Rock Art of the Eastern Desert of Egypt: Content, comparisons, dating and significance 9781407305844, 9781407335339

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tracings
List of Tables
List of Figures
ABSTRACT
1 PREFACE
2 BACKGROUND
3 ANIMALS
4 ANTHROPOIDS, BOATS AND OTHER IMAGES
5 NILE VALLEY PETROGLYPHS
6 WESTERN PETROGLYPHS
7 EASTERN PETROGLYPHS
8 DATING
9 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE EASTERN DESERT PETROGLYPHS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
TABLES
FIGURES
MAPS

Citation preview

BAR S2008 2009 JUDD

Rock Art of the Eastern Desert of Egypt Content, comparisons, dating and significance

ROCK ART OF THE EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

B A R Judd 2008 cover.indd 1

Tony Judd

BAR International Series 2008 2009

15/09/2009 10:19:56

Rock Art of the Eastern Desert of Egypt Content, comparisons, dating and significance

Tony Judd

BAR International Series 2008 2009

Published in 2016 by BAR Publishing, Oxford BAR International Series 2008 Rock Art of the Eastern Desert of Egypt © T Judd and the Publisher 2009 The author's moral rights under the 1988 UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act are hereby expressly asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be copied, reproduced, stored, sold, distributed, scanned, saved in any form of digital format or transmitted in any form digitally, without the written permission of the Publisher.

ISBN 9781407305844 paperback ISBN 9781407335339 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407305844 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library BAR Publishing is the trading name of British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd. British Archaeological Reports was first incorporated in 1974 to publish the BAR Series, International and British. In 1992 Hadrian Books Ltd became part of the BAR group. This volume was originally published by Archaeopress in conjunction with British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd / Hadrian Books Ltd, the Series principal publisher, in 2009. This present volume is published by BAR Publishing, 2016.

BAR PUBLISHING BAR titles are available from: BAR Publishing 122 Banbury Rd, Oxford, OX2 7BP, UK E MAIL [email protected] P HONE +44 (0)1865 310431 F AX +44 (0)1865 316916 www.barpublishing.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS Page List of Tracings List of Tables List of Figures List of Maps ABSTRACT CHAPTER 1: PREFACE THE EASTERN DESERT ROCK ART THIS REPORT CHAPTER 2: BACKGROUND DISCOVERY THE EASTERN DESERT THE PETROGLYPHS CHAPTER 3: ANIMALS INTRODUCTION SAVANNAH ANIMALS RIVERINE ANIMALS COMMON DESERT ANIMALS AND BIRDS RARER DESERT AND SEMI-DESERT ANIMALS DOMESTIC ANIMALS CHAPTER 4: ANTHROPOIDS, BOATS AND OTHER IMAGES INTRODUCTION ANTHROPOIDS BOATS NON-REPRESENTATIONAL FORMS CHAPTER 5: NILE VALLEY PETROGLYPHS INTRODUCTION UPPER EGYPT NUBIA CHAPTER 6: WESTERN PETROGLYPHS INTRODUCTION THE WESTERN DESERT THE GILF KEBIR AND UWEINAT CENTRAL AND WESTERN SAHARA CHAPTER 7: EASTERN PETROGLYPHS INTRODUCTION SINAI AND THE NEGEV SOUTH-EASTERN EGYPT ARABIA CHAPTER 8: DATING PROPOSED CHRONOLOGIES DATING METHODS CHAPTER 9: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE EASTERN DESERT PETROGLYPHS INTRODUCTION SIGNIFICANCE TO THE ANCIENT ARTISTS SIGNIFICANCE TO THE MODERN VIEWER CONCLUSIONS BIBLIOGRAPHY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TABLES FIGURES MAPS

iii

iv iv v v

vi 1 1 5 6 7 11 12 16 17 19 20 27 27 31 34 37 37 39 51 51 53 61 63 63 64 67 73 75 87 87 94 100 101 107 109 116 138

List of Tracings 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Type A and Type B giraffes Long-tailed giraffe Type A and Type B elephants Felines and antelope Crocodile Hippopotamus Ibexes Ostriches “Wild asses” Addaxes Oryx Gerenuk Banded cattle Ring-horned bovid Bovid with multiple horns

Page 12 13 14 15 16 16 17 18 18 19 19 20 21 21 22

Page 24 25 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 30 30 34 34 35 94

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Cow suckling infant Dogs attacking gerenuk “Earring” people “Stick” people “Round-armed” and “orant” people Unrealistic figures Figure with staff Hunting scene “Dancers” “Chorus line” Plumed pair Geometric patterns “Standard” “Map” A recent image

11

Types of elephant images in the Eastern Desert and Nubia Cattle styles in the Eastern Desert and Nubia Sex of cattle in the Eastern Desert and Nubia Horns in the Eastern Desert and Nubia Relationships of anthropoids to cattle in the Eastern Desert and Nubia Numbers of images in the Eastern Desert and Nubia Features of boat images in the Eastern Desert and Nubia Petroglyph images in south-east Egypt Comparative incidence of images in the Eastern Desert and Nubia Numbers of sites with images of animals and anthropoids in the Eastern Desert and south-west Egypt

List of Tables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Representation of the human form in the Eastern Desert “Plumed” human images in the Eastern Desert Numbers of boats and boat sites in the Eastern Desert Eastern Desert sites with the largest numbers of boats Boat features Distribution of boat features in the Eastern Desert Descriptions of boats in Eastern Desert locations “Locations” of neighbouring sites in the Eastern Desert Comparison of numbers of images in the Eastern Desert and at El Kab Nubian sites with most giraffe images

109 12 109 13 109 14 15

109 110

16 110 17 111 18 19

112 112 112

20

iv

113 113 113 113 113 114 114 114 115 115

List of Figures 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Wadi Hammamat Abu Wasil Atwani Hammamat Hammamat Mineh Mineh Mineh Abu Wasil Abu Wasil Abu Wasil Abu Wasil Abu Iqaydi Abu Iqaydi Shallul Shallul Shallul Umm Salam Umm Salam

Site TJ2 General AB2 WD2 HSQ3 MLM1 MLM1 MLM1 WAS3 DR2 DR2 DR2 IQA3 IQA10 SHA1 SHA4 SHA14 SAL4 SAL14

Page 116 116 117 117 118 118 119 119 120 120 121 121 122 122 123 123 124 124 125

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Wadi Site Page Umm Salam SAL35 125 Umm Hajalij HAJ3 126 Miya MIY1 126 Miya MIY5 127 Barramiya BAR4 127 Muweilhat MUD 128 Sha’it SH11 128 Sibrit SBC 129 Sha’it SHW 129 Muweilhat MUL 130 Sibrit SB1 131 Sha’it SH5 132 Groups of images SH5 133 Cattle controlled by “halters” 134 Cattle held by the tail 135 Cattle bearing “structures” 136 Boat images 137 Distribution of boat images between sites 137

7 8 9 10 11

Distribution of cattle images Anthropoid sites Distribution of boat images Petroglyph sites in Nubia Petroglyph sites in south-east Egypt

List of Maps 1 2 3 4 5 6

The Eastern Desert Eastern Desert petroglyph sites Giraffe and elephant sites Crocodile and hippopotamus sites “Wild ass” sites Antelope sites

138 139 139 139 139 140

140 140 140 141 141

The photographs forming Figures 17 and 21 were provided by Ms Maggie Morrow, Figures 13, 18 and 23 by Mr Mike Morrow, Figures 14 and 22 by Dr Peter Dixon, and Figures 15, 16 and 20 together with the uppermost two tracings in Figure 35 by Mr Geoff Phillipson. The initials beneath the captions denote the sources. The author’s own photographs are denoted by numbers of the form “FHx.yyy”. The original photographs are 35mm colour slides. In several cases the contrast has been adjusted digitally to make the petroglyph images clearer.

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ABSTRACT Data that have recently become available on the petroglyphs of the Eastern Desert of Egypt are collated and analysed in detail. Images of wild animals, domestic animals, anthropoids and boats, together with geometric patterns, are classified and assessed by statistical means to reach conclusions about the preferences of the artists in terms of subject matter, style, context and geographical distribution. Published data on the petroglyphs of the Nile Valley are analysed similarly but in less detail to permit comparison with the Eastern desert, identifying many similarities but also significant differences. Petroglyphs from farther afield – from the Western Desert, Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir, south-eastern Egypt, Sinai, the Negev and Arabia – are also compared. The general conclusion is that similarity decreases rapidly with distance, but there are also a few individual cases indicating that some of the artists were in contact. No evidence of contact with Arabia is found. Dating of the Eastern Desert petroglyphs, both relative and absolute, by various methods, is reviewed. It is concluded that, while precision is not possible, it is reasonably certain that many of the animal images, in particular those of animals that require a relatively moist environment, and some of the boats and anthropoids, date to the fourth millennium BC, while other boats, anthropoids and desert animals are later. The significance of the petroglyphs to the artists who drew them is addressed. Various possible reasons for drawing them, such as religious, magical or shamanistic practices, are examined and it is concluded that in the majority of cases it is not possible to say what they meant. Only in the case of the boats is it possible to be reasonably sure that they had some sort of funerary significance. The probability that many of the images had little or no significance to the artists is recognised. Nevertheless it is possible to deduce much about the artists and their communities. A series of propositions, each based on the analysis of the corpus of images without any assumptions about meaning, is drawn up. Together these propositions form a partial description of the society that gave rise to the petroglyphs, although not its beliefs. This description is objective and free from conjecture.

vi

1 PREFACE the background – the discovery of the petroglyphs by western explorers from the 19th century to the 21st and the geomorphology and history of the Eastern Desert. It goes on to describe the nature of the petroglyphs themselves and of the sites where they are to be found.

THE EASTERN DESERT ROCK ART Herodotus described Egypt as the gift of the Nile, and so it was and still is in terms of day-to-day existence because the river has been for millennia the source of sustenance for Egypt’s people. But in another sense, that of the origin of Egyptian civilisation, it is coming to be realised that Egypt is also to some extent the gift of the desert. In particular the Eastern Desert, the rocky, gravelly and mountainous land between the Nile and the Red Sea, has played a significant role in Egyptian history. It has always been clear that it was both a source of minerals and a wellused trade route from the earliest historical times, but recently evidence has come to hand to indicate that before the establishment of the Egyptian state and in its early years the Eastern Desert was important in other ways. Much of this evidence is in its rock art.

The first step towards understanding the petroglyphs is to order and analyse the available data. In their present form these data are hard to interpret, mainly because there are so many of them. The recent expeditions have made several thousand individual petroglyph images available for study, together with a certain amount of supporting information about the nature and location of their sites. Before this mass of information can be interpreted it has to be put in a comprehensible form. In Chapters 3 and 4 therefore the Eastern Desert petroglyph images are collated and classified in terms of subject matter, style and distribution. The second step is to compare the Eastern Desert petroglyphs with those of neighbouring regions. The most important of these, for which data are available, is the Nile Valley. In the 1960s before the Aswan High Dam was completed the reaches south of Aswan, which are now drowned by the waters of Lake Nasser, were surveyed by various groups under the auspices of UNESCO and many of the petroglyphs found were published in forms which lend themselves to analysis. Publications of the petroglyphs from north of Aswan, of which there are several, are unfortunately less comprehensive and less convenient. In Chapter 5 the petroglyphs of the Desert and the Valley are compared, but because of the different nature of the publications the comparison is less thorough for the northern Valley in Upper Egypt than for the southern in Nubia.

One of the important things the rock art bears witness to is that the Eastern Desert was not always a desert. The large numbers of images of animals, both wild and domesticated, which cannot survive in the present arid conditions indicate that the area once supported a flora similar to that of the savannahs of present-day East Africa and the fauna to go with it. And of course the presence of the rock art also tells us that these savannahs were inhabited, temporarily if not permanently, by people, possibly hunters or herders. These people were early Egyptians, and the rock art tells us something about their way of life and therefore about the development of Egypt. In the last decade our knowledge of the Eastern Desert rock art has been increased significantly by the work of participants in amateur expeditions. This study is based on the records of these expeditions, and attempts to deduce from them what they tell of the people who drew the images and patterns and of the society to which they belonged.

Outline

Comparisons can also be made with the rock art of more distant regions. Publications of the rock art of the mountainous areas of Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir in the extreme south-west of Egypt are available. In addition some information on the rock art of the oases and rocky outcrops of the Western Desert has been published, although this is comparatively sparse, partly because there have been few systematic attempts to explore the region for rock art and partly because there is not so much rock art there to find. Chapter 6 summarises what is known of the rock art of western Egypt and compares it with that of the Eastern Desert. Chapter 7 deals in a similar way with rock art in regions to the east – in Sinai and the Negev, in the far south-east of Egypt, and in Arabia. From these comparisons conclusions are drawn about the relationships between the Eastern Desert petroglyph artists and their neighbours, in terms of contacts and influences.

The starting point for the work of understanding the petroglyphs is described in Chapter 2, which summarises

The comparisons are not extended farther afield. There is a very large amount of rock art, both petroglyphs and

The rock art of the Eastern Desert consists almost entirely of petroglyphs – that is images or patterns made by removing part of the rock surface, either by hammering or pecking it with a hard object such as a stone, or by scratching or incising it with a cutting implement of stone or metal. There are almost no pictograms – images or patterns made by painting the rock with colouring material. In this respect the Eastern desert is unlike the Gilf Kebir in south-western Egypt, for example, which is famous for its rock paintings. THIS REPORT

1

ROCK ART OF THE EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

organisation. It is towards conclusions in these areas that this study is directed.

paintings, in the mountainous regions of the Sahara west of Egypt – in the Messak and the Acacus in Libya, the Ennedi in Chad, the Tassili and the Atlas in Algeria, and in regions farther west and south-west – which is well-documented. However this material is not addressed in this study. It seems probable that any influence from these remoter regions on the Eastern Desert would have come across the Western Desert and the Nile Valley and would therefore be apparent there.

This study has a secondary objective. As explained above many of the petroglyph data on which it is based were collected by a series of amateur expeditions in the Eastern Desert. These not only revisited known petroglyph sites (notably those discovered by Winkler in 1937 and 1938) but also found hundreds of “new” sites that hitherto had not been known to the outside world. The sites were recorded and the results, including photographs of most of the petroglyph images together with brief descriptions, have been published (Rohl 2000; Morrow and Morrow 2002). Because of their amateur nature, however, these publications are not as detailed as for example those resulting from the professional UNESCO work in connection with the building of the High Dam. As a result they have attracted a certain amount of criticism as being the work of mere “tourists” (see, for example, Wengrow 2003 p599).

The third and final step is to determine what the Eastern Desert petroglyphs can tell us about the people responsible for them. To establish the chronological context Chapter 8 addresses the question of dating. It is in general very difficult to date rock art with any precision, but it is possible to reach broad conclusions with a reasonable degree of certainty. This allows their significance to be assessed in Chapter 9. “Significance” is interpreted in two senses: as the meaning of the rock art images to the people who drew them; and as the meaning for the modern observer who tries to learn something about these people and their contributions to the development of Ancient Egypt. It is argued that in most cases it is possible to say little about the significance of the rock art in the first of these senses: that attempts to reconstruct the beliefs of the ancient artists are in many cases misplaced. Nevertheless, without any attempt at interpretation, the rock art can tell us a great deal about their interests and concerns, and therefore about their way of life.

The main defence against criticism of amateur work of this nature is that if it had not been done nothing would be known about the great majority of the rock art of the Eastern Desert. This is not an unusual situation: Le Quellec has pointed out that many of the amazing rock art discoveries in the west of Egypt were made and subsequently published by amateurs, from Almásy to Zboray, who travelled as “tourists” (Le Quellec et al 2005 p134). The criticism, that the “amateur” publications are less detailed than they might be, has to be admitted up to a point. An amateur expedition does not, under desert conditions, have the luxury of time to record the depth of detail that is possible for properly-funded professionals. However the admission cannot be allowed to imply that the results are therefore worthless. The amount of detail that has been published, and in particular the photographs of the images, constitute a useful resource. The objective here is to show that this resource can be used to make significant contributions to our knowledge. The intention is to demonstrate that, their shortcomings notwithstanding, the published data can become the basis for valid and, it is hoped, valuable conclusions.

Objectives The overall objective is to advance the understanding of the Eastern Desert petroglyphs by means of the three steps described above, to move towards an interpretation of them in terms of what they can tell us about the origins and development of Egyptian society. An important conclusion is that much of the Eastern Desert rock art probably dates to the fourth millennium BC or later. This means that, by comparison with the rock art of some other regions, notably the cave art of France and Spain, it is recent. The rock pictures at Chauvet, for example, are believed to date to the Aurignacian period, around 30000 BC. Because of their age they are among the earliest human artefacts available to us, coming from a period when the human race was undergoing significant changes. There is therefore currently considerable interest in what they can tell us about the development of human consciousness and cognitive ability. But because the majority of the Eastern Desert rock art is, relatively, so recent it is not a field for study in these contexts and such matters are not addressed here. Our material comes not from a time of development of the human mind so much as a time of development of human society and political

Exclusions In addition to the geographical limits mentioned above this study is limited to an examination of what appear to be the older petroglyph images; those that appear to date from prehistoric (that is Predynastic) times or, if they are contemporary with the Dynastic era, are not obviously in the mainstream of Dynastic artistic images. To this end images of camels and horses, with or without riders, (and more obviously modern images such as motor cars) have not been included because they were comparatively recent

2

PREFACE

arrivals in Egypt. Similarly written inscriptions and graffiti (in hieroglyphs, Greek, Nabataean, Latin or modern languages) have been excluded from consideration. This means, for example, that the very extensive written and pictorial rock art in the vicinity of the Dynastic quarries in the Wadi Hammamat are not included. Origin of this Report This report presents the results of a study conducted by the author at the University of Liverpool, and is essentially the same as the thesis which resulted (Judd 2009). The main differences are that more illustrations, from a wider range of sources, have been included, and that the extensive data files (see Chapter 3, “Methodology” below) have been omitted. The reader can access these data files either via the thesis which is deposited in the library of the University of Liverpool, or by application to the author at [email protected].

3

2 BACKGROUND findings were published by the Egypt Exploration Society (Winkler 1938, 1939). The first two expeditions were devoted to the Nile valley and the Eastern Desert while the third went to the Western Desert and Uweinat. In the Eastern Desert Winkler explored the region east of Luxor, between and on either side of the modern roads from Qift to Quseir via the Wadi Hammamat and from Edfu to Marsa Alam via the Wadi Barramiya. This is the area visited by Weigall but whereas the earlier visitor had kept close to the main routes Winkler penetrated the interior of the desert guided by local ‘Abadi people. In an area roughly 100 kilometres by 50 between the Nile and the mountains which border the Red Sea he found and recorded some 60 sites with hundreds of individual petroglyphs.

DISCOVERY Early expeditions The inscriptions in the Eastern Desert have been known to western travellers for many years but to start with the petroglyphs went unnoticed or were ignored. Lepsius, for example, while travelling from Qena to Quseir in March 1845 "found the cartouches of the sun-worshipper Amenophis IV and his queen, with the shining sun sculptured over them" on the sandstone rock wall (Lepsius 1852 p317). Today this inscription is still to be seen, clear to every passer-by (Figure 1). It is surprising however that Lepsius did not notice, or did not attach importance to, the countless petroglyphs of boats and animals, almost as obvious, in the vicinity.

Extension of Winkler's work (and indeed his life) was cut short by the Second World War. Interest in the Eastern Desert petroglyphs was rekindled by Resch, who in 1960 visited the Wadis Hammamat and Barramiya and published his observations together with a selection of petroglyph images from elsewhere in the Eastern Desert and the Nile Valley as far south as the Second Cataract (Resch 1967). Červíček’s major publication duplicates and extends Resch’s work. It includes many more of Frobenius’ records together with important attempts to classify and interpret the images (Červíček 1974).

