Queen of an ancient lost African tribe, Miniteba and her warriors were said to be the guardians of Africa’s oldest known
diamond mines. These mines have been conjectured to hold greater wealth than the fabled lost mines of King Solomon.
Until recently, both the mines and the tribe were believed to be the essence of myth and legend. As the tale has been
passed from generation to generation across millennia and the rich African soil, the mines were said to produce diamonds
the size of python eggs. However, when an adventurer searching for the lost tribes of the Sudan discovered the image
of Miniteba and the two large diamonds pictured above, historians and archeologists were forced to take the legend of
Miniteba and her lost tribe more seriously.
The adventurer, Antonio DeRose, a descendant of Leonardo DaVinci, was the only survivor of his fifteen member
expedition. George Gibbons, a bush pilot flying a survey team along the White Nile, discovered the near lifeless body of
DeRose on a sandbar near the edge of the river. Gibbons landed in a nearby clearing and dragged DeRose to safety and away
from a huge crocodile. Witnesses from the survey team report that the angry croc was less than 20 feet away from DeRose
when the courageous pilot arrived on the sandbar. Gibbons and the survey team carried DeRose to the plane and flew him
to Johannesburg where he was transported to the trauma unit at Johannesburg Hospital.
A day after his arrival at the hospital, Derose lapsed into a coma, but not before he spun a tale nearly impossible to
believe . . .
At the time of DeRose’s rescue, he was wearing a heavy backpack which contained the pictured carving that was later
determined by archeologists to be an image of Miniteba. Also found in DeRose's backpack were the two large diamonds that
he claimed were among hundreds that covered the ground around the carving of Queen Miniteba. "Our trouble began when
we discovered the diamonds . . ." DeRose is reported to have whispered to one of his doctors just before slipping into the
coma which now holds him captive.
This page continues to be updated . . . please visit again to learn more about this tale of lost people and lost
treasures.
To learn more about a the effort to locate the lost tribes of the Sudan, please click on the link below.
• African Channel 24 Johannesburg - Report on the Search for the "Lost Tribes of the Suddan"
