Libyan Desert

The Libyan Desert landscape, in southern Libya.

The Libyan Desert covers an area of approximately 1,100,000 km², it extends approximately 1100 km from east to west, and 1,000 km from north to south, in about the shape of a rectangle. Like most of the Sahara, this desert is primarily sand and hamada or stony plain.

Sand plains, dunes, ridges and some depressions (basins) typify the endorheic region, with no rivers draining into or out of the desert. The Gilf Kebir plateau reaches an altitude of just over 1000 m, and along with the nearby massif of Jebel Uweinat is an exception to the uninterrupted territory of basement rocks covered by layers of horizontally bedded sediments, forming a massive sand plain, low plateaus and dunes.

The desert features a striking diversity of landscapes including mountains such as Jebel Uweinat (1980 m), the Gilf Kebir plateau, and sand seas (see below). The Libyan Desert is barely populated apart from the modern settlements at oases of the lower Cyrenaica region in southeastern Libya. The indigenous population is Berber. In most of Upper Egypt, the desert is close to the Nile River, with a seasonal flood plain only a few kilometers wide between river and desert.

North of the Gilf Kebir plateau, among the shallow peripheral dunes of the southern Great Sand Sea, is a field of Libyan desert glass. A specimen of the desert glass was used in a piece of Tutankhamun's ancient jewelry.

Gilf Kebir

The Gilf Kebir plateau rises to around 1100 metres in the south and lies in the southwest corner of Egypt.^[1] It is similar in structure to the other sandstone plateaus of the central Sahara, with 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. There is sparse xeric vegetation.

There is a profusion of Neolithic artifacts and rock art. The southern Gilf Kebir and Uweinat are among the richest troves of rock art in the Sahara. The 'Cave of the Swimmers' petroglyphs featured in The English Patient film are in Wadi Sora, discovered by the non-fictional László Almásy in the 1930s. The 'swimming figures' are in poor condition now. In 2002 a new cave was discovered nearby, with hitherto unseen prehistoric petroglyph images.

Three sand seas

The three sand seas, which contain dunes up to 512 meters in height, cover approximately one quarter of the region. They include:

• Great Sand Sea
• Calanshio Sand Sea
• Rebiana Sand Sea

History

In this map of Africa from Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia (1545), the Libyan desert (marked Libyae desertum and Libya Interior) is shown in the center of the continent, west of Nubiae regnum, south of Regnum Tunis and east of Regnum Senegae.

Modern exploration

The Sahara was traversed by mostly Muslim traders, natives and pilgrims, of which the best known is Ibn Battuta. The first European explorer to the Sahara was the German Friedrich Gerhard Rohlfs.^[2] In his expeditions in 1865 he received much resistance from the natives of the Saharan oases and kingdoms he visited. Because of the resistance offered to all European explorers at the time, especially by Senussis Ikhwan, Rohlfs only managed to come back with a few important findings which included an inaccurate first map of the Libyan Desert.

It was not until 1924, when Ahmed Hassanein undertook a 3,500 km (2,200 mi) expedition with a camel caravan that the first accurate maps were drawn and the mountain of Jebel Uweinat with springs at its base was discovered.^[3] He wrote important accounts on the Senussi sect, explaining their lifestyle and ethics in his book The Lost Oases. Ralph Bagnold, who went on to help found the LRDG, greatly extended the knowledge of the area (as well as developing techniques still used today for driving cars in sand) with many journeys in the 1920s and '30s using Ford Model Ts.

World War II

In 1935, the famous French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry crashed in the northern Libyan Desert.^[4] After miraculously surviving, he and his plane's mechanic nearly died of thirst before being rescued by a nomad. This event is described in Exupéry's book Wind, Sand and Stars.

The wreck of the B-24 bomber Lady Be Good—discovered 200 km (120 mi) north of Kufra 15 years after it was reported missing during WWII—had a less happy ending. The crew bailed out believing they were over the sea, when their plane ran out of fuel, and they became lost. When they landed in the Libyan Desert they could feel a northwesterly breeze. Thinking they were near the Mediterranean, they headed into the wind hoping it would lead them to safety. However, they were more than 640 km inland from the Mediterranean, and slowly died from dehydration after covering 130 km with minimal water in a place so dry even the desert Bedouins refuse to enter.

See also

• Eastern Desert
• Nubian Desert

References

Further reading

• Almásy, L. and Lozach, J. 1936. Récentes explorations dans le Désert Libyque (1932–1936) (Recent explorations in the Libyan Desert, 1932–1936). Société royale de géographie d'Égypte, 97 p.
• Almásy, L. 1942. Unbekannte Sahara: Mit Flugzeug und Auto in der Libyschen Wüste (The unknown Sahara: By airplane and auto in the Libyan Desert). Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 215 p.
• Bagnold, R.A. 1931. Journeys in the Libyan Desert, 1929 and 1930. The Geographical Journal 78(1):13–39; (6):524–533.
• Bagnold, R.A. 1933. A further journey through the Libyan Desert. The Geographical Journal 82(2):103–129; (3):211–213, 226–235.
• Bagnold, R.A. 1935. Libyan Sands: travel in a dead world. London: Travel Book Club, 351 p.
• Forbes, R. 1921. Secret of the Sahara: Kufara. New York: George H. Doran, 356 p.
• Hassanein Bey, A.M. 1924. Crossing the untraversed Libyan Desert. The National Geographic Magazine 46(3):233–277.
• Hassanein Bey, A.M. 1925. The Lost Oases: Being a narrative account of the author's explorations into the more remote parts of the Libyan Desert and his rediscovery of two lost oases. 363 p.
• Hoskins, G.A. 1837. Visit to the Great Oasis of the Libyan Desert. London, 341 p.
• Rohlfs G. 1875. Drei Monate in der Libyschen wüste (Three months in the Libyan Desert). Cassel: Verlag von Theodor Fischer, 340 p.
• Scholz, J.M.A. 1822. Travels in the countries between Alexandria and Parætonium, the Libyan Desert, Siwa, Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, in 1821. London, 120 p.
• Scott, C. 2000. Sahara Overland: A route and planning guide‎. Trailblazer Publications, 544 p.
• St. John, B. 1849. Adventures in the Libyan Desert and the Oasis of Jupiter Ammon. London: John Murray, 244 p.
• Zittel, K.A. von. 1875. Briefe aus der libyschen Wüste (Letters from the Libyan Desert). München.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Libyan Desert

• The complete text and photos of the discoveries of Ahmed Pasha Hassanein in the Libyan Desert, National Geographic Magazine article, September 1924

Coordinates: 24°N 25°E / 24°N 25°E / 24; 25