There were other visitors in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth and their interest in the petroglyphs grew, although slowly to start with. Green travelled in the region around the Wadi Hammamat and noted “numerous prehistoric drawings” including several of boats and one in the Wadi Gudami showing an ibex being hunted by archers accompanied by dogs (Green 1903, 1909a, 1909b). At about the same time Arthur Weigall made a rather more systematic attempt to seek out and record the petroglyphs. In 1907 and 1908 he journeyed by camel through the Eastern Desert and in 1909 published his observations in the form of a travel diary which includes drawings of some of the most striking images he saw at Kanais and in the Wadi Hammamat (including the Akhenaton cartouches that Lepsius had noted 60 years before) (Weigall 1909). His survey was limited by the fact that he kept closely to the established routes which since his time have become the modern roads.

In the 1980s the new metalled roads across the desert gave ready access to certain areas and several more petroglyph sites were found. In 1985 Fuchs explored Kanais and the Wadi Barramiya and somewhat later published a detailed account of the new sites he had discovered (Fuchs 1989). Susan and Donald Redford visited and published descriptions of some of the sites close to the Wadi Hammamat road (Redford and Redford 1989). In the 1990s Huyge revisited some of the sites recorded by Winkler near El Hosh and documented them (Huyge 1998), and also explored hitherto unrecorded sites in the vicinity of El Kab.

In 1926 important surveys of the Nile Valley between El Kab and Aswan, the Wadi Abbad, and the vicinity of the Gebel Abrak to the south-east were made by the German 8th DIAFE (Deutsche Inner-Afrikanische Forschungsexpedition) under the leadership of Leo Frobenius. Unfortunately its findings were not published for many years. Resch included some of the DIAFE findings in his selection of images (Resch 1967) and more appeared a few years later in Červíček’s compilation (Červíček 1974). Both Resch and Červíček provide valuable summaries of the early exploration of the Eastern Desert.

Current interest It was only in the late 1990s that two technical advances, reliable off-road vehicles and navigation by the Global Positioning System (GPS), so facilitated access to the desert itself that it became possible to follow up Winkler’s work and extend it. The findings of some of the most recent expeditions have been the subjects of the two recent publications (Rohl 2000; Morrow and Morrow 2002). These have made available details of many hitherto unrecorded petroglyph sites. Between them they list 159 “new” sites (Morrow and Morrow 2000 pp230-231) and contain about 990 photographs of petroglyphs. Even allowing for some duplication with older publications they make available several thousand new petroglyph images, and it is not surprising that they have excited a lot of

Because of the delay in publishing the DIAFE data the first person to bring the petroglyphs to general attention, particularly that of the English-speaking world, was Hans Winkler who made three expeditions in early 1936 and the winter seasons of 1936-7 and 1937-8. The last two of these were financed by Sir Robert Mond and selections of the

5

ROCK ART OF THE EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

occasional trees of acacia, tamarisk and other species. The Wadi Abu Wasil (Figure 2) is typical. Sometimes there are flowers to soften the otherwise harsh landscape. A few gazelles survive on the attenuated pasture of the wadis and in the rockier places there are hiraxes and ibexes. The desert is home to a few groups of wandering Bedouin people who keep small herds of sheep and camels. North of the Wadi Hammamat road is the territory of the Ma’azi people, members of the Ma’aza tribe, while to the south live the ‘Abadi people of the ‘Ababda tribe (Hobbs 1989).

interest (Wilkinson 2003, Butzer et al 2004). It is mainly these “new” data with which this study is concerned. There have been subsequent similar expeditions, in some of which the present author has participated. More systematic work continues to be done by Huyge, who has continued his investigations in the vicinity of Gebel Silsila in the Nile Valley (Huyge et al 2007), and others working near Aswan (for example Storemyr 2008). A recurrent theme in the story of these petroglyphs, irritating to those engaged in research, is the tendency of interest or funds to wane between the collection of data and their publication. Some at least of Frobenius’ data remain unpublished. Winkler’s publications included only a selection of his photographs: many more remain in the archives of the Egypt Exploration Society (although moves are believed to be afoot to publish them). None of the results of expeditions in the Eastern Desert since 2001 have been made public. Thus although Rohl and the Morrows have provided us with a valuable and reasonably complete corpus of the currently published data on the petroglyphs of the Eastern Desert, we know that more data exist and, it is to be hoped, will shortly become available. An estimate of just how complete the current corpus is, is given below.

The whole landscape is heavily eroded, in places by water but mostly by the wind. Chemical attack by water precipitated as dew weakens grain boundaries in some rocks and causes exfoliation in others. Damage to the crystal structure is exacerbated by the stresses caused by the severe diurnal temperature changes and the weakened rock surface is then vulnerable to erosion by wind-blown sand and dust (McCullagh 1978). Erosion rates can be as high as a millimetre per year, and over the millennia the sandstone in particular can be cut into fantastic shapes, often with deep rounded hollows, some small, the size of peas, clustered along the bedding lines like the perforations in an unused sheet of postage stamps, others up to a metre across (Breed et al 1997). In places this has left the rock weak and brittle so that its jagged surface crumbles underfoot.

THE EASTERN DESERT Terrain

Patina The Eastern Desert is a desert of rock and gravel, with only a little sand. Between Edfu and Qift the Nile is bordered on its right by a narrow cultivable plain behind which are low hills divided by an array of wadis. To the south the hills are mainly of red Nubian sandstone with igneous dykes and intrusions, but north of the Qusier road (around 26º north) they are mainly limestone. To the east they rise higher until they reach the jagged igneous mountains which overlook the Red Sea coast (Said 1962). The region of interest for this study is indicated in Map 1, which shows the main wadis including those in which most of the petroglyphs are to be found. The smaller wadis, which make up an intricate and confusing network, are not shown.

Rock exposed to the atmosphere undergoes weathering which causes chemical changes in the surface layer. Water, which may be from rain or dew, diffuses into the rock and causes mobile ions, typically of iron and manganese, to migrate to the surface. The thickness of the zone affected by weathering, sometimes called a “weathering rind”, increases with time on a geological scale and typically may reach 5 millimetres in a few million years (Bednarik 2007 p217). At the surface a patina may be formed. This is a layer typically between 0.2 and 1 millimetre thick consisting partly of the metallic compounds from the weathering rind and partly of windblown dust. It is coloured by the metals, red by iron and black by manganese. There is some evidence that micro-organisms may be involved in the formation of the patina (Watson 1997). Sometimes the patina takes on a shiny appearance and may be called “rock varnish”, but in the Eastern Desert it is more usually matt. The iron and manganese compounds that give the patina its colour are stable under neutral conditions but are readily soluble in an even slightly acidic environment. There is a significant increase in solubility if the hydrogen ion concentration is reduced from pH=7 (neutral) to pH=6 (slightly acidic) (see for example Bednarik 2007 p228).

The region experiences almost no rainfall except for rare but sometimes severe storms in the mountains. The wadis are normally quite dry and are floored with stones and gravel and in places areas of silt. The influence of water is apparent in that the floors of the wadis are level and in many places have been scoured into channels by the flash floods which occur at intervals of perhaps five or ten years. The effect of these floods can easily be seen because in many places the silt has a smooth crust that has cracked and curled as it dried. Some wadis are completely bare but in others, presumably where flood water is retained in the subsoil, there is a little vegetation consisting of dry thorny bushes and grasses with

The sandstone of the Eastern Desert forms a weathering rind that is yellow or salmon pink, but most of the surfaces

6

BACKGROUND

exposed to the atmosphere acquire a patina which may be of any colour from orange-red to brown or black. In the quarries in the Wadi Hammamat, for example, it is a characteristic chocolate brown. The patina can easily be removed by hammering or scraping, revealing the underlying weathered rock which is much lighter in colour and contrasts strikingly. Thus the patinated rock provides an ideal surface for drawing or writing: the image or inscription can be made with a minimum of physical effort, and initially it is prominently visible. However as soon as it is exposed the rock begins to form a new patina, so the work of the artist becomes gradually fainter until, eventually, it is the same colour as the surrounding undisturbed patinated surface and distinguishable only by its slight indentation. The rate of re-patination and the information it gives about the age of the petroglyph is discussed below in Chapter 8.

lasted until about 5300 BC when the climate began to dry. Desiccation advanced from the north and by 3500 BC only isolated places such as the Gilf Kebir had sufficient rain to allow permanent habitation. The people retreated to the south or to the Nile Valley and by about 1500 BC, in the desert, only the western oases were inhabited.

The visibility of petroglyphs on sandstone can also be affected by a change in environmental acidity such as might, for example, be the result of industrial pollution. As explained above this might reduce the thickness of the patina or remove it altogether. Fortunately this is – so far – not a problem in the Eastern Desert.

Petroglyph sites

Although these climate studies are not related specifically to the Eastern Desert it can be assumed that the conclusions apply to it, at least in general terms. If anything the Eastern Desert would have been somewhat wetter than the Western because it benefited from the rain that fell in the Red Sea mountains (Majer 1992). As pointed out above to this day flash floods support a little vegetation, some animals and a few people. THE PETROGLYPHS

Petroglyphs are usually, but not exclusively, found in groups which form identifiable sites. The basic requirement for a petroglyph site is an area of rock surface that is smooth enough and large enough to bear one or more satisfactory images. Individual images are usually at least 20 centimetres or so across, so a rock surface has to extend for about half a metre or more to allow room for several images. Many sites are much larger than this. In some places the rock has cleaved naturally to form smooth vertical surfaces which can be several metres high and wide. These are ideal petroglyph sites, acting like huge scraper boards. Images stand out clearly against the brown or black background but fade slowly as the patina re-forms.

The patina formed on limestone is not differentiated in colour from the substrate in such a marked way as that on sandstone, so petroglyphs on limestone are not nearly so prominent. Climate and population Sediments deposited in ancient lakes have provided rich sources of data on the changes in the climate of north-east Africa. Deposits from Lake Chad (Said 1997), a lake once trapped behind a sand dune in the Wadi Bakht on the eastern side of the Gilf Kebir (Linstädter and Kröpelin 2004) and the lake once present at Nabta Playa (Schild and Wendorf 2001) have revealed consistent information on the variation of rainfall during the latter part of the Holocene. This has been collated with data on human occupation of the region to give an account of the environment of Egypt and the neighbouring regions (Kuper and Kröpelin 2006). Before about 9300 BC the whole of the Sahara was as arid as it is now and apart from the Nile Valley devoid of water and uninhabited. Radiocarbon dates from the lake deposits indicate that quite quickly, within a few generations, the tropical rain belt shifted northward to provide semi-arid or semi-humid conditions throughout the Sahara. The improved conditions were soon exploited by huntergatherer people who moved into what had become a savannah able to support the animals and wild grain they needed. It is possible that they also came with the knowledge that enabled them to cultivate grain (Wendorf and Schild 1984). At the same time most of the settlements in the Nile Valley were abandoned, possibly because of increased flooding. The comparatively benign conditions

In many places the walls of the wadis, which may be 10 to 30 metres high, have at their feet jumbles of boulders, typically 1 to 5 metres across, sometimes with narrow passages or caves between them. The boulders, like the cliff faces from which they have fallen, often have smooth patinated surfaces suitable for drawing. In some wadis there are many large smooth rock surfaces available for petroglyphs while in others there are only smaller boulders. Many of the larger sites are in prominent positions that are easily visible from a distance, as if the artists using them wanted their images to be seen. However in some wadis there are rock surfaces that look to the modern observer as if they would have formed ideal petroglyph sites, yet they are void. There is a little evidence that rock surfaces facing north or west (so that they are in the shade for the hottest part of the day) were preferred, but otherwise it is not clear why some were used and others rejected. The term “petroglyph site” is used in different ways by different authors. In many cases what constitutes a site is clear in that several images are located close together on a rock face or group of faces within say 10 metres of each

7

ROCK ART OF THE EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

individual images). These subjective estimates are based on experience in the field. It is unlikely that many sites in the part of the Nile Valley covered by the UNESCO expeditions were missed, but any that were are now inaccessible.

other, and separated by a large distance from any others. However in some cases, not in the Eastern Desert, petroglyphs are scattered over a wide area, the division of which into sites is to a degree arbitrary. This applies particularly to the vicinity of the Second Cataract where the Joint Scandinavian Expedition found thousands of petroglyphs in an area of some 4 square kilometres. For the purpose of reporting this area was divided into 32 “sites” and then subdivided into 257 “stations” (Hellström and Langballe 1970 p26). Other authors do not make a distinction between sites and stations and would probably have counted some if not all of Hellström’s “stations” as “sites”. In this study the terminologies used by the various authors have been followed, but it should be borne in mind that some of their sites have many more individual petroglyph images than others. For example Hellström’s site 157 consists of 23 stations containing a total of 488 separate rock surfaces, some of which bear 5 or more images.

It is important to note that petroglyphs can easily be overlooked. In 1937, at a site near the entrance to the Wadi Atwani, Winkler found images of elephants apparently being hunted (Winkler 1938 plate XXVII.3). When the site was examined again in 2000 these images could not be found (Morrow and Morrow 2002 p193). It is possible that they had been destroyed in the meantime (either naturally or by human activity), but it is also possible that in spite of being searched for they were missed. Where a petroglyph is not marked by a distinct difference in colour the ease with which it can be seen may depend critically on the angle of illumination, and therefore on the time of day. The 2000 search was made in the afternoon: perhaps if the searchers had been there in the morning the images would have been obvious.

Taphonomy

Thirdly some petroglyphs have been lost. Some have been buried by sand and gravel deposited by flash floods. At site SAL7 in the Wadi Umm Salam, for example, there are partly-buried petroglyphs at the present ground level (Rohl 2000 p62.13). It is very likely that there are others under the gravel at this site, and there may well be other sites that are completely buried. There has been no excavation (or at least none has been authorised) to find out. In addition some petroglyphs will have been erased by wind-erosion and some will have been destroyed by natural collapse of the rock surface on which they were drawn. Others may have been destroyed deliberately. Some sites have probably been lost by modern quarrying and road-building operations. A few sites near the roads have been marred by modern spray-paint vandalism.

This study is based on petroglyphs of which images are available, either in publications or in photographs taken at so far unpublished sites by the author. It is important to recognise that this database is not complete for several reasons. Firstly several authors present photographs or drawings of only a selection of the petroglyphs they refer to in their descriptions of the sites (because of the sheer numbers of individual images). In the publications the texts indicate that most of the observed images, and probably all the largest and clearest ones, have been published in pictorial form. It has nevertheless to be recognised that some images are omitted and that the omissions may not be a random sample of the images at the site. The omissions may have been selected preferentially because they are unclear or because they did not excite the author’s interest. As mentioned above Winkler and Červíček published only selections of the available photographs, and undoubtedly they selected the “best” images according to some unstated criteria.

In view of these unquantifiable losses it has to be assumed that the selection of images published is representative, in a statistical sense, of the images that were originally drawn and that those omitted, either because the authors did not see fit to publish them or because in the course of fieldwork they were missed or because they were destroyed (by natural or human agencies) before they could be recorded, were a random selection the absence of which does not distort conclusions drawn. This assumption, on which all the analysis in this study depends, is clearly questionable. It is however common to all rock art studies and there is no alternative.

Secondly, obviously, the publications cover only the known petroglyph sites. Undoubtedly there remain petroglyph sites to be discovered and reported. In the Eastern Desert the immediate vicinities of the modern metalled roads joining the Valley to the Red Sea coast have been thoroughly searched for petroglyphs in the years since the Second World War, and most of the major wadis in the off-road region west of the Red Sea mountains and between 24º 30´ and 26º 30´ north have been explored in the period since the late 1990s when GPS location became available. In this area, in wadis that have been searched by teams of at least two or three people on foot, it is the author’s estimate, or rather guess, that no more than 10% of major petroglyph sites have been missed, and no more than about 30% of minor sites (i.e. sites with 5 or fewer

Scope As pointed out in the Preface above the intention here is to examine the older, Predynastic, images and to pass over the more recent images involving camels and horses and the written inscriptions (including the extensive written and

8

BACKGROUND

pictorial art of the Dynastic quarries in the Wadi Hammamat (see Morrow and Morrow 2002 pp213-224)). There is some uncertainty about excluding camels and horses because some animal petroglyphs are so unclear that it is not certain what species is depicted. In most cases, however, camels have a clearly-delineated hump and moreover are lightly patinated indicating that they are relatively recent. There are many images of warriors armed with lances and shields and mounted on horses or camels. Though of great interest these have been excluded from the present study. Images of boats are treated in a different way. As explained in Chapter 8 below there are reasons to think that some of them date to the Predynastic period and others to the Dynastic. Because it is not possible to determine which are which in all cases, all the boat images are included here. Almost all of the rock art images from the Eastern Desert so far recorded are petroglyphs - that is they are cut or carved into the rock. They are coloured only insofar as the patina was removed when the petroglyph was made and where it has not re-formed or has reformed only partly the substrate material shows lighter. The other main category of rock art, pictograms made by painting the surface of the rock, is represented by only a handful of examples in the Eastern Desert (Rohl 2000 p129, Morrow and Morrow 2002 p112, Hobbs and Goodman 1995). They are not included here. Moreover the far greater number of paintings in the Western Desert (Zboray 2005) have not been included in the comparison with the wider Egyptian rock art. Most of the petroglyphs reported here depict people, animals or boats, and there are a few in the form of geometric shapes, patterns and sinuous lines. In what follows the four main classes of petroglyphs – animals, people, boats and geometric patterns – are treated separately. There is of course some overlap between the classes because in some cases (as noted below) people are shown in association with animals and in others people are passengers in boats.

9

3 ANIMALS available, supplemented only occasionally and as noted by reference to the verbal descriptions.

INTRODUCTION Sources of data

For brevity in the rest of this chapter references to Winkler (1938) are denoted by “W”, to Rohl (2000) are by “R”, and to Morrow and Morrow (2002) by “M”.

This chapter consists of a detailed analysis of the animal petroglyphs in the part of the Eastern Desert for which data in the form of images have recently become available, supplemented by images relating to the same part of the desert from earlier publications. Images of anthropoids and boats, and other images and patterns, are described in Chapter 4. There are more animal images than all other images put together.

Methodology This chapter consists of collation and statistical analysis, followed by description and analysis in terms of form. The first step was to categorise the petroglyph images. A list of 11 categories, into one of which each animal petroglyph image (with a few very ambiguous exceptions) could be placed, was drawn up as follows:

Animal images have been collected from the following sources: Winkler Rohl Morrow and Morrow

Antelopes, Cattle, Crocodiles, Dogs, Elephants, Felines, Giraffes, Hippopotamuses, Ibexes, Ostriches, and Snakes.

1938 2000 2002.

To these have been added unpublished images of petroglyphs observed and photographed by the present author in the region of the Wadis Sha’it and Muweilhat. These sources provide, from 284 sites, the petroglyph images on which this chapter is based. The sources actually list 308 sites in total but several of Winkler’s sites have not been included because although in his 1938 publication he describes the petroglyphs at all of them he does not include photographs in every case. Map 2 shows the locations of the 284 sites.

In some cases, when the sources allowed it, the categories were made more detailed. For example some of the antelopes have distinctively-shaped horns, allowing addaxes, gerenuks and oryxes to be distinguished (although a category of antelopes of undetermined species has to be retained).

