Gilf Kebir

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Gilf Kebir (جلف كبير), or Jilf al Kabir , is a plateau in the remote southwest corner of Egypt. It was named the Gilf Kebir (Great Barrier) by the first European to sight it^{[citation needed]}. This 7770-square-kilometre limestone and sandstone plateau roughly the size of Switzerland rises 300m from the desert floor.

The Gilf Kebir contains the Kebira Crater, a 950-meter (3,100-foot) impact crater, dating to 50 million years ago crater, and part of a field that spreads over 4,500 square kilometers (1,750 square miles) — more than 75 times larger than Earth's next largest known crater field.

The Uweinat mountain range at the very south of the plateau is shared between Egypt, Libya and Sudan.

Wadis:

Akhdar وادى الاخض
Bakht وادى البخت
Dayiq وادى الضيق
Firaq وادى فراق
Gazayir وادى الجزائر
Maftuh وادى مفتوح
Mashi وادى مشى
Wassa وادى وسع

The Gilf Kebir is mentioned in Michael Ondaatje's novel 'The English Patient'. It was also the site of the recent discovery of a bag which had been lost in the Second World War by a dispatch rider (Alec Ross) of the Long Range Desert Group, part of the British Army. This contained the rider's personal letters and photographs, and had been well preserved.

[edit] Petroglyphs

The Gilf Kebir is known for its prehistoric (Neolithic) petroglyphs

Karkur Talh and Karkur Murr: major eastern valleys of the Uweinat contain one of the richest concentrations of rock art in the whole Sahara.
Western Uweinat: Shelters under the huge granite boulders in the western Uweinat contain numerous paintings, including the famous sites of Ain Doua.
Jebel Arkenu, Jebel Kissu & Yerguehda Hill, the lesser granite massifs around Uweinat have many smaller sites.
Mogharet el Kantara in the southern Gilf Kebir contains only one known rock art site, a cave discovered by Shaw & party in 1936.
Wadi Sora in the northwestern Gilf Kebir: the "Cave of Swimmers" (or Swimmers' Cave, discovered by the Hungarian Count László Almásy (The English Patient), plus many other paintings nearby.
The North-western half of the Gilf Kebir aside from Wadi Sora has only a few scattered engravings, of an apparently very ancient age.
In January 2003, Zarzora Expeditions and Jacopo Foggini independently announced the discovery of a major new rock art site in the Western Gilf Kebir (Foggini-Mestekawi Cave).