasa oasis has been inhabited since ancient times, being the only water source in a vast arid region, located 40 miles (65 kilometers) inland from the Persian Gulf, with a surface of roughly 75 sq. miles (120 sq. kilometers).

In ancient times, Al-Hasa was at the center of the trade routes which traders followed between the east of the Arabian peninsula and India, Persia and the Far East.
The Oasis has a dry tropical climate, with a 5-month summer and relatively cold winter, enjoying the benefits of copious reserves of underground water.
The wind carries and deposits tons of sand over the land, so the Kingdom has planted large barriers of trees to prevent the wind-borne sand from damaging inhabited and agricultural areas, which also adds a bit more shade and coolness.
The Al-Hasa region derives its name from the oasis at its center, stretching north to Kuwait, out to the Persian Gulf, ending in the south with the Rub al-Khali — the Empty Quarter — and the ad-Dahna desert in the west. The region has an estimated population of 3.4 million, which accounts for more than 95% of the total population of the Eastern Province

There are about 50 traditional Arabian villages spread around the oasis.
Al-Hasa is part of the region known historically as Al-Bahrayn, which included the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula down to the borders of Oman, and also included the island of Awal, modern-day Bahrain.
The main cities of Al-Hasa region are Dammam out on the coast — a new, modern urban area thriving from the oil industry — Hofuf which is the chief town administrated as the Eastern Province, and Mubarraz which lies north of Al-Hasa Oasis

The region is the home of some of the richest oil fields in the world. In 1938, petroleum deposits were discovered near Dammam, resulting in rapid modernization of the region, and by the early 1960’s, production levels reached 1,000,000 barrels a day.
One of the region’s few strategic and economic prizes prior to the oil era, Al-Hasa has been controlled from Al-Hufuf in the past 2 centuries by Ottomans, Egyptians, the Bani Khalid tribe, and the Al Saud family

Huacachina OasisCalled the “oasis of America,” Huacachina is a little town built around a small lake in the desert in the Ica Region in southwestern Peru, located in the Ica Province near the city of Ica in the Ica District with a whopping population of 115 in 1999.

Legend has it that the lagoon was created when a beautiful native princess was apprehended at her bath by a young hunter. She fled, leaving the pool of water she had been bathing in to become the lagoon. The folds of her mantle streaming behind her as she ran became the surrounding sand dunes, and she’s said to still live in the oasis as a mermaid

'There and deserts and there are deserts', the explorer Ralph Bagnold famously said. But the Western Desert, a vast expanse that starts at the western banks of the Nile and continues well into Libya, is the desert of deserts. Covering a total of 2.8 million sq km and bordered by Libya in the west, Sudan in the south and the Mediterranean in the north, it is a world of desolation and beauty -- and one of the few places in Egypt where you can go for days at a time without seeing a soul. Five isolated but thriving oases dot this otherwise uninhabited expanse: Kharga, Dakhla, Farafra, Bahariyya, and to the north-west of these, Siwa. (--from Lonely Planet, Egypt).