Many of the images published by Resch (1967) are repeated by Rohl. The sites reported by Fuchs (1989) in the Wadi Barramiya and Redford and Redford (1989) in the Wadi Hammamat are covered by the Morrows. Images from the Nile Valley reported by Winkler, Červíček and others have not been included in this chapter, and neither have those reported by Resch and Červíček from sites in the region of the Wadi Hodein. These images are referred to however in Chapters 5 and 7 below respectively.

The next step was to set up a Microsoft Excel file, called a “register”, that records the presence or absence of each category of petroglyph at each of the 284 Eastern Desert sites. The register file was then interrogated to produce a list of the references to every occurrence of a specific category of image (for example all the giraffes). For the most significant categories each of the listed images was then examined and its characteristics were recorded, mainly in tabular form but with additional notes as appropriate, in a new Excel file relating to that category. In these files the data on each petroglyph include the name of its site together with the location of the site in the form of latitude and longitude, and a reference to an illustration of it (usually in the form of the number of a page in one of the publications). For the less significant categories only the sites at which the images occur were recorded. The result is a folder of files, one for each of the largest categories (for example cattle) and combined files for the smaller categories (such as hippopotamuses or sheep), that provide

Winkler published only a selection of his photographs, accompanied by brief descriptions of his other observations. The rest of the photographs, were catalogued by Červíček (1986, 1993) but he was able to publish only a few of them. The modern publications include photographs of most of the petroglyphs observed together with drawings of some of them and descriptions of the sites which give some details of the unpublished images. Because the verbal descriptions by the various authors vary in detail and terminology the present analysis is confined to petroglyphs of which images, either photographs or drawings, are

11

ROCK ART OF THE EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

differences of colour and marking (Haltenorth and Diller 1980; Dorst and Dandelot 1970).

the data for the statistical or descriptive analysis described below. The records of their positions allow the sites to be mapped by means of the Excel “Chart” facility. The files are all available in the thesis on which this report is based (Judd 2009), where more detailed descriptions are given.

Few remains of giraffes have been found in Egypt, and those only in the Western Desert, the Delta and the Nile Valley (Boessneck 1988). Based on the incidence of petroglyphs it has been concluded that giraffes inhabited the whole of Egypt south of Memphis until they were driven out by man around 3000 BC as increased aridity forced them to attack crops (Osborn 1998).

The petroglyph sites are referred to where possible by means of the nomenclature used by Morrow and Morrow (pp230-231). The sites observed by the author but not published elsewhere are given the prefixes “DU”, “MU”, “SB” and “SH”, referring respectively to sites in the Wadis Dunqash, Muweilhat, Sibrit and Sha’it, all of which are part of the watershed that drains into the Nile at Kom Ombo. The nomenclature of the wadis in which the sites are situated follows that of Morrow and Morrow where possible.

From the sources listed above a database of 27 Eastern Desert sites with 59 giraffe images has been assembled. The locations of the giraffe sites are shown in Map 3. Style The giraffes are drawn in styles ranging from carefullydepicted realistic images to crudely-worked caricatures with grossly exaggerated features. Within this range some stylistic features recur, on the basis of which it is possible to draw up a detailed classification scheme (Judd 2006a). However the value of such a detailed scheme is in practice small, partly because the classification of the individual images is arbitrary and has a large subjective element, and partly because it is very difficult to relate most of the distinctions between types of image to any other difference – in location, dating or context, for example. The only difference of style that seems to be related to wider circumstances is that between more and less realism. For that reason the giraffe images are classified here into two types as follows.

SAVANNAH ANIMALS Most prominent among the wild animals portrayed in the petroglyphs of the Eastern Desert are species currently to be found in the savannahs of East Africa. There are large numbers of giraffes and elephants together with rather fewer felines that might be lions or leopards. Other “big game” animals such as rhinoceroses are absent. Giraffes

Type A These are the most realistic images, with a correct outline, sloping back and accurate proportions of the neck. In some cases the reticulated pattern of the animal’s hide is shown, sometimes the outline is filled (either by abrading or hammering the rock surface), while in others it is left open. Type B Giraffes of this type are represented diagrammatically. The body is shown in some cases as an oval and in others as a rectangular box or a single broad stroke. The neck, legs and tail are usually shown as single strokes. In some cases the neck is inclined at a realistic angle while in others it is vertical, horizontal or even depressed below the horizontal. Often the neck and sometimes the tail are exaggerated in length.

Present-day giraffes inhabit savannahs in which there are sufficient trees and bushes to provide food. They browse the leaves and twigs of leguminous trees such as acacia, impervious to its thorns. They will also take crops such as maize when available. They need water every second day unless their food is lush. Most live in territorial herds consisting of up to 30 or so individuals dominated by a bull, but old bulls may be solitary. Male giraffes fight by dealing blows with the top of the head, which is armed with up to five small horns covered with skin and hair. A giraffe can gallop at over 50 kilometres per hour. When running, or when stressed, it holds its tail curved over its back. Apart from man giraffes have no predators other than lions which will take the young. There is a single species but up to five races are recognized, distinguished by

Type A is an amalgamation of the earlier types 1 and 2, and Type B of types 3,4,5 and 6 (Judd 2006a). Tracing 1 shows typical examples. Type A giraffes can also be seen in Figures 8 and 16, and Type B in Figures 18 and 20.

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ANIMALS

different in nature. Site SAL14 includes a large rock face covered with hundreds of individual images, mostly of animals, that occasionally overlap several deep but in the main are separate and do not cross (M p62.F). Among them there are nine giraffes, distributed apparently at random and drawn mostly in the unrealistic Type B style. Of these five have exaggerated cloven hooves and 4 are in the “hairy tail” style described above and shown in Tracing 2. At site SB4 in contrast there are eight giraffe images that run over images of ibexes and abstract patterns, and in some cases over each other. The giraffes are all drawn in the same style, giving the appearance of a herd. At each of these sites some if not all the giraffes appear as if they were drawn by a single artist. It is not clear what significance if any is to be attached to the existence of these two “giraffe sites”. They might mark places that were particularly frequented by giraffes, or alternatively they might be places frequented by people with a particular interest in giraffes, or even by one artist who especially liked drawing giraffes.

Of the 59 giraffe images 13 (22%) are of Type A and 46 (78%) of Type B. Without exception all the giraffe images are side views. Of the 59 images 31 face to the right and 28 to the left. The difference between the numbers facing right and left is not statistically significant and gives no reason to suppose that the artists chose the direction of their images other than at random. Three of the images (all of Type A) show giraffes with tails curled over their backs. As pointed out above this is a posture the animals adopt when running or stressed. However none of the three images gives any other indication of motion, and in fact all the images, of all types, are static. Twelve of the giraffes (19% of the total, all of Type B) have tails that are grossly exaggerated in length and, which is more remarkable, bear a sparse tuft of still more exaggerated terminal hairs. Most remarkable is the fact that 10 of these distinctive tails are at sites in the Wadi Umm Salam (sites SAL 4, 7, 10, 14, 29 and 36; M pp47.A, 62.F, 79.A and 85.B). Tracing 2 is an example. Figure 19 shows several more, and there is also one in Figure 6.

The orientations of the rock faces bearing 47 of the 59 giraffe images have been recorded. Of these 47, 19 (40%) face north, indicating a significant preference. Huyge (2002) has analyzed giraffe images in the region of El Kab and has found that 80% of them face left and 60% are on rock faces oriented to the west. He relates these preferences to the role of the giraffe as a heliophor, a bearer of the sungod on his diurnal journey. It will be seen that the giraffes in the Eastern Desert in general do not conform to this pattern in that there is no preference for left or right, but there is a preference for facing north. Of the 19 northoriented giraffes ten face to the left.

Distribution

Relationships

The most northerly giraffe petroglyph found so far is in the Wadi Qash (at site HW18, W Plate XIV.1). There are some in the central part of the Wadi Mineh and in the Wadi Barramiya and a few scattered elsewhere, but the main concentrations in the Eastern Desert are in and near the Wadi Umm Salam and at a major site in the Wadi Sibrit. Most of the giraffes appear singly or with one or two others, giving the overall impression that giraffes were usually seen and represented by the artists as individual animals. Only rarely were they represented as groups or herds. There are a few examples of a large giraffe being shown with a smaller one, presumably a calf, by its side (sites PC3, MUA17, SAL11 and MIY1:R p78 and M pp116.B, 56.I and 161.A). All of the giraffes are at sites which have other images, in most cases of other animals.

Almost all the giraffe images have no obvious pictorial relationship to the adjacent images. There are only two possible hunting scenes involving giraffes. A giraffe at site SAL10 in the Wadi Umm Salam (M p55.E) is surrounded by dogs, and one at site MUA17 in the Wadi Abu Mu Awwad (M p116) may be the quarry of a nearby archer. The Type A giraffes give an impression of being more recent than those of Type B. At sites MLM1 (Figures 6, 7 and 8) and MIY1 (M p161.A) realistic giraffes are clearly less heavily patinated than their diagrammatic fellows on the same or adjacent rock faces. At three sites, HAJ8 (M p41.E), SAL7 (M p52.P) and SB4, giraffe images conflict with images of boats. Probably at HAJ8 and SAL7, and certainly at SB4 , the boat lies over the giraffe, indicating that it was drawn later. At SB4 a small but noticeable difference in patination confirms this conclusion.

There is an average of two giraffes at each of the sites at which giraffes occur, but two sites are notable in that they have more than five giraffes. At sites SAL14 and SB4 there are respectively nine and eight giraffes. Both are extensive sites with many images including boats and human figures as well as animals of different species, but they are quite

13

ROCK ART OF THE EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

giraffes the artists appear to have chosen the direction of their images at random.

Elephants Currently African elephants are found in a range of habitats from rainforests to semi-deserts. They feed on a wide range of vegetable matter and in the main need to drink every day, although members of residual populations such as those at present inhabiting the Namibian desert have adapted to going up to four days without drinking (Gautier et al 1994). Typically they migrate long distances using established trails, seeking new growth to eat (Haltenorth & Diller 1980). African and Indian elephants can be distinguished by the line of the back. In African elephants it sags (i.e. it is concave upwards) whereas in the Indian animals it hogs (convex upwards). This may be important in the context of Egypt because it is believed that some Indian elephants were imported into Egypt in the aftermath of Alexander’s expedition (Scullard 1974).

There are no realistic images of elephants. Some of the Type A elephants have features that are quite remarkably unrealistic. Apart from the erect ears several have elongated trunks that project horizontally from the head and curve downwards only towards the extremity. Others have trunks held in a V-shape. Several have trunks that are longer than the animals’ legs. The tusks, if they are shown, sometimes project upwards above the top of the head. Some have crooked tusks. Sometimes the feet are shown as round blobs and in a few cases even as claws. Sometimes the penis is exaggerated. In most cases it is clear that the artist either had no intention of making an accurate realistic image of an elephant, or else he or she had never seen one and was working from an imprecise description. Few of the elephants have markings. One at site SAL4 Wadi Umm Salam (M p47.A) has spots (as does a nearby hippopotamus) and another at site JCB1 at Kanais (R p18.1) has a wavy line down its side. None has the zigzag lines born by elephants depicted on Naqada I pottery.

In the Neolithic before about 4000 BC elephants appear to have ranged all over Egypt and remains (some of which seem to have been imported as fossils) are reported from the Western Desert and the Fayyum (Gautier et al 1994). It seems likely that, like giraffes, they were gradually expelled by man because of the damage they did to crops, being pushed south of the Wadi Hammamat by about 2600 BC and being made extinct by about 2000 BC (Váhala 1972; Osborn 1998). Again, the main evidence for this is from the petroglyphs.

Distribution Images of elephants appear rather farther north than giraffe images. There are several in the Wadi Atwani and others scattered elsewhere with concentrations in the Wadis Abu Wasil, Umm Salam and Miya, but very rarely farther south.

The above sources give details of 28 sites with 41 elephant images. The locations of the elephant sites are shown in Map 3.

Almost all the elephants appear with other animals of various species and sometimes boats and anthropoids, and most appear singly or in pairs. However there is rarely any pictorial relationship with other images (except in the case of the possible family group noted below). In the main the elephants seem to be occupying the same rock surface as a matter of convenience, not necessity. There is, however, a concentration of elephant images (14 in all) at neighbouring sites in the Wadi Atwani and a few kilometres away in the Wadi Hammamat. At site ATW1 in the Wadi Atwani there is a group of five, all drawn in a similar style. Two are smaller than the rest and appear to be calves, giving the impression that the group is a family or small herd. (These images are reported by Winkler (Plate XXVII 3), but when the site was revisited in 2000 they could not be found (M p193).) Farther south at site MIY1 in the Wadi Miya there are seven, most of which are in a similar unrealistic style (Figure 22). Some of them clearly overlie images of ibexes, while appearing to be older than a neighbouring boat image and much older than a camel.

Style It is possible to identify two styles in which the elephants are drawn. Type A These are unrealistic images characterized by the ears of the animal being shown as raised above its head in a “butterfly” or “Mickey Mouse” manner. Type B These are shown with the ears hanging down normally, but otherwise are similar to Type A.

Elephants are conspicuous by their absence from site SAL14 which, although it contains images of dozens if not hundreds of animals in a confused mass, does not appear to have any elephants.

Tracing 3 shows examples of each and there are several Type A elephants in Figure 22. In all there are five Type B images (12%) and all the rest are of Type A. All 41 are side views and 20 of them face to the right. As in the case of the

14

ANIMALS

No feline petroglyph has been found north of the Wadi Hammamat road. There are 10 (12) between there and the Wadi Barramiya road, and a further 6 (8) to the south in the Wadi Sha’it. The first numbers relate to the images that are reasonably certain to represent felines of some sort while the numbers in brackets include the more indeterminate images that might not be felines at all.

There is an average of 1.5 elephants at the sites at which they occur. Only two sites have more than two elephants. Of the 32 elephant images of which the orientation has been recorded eight (25%) face north, more than in any other direction but not so many as to show a strong preference. Relationships

There are five images that clearly show a male lion’s mane. Two are in the Wadi Sha’it and two are in the Wadi Qash. Both of the latter appear to be quite recent and one of them is shown fighting a man who is armed with a sword and a shield (W Plate V.1). A fifth is towards the head of the Wadi Shallul and is peculiar in that it is one of a series of very clear and apparently fresh images that includes several animals clustered round a seated man. The group gives the impression of being comparatively recent, partly because of the lack of patination and partly because the man is sitting on what appears to be a stool (Figure 17).

The group of five elephants at site ATW1 in the Wadi Atwani is shown as being surrounded by figures, one of whom is an archer, suggesting that it may be the object of a hunt. There are no other elephant-hunting scenes. With the exception of this group none of the elephants seems to bear any relationship to any of the other animals around it. An elephant at site WAS2 in the Wadi Abu Wasil (M p172.A) may be tethered or trapped, but this interpretation is not certain. There is a little evidence that elephants are newer than some (but not all) of the other animal images. At site MIY1 elephants clearly overlie ibexes and a crocodile (or lizard). However in many cases similarity of style and patination indicate that the elephants are at least roughly contemporaneous with other animals and boats. Sites ER1, TJ2 and SAL38 (R pp148.7 and 126.3 and M p87.B) are examples. The comical Type A image at site GP1 in the southern Wadi Umm Hajalij (R p36.9) presents a difficult problem of chronology because it is clearer and less heavily patinated than the adjacent boats, and indeed it looks as if it is quite recent. However this particular wadi is on or close to one of the routes between the Red Sea ports such as Berenike and the Nile Valley, and it is known that in the Ptolemaic era elephants were captured in Ethiopa, shipped up the Red Sea, and then driven across the desert to be used for military purposes (Scullard 1974). It is possible that this image alone represents an elephant that was present not in the wild state but in captivity. On the other hand there is no indication of bonds or captors so this must remain a speculation.

At site SHA4 in the Wadi Shallul three elegant felines surround a giraffe and appear to be attacking it. There are two other giraffes and an elephant, all in the same flowing style, in the group (Figure 16). At site SBC in the Wadi Sibrit felines (leopards, possibly) are shown attacking an antelope: they are depicted with legs and bodies extended in the chase (Tracing 4). At site MUA10 a particularly realistic feline is chasing a Beisa oryx, and nearby is another Beisa oryx being chased by what might be a greyhound (M p108.K and L). None of the felines appears in a human context. At site SHH in the Wadi Sha’it there is a spotted animal which might be a hyena.

Felines In contrast to the herbivorous animals the predators of the savannah are rarely represented in the petroglyphs. There are however a few images of felines. Some of these are recognizably lions but the majority are indeterminate: they might be leopards, cheetahs or possibly lionesses. None gives an indication of the colouration or patterning of the animal’s coat. Most are in a more realistic style than any of the giraffes or elephants. They are animated and show the animal in motion, and in general give a quite different impression from that of the stiff, formalized, caricature-like giraffes and elephants.

Preferred sites The overall impression of the savannah animals is that the giraffes and elephants were usually seen and represented by the artists as individual animals. Rarely they were represented as groups or herds. In several cases they were grouped with other animals. A few sites seem to have been of special significance in that they attracted many images, in some cases of giraffes, in others of elephants. Yet others had a different significance in that many images of different animals (as well as people and in some cases

15

ROCK ART OF THE EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

contrast at site MU3 in the Wadi Muweilhat a man spears a crocodile (this is the only crocodile image south of the Wadi Barramiya). At sites IQA4 in the Wadi Abu Iqaydi and MUA10 in the Wadi Mu Awwad there are crocodiles seen from the side.

boats) were crowded onto them and superimposed several deep. At these it appears to have been more important to the artist that the image should be present on the favoured site than that it should be seen clearly (although it should be remembered that if the images were cut over a lengthy enough period the earlier ones would have become partially obscured by patination, allowing a new image to be more prominent than it is now). In general elephants seem to have been of less importance than giraffes to the rock artists, and the predators were of less interest still.

There is no clear temporal relationship to the other animal petroglyphs. In the Wadi Umm Salam a crocodile lies over, and is therefore presumably more recent than, a giraffe (site SAL14, M p60), but in the Wadi Miya one appears to be under, and so older than, boats and elephants (site MIY1, M p162). The side-view crocodile in the Wadi Mu Awwad appears to be more recent than a neighbouring ostrich and is drawn in a different and much more realistic style (M p107).

RIVERINE ANIMALS Crocodiles The sources of petroglyph data have illustrations of what may be intended to represent crocodiles at 18 sites in the Eastern Desert, but as almost all of them show the animal as seen from above, and as there is no way of judging the intended scale, many of them could be lizards (Tracing 5). In view of the obvious interest of the petroglyph artists in the larger animals for the rest of their work, however, it is assumed here that they are all crocodiles. Map 4 shows the location of these sites. (Winkler (1938) mentions crocodiles at several other sites but does not give illustrations.)

Hippopotamuses Hippopotamuses depend on large bodies of warm water edged by sandbanks or grasslands rather than forest. They are capable of walking up to a kilometre to new waters and of travelling significant distances by moving from one water-hole to the next (Haltenorth & Diller 1980). Hippos became extinct in Egypt only in the nineteenth century AD. The sources provide illustrations or descriptions of hippos at 23 sites spread thinly through the Eastern Desert (Tracing 6). Map 4 shows the sites. There are several in the Wadi Umm Salam and its vicinity and a few in the Wadi Hammamat, but there is only one in the southern wadis draining towards Kom Ombo. Some appear in rough outline only while in others the outline is filled with speckles, but there are too few hippopotamus images to make any connection between stylistic differences and location. There is a realistic image at site SH8 in the Wadi Shai’t. Two hippos in the Wadi Mineh and nearby (sites PC3 and MUA11) appear to be tethered or trapped and one of them seems also to be speared (R p78; Resch 1967 p51). A little farther south at site SAL5 in the Wadi Umm Salam two hippos may be being hunted (M p49.D and E).

