Egyptian Scrambled Eggs Desert CAMO

One of the earliest camouflage patterns produced in Egypt is frequently called the "rocks" pattern (often to discern it from the "sand" pattern), which is believed to have emerged in 1956. The design can be seen to derive from the German WW2 "Planetree" pattern (hence is sometimes called "Egyptian Plane Tree"), although certainly the Egyptian version is much more crude. Variability within production runs is considerable, even more so when factoring in that the pattern remained in production well into the 1990s period. The "rocks" pattern is nearly always printed on one side of a reversible fabric, with a two-color desert "sand" pattern (see below) on the other side. This practice continued into the later years of its production, but contemporary uniforms were no longer designed to be worn reversibly; they were either sewn together with the "rocks" or the "desert" side out. This pattern is generally associated only with Airborne and Commando units. Egyptian manufacturers have exported this pattern to Sudan, Somalia, Niger, Libya, and Yemen, among others. Seen below are several variations of the pattern, giving a cross-section of tremendous variability between early and late production.

The Egyptian desert (scrambled eggs) pattern was modified in the later part of the 1990s, giving it a much more sparse concentration of overprinted shapes. For this reason it is generally termed "sparse desert" pattern. As with the previously produced Egyptian camouflage patterns, there seems to be considerable variability both to the dye lots and the basic fabric color (background) employed when printing this design. At least four versions are known, with either sand/tan, pale green, pale blue, or medium grey background colors. Seen below are three of these variations, although it is certainly possible that others exist. Early versions of this camouflage initially appearing during the First Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm), but this continues to be a standard issue pattern for this nation. It has been exported and used by Somalia and Sudan.