Terramata is an Italian Web Site devoted to the exploration of the World deserts, expressing a special interest for the Libyan and Egyptian sectors of the Eastern Sahara. Terramata is written in English; the majority of the Saharan inhabitants and travellers understand and spoke some basic English (even the Francophiles), as we try to do with some satisfaction.

The Terramata Web Site started in 2000 as a tribute to the amazing beauty of the Three Deserts of Egypt (our second homeland). Now the Egyptian section is off-line, back in the drawer. A quite large part of our virtual Egypt has been published on specialized magazines and books. A number of reports, full of images, were published on this site from other deserts of the World, warm and cold (Namibia, Australia and Svalbard). We have, in fact, a passion for photography, classic photography on film and digital.

In 2005, with some good friends, we promoted the first phase of the "EMERI Project", an exploratory program devoted to the Libyan sector of the Jebel Uweinat, which major spring are currently exploited as boundary and customs posts by the Libyan army and police.

In 2005, 2006 and 2007-2008 seasons, we hiked three times the high granite regions of the massif known from the scientific papers by Prof. Umberto Mònterin as the "Emeri Higland". With the third expedition (end of Phase 1), all the remaining unchartered wadis of the Libyan Uweinat can now be considered explored for rock art although we may well have left something behind our shoulders.

The second phase of the Emeri Project must change nature. Whenever it will become operational, it will be devoted to the survey of the important rock art sites threatened by the increasing hooliganism and the mischief of the poorly regulated tour operators infesting the Sahara. Some of them are converting large part of the Libyan expanse in a gigantic garbage dump and a playgroud for rich but uneducated people that still consider permissible to pick prehistoric stone implements at their will.

We are now starting the data collection phase (Phase 0.1) of a new Saharan project aimed at the exploration of the "Gongoi Wadi", a lone walley lost in the Egyptian Western Desert. Do not look for the "Gongoi Wadi" on the Atlas: it is a code name!