Great Sand Sea
LocationEgypt/Libya
Area72,000 km2
ContinentAfrica
TypeSand
About Great Sand Sea
A vast field of long parallel dunes along the Egypt-Libya border. Libyan desert glass, a natural silica glass about 29 million years old, is found between its dunes. A carved piece of this glass forms the scarab on a pectoral from the tomb of Tutankhamun. Herodotus wrote that an army of the Persian king Cambyses vanished in a sandstorm in this region.
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