In the Wadi Atwani crocodiles appear in large numbers in a unique context. There, at sites ATW6 and AB2, on two separate rock faces high on the vertical wall of the wadi, there are twenty or so crocodiles along with many human hand prints and several patches of linked lines that look like small nets or possibly pieces of a honeycomb (R p146, W Plates XXVI.1 and 2, Figure 3). There are no other recognizable animals, human figures or boats. The rock surfaces face north. They are inaccessible from the present wadi floor, but it is possible that at some time in the past the wadi was filled to a higher level than now with gravel that has since been washed away by flash floods. Nothing similar to this group of petroglyphs has been found at any other site in the Eastern Desert (although there are some in the Nile Valley near Aswan – see Chapter 5 below).

The hippos in the Wadi Umm Salam are adjacent to giraffes and other animals but appear from the degree of patination to be somewhat later in date. The realistic hippo in the Wadi Sha’it shares a rock face with an equally realistic goat. The style suggests that both are comparatively recent.

Apart from these two sites crocodiles appear singly. They usually accompany several other animals but seem to bear no pictorial relation to them. Only a few crocodiles are shown in a human context. In the Wadi Barramiya there is a man wearing a plume on his head and holding a tethered crocodile (site ED1, R p41). At site DAH2 in the Wadi Dahabiya one has seized a man in its jaws (M p150), and in

Aquatic environments If the petroglyph artists drew images of animals in their immediate vicinity there must have been large expanses of permanent water – lakes or slow-flowing river reaches – in

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North of the Wadi Barramiya images of ibexes are very common. They appear to date from all periods, in that some are darkly patinated while others are quite light and fresh indicating a relatively recent date. Some are clearly older than adjacent images of camels (MLM1, R p95.7) while others appear to be contemporaneous (MIN3, M p184.A). Several at site MLM1 appears to be older than, while the one at SHE seems to be of the same age as, nearby cattle. The impression is that for many centuries the simple image of an ibex with exaggerated horns was popular, easy to copy, and often repeated. This implies that they were present throughout the period, presumably in large numbers. South of the Wadi Barramiya ibexes, though present, are not so common and they never dominate the petroglyph sites as they often do farther north.

what is now the Eastern Desert. The large numbers of crocodile images in the Wadi Atwani and of hippos in the Wadi Umm Salam suggest that these might have been such sites. However if this is the case it is very curious that there are no hippos in the Wadi Atwani and very few crocodiles in the Wadi Umm Salam. Map 4 shows that there is indeed no close correlation between crocodile sites and hippo sites, although if there was enough water for one there would presumably have been enough for the other. This seems to imply that for these animals at least the artists were not copying things that were before their eyes as they drew. They must have had some other purpose for drawing them than to represent what was present in the vicinity. And if the animals were not present where they were drawn, there may not have been lakes or pools in the wadis of what now is the Eastern Desert at the time the petroglyphs were drawn.

Most ibexes appear as individual images scattered among other animals. At site MUL in the Wadi Muweilhat there is a row of four clearly meant to be seen as a group (Figure 29). There is another group of ibexes at site HAM5 in the Wadi Hammamat (M p211.B), but although they are similar in style they are drawn less carefully than those in the Wadi Muweilhat. Comparisons like this seem to indicate that in the south of the region, where ibexes were rarer, more attention was paid to their portrayal. Farther north, where they were common, they were drawn frequently but with little interest or attention to detail.

COMMON DESERT ANIMALS AND BIRDS Ibexes Images of quadrupeds with tails and huge horns curved in a semicircle right over the body abound in the Eastern Desert (Tracing 7). There are several in Figure 6 and 15, for example, and one in Figure 18 has particularly exaggerated horns. Out of the 221 sites which have images of animals 181 (82%) have at least one of these images, and some have dozens. There are more images of them than of any other animal: only cattle (see below) approach them in profusion. They are often drawn crudely, with the body represented in outline as a rectangular box. They are usually assumed to be ibexes although, bearing in mind the artists’ tendency to exaggerate an animal’s prominent

Ibexes appear as the quarry in at least 16 hunting scenes (at sites HAJ9, MIY4, MIY5, WAS3 and HAM2; M pp42.C, 164.B, 166.C, 175.G and 204.D). Two neighbouring hunting scenes (SAL8, and SAL9, M pp53.C and 54.E), apparently done by the same hand, show an ibex attacked by dogs with a man holding a staff in attendance. There is a very large detailed representation of an ibex at site MU3 drawn over several other animals. At site MUA10 an ibex has been drawn over a heavily-patinated geometric pattern. An ibex at site MUL has the dotted outline of an owl of Pharaonic form drawn over it. Ostriches Ostriches were widespread in Egypt until recently but are never now found in the Eastern Desert except possibly in the far south. They are well-adapted to desert conditions and can go for months, possibly years, without water. They feed off a wide range of plants including flowers and seedheads of trees such as acacia, and desert succulents. They avoid tall grass and woodland and seldom seek shade. They are sometimes found in herds of 40 or more (Brown et al 1982).

features, some of them could be scimitar-horned oryxes. Ibexes are animals of the mountainous desert or semidesert with sparse vegetation. They can survive in regions having little water. They were common throughout eastern Egypt in historical times but are now rarely encountered in the desert. They survive in the mountains (Hobbs 1989) and there are a few in Sudan and Ethiopia (Haltenorth & Diller 1980). Ibexes appear to have been widespread east of the Nile in prehistoric times, but as remains cannot be distinguished from those of domestic goats with certainty this conclusion is based mainly on the proliferation of petroglyphs in the region.

Images of ostriches appear at 139 (63%) of the 221 sites that have animal images. Figures 15 and 21 have examples. There are many ostrich petroglyphs in the Wadi Umm Salam and the neighbouring wadis, and elsewhere in the

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ROCK ART OF THE EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

At 44 petroglyph sites there are 102 images of an animal depicted almost identically and with precision, but which cannot be identified with certainty. It is a quadruped with a tail, a short upright neck, long erect ears (or possibly short straight horns), a broad blunt muzzle curved slightly downwards and, most distinctively, an appendage which appears to hang down from the back of its head (Tracing 9, Figures 15 and 27). The possibilities that the appendage is meant to represent a mane and that the animal has long ears has led it to be identified as a wild ass or donkey. The sites where they appear are shown in Map 5.

Eastern Desert they are widespread though in smaller numbers. They sometimes appear in small flocks of five or so birds, sometimes apparently with young (Tracing 8). They are usually shown in side view, quite crudely drawn with few details. Sometimes raised wings are indicated (for example at site SAL36, M p85.B). Usually no detail or patterning is shown on the body of the bird, but at site MUA10 in the Wadi Abu Mu Awwad an ostrich with a cross-hatched body is shown eating from a bush (M p106.H). There are a few petroglyphs of ostriches seen from the front, at sites SAL25, WAS1 and DUA. These are unique in the Eastern Desert in that they are the only frontview images of birds or animals. That at site DUA in the Wadi Dunqash is apparently of a male bird just after the act of copulation (when the penis is visible (Brown et al. 1982)). The images farther north at sites WAS1 in the Wadi Abu Wasil and SAL25 in the Wadi Umm Salam (M pp74.C and 171.B) might be similar but they are so indistinct that they might alternatively be human figures wearing headdresses.

The animal might possibly be a subspecies, now extinct, which had a longer mane than present-day asses. If the mane was free to blow in the wind it could be the origin of the curious appendage shown in the petroglyphs. Alternatively the appendage might be an exaggerated representation of the prominent dark stripe down the back or the transverse stripe across the shoulders of the africanus subspecies of wild ass which still inhabits northeast Africa.

Ostriches usually appear in ones or twos associated with other animals. Panels with many animals such as those at sites SAL14 and SAL40 in the Wadi Umm Salam, for example, usually contain ostriches. There are small flocks at sites SAL12, 18 and 42 (M pp59, 67 and 92).

The identification of these animals is discussed elsewhere (Judd 2006b). It is possible that the animal is some other equid. It has been argued that remains found in a well at Soleb in an 18th Dynasty context are those of a Przewalski horse (Nibbi 1979), and that animals of this type were associated with the people of Naharin (which Nibbi places in the central delta). Przewalski horses have manes which, though short and erect and certainly not flowing, are prominent because of their dark colour. In reliefs of Naharin people accompanied by small horses the mane is emphasized (Nibbi 2004). It is not known how this horse, which is native to Mongolia, would have got to Egypt.

At sites scattered throughout the southern part of the Eastern Desert region there are drawings of ostriches being hunted by dogs (for example HAJ6, M p39.B; GP1, R p36.8) or, less frequently, men (DTF1, R p89.3). At site SHL in the Wadi Sha’it, and possibly at sites JAW1 (R p91.2) and SAL15 (M p64.B) farther north there are drawings of ostriches that are tethered or trapped. Some ostrich petroglyphs are dark and seem to be relatively old (SHA2, MU3), while others are light and appear to be comparatively recent.

Only two different animals with similar appendages have been found - two “maned” ibexes at site MIY4 in the Wadi Miya (M p164.B). There are a few animals that lack the “mane” but in other respects appear to be “wild asses” at sites HAJ1 (M p32.H) and SAL7 (M p50.D and p52.F – but note that at the same site there are “maned” animals – see p51.I).

“Wild asses” Wild asses are found in grass steppes, semi-deserts and deserts. They are particularly adept at climbing and are well-suited to rocky hills. They can go for two or three days without water (Haltenorth & Diller 1980). Remains of wild asses dating from the Pleistocene and later have been found at several sites in the Western Desert and the Nile Valley (Osborn 1998). The animals may still live in the remote south-east of Egypt.

It is remarkable that almost identical images of these “wild asses” appear, cut with precision, at several sites in the Kom Ombo watershed and also at sites in the Wadi Hammamat and Umm Salam over 100 kilometres away. There are “wild asses” at many other sites, principally in

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ANIMALS

petroglyphs, certainly the more recent ones, represent addaxes rather than kudus. Prehistoric remains of addaxes have been found in southwest Egypt and north-west Sudan but no nearer to the Eastern Desert (Osborn 1998).

the Wadi Umm Salam and nearby. At site SHA1 in the Wadi Shallul there is a rock face with at least six “wild asses” along with ostriches and ibexes, all apparently contemporaneous (Figure 29). Elsewhere in the vicinity there are many other “wild asses” which are less carefully drawn but can be identified by the distinctive neck appendage.

In the petroglyphs some of the addaxes (or kudus) are shown realistically (Tracing 10) but others have grossly elongated horns, up to five times the length of the body. Only one long-horned addax has been found north of the Wadi Barramiya, at site SAL32 in the Wadi Umm Salam (M p82.C), while no short-horned addaxes have been observed to the south.

Many “wild asses” appear as the quarry in hunting scenes, for example at sites HAJ8, MUA10, IQA2, ED1 and DR1 (M pp41.D, 108.H and 137.B; R pp41.11 and 46.11) in and near the Wadi Umm Salam, and at sites DUA, SBC, SH5, SH11 in the vicinity of the Wadi Sha’it. In most cases they are surrounded by dogs (Figure 26), and sometimes by figures carrying bows. There are frequently other animals such as ibexes and ostriches present. At two sites in the Wadi Abu Wasil there are tethered “wild asses”, one of which appears to be being shot by an archer (R p106; M p179). Asses are never seen carrying burdens or being ridden. At site MUL in the Wadi Muweilhat where there is a row of ibexes there are also five “wild asses” shown in an orderly row marching from left to right (Figure 29). This rock face is decorated with many other images of animals and boats and among these, to judge from the degree of patination, the “wild asses” appear to be some of the oldest. (The dating of the images on this rock face is discussed in detail in Chapter 8 below.) In general “wild asses” often appear adjacent to, and seem, judging by style and patination, to be contemporaneous with, ostriches, ibexes and antelopes, but not cattle. Those at SH11 appear to be contemporaneous with the adjacent boats, but one at MUA22 (that does not have a “mane”) must be older than the boat which has been drawn on top of it (M p120.A).

Drawings of addaxes at sites MUA11 in the Wadi Abu Mu Awwad and SB4 in the Wadi Sibrit appear to lie over, and therefore to be younger than, images of ibexes. The Wadi Sibrit addax seems to be contemporaneous with a boat. Since addaxes were present in the Eastern Desert until recent times it is to be expected that some at least of the addax petroglyphs would be very recent, and indeed the image of an addax apparently being lassoed by a camelrider at site MUA3 in the Wadi Mu Awwad (M p100.A) must be comparatively so. On the other hand the addax at site SH11 in the Wadi Sha’it appears to be older and in a cruder style than other adjacent animals.

RARER DESERT AND SEMI-DESERT ANIMALS Addaxes

Oryxes

In the Eastern Desert there are 14 petroglyphs of animals with horns indicated by wavy lines. It is usually assumed that the horns were in reality helical and that the animals are addaxes, but the identification may not be correct. It is possible that they are kudus. Their locations are shown in Map 6.

There are several oryx subspecies, two of which appear to have been resident in Egypt. These are the scimitar-horned dammah oryx and the Beisa oryx which has straight horns. Both subspecies inhabit semi-desert regions. They drink daily when water is available but can do without if there is suitable vegetation. Scimitar-horned oryxes are now nearly extinct but Beisa oryxes can be found in Eritrea and Somalia (Haltenorth & Diller 1980). Remains of neither seem to have been found in Egypt. The horns of the scimitar-horned oryx can curve through up to about 90 degrees (in contrast to those of the ibex which curve more).

Addaxes are now nearly extinct but in recent times they inhabited the whole of the North African Desert. They are relatively slow and easily hunted (a fact which has contributed to their near extinction). They are nomadic desert animals and can exist for a year at a time without water, surviving on moisture from dew and the leaves of food plants. Kudus are animals of rocky semi-desert and are still to be found in Ethiopia and Eritrea (Haltenorth & Diller 1980). However they require thickets of vegetation for cover, and for this reason it seems probable that the

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ROCK ART OF THE EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

that the petroglyphs represent an amalgam of several different animals.)

In the Eastern Desert there are 27 oryx petroglyphs (Map 6, Tracing 11). There are 25 north of the Wadi Barramiya but only two have been found to the south. In some cases scimitar-horned oryxes appear to be shown together with ibexes and to be distinguished from them by the lesser curvature of their horns, at sites SHA7 and MUA6 (M p102.B and E) for example, but in many cases any distinction is not clear. If it is assumed that petroglyphs showing animals with straight backward-sloping horns about half as long as the body are Beisa oryxes then there are a few in the Eastern Desert. One, at site SH5, which appears to be suckling a kid, is clearly more recent than adjacent ibexes, ostriches and hunters (see Chapter 8 below). Another at site MIY6 appears to be contemporaneous with two horsemen, and therefore to be relatively recent (M p168.D). At site HAM3 in the Wadi Hammamat there are two incised Beisa oryxes that are represented particularly accurately (M p206.K and L).

There are 20 images of gerenuks at the 189 sites with animal images north of the Wadi Barramiya (about one for every ten sites) and ten at the 32 sites (one for every three sites) to the south. Figures 7 (centre), 14 and 30 (centre) show examples. Although the numbers are too small to have strong statistical significance there is a possible indication that gerenuks were more common in the Kom Ombo watershed than farther north.

An oryx at site BL1 in the Wadi Mineh may, along with ibexes, be being hunted (R p74.1). At site MUA10 in the Wadi Mu Awwad two Beisa oryxes are being pursued, one by a feline, the other by a dog (M p108.K,L). The latter images appear to be relatively modern.

There is an example of a gerenuk being hunted at site SH7 in the Wadi Sha’it. At site DR1 in the Wadi Barramiya a gerenuk along with a bovid may be being hunted (R p43.5). At site SBC in the Wadi Sibrit there is a remarkable image of a gerenuk being attacked by a feline, possibly a cheetah. Nearby at site SB1 two gerenuks appear to be contemporary with ibexes and wild asses and older than a roughly-drawn boat. A gerenuk at site MUA6 may be trapped or tethered (M p103.C). Two gerenuks at site IQA10 have patterned and spotted hides (M p143.D). The animals at SH11 and SBC, though exaggerated, are particularly graceful in form (Tracing 12).

Gerenuks

Other wild animals

In the Eastern Desert there are 30 petroglyphs of animals with long necks and vertical horns that curve forwards at the tips (Map 6, Tracing 12). There are several possible identifications: they might be Dorcas gazelles, dibatags or gerenuks. All three are animals of desert and semi-desert, all can live for long periods without water, and all are found in north-east Africa, the Dorcas gazelle being the most widespread. Gerenuks and dibatags are browsers but Dorcas gazelles graze (Haltenorth & Diller 1980). There seem to be no reports of prehistoric remains, but they are believed to have been present in Egypt in the Predynastic, becoming locally extinct before the Dynastic period (Houlihan 1996).

There are a handful of possible images of scorpions but only two, at sites SHA5 and SHA14 in the Wadi Shallul, are reasonably certain (M pp127.B and 134.A). There are also some wavy lines that might be snakes, but very few have heads, so it is hard to tell. The only certain snake is a finely drawn cobra at site FL1 in the Wadi Hammamat (R p130), but as it is decorated with plumes and a sun-disc it is clearly a piece of Pharaonic imagery. In general obnoxious creatures are conspicuous among the petroglyphs by their scarcity. DOMESTIC ANIMALS Cattle While domestic cattle are common throughout Africa currently the only wild member of the genus bovidae present in the continent is the African buffalo Syncerus caffer. These animals are found in habitats ranging from forests and swamps to grassy steppes and savannahs, but not deserts or semi-deserts. They have to drink every day. They eat grass and foliage and live in herds. They have horizontal or down-swept horns that are turned up at the tips. Wild buffalo are not found in Egypt at present, being confined to regions south of southern Somalia (Haltenorth & Diller 1980).

In the author’s opinion the petroglyphs are most likely to be gerenuks because of the length of the neck. Gerenuks are sometimes known as “giraffe gazelles”, and some petroglyphs show necks so long that the animal might almost be a giraffe. Bearing in mind the artists’ propensity to exaggerate animals’ most obvious features (such as the horns of ibexes and the trunks of elephants) it seems likely that they were depicting animals most notable for their length of neck. (It is of course possible that the artists did not notice, or distinguish between, the different species and

In the Neolithic Egypt was home to a population of aurochs, Bos primigenius, which were long-horned bovidae and are now extinct except in so far as they form

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A few animals are shown with a reticulated pattern (Figure 7). These stylistic variations can be summarized as follows:

part of the ancestry of modern domestic cattle. Remains dating from the end of the sixth millennium have been found at El Kab (Midant-Reynes 2000 p80). Cattle were domesticated in the Predynastic period, but it is not clear whether domestication originated in the Nile Valley or the playas of what is now the Western Desert, or indeed elsewhere (ibid pp88-89). On the basis of archaeological finds McHugh argues that domestic cattle were present in the Gilf Kebir region long before they were in the Nile Valley, and that the central Sahara was where domestication was first practised (McHugh 1974).

Banded 35; Filled 57; Speckled 17; Reticulated 8; Outline only 63;

19% of the 180 images, 32% “ 9% “ 4% “ 35% “.

It is very noticeable that few of the cattle images give any indication of sex. Of the 180 images only 19 (11%) have udders and 9 (5%) are clearly bulls. It seems surprising that the artists had so little interest in this matter.

