Friedrich Gerhard Rohlfs

After the ordinary course at the gymnasium of Osnabrück, he entered the Bremen corps in 1848, and took part as a volunteer in the Schleswig-Holstein campaign, being made an officer after the battle of Idstedt (July 1850).

[1] In 1873, with an expedition of 100 camels and 90 men, organized under the patronage of the khedive of Egypt Isma'il Pasha, Rohlfs explored the Libyan desert west of the chain of oases which skirt the valley of the Nile, and discovered that the depression called the Bahr Bela-ma (river without water), marked on many maps of the desert at that time, did not exist.

By February the party was about 100 kilometres (62 mi) north of Abu Ballas (Pottery Hill) in the Western Desert, looking for a way around the dunes.

Accompanied by Karl Zittel and a surveyor called Jordans, Rohlfs and his colleagues experienced a torrential downpour - a rare occurrence in the desert.

Rohlfs' team restocked and watered their camels and built a cairn at the place he named Regenfeld ("Rain field").

[5] The westward progress of the expedition continued to be hampered by the north–south dune ridges of the Great Sand Sea which the loaded camels were unable to climb.

In 1880 Rohlfs accompanied Stecker on an exploring expedition to Abyssinia; but after delivering a letter from the German emperor to the Negus, he returned to Europe.