Life in Ancient Egypt revolved around religion. The pharaohs traced their ancestry back to the gods of the Egyptian pantheon. Different pharaohs allied themselves to different cults, and the elaborate temples they built cemented their own political status. With intricately painted walls, vast colonnaded courts and columned hypostyle halls, the temples of Ancient Egypt are among its greatest cultural triumphsThe Temples of Abu Simbel (NubiaThe Temples of Abu Simbel (Nubia)Of all the pharaohs, Ramses II was the most prolific builder of monuments and temples. Two of his greatest temples, the Great Temple of Abu Simbel and its smaller cousin, the Temple of Hathor are at Abu Simbel. Both temples originally sat some sixty metres below where you find them today. They were part of a massive UNESCO operation to save Egypt’s Great Temples from Lake Nasser’s rising waters. Embedded into the mountain itself, the temples had to be cut free from the rock and painstakingly dismantled and rebuiltFrom the entrance to the Amun Temple Enclosure you pass down the processional avenue of ram-headed sphinxes that originally flanked a canal connecting the temple to the Nile.The Temple of Horus (Edfu)A very well preserved Egyptian temple, much newer than other temples. Its state of preservation helps to fill some historical gaps. The sanctuary of Horus contains the granite shrine that once housed the gold cult statue of Horus.The Temple of Queen Hatshepsut (Thebes)At the base of a lofty limestone mountain in the desert at Thebes nestles Queen Hatshepsut’s astonishing terraced temple. Hatshepsut was Egypt’s greatest female Pharaoh. She fought off male pretenders to her throne for over 20 prosperous and peaceful years.Partly embedded into the mountain itself, the temple is almost forty metres wide. Its honeycomb colonnades pick up the natural lines and recesses of its mountainous backdrop. Hatshepsut’s temple is essentially an extension of Mentuhotep II’s temple, though several times its size. The two blend in so well together, they are indistinguishable from a distanceThe Temple of LuxorThough Ramses II’s triumphant twin statues stand sentry at its entrance, it was Amenhotep III who built the bewildering Temple of Luxor.the years, several of Egypt’s legendary rulers added to the glory Over of the Temple of Luxor, from Tutankhamun to Alexander the GreatThe Temple of Amada (Nubia)Saved from the waters of Lake Nasser and moved to higher, drier land, the Temple of Amada boasts the most wonderfully preserved wall reliefs of the Nubian style. Dedicated to the gods of the New Kingdom, Amun-Ra and Ra-Hor-Akhty, it was a collaborative effort between Tuthmosis III and his son Amonhotep II. Ramses II also restored much of the temple that had suffered under Akhenaten’s rule.Other Pharaonic Temples.The Temple of Dakka (Nubia)It takes fifteen minutes to walk through the desert to these sites from Wadi es-Sebua. The Temple of Dakka originally stood forty kilometres further north. Dedicated to Thot, god of wisdom, its construction lasted from the reign of the Nubian pharaoh, Arkamani, in the third century BC to that of Emperor Augustus. It is worth visiting in particular for its twelve-metre high pylon which offers a striking view over the lake. Maharraqa, the smallest of the three temples, is interesting for its spiral staircase, a rare feature in ancient EgyptThe Temple of Isis (Aswan)Small in scale, the temple was designed as an ode to Isis and the Nile, creator of all things. Legend relates that Isis had chosen to live on the island to grieve for Osiris, her brother and husband, murdered by Seth, and that it was on Philae that she found the heart of Osiris. Construction of the temple and its surrounding buildings dates back to the first centuries AD. The worship of Isis continued here until the closure of the temple in 537 and its transformation into a churchThe Temple of Hathor (Dendera)The site of the Dendera temple may have been occupied since very ancient times but the temple itself dates “only” from the first century AD. Construction was started in the reign of Ptolemy IX and was completed by the Roman emperors. The temple was dedicated to Hathor, goddess of celebration, music and love, and was absorbed into the cult of Aphrodite by the Greeks.The Temple of KarnakThe most important place of worship in all Egypt during Theban power. It was built, dismantled, restored, enlarged and decorated by several pharaohs. It’s a complex of sanctuaries, obelisks and pylons, dedicated to the glory of the pharaohs. It’s a gigantic site : 1.5km by 800m. Impossible to describe, this immense monument has to be seen, to be believedKom Ombo Temples (Kom Ombo)The Temple of Sobek and Haroeris is visible from and overlooks the Nile at a wide bend in the river. Built during the Ptolemaic period, its stands on a rock rising out of the sands. It is unusual in that it is in fact two temples – one devoted to the crocodile-god, Sobek, and the other to Haroeris, the falcon-headed god (Horus the Great). The whole site is laid out along two parallel axesThe Temple of Khnum (Esna)The temple of the ram-god, Khnum, has withstood the ravages of time. This may be because it was buried beneath layers of silt deposited by successive Nile floods. The hypostyle hall is an excellent example of Graeco-Roman architecture

OUR PROGRAMM FOR LUXOR AND ASWAN

you can visit in luxor any thing like luxor temple,karnak temple,the vally of the kings,vally of the nobles,vally of the workers vally of the queens,habo temple,hatshepsut temple,memnon status ,luxor museum you can also fly with ballon in luxor,riding camels or horses or make atrip in the nile by fuluka ,also you can see the island of banana,you may see the light show in karnak temple ,you will travel from luxor to safagah where you can make diving in the red sea this is the programm of luxor you can also visit dendara temple , and visit abydos temple the first ,you will stay at afive stars hotels or four stars or flat with aspicial services ,after luxor you can visit edfu temple,temple of horus,kom ompo temple of god sobek and god {horwer }and then we come to the program of aswan the most beautiful city in egypt where you can visit the {high dam } philae temple un finished obilisk and make trip in the nile with fuluka ,and visit kitchener island ,and you can visit the nubian village , and you can see the magnificiant sun set ,and you will visit the spices market and bazar ,and our surprise is the beutiful visit to abu semple