Luxor4u

For those that can be bothered to push just 1 key an interesting article...
http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/sci ... ce+News%29

The cause of death is irrelevant surely.
If the Army was defeated, I would still expect to find a load of corpses lying about somewhere ?

If 30 ships, planes & satellites cannot find 1 plane in the sea with today's technology...

True Doctor, But I would imagine they were following a well known path to Dakhla Oasis, so we would expect to find something near that path, Evidence of being overwhelmed by either a sandstorm or indeed the Native army.
Even if wild dogs took the remains, the armour and weapons would still be somewhere nearby where they fell.
Also, why would Petubastis III not document a significant victory ?

Still, the Sahara holds many secrets of Earth's past...

I will await publication of the paper before commenting further ...

Armies in those days were often mercenary and it is possible that once defeated they simply switched sides and became part of Petubastis III 's own army. It would explain why he was then successful in taking power and being crowned Pharaoh if only for a couple of years until being put down by Darius I.
As the article suggests Darius would want to hide/erase the total failure of his predecessor in much the same way as the Egyptian pharaohs did from time to time.

A perfectly reasonable explanation...

Although I was considering the logistics of the whole operation, and 50,000 troops going though a desert..
Thats an awful lot of water to transport for all those troops, who I woudl imagine would be needing about 2 gallons of water per man per day..

http://www.armystudyguide.com/content/a ... -ope.shtml