The Egyptian Sand Sea is the Egyptian part of the Great Sand Sea of Africa's Libyan Desert. Together with the Calanshio Sand Sea and Ribiana Sand Sea of Libya, the dunes of the Great Sand Sea cover about 25% of the Libyan Desert.
Although well-known to the Tuareg and Muslim traders who caravaned across the Sahara, Friedrich Gerhard Rohlfs was the first European to document the Great Sand Sea. He began his Saharan expeditions in 1865, and named the great expanse of dunes the Große Sandmeer, but it was not until 1924 with the maps of Ahmed Hassanein that the full scope of the Great Sand Sea was appreciated by Europeans.
Famous quotes containing the words egyptian, sand and/or sea:
“What greater light can be hoped for in the moral sciences? The subject part of mankind in most places might, instead thereof, with Egyptian bondage expect Egyptian darkness, were not the candle of the Lord set up by himself in men’s minds, which it is impossible for the breath or power of man wholly to extinguish.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“This sand seemed to us the connecting link between land and water. It was a kind of water on which you could walk, and you could see the ripple-marks on its surface, produced by the winds, precisely like those at the bottom of a brook or lake. We had read that Mussulmans are permitted by the Koran to perform their ablutions in sand when they cannot get water, a necessary indulgence in Arabia, and we now understand the propriety of this provision.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Gonzalo. Nay, good, be patient.
Boatswain. When the sea is. Hence! What cares these roarers for the name of king?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)