This is the Gara Medouar, a geological formation near Sijilmasa, Morocco. You might have seen this place in the films The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, whose stories were set in Egypt, but were largely filmed in this place. The Gara Medouar is also featured in the 2015 Bond film Spectre as the evil lair of the villain.
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Gara Medouar, literally “the round mountain”, is the eroded remains of a large limestone massif that, at its current state, rises 50 meters above the desert and encompasses an area of about 50 hectares. But there is no plateau. Instead, the central region is collapsed to form a valley, and the resulting circular formation is broken by a ravine that provides entrance into the heart of the massif. The interior is flat and any loose material has long been washed away, presumably by water, although there is no source of water nearby in the desert today. Most of the perimeter consists of vertical rocks with loose gravel at the bottom.
Learn more about the Gara Medouar and how it was used in history over at Amusing Planet.
(Image Credit: Piefke La Belle/ Flickr)
Source: neatorama