There may have been cross-breeding with short-horned stock from Asia, but it is very difficult if not impossible to distinguish evidence of this from the petroglyph images because during the course of domestication the shapes of animals’ horns were altered by selective breeding and by artificial means. Rock art images from the Messak region of south-western Libya show many examples of artificial deformations producing horns with weird shapes and multiple horns (Lutz and Lutz 1997). The practice has been confirmed by the finding of cattle skulls showing evidence of artificial deformation at Faras near the Sudanese border (Huard 1964) and at Kerma in northern Sudan (Chaix 1996). It is generally agreed that there was no separate species Bos ibericus involved in the ancestry of domestic cattle (Gautier 1988).

In the southern part of the Eastern Desert there are more incised images than pecked. At site SH5 in the Wadi Sha’it there is a large and realistic cow, more than a metre long. Most of the cattle depicted have long horns apparently exaggerated in length. They are almost always displayed as if seen from the front, even though the body of the animal is invariably shown in side view. Most turn outwards at the tip, often in a graceful curve that in some cases is broad and spreading and in others is shaped like a lyre. A minority turn inwards and in a few cases they are shown to meet, forming a closed curve above the head. Some have asymmetric horns, one being shown as curved down in front of its head in a “drooping” manner while the other points upward in the usual way. There is a group of four of these images at site IQA3 in the Wadi Iqaydi (Figure 13), two more at site MIY5 in the Wadi Miya (M p166.A), and one at site JAW1 in the Wadi Mineh (W Plate XVII.2). An animal at site GP1 apparently has a sun-disc between its horns, while another at site JAW1 seems to have been modified to close the gap between outward-curved horns to form a complete circle (Tracing 14).

From the sources of petroglyph data listed above a database of 178 bovid images has been assembled. They have been discussed elsewhere by the present author in somewhat less detail than here (Judd 2007). Style Cattle are portrayed in a much narrower range of styles than for example giraffes or elephants. Most are quite realistic and there are few of the diagrammatic images that look to modern eyes like caricatures or childish work. In some cases the markings on the animal’s hide are represented. Some have a band or stripe round the girth. In some cases this is shown as a vertical stripe halfway along the body, while in others it is a broad band or panel occupying as much as a third of its length. In a few cases it is marked by two vertical lines but more usually it is filled so that it appears as a light band on an otherwise dark body (Tracing 13). In some cases the entire outline of the animal is filled, in others it is speckled, while in most it is outlined.

There are a few short-horned animals. As pointed out above, if the images are of domesticated animals, all these different horn shapes may refer to artificial deformations and therefore to the preferences of individual herdsmen. It is not possible to conclude that they represent different species or races. The shapes of the horns can be summarized as follow:

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ROCK ART OF THE EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

110 cattle images in total in the northern region and 70 in the south, so that there is an average of 1.9 cattle images at each of the northerly sites where there are cattle, but 3.3 at each of those in the south. Thus there are many more sites with images of cattle (in proportion to the number of sites with images of animals of any sort) in the south, and there are larger numbers of cattle at each of the southern sites.

Long, curved outwards 121; 67% of 180 images Long, curved inwards 40; 22% “ Long, drooping 7; 4% “ Long, meeting at the tip 3; 2% “ Short 9; 5% “ At site SHU in the Wadi Sha’it there are two animals shown with what may be multiple horns, another presumably artificial deformation (Tracing 15). At site DB1 in the northern Wadi Umm Hajalij there is a banded animal with downswept horns that suggest it might be a buffalo (R p30.6). However as it lacks the massive head of these animals this is unlikely. No other probable representations of buffaloes has been found.

Map 7 indicates how the cattle images are distributed. There are concentrations in and around the Wadi Abu Wasil, in the Wadis Iqaydi and Umm Salam and nearby and in the Wadi Miya, and the largest is in the Wadi Sha’it. It seems likely that these were areas where large numbers of cattle were found or, if they were domesticated, were kept, presumably because there was plentiful fodder. The cattle often appear in groups or small herds the members of which are drawn in a similar in style. At site MIY5 in the Wadi Miya there are at least 11 animals, mostly bulls, mostly with bands, and all with long horns that curve in a variety of shapes. They are drawn in simple outline and have been overlain by several images of camels and horsemen that are clearly more recent (M p166). In the Wadi Mineh at site MIN9 there are three realistic cows all with differently curved long horns (M p191). In the Wadi Abu Iqaydi at site IQA3 there is a group of rather less realistic animals again in a similar style but with different patterns and flamboyant horns (M p136). At MLM1 in the Wadi Mineh there are several realistic cows all with different patterns and differently curved long horns (R p94). There are several groups or small herds of cattle in the vicinity of the Wadi Sha’it. One at site MUD in the Wadi Muweilhat consists of four animals patterned differently but drawn in so similar a style as to appear to be the work of the same artist (Figure 25). Another, at site SHX, is unusual in that while clearly intended as a herd with all the animals facing the same way and drawn in the same style, one has long horns while all the others have short.

Of the 180 cattle images 123 (69%) face to the right and 57 (31%) to the left. There is a marked and statistically significant preference for them to face right, in contrast to the images of both giraffes and elephants which face right and left in nearly equal numbers. This suggests that the cattle images were drawn by a different group of artists from those who drew the images of savannah animals. It is not possible to reach statistically valid conclusions about the orientation of the rock faces on which cattle are drawn because too few data have been recorded. Distribution Among the Eastern Desert petroglyphs cattle are the next most commonly depicted animals after ibexes. They are to be found at several sites in the north of the region, in the Wadis Hammamat and Mineh and their tributaries, and there are rather more in the vicinity of the Wadi Umm Salam. In the Kom Ombo watershed however they are much more common: in the Wadi Sha’it in particular they are to be found at almost every site and there are many sites consisting only of petroglyphs of cattle. In parts of this wadi there seems to be a bovid on almost every suitable rock.

In these cases the style of drawing is uniform but the patterns on the hides of individual animals and the shapes of their horns are different. It seems clear that the artists who drew these groups and herds recognized and valued the variety of the individual animals’ characteristics. It also seems probable, because the similarity in style suggests that the images were drawn contemporaneously or nearly so, that the variety of the shapes of the long horns does not represent a development in time but rather that animals with horns curved inwards and outwards were present at the same time. If the curvature was induced artificially by constraining the horns as they grew it suggests that the animals were subject to human intervention and therefore to some degree were domesticated.

There is a marked difference in the distribution of cattle images in the regions north and south of the Wadi Barramiya, as the following statistics show. In the Wadi Barramiya and north of it there are 189 sites with images of animals, but only 57 of these (30%) have images of cattle, whereas there are 32 animal sites south of the Wadi Barramiya at 21 of which (66%) there are cattle. There are

It is noticeable that in all these cases the individual animals of the group or herd do not overlap. This is in contrast to

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ANIMALS

it. But while in some cases the “rope” is drawn as a continuation of the arm running smoothly from the shoulder of the person to the horn of the animal, in many although the lines of “rope” and arm are continuous there is a pronounced angle at the elbow and another at the wrist, as if the artist had in mind a physical bond gripped in the hand. This would not be inconsistent with ownership.

the way wild animals are often depicted: at some sites images of giraffes, for example, are crowded together and run over each other. In the case of cattle it seems that the artists wanted to depict a group as opposed to several individual animals. Cattle and people

In some cases similarity of patination gives the impression that images of cattle held by ropes are contemporaneous with nearby images of boats (MA1, ER1, R pp114.4 and 148.6), but at SH1 a crude animal is clearly much more recent than the adjacent boat. As cattle tend to appear at separate sites, or if at the same site not in any clear relationship with images of other animals, it is not possible to draw any general conclusions about their relative ages. Cattle appear in all degrees of patination from very dark to light, indicating that they date from all periods.

“Captive” cattle An image common north of the Wadi Barramiya is of a figure holding what appears to be a rope attached to the base of the animal’s horns. It appears at sites DB1, ED1, PC3, JAW1, DR2 (Figure 11), MA1, MH2 and ER1 (R pp30.1, 41.9, 76.8, 91.1, 104.14, 114.4, 146.5 and 148.6), HAJ6, SAL3, SAL35, SAL45, MUA10, SHA3 and MIY4 (M pp39.C, 46.A, 84.A, 95.B, 107.E, 124.A and 165.G). The figure almost always stands behind the animal, but at SHA3 there are two figures, one in front and one behind. There are a few similar images in the Kom Ombo watershed. At SHE, SH7 and SHX in the Wadi Sha’it the figure stands behind, but at MUO and MU3 in the Wadi Muweilhat he or she is in front. In most cases the “rope” is attached to the base of the animal’s horns, but in a few it is nearer the tip. In two cases in the Wadi Sha’it a second individual is present, but it is not certain whether he or she is intended to be part of the ensemble. In all there are 26 such images, about 14% of the total. Figure 33 shows a selection of them. Their locations are spread fairly evenly north of the road from Edfu to Marsa Alam.

In summary these images of “captive” cattle appear to denote a strong relationship between person and animal, probably one of ownership. However it is not clear whether it denotes actual ownership or desired, or whether the “rope” is a physical bond or abstract. Cattle held by the tail Another image that may indicate ownership is that of a person grasping an animal’s tail. This appears five times, in the Wadi Sha’it at sites SHJ (twice), SHE, and SHA, and also in the nearby Wadi Muweilhat at site MUM. It has never been found north of the Wadi Barramiya. Figure 34 shows the five images. It will be seen that all the animals face to the right, all have long diverging horns, three of them are banded, one is speckled and the outline of the other is filled, one is a cow but the sex of the other four is not indicated, and one of the people is clearly male. In three cases the person holds the end of the tail while in the other two he or she holds it at about the mid-point. In all cases but one the angle between the forearm and the tail is shown clearly and in three the elbow is shown. In three, possibly more, cases the person holds an object in the other hand.

It is not clear what these images represent or refer to. They might be hunting scenes, the “rope” being a lasso. In the Wadi Abu Wasil one of the figures holding the “rope” has a bow in his other hand, possibly indicating that he is a hunter (R p104.14). Against this it has to be noted that if they are hunting scenes they are unlike any of the other numerous such scenes in the region, all of which involve several hunters with bows or dogs or both, and usually several quarry animals. Hunting scenes involving bovids are very rare: apart from the case mentioned above there is only one other, at site DR1 in the Wadi Barramiya, where a single animal is confronted by a man with a bow (R p43.5).

It seems most unlikely that these images have anything to do with hunting as one would hardly attempt to catch a wild animal by grasping its tail. The image appears to represent a relationship between an individual and a tame animal – in other words to a form of domestication. In this respect it is of interest to note that grasping and twisting the tail is used as a technique for controlling domestic animals by people in modern Arabia and elsewhere (Lombry 2007). The fact that the images are confined to a small area indicates that the relationship to which they refer, or possibly the means of depicting that relationship, were very local. However the obvious differences of style show that they were not all drawn by the same artist: this practice, or

If the image has not to do with hunting another possibility is that the “rope” is a halter or tether by means of which a person is controlling the animal. While this is the simplest explanation it seems somewhat unlikely because in most cases the figure is following rather than leading, but it may be that the artists did not adopt the conventions of perspective or sequence that are familiar to us. Another possible explanation is that the line connecting the figure to the animal does not represent a rope at all but rather is an indication of an abstract relationship between them, presumably of ownership. The image would thus be a statement or assertion of ownership or possibly a wish for

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rather than the practicalities. Another possibility is that the structures are some form of decoration, possibly an indication that the animal has been prepared for some sort of ceremony, the nature of which is obscure. Yet again the “structure” might not be a “real” object at all: it might be an indication of some perceived spiritual entity or distinction.

this imagery of the practice, was peculiar to a group or a locality, but not to a single individual. It is notable that in almost all examples of the images of “captive” cattle and cattle held by the tail the “owner” (if that is how the anthropoid image is to be interpreted) stands behind his or her animal.

At site SHA there are two images of animals with an appendage shown as a short vertical line hanging beneath its neck.

Cattle bearing structures A third image is even more remarkable. Again it occurs only in the Wadi Sha’it and its immediate neighbours. There eight examples have been found of cattle apparently bearing a structure of some sort on their backs. They are shown in Figure 35. The simplest form of the structure consists of two vertical lines rising from the middle of the animal’s back, either converging towards the top (MUO) or diverging (SH7). In two other cases these lines appear with a third object behind them (SHE and SHU). This object might possibly be a small person, maybe a child, riding on the animal, but in both cases it is not clear enough to be sure. In two further cases (at MU3 and MU17, both in the Wadi Muweilhat) the third object is between the two vertical lines, which appear to be decorated with round attachments. Beneath the structure on the animal at MU3 there are two lines that might represent girths fastening it in position. Finally two animals at the same site in the Wadi Sha’it both have vertical lines, joined by a cross-member and bearing in front and behind large round objects (SB4). Six of the eight animals are controlled by people holding what appear to be ropes, but except in one case (MU17) the point of attachment is not at the base of the horns. Sometimes it is attached to the mid point of the horns, sometimes it also seems to be attached to the animal’s muzzle, and sometimes it is attached to, or crosses over, the structure on the animal’s back.

Possible indications of domestication All three of these specific images – “captive” cattle, cattle held by the tail, and cattle bearing structures – seem to be indicative of close relationships between animals and people, and therefore that the cattle are domesticated in some sense. However it should be noted that among all the cattle images in the Eastern Desert there are hardly any indications of the purposes for which the animals might have been used. There is only one indication of an animal being used as a source of food. This is at site SHL in the Wadi Sha’it where a cow seems to be suckling a human figure, possibly a child (Tracing 16). There are no other indications of cows being milked, and no indications at all of cattle being used to provide blood or meat. There are no images of cattle being ridden, and there is only one possible image of an animal harnessed for draught purposes, at site SHU, where a rather confused image might show an ox pulling a plough, but it is far from clear.

These structures might be practical objects such as saddles or frames for carrying freight. It is possible that the artistic convention of dynastic Egyptian art, whereby in a single image side and frontal views were mixed so that the important features were displayed to best advantage without regard for making the result look completely realistic, might have been used. This seems quite likely because in all the cattle petroglyphs while the main part of the image is a side view the horns are always shown as if seen from the front. The structures might be represented in the same way, so that for example in the case of the two animals at SB4 what is shown as a structure lying along the animal’s back might in fact represent a frame resting across it, carrying a load consisting of a round object on each side.

A recent study of remains of cattle from sites at Mostagedda (dating to the Predynastic period around 4000 BC) and El-Badari (from the late Old Kingdom around 2000 BC) indicates that the animals from both had a diet consisting of vegetation typical of an arid, rather than a temperate, environment (Thompson et al 2005). This appears to be consistent with their being pastured, at least for part of the year, in what is now the desert but was then savannah grassland. Map 7 probably indicates where the best of these pastures were located. The suggestion that cattle were subject to transhumance, spending the winters in the Nile Valley and moving to pastures in what is now

It seems less likely that the animals were being ridden. Apart from the two examples that might be of children, and these are at best very doubtful, there is no emphasis on a rider. If the animals were being used for personal transport it seems most likely that the interest would be in the rider

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the south asses are more often hunted. There is a particularly elaborate scene at site DR1 in the Wadi Barramiya (R p46.11) showing six bowmen accompanied by at least 14 dogs hunting two ibexes and three asses. At site SAL8 four curly-tailed dogs and a man with a stave attack four ibexes (M p53.C). The scene at site SHA1 shows dogs with ibexes and ostriches, and even though no people are present the difference of scale strongly supports the conclusions that the small animals are indeed dogs. Tracing 16 shows what appears to be dogs hunting a gerenuk.

the desert during the annual inundation, has been elaborated by Wilkinson (2003). At DR1 in the Wadi Barramiya there is an animal confronted by a man with a bow (see above). This is the only unequivocal example of wild cattle being hunted. Apart from this all the cattle images are consistent with their being representations of domesticated or semidomesticated stock. Dogs It is not clear whether the practice of domesticating dogs originated in Africa or was introduced from Asia (or both) (Cesarino 1997). Domestic dogs appear in rock art throughout the Sahara from the earliest times.

Sheep, goats and pigs It is often very difficult to distinguish archaeological remains of sheep from those of goats so it is common to use the term “ovicaprines” to cover both. In Egypt ovicaprines seem to have been domesticated from early in the Neolithic. In the Sodmein cave, 35 kilometres northwest of Quseir, large deposits of dung together with skeletal remains, one of which could be positively identified as being from a goat, have been dated to around 6000 BC (Vermeersch et al 1994). In the Badarian and Naqada I and II periods ovicaprines were kept along with cattle and pigs (Baumgartel 1955 p23: Midant-Reynes 2000 pp185 and 201). Since sheep or goats are probably not native to Africa the domestic animals must have been introduced from Asia, but the route and agency by which they came is uncertain. Baumgartel (1955 p24) argues that they came across the Bab-el-Mandeb straits rather than through Sinai, while McHugh (1990) suggests that they reached the Nile Valley from the west. Le Quellec et al (2005 p335) prefer the Sinai alternative. They may have been brought by humans, but because there is no evidence of deliberate introduction Muzzolini (1987 p133) inclines to the view that there was a natural migration. Wetterstrom (1993 p203) traces their introduction from south-western Asia via Sinai to the Delta in the 6th millennium, and then up the Nile Valley to reach Upper Egypt by the Badarian period.

In the Eastern Desert there are many representations of quadrupeds that are always shown with, and smaller than, other animals or people. They have short straight muzzles, erect ears, tails that are usually erect and sometimes curled, and legs of medium length that are usually stretched out as if to indicate that they are running. The obvious interpretation is that they are dogs. The above sources mention images of dogs at 101 sites, of which 80 are illustrated, usually showing several individual dogs. In 70 of these cases the dogs are with a larger animal which they face, often from behind as if chasing it, sometimes from in front, and in several cases they surround it (Tracing 17). The resulting scenes strongly suggest hunts. In 26 cases there are one or more anthropoids present and many of these are armed either with bows or what appear to be staves. (The latter could be spears but they are held vertically.) The quarries of these hunts are ibexes (29 examples), ostriches (16 examples), “wild asses” (12 examples) or unidentified antelopes.

Ovicaprines are better able than cattle to tolerate an arid climate. It appears that at Kerma, just above the Third Cataract of the Nile, they gradually replaced cattle in the domestic stock as the climate became dryer (Chaix 1994). Indeed a few small flocks of sheep, the property of nomadic ‘Ababdi people, can be found to this day in the Eastern Desert. Because domestic ovicaprines were economically important in Egypt in the fourth millennium and before, because they probably reached Egypt via the Eastern Desert, and because they have probably been present there ever since, it is particularly remarkable that there are very few representations of sheep or goats among the petroglyphs. There are in fact only six that are reasonably certain. Three are in the north of the region, at sites HAM3

Hunting scenes of this type are widespread in the region. Figure 30 shows one such. The quarry is not the same everywhere, however: although all prey animals are represented throughout the region, north of the Wadi Barramiya there are more ibex and ostrich hunts while to

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ROCK ART OF THE EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

(M p208.C), HAM6 (M p212.A) and HW18 (W Plate XIV.1), and three farther south at sites SHA13 (M p133.E), MUA10 (M p107.E) and MIY1 (M p161.B). All six are characterised by horizontal horns: in five cases they are shown as slightly curved in the form of a shallow arch (like those of Barbary sheep), while in one (at site MUA10) they appear to be helical, like corkscrews. (Horizontal corkscrew horns do not occur naturally: they are the result of selective breeding (Muzzolini 1987 p137).) Each of the six shares its rock face with other animals but none is shown as being in any obvious relationship with them. There are no herds of sheep. It is possible that other images of sheep are present but have not been recognized. This seems unlikely, however, because the ears of sheep droop. The images described above that are assumed to be dogs, for example, all have erect ears, so they cannot be sheep. Ewes would presumably have been drawn with indications of neither ears nor horns, and there are no such images. The bovids have horns of many different shapes, but most of them turn up at the tips so the images are unlikely to be actual sheep mistaken for cattle. There are no certain petroglyph images of pigs in the Eastern Desert.

