Blue Desert
Desert
The Blue Desert in 2016
The Blue Desert in 2016
Blue Desert is located in Egypt
Blue Desert
Blue Desert
Coordinates: 28°38′23″N 34°33′39″E / 28.639722°N 34.560833°E / 28.639722; 34.560833
LocationSouth Sinai,  Egypt
Area
 • Total14 kilometres (8.7 mi)2
Dimensions
 • Length6.5 kilometres (4.0 mi)
CreatorJean Verame
created in1980

The Blue Desert (also known as the Sinai Peace Junction) is an area of the Sinai Desert near Saint Catherine, where a number of rocks are painted blue.[1][2]

This piece of art was created in 1980 when, following the signing of the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty, Belgian artist Jean Verame visited Sinai to paint a line of peace. Verame gained the permission of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and received a grant of ten tons of paint from the United Nations.[3][4]

History

After the official signing of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty in Washington DC on 26 March 1979, Belgian artist Jean Verame wanted to celebrate this historical peace in his own way.

Verame first came to Sinai in 1978. Inspired by the hit song "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue", he spent two years attempting to gain permission from Egyptian authorities to pursue his artistic dream. With the official approval of Egypt's president at the time, Anwar El-Sadat himself, and 10 tonnes of paint provided by the UN, Jean started painting the desert blue. One year later, the "Line of Peace", or the "Sinai Peace Junction" as it is also sometimes called, extends almost 6.5km with boulders rising up to nine meters in height, all painted blue.[5][6]

Location

The Blue Desert stretches between Dahab and St Catherine, known as the Plateau of Hallaoui.[5]

Other places

Four years after Sinai's Line of Peace, Verame completed another blue painting. This time, it was in Tafraout, Morocco. With approval granted by the late Moroccan Monarch King Hassan II, Verame went into the mountains with a team of firemen and 18 tons of blue, red, violet and white paint. In three months he and his team painted granite boulders and small hills of the Anti-Atlas Mountains: "Les Pierres Bleus" (The Blue Rocks).[5][7]

References

  1. ↑ Kinsella, Clodagh. "The Egyptian hike that's rewriting history". www.bbc.com. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
  2. ↑ "Sinai - Blue Desert". www.geographia.com. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
  3. ↑ "Jean Vérame's Les Roches Bleues". GRAPHITE. 2011-07-06. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
  4. ↑ "Blue Desert". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
  5. 1 2 3 "Al-Ahram Weekly | Travel | Snap shots". 2008-10-14. Archived from the original on 2008-10-14. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
  6. ↑ "فعل الطبيعة أم الإنسان..ما حقيقة "الصحراء الزرقاء" بسيناء مصر؟". CNN Arabic (in Arabic). 2020-02-24. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
  7. ↑ الاتحاد, صحيفة (2020-09-12). ""تافراوت" المغربية.. من قرية صغيرة إلى مزار عالمي". صحيفة الاتحاد (in Arabic). Retrieved 2020-12-21.
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