Revised edition: The Western Desert of Egypt

Cassandra Vivian

The Western Desert of Egypt
New Revised Edition 2008
AUC

The revised edition of the only handbook for exploring the Western Desert of Egypt has turned up on my doorstep this weekend. I ordered it around a year ago to replace my battered 2002 edition when it was listed as available for order on Amazon. At the time it had a delivery estimate of a couple of weeks, but I have been receiving apologies from Amazon ever since.

I only received the book on Saturday so other than the addition of some glossy colour photographs I don't know what the revised edition adds to the existing one because the preface doesn't say. But it has some more pages (459 in total as opposed to 426 in the 2002 edition).

If you are travelling into the Western Desert this is the only real print resource, other than the eternally useful and enjoyable Sahara Overland by Chris Scott (which has a supporting website). Sahara Overland is a glorious book about travel throughout the entire Sahara desert, but obviously covers the Egyptian Western Desert area in much less detail than Vivian's book. For those wondering about portability Vivian's book weighs c. 0.91kg (just over 2lbs).

Vivian clearly shares the same concerns that many Western Desert travellers have about the impacts of tourism on the desert landscape. Growing numbers of visitors pose a potential threat to its beauty and to the lives of the people who dwell in and around the desert. She is careful to give GPS co-ordinates only for sites which she considers not to be at major risk and she makes an appeal to visitors to respect the desert, to move quietly through it and to be its friend. It has always seemed so strange to me, as it clearly does to Vivian, that some of the people who travel so far to see something so amazing, should treat the landscape and the archaeology such lack of care.