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4 ANTHROPOIDS, BOATS AND OTHER IMAGES INTRODUCTION

Representation

This chapter consists of an analysis of the remainder of the Eastern Desert petroglyphs, apart from the animals that are the subjects of Chapter 3 above. Most of them are anthropoids or boats and there are a few geometric patterns and designs. As for the animals, images have been collected from the following sources:

Table 1 summarizes the way the human form is represented in the Eastern Desert images. In almost every case the head is a plain circle, filled and featureless. A few – 30 out of the 426 (7%) free-standing images, mainly towards the south – have square or trapezoidal heads, and of these seven have small appendages at the bottom corners that look a little like earrings (Tracing 18). Most of these “earring” people are in the Wadi Sha’it but there is one isolated example some 100 kilometres to the north at site MLM1 in the Wadi Mineh (R p94.4). There are no people with square heads on boats.

Winkler Rohl Morrow and Morrow

1938 2000 2002

and the unpublished photographs taken by the present author in the region of the Wadis Sha’it and Muweilhat. The sites are all shown in Map 2. Only images of which either photographs or drawings are available have been included. As before references to Winkler (1938) are denoted by “W”, to Rohl (2000) by “R”, and to Morrow and Morrow (2002) by “M”. The methodology was the same as that for the animal images described in Chapter 3 above. ANTHROPOIDS In some cases the head is very small, so much so that it is almost non-existent (Tracing 19). There are only 30 such “pinhead” images among the stand-alone people (7%) but rather more, 37 out of 151 (25%), among the people on boats. In only one case, at site SHA14 in the Wadi Shallul, is there any indication of facial features (Figure 17). This figure is also unusual in several other respects: it is seated, it appears to be holding the horns of a bovid by a short rope, and it appears because it is lightly patinated to be of recent origin. Nearby there are other unusual images including one that seems to show a man riding a giraffe.

There are many representations of human figures among the petroglyphs of the Eastern Desert. A few, which are drawn in a style familiar from the temples and tombs of the Nile valley, appear to date from the Dynastic period. Rather more, images of people riding horses or camels and of men fighting with spears and shields, such as those in Figure 23, appear because of their lighter patination, to be more recent. Both of these groups have been excluded from this study, which is confined to the figures which appear to be of Predynastic origin. There are many images of boats in the Eastern Desert, and these form the subject of the next section of this chapter. A lot of these boats have apparent representations of one or more human figures standing in them. Typically they are depicted in a certain amount of detail with head and limbs shown, and they are disproportionately large compared with the size of the boat itself. Often there are also small vertical strokes that appear to represent oarsmen, members of the crew. “Oarsmen” (if that is what they are) are not included in this discussion but the larger detailed figures are.

Arms and legs are always represented by single lines. These are usually straight but one or both arms of 124 of the free-standing figures are semicircles, as if to show that the hand is resting on the hip (Tracing 20). These “roundarmed” people appear throughout the region but there are concentrations in the Wadi Umm Salam and the Wadi Sha’it and its neighbours. Figure 28 shows examples from site SBC in the Wadi Sha’it. Some of the “round-arms” carry a bow or a staff in the other hand. A slightly smaller

The following notes discuss the figures found at the 284 Eastern Desert sites detailed above. At 167 (59%) of these sites there are anthropoid figures. There are a total of 151 figures in boats at 69 of these sites and 426 figures not in boats at 142 sites. (At 44 sites there are both figures in and not in boats.) Map 8 shows their locations.

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to wear skirts, but as these might equally well be described as kilts they are at best equivocal indications of femininity.

proportion of the figures on boats have round arms. A few images show people with one arm or rarely both arms bent at the elbow. Only one figure, at site MO1 in the Wadi Mineh, has discernible fingers (R p75.2).

Although some of them are quite faint the great majority of the figures are clearly intended to be human in form. There are, however, a few which are represented in such an unrealistic manner that it is uncertain what they are. At site SH5 in the Wadi Sha’it there are many images of animals and people, some clear, lightly patinated and apparently recent, others probably much older. Among the faintest, and therefore presumably the oldest, there are four bizarre figures. Two seem to have oval bodies, short arms and legs, and long thin necks. One has a small head with several small appendages while the neck of the other ends in a Tshape with hardly any indication of a head at all. A third oval-bodied figure has arms, legs, a penis or tail, no neck and a round head. The fourth is very indistinct apart from what appear to be four or five plumes on its head. They are shown in Tracing 21. Site SH5 is discussed in more detail in Chapter 8 below. There is a somewhat similar figure at site MIY1 in the Wadi Miya (Figure 22, centre). In the Wadi Abu Wasil, there is a strange figure with a thin rectangular body, legs, no arms, no head, but with two diverging plumes (R p102.4). It would not be recognizable as a human figure were it not for its feet.

There are 20 free-standing figures with arms raised and curved above the head in the “orant” pose (Tracing 20). Small groups of such people have been found at sites in the Wadi Hammamat, and there are a few more in the Wadis Miya (Figure 22) and Sha’it. There are proportionally considerably more orant figures in boats (Figure 30), and these are spread widely through the region. In almost all cases the body is quite featureless. It is usually represented by a broad vertical straight line, although in 34 cases it is a narrow line so that the whole figure takes on the appearance of a “matchstick man” (Tracing 19). None of these is in a boat. Most are in the Wadi Sha’it but there are a few farther north in the Wadis Mineh and Umm Salam. There are 69 images out of the total of 577 in which the body is represented by an isosceles triangle with its base uppermost, giving the person a broad-shouldered narrow-waisted appearance (Figure 29). These “wedge” people are mainly scattered more-or-less uniformly throughout the region but there is a small concentration among free-standing figures in the Wadi Sibrit. There is a small group of distinctly steatopygous people in the Wadi Muweilhat and a few more nearby in the Wadis Sibrit and Sha’it, but there is only one such figure in a boat, at site ED1 in the Wadi Barramiya (R p38.10).

In general the impression is that there are differences in the styles in which human figures are represented in different areas, but such differences are not, or are rarely, exclusive. In several cases certain stylistic features are found more widely in one wadi or group of wadis than another, but there are very few cases in which such features are entirely absent, and in the cases where they are, such as the absence of square-headed images north of the Wadi Abu Wasil, the numbers are so small that the absence could easily be explained as a matter of statistical variation rather than any deliberate choice by the petroglyph artists. The style of the anthropoid images is not homogeneous throughout the region, but it is nearly so. The appearance is of cultural continuity, but with minor local variations. The people who drew the anthropoid petroglyphs seem to have been familiar with the imagery used elsewhere – presumably because they had seen it – but local groups, or possibly individual artists, preferred certain ways of representing the details of their subjects.

Sexual characteristics are not strongly emphasised. A penis is shown in a total of 126 of the images, 110 (26%) freestanding and 16 (10%) in boats. In 72 images it is between the legs, often rather long but not given any other prominence, while in 54 it projects to the side, presumably erect or possibly sheathed. There is only one instance, at site SAL24 in the Wadi Umm Salam, where the penis is grossly exaggerated (M p73.E). Only one of the 529 images has any clearly female characteristics. At site MU3 in the Wadi Muweilhat there is a woman with large breasts. Some 18 of the figures appear

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ANTHROPOIDS, BOATS AND OTHER IMAGES

The two large figures in the prominent boat at site DR2 in the Wadi Abu Wasil have what appear to be bows but they are held horizontally across their bodies (Figure 10). There is a very similar image, of a boat with a single occupant carrying a horizontal bow, nearby at site SH1 in the same wadi (R p121.1). The similarities are so close that it seems likely that they were drawn by the same artist. Also in the Wadi Abu Wasil, at site WAS9, there is a boat with five occupants some of whom appear to carry bows, but the style in which it is executed is quite different (M p181.D).

The group of realistic anthropoid images in the Wadi Hammamat (R pp126.10, 130.5, 130.8, 133.2, 139.1) that appear, because of their form and style, to belong to the main Dynastic artistic tradition, have been omitted from the present consideration. Accoutrements “Plumes” The tops of the heads of 94 of the free-standing images – 22% of the total – are decorated with one or more lines that appear to represent plumes. Proportionally more – 51 (34%) – of the boat-borne images are similarly decorated. Table 2 gives the details and Tracing 20 shows typical examples. There are others in Figures 20 and (in the boat) Figure 10. Most of these figures have one or two plumes, while seven have three, one has four, one has five, two have six and one has seven. Some plumes are straight, some curved and a few are wavy. Some images have two divergent plumes looking rather like the antennae of an insect. The plumed people are scattered throughout the region but occur most frequently in the Wadis Mineh and Umm Salam and nearby. There is a group of three people with divergent plumes at site PC3 in the Wadi Mineh (R p77.5,7).

A few free-standing figures hold sticks which they appear to wave above their heads. Others hold tall vertical staves (Tracing 22). One, at site DK1 in the Wadi Mineh, holds what might be a mace (R p73.3). Some boat occupants, such as two at site SAL7 in the Wadi Umm Salam and two at adjacent sites DTF2 and MA1 in the Wadi Abu Wasil, hold objects.

It is notable that there is something of a difference in the way the plumes of free-standing images and images in boats are represented. Although in both cases double plumes and straight plumes are more numerous than other forms, the preponderance is more marked among the images in boats, where two tall straight plumes are most usual. The resulting images thus seem to bear some resemblance to the familiar Dynastic images of the gods Amun and Min. No other form of decoration than “plumes” is shown. None of the images shows any details of marks on the body. No clothing is shown apart from skirts or kilts in a minority of cases. Activities

Weapons

At about 20 of the 167 sites with anthropoid images there are hunting scenes. (The number is imprecise because in several cases it is not clear whether there is a single image of animals being hunted or merely adjacent images of people and animals.) The hunters usually carry bows and are often accompanied by dogs, and their quarries are mainly ostriches, ibexes and wild asses. Tracing 23 shows an example. There are many single hunters and there are also hunting scenes involving several hunters, dogs and quarries. One such, at site DR1 in the Wadi Barramiya, shows six hunters and about sixteen dogs pursuing ibexes, wild asses and another unidentifiable animal (R p46.11). A scene at site HAJ9 in the Wadi Umm Hajalij involves two hunters armed with bows and two dogs hunting ibexes (M

A lot of the free-standing figures, 111 out of the 426, hold bows. These are usually shown as being mainly straight and curved at top and bottom, and they are held vertically. Often the bow is nearly as tall as its owner (Tracing 20). Sometimes the bowstring is shown, and more rarely an arrow is indicated. Quite often the bow is held near the top rather than at the centre, a position that would not be appropriate for use. At site SBC in the Wadi Sibrit there is a group of bowmen each of whom holds his weapon asymmetrically in this way in one hand and rests the other on his hip (Figure 28).

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At site DF1 in the Wadi Barramiya there is a group of figures who hold bows and appear to be fighting (R p49.3). One of them has two plumes on his head. Apart from these, however, there is no obvious representation of violence among the pre-dynastic figures in the region (although there are several battles among later figures, such as those in Figure 23). At SHA11 in the Wadi Shalul there is a figure standing between and apparently holding two longnecked animals. He looks a little like a “master of animals” (M p131.B). At DAH2 in the Wadi Dahabiya there is an unfortunate man who is being eaten by a crocodile (M p150.D).

p42.C). Nearby at site HAJ3 four hunters armed with bows and three dogs hunt ostriches, a gerenuk and another animal (M p34.A). This scene is remarkable in that one of the dogs is drawn upside down, apparently in an attempt to show the dogs surrounding the action. This may be an attempt, rare in the Eastern Desert, to indicate a threedimensional spatial relationship and a degree of movement. The scene at site SBC shows several people with asymmetric bows and several wild asses (Figure 28). There is one possible dog, but there is nothing in the arrangement of the figures to make it clear that the scene was intended to portray a hunt. Nearby at site SB4 three dogs attack two ostriches but there are no hunters.

A few of the boat occupants have one arm extended as if they are pointing or directing the vessel to its destination. There are four such people, two in the Wadi Umm Salam at sites SAL5 and SAL7 (M pp49.C and 50.G), one at ER1 in the Wadi Atwani (R p147.1), and one at DR1 in the Wadi Barramiya (R p45.10). The last has two plumes on his head, but the others are not especially distinguished.

There are images of people tending cattle, as described above in Chapter 3. There are scenes showing a person standing behind a bovid and holding a halter attached to the base of the animal’s horns, and others of people holding the tails of their animals. There is even closer intimacy at site SHU where the man appears to be having sexual intercourse with the animal, but this might be a later unauthorized modification of an otherwise innocuous image. At site SHL a cow is shown suckling a child.

In spite of these exceptions the overall impression from the human figures in the region is the lack of activity. Most are quite static: many are not shown to be doing anything. Almost all are shown upright with straight legs and with arms in a limited number of standard positions. There is little variety, little evidence of originality or imagination, in the way they are drawn.

A few of the images look to modern eyes as if they might represent people dancing. In the Wadi Hammamat at site TJ2 there are two matchstick men (or women) who seem to embrace and to lift their knees in unison (Tracing 24). At WD2 in the Wadi Abu Wasil there is a figure who holds a staff and at the same time lifts his or her knee (R p108.4). At site RM1 in the Wadi Atwani there is a line of seven figures who appear to be wearing skirts and holding hands. Though rather indistinct they look somewhat like a chorus line (Tracing 25). Remarkably 150 kilometres to the south at site SBI in the Wadi Sibrit there is a similar line of seven (possibly more – they are very indistinct) similar skirted figures, and there is another small group nearby at site MUH in the Wadi Muweilhat.

Groups Apart from the hunting parties and the “chorus lines” mentioned above the petroglyph figures rarely appear in groups. There are a few “couples” and “family groups”. At MC1 in the Wadi Abbad there are two adults (both wearing skirts), one of whom may be leading an animal, and a smaller figure who appears to be a child (R p25.1). The adults seem to be carrying burdens on their shoulders. There are pairs of figures, clearly intended to be seen as being in some relationship, at WAS1 in the Wadi Abu Wasil (M p171.B), ED1 in the Wadi Barramiya (R p39.6, Tracing 26), SHA7 in the Wadi Shalul (M p129.A) and SAL20 in the Wadi Umm Salam (M p68.A). Although these are drawn in different styles they all have plumes (the pair at SAL20 having multiple plumes). At some sites, mostly in the south, there are groups of very similar images. At SHU in the Wadi Sha’it there are at least seven people, all with square heads, “earrings”, wedge-shaped bodies most of which are steatopygous, and

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ANTHROPOIDS, BOATS AND OTHER IMAGES

based. A total of about 903 boats are described and of these 634 are illustrated.

bent arms (Tracing 18). Two seem to hold hands. They are surrounded by cattle, dogs and other animals. They are all represented in the same style as if they were drawn by the same artist. However if they were meant to constitute an integrated scene, a representation of a specific group or a particular activity, it is not clear what it is. Nearby at SHW there is another group similar in many respects except that they have round heads, suggesting they were drawn by a different artist. At SH11 the group of six people in the slender, “pin-headed” style, all have bows (Tracing 19). They may be associated with some indistinct animals but there are no cattle. The 15 people at SBC in the Wadi Sibrit (Figure 28) are all drawn in the same style, mostly with bows and surrounded by wild asses but no cattle. None of the bows has an arrow and it is not clear whether the intention was to depict a hunt. In contrast to these stylistically homogeneous sets of images at sites farther north such as SAL44 and SAL7 in the Wadi Umm Salam (M pp94.A and 51.M) there are people and animals (confused with boats at SAL44) but there is no uniformity of style. At MF1 in the Wadi Umm Hajalij there are several square-headed people (and some with round heads) surrounded by ibexes (R p32.12). The drawing style is different from any in the Wadi Sha’it.

Distribution The distribution of boat petroglyphs is shown in Map 9. In order to give a degree of precision to the overall impression presented by the distribution the area of the Eastern Desert covered by the petroglyph sites has been divided into five regions from north to south, in each of which the sites are reasonably close together, within a few tens of kilometres of each other. The regions are indicated in Map 9. They are as follows. Region 1 Region 2 Region 3 Region 4 Region 5

Wadis Atwani and Hammamat Wadis Mineh and Abu Wasil Wadis Abu Iqaydi, Mu Awwad, Umm Salam and Umm Hajalij Wadis Miya, Barramiya and Dunqash Wadis Muweilhat, Sibrit and Sha’it

Table 3 gives the numbers of sites at which boats are depicted and of individual boat images in each of these regions, and shows that there are significant differences between them. Sites with depictions of boats are proportionally less common in Regions 1 and 5, and noticeably more common in Region 4. Even more pronounced is the fact that the average number of boats at the sites where boats occur is very much larger in Region 4, the region of the Wadi Barramiya and its immediate neighbours. The figures confirm the impression that there are many boat sites and several sites at which there are many boats, particularly near the small speos temple of Seti I at Kanais and in the wadi to the east of it. Clearly this region was preferred by the artists who drew the boats. In fact the large average number of boats per site in Region 4 is partly due to two sites at both of which boats are very numerous: BAR4 with 21 boats (M p159) and GP1 with 31 (R p34). However even without these exceptional cases Region 4 would have 169 boats at 28 sites, an average of 6.0 boats per site, still significantly more than in any other region.

BOATS Undoubtedly the most remarkable features of the rock art of the Eastern Desert are the images of boats. It would be strange to find a single image of a boat in the middle of the desert, 100 kilometres from the navigable water of either the Red Sea or the Nile, but to find hundreds is surprising indeed. Apart from weapons and other personal accoutrements these are the only artefacts to be represented: there are (apparently) no images of temples or houses, no carts or chariots. It is clear that boats occupied special places in the imagination of the rock artists as they went about their work, and that there must have been particular reasons for selecting boats to portray rather than any other aspect of their man-made environment. At the time when they were drawn boats would have been by far the largest and most impressive mobile objects made by man. They would have been the outstanding means of transport, making it possible for people to travel not only through the length of Egypt but also to foreign lands, and therefore they would have been a means of exciting the imagination. They would have been a principal means of trade and, because they offered the only means of moving heavy loads over large distances, the key to monumental building projects. A boat could have been a symbol not only of the greatest of human achievements but also of the extent of human aspiration and longing.

These two sites are in fact examples of another unexpected feature of the way the boat images are distributed between sites. Figure 37 shows the distribution of boats with respect to the number of boats at each site, and compares it with the distribution that would be expected if they were distributed at random. The latter is a Poisson Distribution, and is generated by the assumption that the artist chooses the site for his or her work in a disinterested manner. Clearly this assumption is very unlikely to be correct, and the way it differs from the actual choice of sites is of interest. It will be seen that the actual distribution is bimodal: there are more boats than expected at sites with both very small numbers of boats and very large numbers. That is to say that there are unexpectedly large numbers of

Images of boats at 196 of the 284 petroglyph sites are described in the sources on which the present study is

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ROCK ART OF THE EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

hulls that are straight in the middle and curved at the ends, that cannot be assigned to one group or the other convincingly. Similarly there are several images in which one finial (presumably the stern post) sweeps forward over the hull in a generous curve, but there are also many with a finial that is slightly curved, or is curved but very short, so that it is difficult to say whether it is “incurved” or not.

sites with only one or two boat images, and also of sites with 15 or more boats. There seem to have been two differing preferences at work: some artists seem to have wanted their images to be alone or with few fellows, while others preferred them to be surrounded by many others. Table 4 lists the most popular sites for boat images. All but four of these (those in Regions 2 and 3) are close to the modern roads from the Valley to the Red Sea coast, both of which follow ancient routes. Two of these sites are shown in Figures 21 and 24.

