“The world is talking about Mauritania,” says Mohamed Barak Allah, a tourist guide in the city of Ouadane. The West African country is high on the list of destinations that no one knows about, but according to Barak Allah that is changing. “I see more and more foreign reports about the Eye of the Sahara.” That eye is officially called Guelb el Richat, which means something like circular rock in Arabic. It is a gigantic crater – about fifty kilometers in diameter – in the desert east of Ouadane.
For about ten years amateur archaeologists have been claiming on the internet that the legendary city of Atlantis was located there. Barak Allah shows a video on his phone of astronauts looking from space at the Guelb el Richat – it has traditionally been a fixed landmark for astronauts. It is also clearly visible on Google Maps. Due to several interlocking rings and the surrounding landscape, the rock formations do indeed look like an eye from space.
There are no figures, but according to tour operators and local hotels, significantly more people are coming to Mauritania. Especially for the Eye of the Sahara, Barak Allah also claims. They take selfies in the middle of the circle. “It’s really hype.”
With Barak Allah I walk through Ouadane, which is high on a rock. Houses are built of blackened boulders from the area, which are stuck together with clay. In the depths, the Sahara stretches in all directions. “Only nomads live there with goats and camels,” says Barak Allah. He doubts that there was ever another city about 50 kilometers away. “I don’t think there’s any evidence for that.”
The Greek philosopher Plato wrote in Critias, one of his dialogues, first about Atlantis, which is said to have disappeared about 12,000 years ago. It would have been an archipelago beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Strait of Gibraltar). Its inhabitants ruled over the peoples of the Mediterranean, but are said to have been swallowed up by the sea because of increasing depravity. According to most Plato scholars, the story of Atlantis is a myth that describes how civilizations can fall; he would have wanted to highlight ethical themes such as justice and decadence.