They trained on a surface that Egypt has plenty of: sand. The four-member snowshoe team of two men and two women with learning disabilities had never seen snow before arriving in Austria for the ...

In 1999, after frequent trips to Egypt (her mother’s family is from Alexandria), Mahdavi chose to visit Siwa, an urban oasis (population 35,000) on the edge of the Great Sand Sea, a vast expanse ...

The research suggests that the type of sand found in the Egyptian desert becomes particularly slippery when wet – something that might have made it much easier to move the huge stones that were used ...

"It turns out that wetting Egyptian desert sand can reduce the friction by quite a bit, which implies you need only half of the people to pull a sledge on wet sand, compared to dry sand," Bonn said.

The wonders of Egypt are being recreated on the South Coast by 60 artists from around the world in a summer-long sand sculpture festival. Nearly 10,000 tons - 500 lorry loads - of special sand has ...