The Gilf Kebir
Egypt
About
The Gilf Kebir plateau rises to around 1100 metres in the south and lies in the south west corner of Egypt.[2] It is similar in structure to the other sandstone plateaus of the central Sahara; its southern rim rising in sheer cliffs separated by wadis. The northern part is more broken and supports three large wadis of which Wadi Hamra and Adb el Malik are the most distinctive. Here there is scant vegetation but a profusion of Neolithic artefacts and rock art. Indeed the southern Gilf and Uweinat are among the richest troves of rock art in the Sahara. The 'Cave of the Swimmers' as featured in The English Patient film is actually Wadi Sora, discovered by the real life Laszlo Almasy in the 1930s. The so-called 'swimming figures' here are in bad shape, but as late as 2002 a spectacular new cave was discovered nearby, displaying hitherto unseen prehistoric imagery. New discoveries continue to be made. Just north of the Gilf, among the shallow peripheral dunes of the southern Great Sand Sea is a field of Libyan desert glass or 'desert emerald', a piece of which was recently found to feature in a piece of Tutankamun's jewelry.
