Ancient trans-Saharan routes show little correspondence with existing modern maps which in particular for the Libyan Desert present non-existing fantasy roads. Modern cartographers seem to have chosen arbitrarily some early desert explorers’ routes to satisfy their horror vacui, without considering that inexperienced travellers trusting this information might well be led into a limbo, where truly the world ended.
-Rudolph Kuper, Prologue to Desert Road Archaeology in Ancient Egypt and Beyond, Förster and Riemer, 2013
Kuper sums up my own case, setting off on a fantasy desert road that I call the Darb al-’Arba’īn, which in fact lies a hundred miles to the west, carrying only a torn National Geographic map on paper, hoping to follow its dotted line to Egypt and which KhairAllah said was good only as a fire starter.