The Gara Cave: A Hidden Gem in Egypt’s Western Desert
The Gara Cave in Egypt, which was trodden by the feet of the first ancient humans thousands of centuries ago, and which witnessed inscriptions excavated by the ancestors of the ancestors before civilizations were even established,
The gara cave history
A century and a half ago, specifically on the twenty-fourth of December 1873, the German explorer “Gerhard Rolfes” arrived in a secluded area located between the New Valley of the Western Desert and Asyut. While he was on a three-month exploration trip in the Western Desert, a severe storm hit him, and his guide in the desert pointed him to this cave to take shelter in. He was surprised by a strange gate in the interior of that plateau, which started from the first moment as an entrance to one of the horror movie houses in the ground, where the rocky sediments hang like fangs up and down.
The German explorer, “Gerhard Rolfes”, dared to enter the neighbor’s cave, and then wrote in his writings on the Western Desert that he had seen dozens of human inscriptions, and it seems that this cave was home to some of the first humans who inhabited that area, or they may have passed through it as he passed.
The gara cave Location
The Gara Cave is a group of caves located more than 50 meters deep in the ground in the heart of the Western Desert between Bahariya Oasis and Assiut, specifically in the middle of the Farafra Desert.
The Egyptian explorers discovered that the cave is about 20 thousand years old, meaning that it existed before history and that it is one of the caves that prehistoric people knew and took refuge in. This is from the rock inscriptions he carved a long time ago, which express the surrounding environment in the cave.
As soon as the visitor steps into the cave, which he will have to enter with his head down because he is on the ground, he will find a large room with an area of about 1,300 square meters, connected to a smaller room through a narrow corridor, decorated with some Neolithic man inscriptions, in addition to the inscriptions of some animals such as ostriches and deer with their large, medium, and small horns and chickens, and 133 drawings of animals and creatures that lived in that lifeless area have been identified at the present time.
The structure of the cave
The gara cave is filled with what are called geologically the sediments of stalagmites and stalactites, as well as drawings of primitive men from hunting and special games, which indicate that the area in these ages was inhabited and had a normal life.
Thousands of years ago, the cave area was not a barren desert area, but rather had water, planting, grazing, and a normal human life. This included human drawings, cows, hunting machines, arrowheads, spears, stone daggers, and evidence of the abundance of water in the area and the presence of stalagmites and stalactites from calcium salts inside the cave.
The gara Cave FAQs
Also read: The Majestic Tomb of Queen Nefertari: A Monument to Ancient Egyptian Royalty