BAHARIYA OASIS

The World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee to be included in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites Program. These features may be natural, such as forests and mountain ranges, and may be man-made, such as buildings and cities, and may
be mixed. Each heritage site is the property of the state within its borders, but it receives the attention of international community to ensure that it is preserved for future generations. All 189- member States of the Convention are involved in the protection and preservation of these sites. The Egyptian Culture and Natural Heritage Sites are part of the UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites list. This paper will focus on one of the Egyptian Heritage Sites that is in the tentative list, is Bahariya Oasis. This research will focus on the history of the Oasis, its cultural and
natural heritage. And finally, the research will introduce a New Vision for Bahariya Oasis

Bahariya Oasis description

Bahariya Oasis is a depression, located in the western desert, 360 km from Cairo. It consists of Oases (Qasr – Mandishah – El-Bawiti – El-Hayz) and currently follow the governorate of Giza administratively and its current capital is El-Bawiti. the main economic sectors are agriculture, mining dates, olive and currently safari tourism. The agriculture products are dates, olives,
guavas, and mangos (Egyptian Monuments, 2018). El-Bawiti is considered the largest village and administrative center. Qasr is El-Bawiti’s
neighborhood. Mandishah has located to the east about ten kilometers away. El-Hayz is the southern village, it is far from the rest of the other villages, about fifty kilometers to the south of El-Bawiti (Kujanova, M., Pereira, L., Fernandes, V., Pereira, J. B., & Černý, V., 2009).
The history of Bahariya Oasis dates back to the prehistory era. Archaeological excavations conducted in El-Hayz area, “north of Bahariya Oasis, about 37 km from El-Bawiti” revealed that the area was inhabited by the population in the middle of the Holocene geological era, a
million years ago, and its people lived near the lakes that formed by rain, the area of this population was 20-200 square meters, but the actual area of these sites ranged from 20-80 square meters (Egyptian Monuments, 2018).

The archaeological remains recovered from these sites included the remains of stone tools, single and double-headed arrowheads, wide and sharp two-faced stone tools, two-pointed billet blades, remains of pieces of ostrich eggs (some of which were used as a perforator), and stone
balls. There is influence relation between the stone tools in the oasis and the Late Paleolithic tools in the Deshna region of the Nile valley (Hassan, F. A., 1999). It is noted here that the word “oasis” refers to an oasis in general and not specifically to Bahariya Oasis. it may have
been part of all the oasis of the Western Desert of Egypt at that time (Giddy, L. L, 1987). The references to the existence of Bahariya Oasis dates back the 6th dynasty, the Old Kingdom in the Ancient Egyptian History. The evidence was limited to the existence of relations between
the Nile Valley and Western Oasis on the written documents, due to the lack of archaeological material available from Oasis of that era. The autobiography of Harkhuf, written on the walls of his tomb in Aswan, is documented in 58 columns inscribed on the front of the cemetery. He served in the reigns of King Merenre and Pepi II and became governor of Upper Egypt. He said on the right side of his grave: “Then His Majesty sent me for the third time to Iam.” He went from the region in the way of the oasis.

The Culture Heritage of Bahariya Oasis:

In Bahariya Oasis, there are large number of historical places; temples, chapels, tombs, tombs date back to the Saite dynasty, Tombs of El-Bawiti, Palace of Allam, Ain El-Meftela chapels, Temple of God Bes, Temple of Alexander the Great, The Golden Mummies Valley, GrecoRoman, Coptic and Islamic monuments, and a number of natural sites with fascinating views that are unmatched in the world, such as the eyes of natural water and environmental sites such as the Museum of the Heritage of Bahariya Oasis, the White and Black Desert, and Crystal Mount (Egyptian Monuments, 2018).