In spite of these difficulties it is necessary to adopt some means of distinguishing the forms of the boat images because some of them share prominent features and there is, apparently, a connection between them. In some cases the similarities are so great that the images seem to have been drawn by the same artist or to have been copied. The system adopted here is to describe, rather than to classify, each image. A list of 14 features has been drawn up and each illustrated boat image has been assessed as to whether it exhibits each of these features. The features are listed in Table 5 together with notes to indicate how they have been identified. The definitions have been drawn up with a view to minimising the subjective element in applying them. File 14 contains the resulting descriptions of all 634 illustrated boats in the form of a table that indicates whether each boat has or has not each of the 14 features. Figure 36 shows a selection of the boat images chosen to illustrate each of the 14 features. The 14-digit binary number labelled “description” shows, in order, the presence (“1”) or absence (“0”) of each of the features described in Table 5. Figures 4, 10, 21, 24, 26, 30 and others, show typical boats.

Style Several authors have attempted to classify the various styles in which boats are represented. Winkler (1938) classifies 101 boat images. Most of them he had recorded for the first time but to these he added a few collected from earlier publications. He divided them into four basic types based mainly on the shape of the hull and the finials, or stem and stern posts, that form prominent features of many of the images. He called the four basic types “Sickle Boats”, “Square Boats”, “Incurved Sickle Boats” and “Incurved Square Boats”, and to these he added six additional types he called “Square Boat Derivations A to F". In his 1974 compilation Červíček includes about 145 boat images (again, some are dubious), among which are most of Winkler’s. He divides them into 33 “Types”. Types 1 – 5 are closely related to Winkler’s classification. Many of the rest consist of very few boats: 13 have only a single member and 11 have two. If the purpose of classification is to detect similarities a classification with a large number of very small classes seems not to fulfil it. (Most of the sparsely-represented Types do not appear in the part of the Eastern Desert to which Rohl’s and the Morrows’ publications refer.)

Tracings are preferable to the original photographs for illustrating boat petroglyphs because they make the features clearer. They have, of course, an important subjective element, but this is unavoidable. In some cases it is not entirely clear whether a mark on the rock is natural or part of the artist’s work, and the observer has to decide whether or not it is a feature of the image. This is a greater problem with the boats than the animals or the anthropoids because for the latter one knows what features – legs, horns, plumes, bows, etc. – are to be expected.

The problem with classification schemes such as Winkler’s and Červíček’s is that is that they attempt to be exhaustive, and the distinctions between the types are never clear. Classifiers assume that it is possible to set up a scheme into which every boat image will fit (although Winkler recognises the difficulty by listing a small number of “Unclassified” images). It is undoubtedly the case that there are some recognizable representation styles that occur frequently, but it is also the case that there are many images that have characteristics of more than one style. In these cases classification contains a significant subjective element, and the boat is assigned to one style or another according to which features the classifier deems to be more important. For example, Winkler’s basic distinction between “Square” and Sickle” boats undoubtedly reflects a pronounced difference between one group with hulls definitely curved like a sickle (or possibly like a banana) and another group with hulls that are definitely straight, but there are also many images with slightly-curved hulls, or

Geographical Variation of Style Table 6 shows the number of boats with each of these features and the way they are distributed between the five regions. Overall it is apparent that the simplest images are by far the most common. Straight-hulled boats with finials and crew or passengers or both but no other features such as oars, cabins or masts, drawn using the simplest singleline technique, make up about a sixth of the total, 109 out of 634. The more elaborate and well-worked the image the rarer it is. In addition Table.6 shows differences between the regions in terms of the way the boats are represented. The bold and underlined entries denote the respects in which either improbably few or improbably many of the boats of the

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ANTHROPOIDS, BOATS AND OTHER IMAGES

text of the various publications makes clear, certainly other boats at many of these sites which, if it had been possible to include them in this analysis, might have altered the conclusions. There is undoubtedly a tendency to take and publish photographs of the most interesting, and therefore elaborate, boats, so that the present analysis is skewed towards them and away from the simpler boats. It is to be hoped that any bias introduced in this way applies uniformly at all the sites, although this cannot be checked. It has to be remembered when conclusions are drawn.

region have the attribute in question. (The cut-off was taken at the 10% tails, assuming a binomial distribution.) All of the 14 features have been found in all the regions (except for towing crews which are absent from Region 5). However, as Table 6 shows, certain stylistic elements are rather more common in Region 1 and to a lesser extent Regions 2 and 3 than elsewhere. In Region 1 there are more carefully-worked images (as indicated by the relative lack of “single-line” images) than farther south and more “sickle” or “banana” boats with cabins and prominent passengers. Relatively few of the Region 1 boats have crews or finials, although when finials are shown one of them is more likely to be incurved. As in the case of the artists who drew the anthropoid images the boat artists formed a homogeneous group in which artists from each region were aware of the work that was done elsewhere, but they had noticeable local preferences.

Even with this reservation it can be seen that the group of sites in the Wadi Atwani display an unusually large number of elaborately decorated boats with oars (but not steering oars), crews and prominent passengers. In contrast in the nearby Wadi Hammamat there are several simpler boats, mostly with curved hulls and many with no finials. Many have cabins but rarely crews or prominent passengers. The Wadi Mineh is characterised by many boats drawn in the simple single-line style. In the Wadi Abu Wasil none of the boats lacks finials and most have straight hulls. In the Wadis Abu Iqaydi and Mu Awwad there are an unusually large number of boats with steering oars and masts.

These local preferences become more apparent if the data are examined on a smaller geographical scale. In some of the wadis there are groups of petroglyph sites that are close together. Bearing in mind that the individual sites have been defined quite arbitrarily by their modern observers it seems likely that such groups, rather than the separate “sites”, were seen by the petroglyph artists as territorial units, possibly the domain of a single artist or a single family group. By searching for sites within a kilometre or so of each other in a single wadi, ten such closely-located groups of sites, for which the term “location” has been used, have been identified, as indicated in Table 8. Two additional locations spread over slightly larger distances have been included in the list. The location in the Wadi Umm Salam extends over a greater distance but the distances between individual sites are small and there are no clear spatial divisions. The rather widely-scattered location in the Wadi Sha’it and nearby is included to permit Region 5, where boat petroglyphs are rarer than farther north, to be included in the comparison. These 12 locations include 104 of the total of 196 boat sites and 387 of the total 634 boat images.

Farther south the long Wadi Umm Salam and the neighbouring Wadi Hajalij (the northern of two wadis with this name) each have several boats with the distinctive divergent finials, but the similarity ends there because the latter wadi has no boats with oars at all. The cluster of sites round the temple at Kanais presents perhaps the most distinctive collection of boats, many with curved hulls, cabins and incurved finials often decorated with the unusual “flower” motif. The southern Wadi Hajalij is only a few kilometres away but there none of the boats have “flowers” and few have incurved finials or cabins. The group of sites farther up the Wadi Barramiya have an unusually large number of crews and passengers. Among the small number of boats in the Wadi Sha’it there are rather more with cabins than might be expected. Any meaning of these differences is not apparent from this analysis, but it is clear that the differences exist. In many cases boats at one site are drawn in so similar a style as to appear to be the work of a single person. It seems likely that different groups of petroglyph sites were used by distinct groups of people or possibly different individual artists. Again there is no exclusivity: all the different image characteristics were drawn in all locations, but there are marked preponderances localised over distances of around two kilometres or so. On a larger geographical scale the groups of sites in or near the Wadi Hammamat, and those in the vicinity of the Wadi Barramiya, stand out in several ways. In both there are large numbers of sites with unusually large numbers of boats, many of which show distinctive characteristics (in the north straight hulls with oars, crews and elaborate finials, or banana shape with cabins but no finials; in the south curved hulls with

Table 7 shows the numbers and percentages of boat images at each of these locations exhibiting each of the 14 features identified above, together with the numbers and percentages for all the boats for comparison. As in Table 6 the bold and underlined entries show the respects in which the boats of the wadi differ from the average at the 10% probability level. The fact that 47% of the entries in Table 8 are bold, compared with only 39% of those in Table 6, is an indication that the differences are most pronounced at the level of individual wadis. They show that the artist or artists of each wadi chose, in the main, to draw their boats differently from the artists in other wadis. In interpreting the data in this table it must be remembered that it is based on published images only. There are, as the

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All of these patterns are heavily patinated, which tends to indicate that they are relatively old, possibly contemporaneous with or predating the oldest animal images. It will be noted that, while they are few in number compared with the images of animals, anthropoids and boats, there are several in the Wadi Umm Salam.

incurved finials decorated with “flowers”). As pointed out above both these locations are close to routes that have been in use since Predynastic times. NON-REPRESENTATIONAL FORMS All of the petroglyphs described so far appear, at least to modern eyes, to be representational in the sense that they look like some physical object, either an animal (including human animals) or a boat. However there are in addition many other petroglyphs that bear no obvious resemblance to any physical object. Some of these are clearly relatively modern: there are for instance many inscriptions in various scripts and languages, hieroglyphics, Greek, Latin, Nabatean, Coptic, Arabic and other modern languages including recent graffiti. There are also various tribal signs which are a form of territorial demarcation. These have not been included in the present study.

Symbols There are other forms that may have been intended to be representative in some way, although this is not certain. At sites SAL46, WAS8, HAM1 and HAM4 there are outlines that appear to be of the soles of pairs of sandals (M pp96.B, 180.C, 202.B and 210.B). The pair at HAM4 even show the straps as if they are templates to be used to guide cutting the hide when sandals were made. At WAS 8 there are also footprints (M p180.D), and at ATW6 there are several handprints, all roughly life-size (M p197.B and C). At both ATW6 and SAL5 there are forms consisting of a vertical line crossed by several horizontal lines (M pp49.B, 197.B). The example at SAL5 has a loop at the top. They are somewhat reminiscent of djed pillars.

Geometric Patterns There are several petroglyphs that seem to be elaborations of relatively simple geometric shapes. There are sets of concentric circles at sites SAL28, SAL40 and MUA10 ( M pp 78.A, 90.E and 107.P) and nested squares at SAL11 (M p57.E) and MUI (Tracing 27). At SAL11, BAR1 and ATW6 there are circles surrounded by radiating lines (M pp 57.K, 153.C and 199.M), and at MUA16 there is a circle that contains radial lines rather like the spokes of a wheel (M p115.B). At PC3 (R p78.4) and SAL14 (M p63.F) there are double circles with additional curved double lines attached to their circumferences. On a boulder just east of Site DR2 there are several rough spirals (Figure 12).

At JCB1 there is an outline of a square box on which stands a vertical line surmounted by a semicircle resting in a shallow arc. Beneath the arc there are two short lines angled to the left. The whole resembles a standard, possibly representing the rising sun. It overlies (or possibly is overlain by; the sequence is not clear) an image of an animal (Tracing 28).

There are some more complex patterns in the forms of meshes or grids at SAL12 and SAL28 (M pp58.F and 78.A), and SB4. At AB2, as mentioned above, there are two sets of rather loose meshes associated with other patterns and several images of what may be crocodiles (Figure 3). There is a pentagram at site HAM1 (M p203.D), a large arched shape like a doorway in appearance and containing several circles at MUA, and at SHF there is a design of an equilateral cross each arm of which terminates in a double loop (Tracing 27). At a few sites there are sinuous lines.

At several sites there are relatively lightly-patinated shapes and symbols that appear to be relatively recent. Figure 9 shows several examples in the Wadi Abu Wasil. “Maps” At four sites, SAL4, SAL32, WAS5 and ATW6, there are networks of branching lines that, it has been suggested, may be simple maps of the neighbouring wadis. The “map” at SAL32 consists mainly of straight lines that branch at right-angles (M p82.A), while the other three are made up of curved lines. Cherry (2000) compares the SAL 4 “map” (Tracing 28) with the outline of the Wadi Batur and some of its major tributaries over a distance of about 30 kilometres; the WAS5 “map” with a series of wadis including the Wadi Mineh that together form routes from Laqeita to Barramiya, a distance of over 100 kilometres; and the ATW6 map with the Wadi Atwani and part of the Wadi Hammamat over some 30 kilometres (W Plate

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XXVII.1). The correspondence in all three cases appears reasonably close not only with respect to topology but also to scale. In assessing the validity of the suggestion that these are “the oldest maps in the world”, however, it must be remembered that throughout the Eastern Desert the wadis form an exceedingly intricate network. In making his comparison Cherry has selected the wadis that appear to form reasonable routes that might have given access to locations such as wells and petroglyph sites, but of course he has neglected, and has assumed the “map-makers” to have neglected, many others. As a result, considered as an aid to a traveller, the “maps” would not have indicated which wrong turnings to avoid.

If they are maps they are the products of considerable feats of three-dimensional imagination because they show the arrangement of the wadis, over distances of several tens of kilometres and approximately to scale, as if seen from a great height. The ancient “mapmakers” could, by climbing a high hill, have gained a view of at most 10 or 20 kilometres of the terrain, and could have seen it in only a lateral perspective. To extrapolate from a view to a map would have been an extraordinary intellectual feat. Two somewhat similar “maps” have recently been reported from the Acacus mountains in Libya (Maestucci and Gianelli 2008). They, like those in the Eastern Desert, show quite close similarity with the pattern of local wadis over distances of 20 km or so. A boulder at site KTN27 in the Uweinat massif that may be marked with a plan of the local topography over a distance of about 1 kilometre is rather less convincing (Kolbe 2008).

35

5 NILE VALLEY PETROGLYPHS drawing technique and the style of the images are different from those of the Eastern Desert artists (Darnell 2002). Most of the images date to the dynastic period but because of both style and content a few appear to be earlier. At Gebel Tjauti there are images of crocodiles (seen from the side) and a bovid with tapering legs (ibid p23), ibexes, a scorpion and several birds including storks but not ostriches (ibid p10). There are two boats, one with a simple banana-shaped hull and no equipment or occupants, and a second which possibly has oars, crew and a “passenger” but is so heavily overlain by dynastic inscriptions that it is hard to discern (ibid p25). Elsewhere there are images of anthropoids with wedge-shaped bodies and decorative plumes (Huyge 2003). They show details of the feathers, fingers, and what appear to be the ends of waist sashes (or possibly penis sheaths). Such details rarely appear in the Eastern Desert, but this may be because the sandstone is not conducive to the fine work that the limestone allows. Further details of the rock art in this region remain to be published.

INTRODUCTION In order to place the petroglyphs of the Eastern Desert in their spatial context it is necessary first to see how they compare, as a corpus, with their near neighbours, the petroglyphs of the Nile Valley. The Eastern Desert petroglyph sites discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 are all within 100 kilometres of the Nile, some considerably less, and it seems most likely that the Eastern Desert petroglyph artists would have been at least familiar with the culture of the Valley even if they were not part of it. Similarities are therefore to be expected, and the purpose of this chapter is to determine what similarities exist by comparing the petroglyphs of the two regions. Unfortunately the data for the comparison are far from uniform. The petroglyphs of the Nile Valley south of Aswan in Nubia have been recorded and published but although the northern Valley in Upper Egypt is far betterknown its petroglyphs have not been studied systematically. There are several publications, each covering a small area, but none is comprehensive or complete. As a result the comparison with the Valley in Upper Egypt is partial and almost entirely merely qualitative, while that with the Valley in Nubia is more nearly complete and quantitative.

El Kab and Hierakonpolis In the mouth of the Wadi Hilal, which enters the Nile Valley on the right bank just east of the ancient city of El Kab, there is a group of rock tombs and a small New Kingdom temple and, on the northern wall of the wadi and on three nearby isolated rocks, large numbers of petroglyphs and hieroglyphic inscriptions. These have been the objects of study by a Belgian group for several years, and many of the finds have been published. The inscriptions have been published in systematic and thorough detail (Vanderkerckhove and Müller-Wollermann 2001), but unfortunately for the present purposes most of the petroglyph images have not. A few appear by chance in the margins of the photographs of inscriptions. For example on “Vulture Rock” there is what appears to be an ass with a mane shown realistically by short vertical strokes, and nearby another ass with no mane (ibid vol 2, N251 and N252). There are many giraffes (ibid M9) (see above in Chapter 3). There are several boats in various styles (ibid N111-120, N210, N270-271 and W3). The last of these, on “Pigeon Rock”, has a curved hull and an incurved finial.

UPPER EGYPT In this section the petroglyphs of the Nile Valley north of Aswan are compared with those of the Eastern Desert in as much detail as the published sources allow. In many cases the publications refer to work done with wide objectives, not just rock art, and give few data on the petroglyphs. Some describe them but, crucially, without or with only a few photographs or drawings. This makes the type of analysis described in Chapters 3 and 4, which is based on the author’s assessment of the form of the images, impossible, and permits only an incomplete qualitative comparison. The Qena Bend From the region west of the Qena Bend of the Nile Winkler reports images of a realistic hippopotamus and an elephant in the style identified as “Type C” (see below) (Winkler 1939 Plates X.2 and LVII.1). There are also two boats with incurved finials and two with elaborate masts and rigging (ibid Plates X.1 and XV.2; Winkler 1938 Plates IX.2 and XIII.1) and several other animals.

A discussion of the dating and significance of the petroglyphs, however, gives information on the numbers of various forms of images together with drawings of a few of them (Huyge 2002). Some of the numbers (ibid Table 1) can be compared with the corresponding numbers of images in the Eastern Desert, but others are not comparable. The images of ibexes and dogs in the Eastern Desert for example have not been counted because the published sources do not give photographs or descriptions of all of them. Table 9 compares those that can be

Recently the Theban Desert Road Survey has explored the region and discovered various rock drawings of anthropoids, crocodiles and other animals, and boats. The rock is limestone and, no doubt as a consequence, the

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ROCK ART OF THE EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

range of dates, the oldest of which indicates that they date from before around 5600 BC (Huyge et al 2001, and see Chapter 8 below). While the animal images are similar to many found in the Eastern Desert no parallels to the “fish traps” have been found there.

compared. It will be seen that there are marked differences. Among the wild animals while giraffes, antelopes and asses are present at El Kab in roughly the same proportions as in the eastern Desert, hippopotamuses are completely absent and crocodiles and elephants almost so. Cattle are present in both places in similar proportions but, most strikingly, anthropoids and even more so boats are much less common at El Kab. It is clear that the interests of the petroglyph artists at El Kab were not the same as those of their fellows in the Eastern Desert.

Recently a group of images has been found at Qurta, on the right bank of the river some 10 kilometres farther south. There are many images of cattle, along with birds, antelopes, fish, and anthropoids. The style is quite unlike anything in the Eastern Desert or anywhere else in Egypt. They are in the vicinity of the remains of settlements that have been dated to the late Palaeolithic, around 14000 or 13000 BC. This, and the fact that they are heavily patinated, indicates that they are older than any other rock art in Egypt (Huyge et al 2007).

Huyge illustrates a few of the El Kab images. The giraffes seem to be mainly of what is described here as “Type B” (see above), and some have the exaggerated “hairy” tails. The ibexes and asses seem similar to those of the Eastern Desert. Notably there are “orant” anthropoids at El Kab, but there are other anthropoid images that do not appear in the Desert (ibid Figure 2). Huyge’s conclusions about the chronology of the El Kab petroglyphs are discussed in Chapter 8 below.

Farther south on the right bank, about 12 kilometres north of Aswan in the Wadi Abu Subeira, more images of cattle, fish, a hippopotamus and other animals, in the same naturalistic style and also heavily patinated, have recently been found (Storemyr et al 2008). In other locations in the same wadi there are many animal images, including giraffes, elephants and a harpooned hippopotamus, a plumed figure and several boats (Gatto et al 2008). One of the boats is towed, while another carries a falcon figurehead which may be reminiscent of the image at site TJ1 in the Wadi Mineh (Rohl 2000 p82.10). Other images at sites in this wadi are reported by Červíček (1974). In general the Wadi Subeira images bear quite close resemblance to those of the Eastern Desert.

