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:
“He will to his Egyptian dish again.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white stones like paving-stones, excepting one or two short sand beaches, and is so steep that in many places a single leap will carry you into water over your head; and were it not for its remarkable transparency, that would be the last to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the opposite side. Some think it is bottomless.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)