A bottle with a note from a Maltese man from 1977 was found in Egypt.

In Egypt, a Bedouin found in the desert a glass bottle with a note left there by Maltese Tom Moran in May 1977. Times of Malta reports this.

The bottle was discovered by Suleiman Zidane, who was exploring the remote area of ​​Wadi Jadid in western Egypt. She lay among metal crates and a rusted water tank on a rocky ridge. Inside was a piece of paper with handwritten text that read: “May 1977; Tom Moran; Party 6305; Avich Bay Street; Malta". Zidane's cousin Ayman sent photographs of the note to the Times of Malta with a request for help in identifying the person who left the message.

Although the note did not indicate the locality, a copy of the government gazette dated January 22, 1981 found a mention of a person with the surname Moran living at that address. A search on social media revealed Carmen Rossiter, who turned out to be Moran's sister. “I thought it was a prank, but I immediately recognized my brother’s handwriting,” she said. It turned out that Moran passed away in 1998 at the age of 54.

According to his sister, Tom was a geophysicist for an American oil exploration company and worked in Egypt for many years. He left school early and joined the British Army at 16, where he learned a trade that would later take him to work all over the world, from Saudi Arabia to Papua New Guinea. In the last years of his life, he worked in the state oil exploration department.

For Aiman, the find was remarkable not only because of the Maltese connection, but also because the message has survived despite the passage of time. “The desert kept his message intact,” he says.