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It is truly a beautiful place. So vast and empty. Here are the pics I took https://secure.flickr.com/photos/robk/sets/72157635153819347...
It's interesting to contrast this with the Pizza Hut down the street from the Great Pyramids: http://imgur.com/PWtf3DV
curious what the surrounds of this look like https://m.flickr.com/deep/photos/54539963@N00/9557054418

or do watermelons grow in a desert?

Maybe somewhat counter-intuitively, vegetables & fruits like melons, watermelons, cucumbers, etc. (that contain a lot of water), often grow well in dry-looking sandy soil. I think it may be partly because the soil is loose, so their roots can go deeper more easily, to reach the water below. As a result, I've often seen and heard of these plants growing or being grown near rivers and lakes, even somewhat far away from the water's edge, because there is water below, in the water table.

Source: I did a lot of gardening in my teens and also read a lot about it.

They do when you water them. The Nile runs through the desert in northern Sudan.
Thank you for sharing!

The "hack" here, is merely getting the information out...historically not easy.

In the article it’s noted that the digital camera couldn’t handle the fine dust and sand of Sudan, whereas the film camera did. Are there digital cameras can handle such difficult environmental conditions?
I don't think it was so much the film vs digital, as the two aren't that different (digital has a sensor and no motor/film roll, but they're otherwise pretty much the same). The Mamiya must have just had better weather sealing, being a much more expensive camera.
Depends a _lot_ on the specific camera (and lens). Pro SLR lenses and bodies are generally more effectively sealed than consumer equipment, and generally more robust. A Nikon D5 with a well sealed prime lens will stand up to an awful lot of mistreatment. More, in fact, than the Mamiya he used.

However, medium format cameras are the best you can get for still image quality while still having something you can reasonably call "handheld", which is likely why he chose one. Also, this Mamiya (like most film MF cameras) is massively cheaper than a nikon d5, which means you care less about risk from dust damage etc.

If you use tropicalized lenses and cameras then yes, you can handle those conditions.
Fuji's has one of the best weather-sealing (dust & rain) in the mirrorless segment. No idea about the lens he used, but my X-Pro2 survived (rain & snow) storms, even with a non-tropicalized lens.

I guess sandstorms must be harder for the camera?

I guess it too, it would be nice to have more info about what happened.
Would've been nice to see more photos of the non-reconstructed pyramids. Most of the photos were either sand or reconstructed pyramids.
They're not so photogenic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Ferlini#/media/File:S...
hmm...I wonder what kings ruled over these ancient kingdoms?
OT - factoid. The photos in this article were taken by my former CEO, Christopher Michel. A serial entrepreneur with two exits (Military.com & Affinity Labs). He then turned into a full time photographer, but still advises companies, invests in a few and sits on a few boards.
The article also details his journey, not sure if you paid that much attention.

I often ignore the names in articles. But I noticed the subject & photographer were the same, here.

A friendly titbit for you: factoids are untrue, unlike titbits.
That's archaic and not true anymore.
Not according to the definitions I looked up.
This photos look heavily photoshopped.
no photographer today publishes without "post production".

usually sharpening filters and messing up with saturation are the norm.

source: worked with tons of A list art, fashion, news photographers.

There are a couple of moderately well known landscape pros that do. But yes. I'd also note that this is a MF camera, with (what looks like) drum scanned film. This tends to produce images with much better color rendition and improved sharpness and contrast than you'd typically see out of a "normal" camera. The photographer also appears to have used polarizing filters in at least one of the shots. Given all this, none of the images look significantly manipulated to me.
The Italian grave robber who destroyed more than 40 pyramids finally found his treasure, became rich by selling it in Germany and was buried in Bologna's monumental cemetery, among the city's most important people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Ferlini