Grand Erg Oriental Grand Erg Oriental The Grand Erg Oriental (English: 'Great Eastern Sand Sea') is a large "erg" or "field of sand dunes" in the Sahara Desert. Situated for the most part in Saharan lowlands of northeast Algeria, the Grand Erg Oriental covers an area some 600 km wide by 200 km north to south. The erg's northeastern edge spills over into neighbouring Tunisia. The Grand Erg Oriental is a desert, a natural region receiving very little rainfall. It is the largest "Erg" in Algeria, the next in size being the much smaller Grand Erg Occidental ('Western Sand Sea'). The largest erg
What Is a Nation? Anderson also points out that the reason many French citizens of Renan's time knew anything of these massacres was because they learned of them in state-run schools. Thus, the state itself preserved the knowledge which needed to be forgotten for national identity. In a 1995 book, "For Love of Country: an essay on patriotism and nationalism", Maurizio Viroli called Renan's essay "the most influential late nineteenth-century interpretation of the meaning of nation", because of its focus on the "spiritual principle" as opposed to race, religion or geography. Other authors, like Joxe Azurmendi, consider that really there is no such opposition