Gilf Kebir

Gilf Kebir (??? ????) (var. Gilf al-Kebir, Jilf al Kabir) is a plateau in the New Valley Governorate of the remote southwest corner of Egypt, and southeast Liby...
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Gilf Kebir (??? ????) (var. Gilf al-Kebir, Jilf al Kabir) is a plateau in the New Valley Governorate of the remote southwest corner of Egypt, and southeast Libya. Its name translates as "the Great Barrier". This 7770-square-kilometre sandstone plateau, roughly the size of Puerto Rico, rises 300m from the Libyan Desert floor.

The name Gilf Kebir was given to the plateau by Prince Kamal el Dine Hussein in 1925, as it had no local name.[1] It is known for its rugged beauty, remoteness, geological interest, and the dramatic cliff paintings-pictographs and rock carvings-petroglyphs which depict an earlier era of abundant animal life and human habitation.
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 Sura in the southwestern Gilf Kebir: the "Cave of Swimmers", discovered by the Hungarian Count LÃ¡szlÃ³ AlmÃ¡sy (The English Patient), plus many other paintings nearby.
The North-western half of the Gilf Kebir aside from Wadi Sura 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).
Saharan rock art has been found to resemble art of Nile valleys. The Saharan area was more wet until mid-Holocene or about 4000 BC, when the monsoon retreated southwards, forcing humans to migrate. Some retreated eastward to the Nile valley, taking with them their beliefs and influencing Egyptian art.
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