Culture & Lifestyle
On a wind-scoured morning, in the village of Abu Ramad, the gateway to Jabal Elba (Elba Mountain) in the Halaib area of Egypt’s Red Sea Governorate, a pair of mutilated sheep signaled the return of a visitor from the past—the spotted hyena. Once hunted and fattened by ancient Egyptians as a feast delicacy, the spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) had vanished from the region for over five millennia. In 2024, it has traversed deserts and borders into a land that no…