Garah cave

Garah cave is one of the ancient caves in the western desert of Egypt, and its history dates back more than 40 million years. It is considered one of the most beautiful and rare caves in Egypt, and it is the most wonderful thing on which a human eye falls in the African region in general and the north in particular ……

The cave is located near the dunes of Abu Muharraq near an ancient caravan path, connecting the Farafra Oasis in the Western Desert with Assiut in Upper Egypt. The cave of the neighbour has discovered on the twenty-fourth of December 1873 AD by the German explorer, “Gerha Red Rolfs” during his journey, which he recorded In his book “Three Months in the Libyan Desert”, in which the goal was to reach the Libyan oasis of Kufra, and that was when his guide led him on the journey to a place called Al-Jarah with a cave characterized by what he called the geology of stalactites and stalactites, despite Rolfs and his group’s fascination with the cave and its beauty, which is Rolfs recorded it in his book about his famous voyage. Still, the cave did not receive enough attention at the time from researchers and scholars to try to know its history or at least explain the geographic drawings dating back to the early ages of man in the region …..

In 1989, Carlo Bergmann, “one of the new adventurers of the desert”, rediscovered the cave, trying to shed light on the primitive scribbles that characterize its walls and entrance. The first archaeological survey was carried out on the scientific basis of the drawings in the cave in the year 1990 AD by a wonderful group of specialists in this field from Cologne, Berlin and Cairo, and the year 1999 until the year 2002 AD, the drawings and decorations were studied extensively within an integrated scientific project …..

The cave has magical proportions, it arose as a natural result of pure water and the desert climate over millions of years, and it contrasts with all the caves of the region in its formations and the shape of its wonderful sediments, where the descending and ascending sedimentary forms look more like frozen waterfalls, which are the result of millions of cubic meters of water The ground that seeped through the desert sands millions of years ago and created this terrestrial cave, then was deposited and condensed by the intense heat. Sedimentary formations reach heights of three or four feet …

The frescoes in the cave represent the usual activities of the region’s people, such as hunting and playing, and the drawings date back to the “wet Holocene” era. At that time, the inhabitants of that area were hunters, and they also practised the gathering and gathering stage. The drawings suggest that the neighbour’s area is now in terms of attraction and unwillingness. Life was once inhabited and full of life…

The entrance to the cave is located in the form of a small opening at the level of the surface of the limestone plateau in which the cave is located, gives the impression of the visitor descending into a small basin of limestone that leads to a small narrow corridor that forms a plateau filled with sand that creeps in by the winds from outside the cave into the interior due to the low level of the cave Inside from the surface outside, and at the entrance to the cave, one of the stalactites growing on the floor of the cave in the form of stalagmites, which are beautified by the famous drawings or scribbles that are angled year after year, and from the entrance to the main and only square of the cave that covers an enormous area of ​​rocky cavity filled with wonderful stone stalactites The view and the beauty that the cave sends down from its ceiling until it fuses with its floor, and the main square of the cave represents in its entirety a flat of 30 square meters with a height of five to six meters …

Although the cave is located in a limestone area, geological analyses have proven that the stalactites and stalactites consist only of sandstone, which may shed light scientifically on the area’s geological history. It is preferable when visiting the neighbour’s cave to use lighting to see the sedimentary formations…