Egypt Guide
The Western Desert Oases
The Great Sand Sea
Between the Gilf Kebir and Siwa Oasis lie 72,000 square kilometres of dune fields that the explorer Gerhard Rohlfs named the Great Sand Sea (Bahr er-Raml in Arabic). Though maps still define parts as beyond the "limits of reliable relief information", its overall configuration is known. From thick whalebacks and a mass of transverse dunes near Siwa, it washes south in parallel seif dunes (oriented north– south, with a slight northwest– southeast incline) as far as the eye can see.
Today, tourists can cross the Sand Sea on deep-desert safaris from Bahariya, Farafra or Cairo. Most itineraries feature Regenfeld and an area of desert strewn with pale green deposits of translucent silica glass – a material known to the Ancient Egyptians, for it was from this that the scarab on Tutankhamun's funerary pectoral cross was carved. The silica glass deposits are thought to have originated in a prehistoric meteorite strike, whose impact fused sand into glass. Ground zero may have been the four-kilometre-wide Al-Baz Crater, 150km southeast of the silica glass region (the crater is named after its Egyptian-American discoverer, Farouk al-Baz, a pioneer in using satellites to search for water in arid areas).
If you can't afford a safari into the heart of the Sand Sea, a brief excursion from Siwa Oasis to Bir Wahed is enough to experience the utter desolation and colossal size of its dunes.