Across the river from El Kab, at Hierokonpolis, two images of boats have been found (Berger 1992). They are very similar. Each has a curved hull, an elaborate cabin and two short incurved decorated finials, but no “passengers”, crew, oars or mast. They appear carefully drawn and to be the work of the same artist. El Hosh and Aswan At El Hosh, on the left bank of the Nile some 30 kilometres south of Edfu, there are images of giraffes, including one in the “sitting” position, and one with a line drawn starting at its head and finishing in a large spiral (Winkler 1938 Plate XXIX.1; 1939 Plate LI.2). There is also a row of very accurate and well-observed animals including an elephant, a rhinoceros, four antelopes and an archer hunting an ostrich, all in a style that is much more realistic than any of the Eastern Desert (ibid Plate XX.1). Nearby is a man apparently leading an animal that might be a hartebeest (Winkler 1939 Plate XVIII.1), a design consisting of three crossed fish (ibid Plate VII.2) and some anthropoids with long hair and bodies represented by rectangles (ibid Plate X11.2). None of these images has any parallel in the Eastern Desert. However there is also a very striking boat with a curved hull, incurved finial, cabin and an elaborate “flower” decoration that would not be out of place at Kanais in the Eastern Desert (which is some 50 kilometres away to the north-east).

On the left bank opposite Aswan, in the vicinity of many ancient settlements and quarries, there are several rock art sites (Winkler 1939 Site 53, Storemyr 2008, Gatto et al 2008). There are particularly large numbers of geometric features including straight and wavy lines and circles with lines radiating from them. In addition there are several images of crocodiles as well as other animals. The crocodiles are remarkably similar to those 220 kilometres away at sites AB2 and ATW6 in the Wadi Atwani (Winkler 1938 Plates XXVI.1 and 2; Rohl 2000 p146.3; Morrow and Morrow 2002 p197.D and E), and the embellished circles are not unlike a pattern at site SAL12 in the Wadi Umm Salam (Morrow and Morrow 2002 p59.E). There are several boats, some with “passengers”, and one which is towed. South-east of Aswan, in the Wadi el Hudi, associated with amethyst quarries dating to the Middle Kingdom and later, there are several anthropoid images that appear to be of Dynastic date (see Chapter 8 below), and a few images of animals including six bovids, five dogs, two ibexes and an elephant (but no giraffes) (Fakhry 1952).

At the same site there are several curvilinear drawings, shaped like hearts or mushrooms (Winkler 1938 Plate XXXII). These have been interpreted as images of fish traps. It has been noted that in some cases the animal images overlie these “fish traps” (Huyge 1998), indicating that the latter are older. The patina on some of these images has been dated by means of its carbon-14 content giving a

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NILE VALLEY PETROGLYPHS

petroglyphs observed as a subsidiary activity of an investigation directed primarily towards recording monuments and graves (Curto et al 1987 p27). They present sketches of the images and only very few photographs, so in some cases interpretation is rather difficult. There are other publications that give a few additional images (Weigall 1907, Verwers 1962, Lopez 1966, Needler 1967), and they are included in the discussion of this chapter, but the rock paintings recorded by Bietak and Engelmayer (1963) are not. Weigall’s report is wide-ranging but, apparently, far from thorough. He reports only a few petroglyphs, some of which were also noted by Dunbar (for example Weigall Plate XXXVII.6 = Dunbar Figure 8; XXXVII.14 = Figure 40 and L.12 = Figure 16).

Comparison with the Eastern Desert For the reasons stated above it is not possible to make a detailed comparison of the petroglyphs of the Nile Valley in Upper Egypt with those of the Eastern Desert, but a few points are apparent. Many of the images that appear in the Valley have similar counterparts in the Desert, but equally there are several that do not. There are no rhinoceroses, storks or architectural constructions in the desert or (less surprisingly) fish or fish traps. Some of the anthropoids are similar to those of the Desert but several are quite different. While there are several images of boats in the Valley they do not dominate the petroglyph corpus as they do in the Desert. The general impression is that the differences between Valley and Desert are far greater than between any parts of the Desert.

Petroglyph Sites The Qurta images that appear to be very much older than any others have no parallel with any so far discovered in the Desert.

As pointed out in Chapter 2 above different authors use the term “site” in different ways, and in particular some of the sites described by Hellström and Langballe are very large and are divided by them into several “stations”. Their nomenclature with respect to sites is followed here, without reference to stations.

NUBIA Sources of Data

Váhala and Červíček use a different terminology. They present most of their observations in terms of 38 Fundstationen which are divided into a total of 375 Fundorte. Most of the Fundorte have between five and ten individual petroglyphs, so that compared with the sites in the Eastern Desert the Fundorte are rather small and the Fundstationen are large. Moreover they have one Fundstation, at Korosko, that consists of 579 separate Fundorte with between them around 2500 individual petroglyph images. In what follows each Fundstation is referred to as a petroglyph “site”. It must be remembered that some of these sites, especially Korosko, are very large.

In the 1960s, before the completion of the High Dam, a series of expeditions arranged under the auspices of UNESCO surveyed parts of the valley that were about to be flooded by the waters of Lake Nasser with the object of recording the petroglyphs and rock inscriptions that would be lost. The results of some of this work have been published and these publications form a database that is not only invaluable but also reasonably convenient for study. They, supplemented by a few publications of earlier observations in the region, have been used as the basis for the present comparison. The main sources are Dunbar Engelmayer Almagro Basch and Almagro Gorbea Hellström and Langballe Červíček Curto et al Otto and Buschendorf-Otto Váhala and Červíček

1941 1965 1968 1970 1974 1987 1993 1999.

Otto and Buschendorf-Otto describe 132 Fundplätze at most of which there are several Bildgruppen, and most of these have between one and twenty individual petroglyph images. The Bildgruppen are usually stated to be “close” to one another, but how close is not made clear. In what follows each Fundplatz is referred to as a “site”. Engelmayer presents drawings of the boats at 22 Stationen and photographs of some of them. Some of these Stationen are quite large, extending over 150 metres or more (Engelmayer 1965, for example p35). Apart from the names given to them by the local people the precise locations are not given: it is stated only that they lie on both banks of the river within a few tens of kilometres of Sayala, which is some 130 kilometres south of Aswan (ibid p9).

Between them these publications present many thousands of individual images from a region that stretches from the First Cataract just south of Aswan to about 100 kilometres south of the Second Cataract, a distance along the river of about 460 kilometres. Most of these sources deal only with the Nile Valley but Červíček’s 1974 publication includes images from a wider area, of which only those from the Valley have been selected for inclusion here. Engelmayer, unfortunately, presents only images of boats: the other petroglyph images recorded by the Austrian expeditions do not seem to have been published. Curto et al report

Curto et al report 23 petroglyph sites, 12 in the vicinity of Dehmet (about 35 kilometres south of Aswan) and 11 on

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ROCK ART OF THE EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

448, 450 and 457). Each of these two groups seems to have been drawn by a single artist. Neither, however, has a parallel in the Eastern Desert. On the other hand the “diagrammatic” image of a giraffe with a round body and a neck of exaggerated length that appears in the Desert (at site SAL7, for example) is absent from the Nubia.

the right bank between Qasr Ibrim and Korosko (opposite the region explored by the Spanish team and reported by Almagro Basch and Almagro Gorbea. Counting each of Váhala’s Fundstationen and each of Otto’s Fundplätze as a “site” in this way, (but not including Engelmayer’s unlocated Stationen) a total of 309 sites are reported in the above publications. All of them are referred to here by their authors’ numbers and names, and are distinguished by means of a prefix as follows: “D” refers to Dunbar (1941), “CCK” to Červíček (1976), “A” or “AA” to Almagro Basch and Almagro Gorbea (1968), “H” to Hellström and Langballe (1970), “G” to Curto et al (1987), “OT” to Otto and Buschendorf-Otto (1993), and “V” to Váhala and Červíček (1999). Map 10 shows their locations. It seems likely that most of the UNESCO survey publications are nearly complete, in the sense that almost all the petroglyphs adjoining the reaches of the river for which the survey results have been published have been included. It will however be seen that some reaches are not covered by the UNESCO publications and the coverage is at best sketchy and in many cases non-existent. Sayala, location of the Austrian surveys, was around 23˚ N, 32˚40’ E, and it will be seen from Map 10 that there are few published sites in this region. The few there are were recorded by Dunbar.

Giraffe images are distributed fairly uniformly throughout the Nubia. There is however an average of 6.0 giraffes at each site at which giraffes occur (compared with only 2.0 in the Eastern Desert). This is because there are several sites with large numbers of giraffes. These are listed in Table 10, from north to south along the river. It is interesting to note that most of these sites are in three groups, one within some 50 kilometres of the Toshka and Korosko bends in the Nile, one near the Second Cataract and one in the extreme south near Dakke. The large number of giraffe images near the fortress of Ibrim (A pp267-272) is particularly remarkable, as is the large number at Dakke where at least 44 giraffes, possibly more, are crowded onto a single rock face (O Foto 451). There are sites with several giraffes in the Eastern Desert but none with such large numbers. As in the Desert, at the sites with large numbers of giraffes in the Valley the individual images are in most cases very similar in style, suggesting that they were all drawn by the same artist. This is particularly noticeable at sites AAIS, OT129 (see above) and D008 (D Figures 7 and11).

As before, for brevity, in the remainder of this chapter references to Almagro Basch and Almagro Gorbea (1968) are denoted by “A”, to Červíček (1976) by “C”, to Dunbar (1941) by “D”, to Hellström and Langballe (1970) by “H”, to Otto and Buschendorf-Otto (1993) by “O”, and to Váhala and Červíček (1999) by “V”. In reviewing the petroglyph images in the Valley and comparing them with those in the Eastern Desert the order of the categories used in Chapters 3 and 4 is followed.

In the Nubia 68% of the giraffes face to the right. This is significantly different from the Eastern Desert, where they face right and left in nearly equal numbers. As in the Desert, in Nubia there are only a few hunting scenes involving giraffes. At sites H160, H157 and H380 a giraffe is the quarry of a hunt. The giraffes at H160s (H Plate 54.2) seem to be attacked by steatopygous archers and possibly dogs, but as the site is crowded with many images it is not clear exactly what the artists intended to depict. The artist of H157m (H Plate 38.2) however clearly intended to show his or her giraffe as being attacked by two archers. Site H380b (H Plate 101.1) also shows a clear hunting scene with four giraffes, at least four archers, and four dogs. There are no scenes of giraffes being hunted south of the Second Cataract.

Giraffes Images of giraffes are common in Nubia. Of the total of 309 sites 93 have images of giraffes and there are 554 giraffe images in all. In Nubia 125 (23%) of the images are of Type A (see Chapter 3 above) compared with 22% in the Eastern Desert. Thirty-five of the Nubian giraffes have curly tails and of these 15 are in the group of sites close to the Second Cataract. An image of a giraffe with exaggerated tail hair appears only once in Nubia, at site V39 (V Tafel 161.5), and it is quite different in appearance from those in the Eastern Desert because there is no tail, only a tuft of long hair. Many of the giraffe images in the Valley would not be out of place in the Desert, but there are exceptions. There is a group of giraffes with particularly large bodies contrasted with spindly necks and small heads at site V39 (V Tafeln 203 and 204), and at two of the most southerly sites, OT128 and OT130, there are groups of several giraffes, elegant to modern eyes, with long tapering legs and graceful necks (O Fotos 440, 441,

At sites H160 and H380 there are scenes of giraffes feeding. At H160s two giraffes feed from opposite sides of a tree (H Plate 54.5) and at H380d a group of six giraffes is shown eating from at least three trees or bushes (H Plate 102.1). While none of these feeding scenes is particularly well drawn they are of interest because they are evidence that the natural behaviour of the animals apart from human interaction was observed and recorded. This might indicate an interest in them for their own sake, not only as an economic resource. Similarity of style, to the extent that all these feeding giraffes have cocked tails, suggests that they

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Of the 116 elephants 85 (73%) face to the right. This indicates a statistically significant preference, and is quite different from the Eastern Desert where almost equal numbers face left and right. The difference is very similar to that in the case of giraffes. Elephant images usually appear in conjunction with images of other animals, and less frequently of people and boats. However there is rarely any pictorial relationship with other images (except in the cases noted below). The elephants seem to be occupying the same rock surface as a matter of convenience, not necessity.

were drawn by a single artist. There are no feeding scenes among the giraffe images in the Eastern Desert. Images of vegetation of any sort are very rare in both Nubia and the Eastern Desert. In Nubia there are four, possibly five, images of giraffes joined to anthropoids by a line from the neck, as if the animal is being held captive, or led, by a man. These are at sites D026 and D008 (D Figures 7 and 8; Weigall 1907 Plate XXXVII.6) and V31 (V Tafeln 8 and 9), and there is a more dubious example at site V31 (V Tafel 84). Images of this type (but not these examples) are discussed by Van Hoek (2003), who suggests they are magic “rain animals”. There is nothing like them in the Eastern Desert. Unlike the images of “captive” cattle in the Desert (see Chapter 3 above) the “controllers” are in front of their giraffes.

There are a few scenes in Nubia that may represent elephant-hunts. At site V10 three very crudely-drawn elephants are confronted by men carrying what may be bows (V Tafel 30.104). An elephant at site H154b is confronted by an archer (H Plate 18.1), and another at site AANK is surrounded by four or maybe five dogs that seem to be attacking it (A Figure 17). One at site H154m may be being hunted by men with clubs, but this interpretation seems very doubtful (H Plate 27.5). A confused scene at Auleko may also represent a hunt (O Abb.318). There are no scenes of elephants feeding or engaged in any particular activity (such as migrating or gathering at a water hole, for example). An elephant at site AAKM is held by the tail by a very small man (A Figure 183). Apart from this no elephant is shown in a domesticated context or as being used for riding or haulage. Elephants at sites AANK and H152b appear to be accompanied by calves.

Elephants The sources provide a total of 116 elephant images from 35 sites. There is an average of 3.3 elephants per site, in comparison with 1.5 per site in the Eastern Desert. As in the case of giraffes the difference is the consequence of a few sites with large numbers of elephant images, notably 11 at site OT087 at Aruse, and six at site AAKM and five at site D018 (both near Korosko). There are also seven and 17 at sites H152 and H154 respectively at the Second Cataract, but these numbers are not readily comparable because of the different nomenclature for sites adopted by Hellström (see above). The elephants at Aruse are, unusually, drawn in a range of different styles and only four of them form an identifiable group (O Foto 237).

Almagro Basch and Almagro Gorbea argue that the Type C elephants (drawn with incised lines in a fluid and animated style) are older than Types A and B (A p312). This conclusion is based on conflicts where one image clearly overlies another. Similarity of drawing technique suggests that the elephants at site AAKM, some of which are close to Pharaonic images, date to the Dynastic period. As only Types A and B appear in the Eastern Desert these conclusions tend to indicate a relatively late date for the elephant images there, but do not provide any basis for absolute dating.

There is more variation in the style of the elephant images in the Nubia than in the Eastern Desert. In addition to the two Types of image identified above (Type A with both ears raised above the head, and Type B with the ears hanging down realistically) there is a third Type C in which one ear is shown above the body and the other hanging down. In Type C the outline of the image is without exception not filled so that the pendant ear can be seen, and the image is more realistic and variable than types A and B. Table 11 shows the incidence of the various types in both locations.

Felines There is a total of 45 images in the Nubia that might possibly be identified as felines. Several of them are very dubious. One at site H209 for example is identified by Hellström as a lion but looks much more like a horse (H Corpus M19 and Plate 156.1). If these together with several that are clearly cats are eliminated, 29 images that probably represent large feline predators remain. A feline at site AAKM might be attacking a giraffe (A Figure 189), and one at H376c might be attacking a bovid (H Plate 72.2). At site D009 a row of four ibexes is attacked by two animals that could be felines but are more probably dogs (D Figure 16). At site V39 a feline, probably a lion, is fighting three men, one of whom is apparently dead while the other two

Almost all of the Type C images appear in the region of the Korosko bend in the river, but there is also one 200 kilometres away at Aruse (O Abb.618) and another farther south at Sheragoshe (O Abb.763). Although 30 of the 116 elephant images (26%) are at the Second Cataract there are no Type Cs among them. The Type A and B elephants in Nubia display many of the unrealistic features shown by the Eastern Desert images and identified in Chapter 3. As noted above there is a single Type C elephant at the Qena bend, far to the north.

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ROCK ART OF THE EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

fight on armed with shields and axes (V Tafel 120, also reported by Dunbar, Figure 93). This scene appears to have more in common with Pharaonic imagery than with the majority of the desert petroglyphs. At H154e a lion is confronted by an archer (H Plate 20.1, top left).

surprising is the resemblance between the four other “quadrupeds” and some of the strange creatures at site SH5 in the Wadi Sha’it.

These feline images are in the main similar to those found in the Eastern Desert, but there is one group of images of lions that are different. At site V27 there are five lions, almost identical in form and all facing left, and at the nearby site CCK14 there is another (V Tafel 74, C Foto 11). All six images appear to have been drawn by the same artist. There is none similar in the Eastern Desert.

Compared with the 25 or more in the Eastern Desert there are only 25 hippo images in Nubia, 12 of which are at the Second Cataract. (The last four of Hellström and Langballe’s 16 images appear to be more like pigs than hippos (H Corpus H).) It is surprising that although there are more petroglyph sites in the Nile Valley than in the Eastern Desert there are no more hippo images there, close to the river where the animals must have been common. Moreover in contrast to the desert images none of those in Nubia is shown in any human context. There are for example no hunting scenes involving hippos.

Hippopotamuses

Rhinoceroses There are two unequivocal images of rhinoceroses in Nubia, one at Aruse (O Abb.618), and one at Naga Abu Asha (V Tafel 44). There are no images of rhinoceroses in the Eastern Desert.

As noted above at site AAKA a hippo appears surrounded by crocodiles and other images. At site V15 a hippo is with what appears to be a rhinoceros (apparently showing the creases in the animal’s hide) and possibly some calves (V Tafel 44.167). At site OT087, a site with a wide variety of animals including giraffes, gerenuks, elephants, oryxes, cattle, ostriches, dogs, anthropoids, and the rhinoceros mentioned above, there is a hippo with a calf (O Abb.609a), and at site G007 there is another group of animals also including a hippo and a calf.

Crocodiles As in the Eastern Desert it is in most cases impossible to know whether an image was intended to be a crocodile or a lizard, but as almost all the other recognizable images appear to represent large animals it is assumed that they are crocodiles. There are 57 crocodile images in the above sources, 30 of which are at the Second Cataract. As in the Eastern Desert most of them are very simple with no representation of digits or claws. Most are drawn as seen from above but at sites V30, OT025 and OT087 there are crocodiles seen from the side. Unlike the crocodiles in the Eastern Desert few in Nubia appear to be represented as being in any recognizable context or related to any other image. Two at site H379c appear to be fighting snout to snout (H Plate 99.4). At site OT087 a crocodile is being speared by a hunter and at site H154g there is an image of what might be a man grasping the tail of another (H Plate 25.2). Apart from these there seems to be no anthropoid image associated with a crocodile (although at some sites anthropoids and other animals have been drawn on the same rock surface but are apparently unrelated to each other).

Ibexes There are relatively few ibex images in Nubia compared with the Eastern Desert: while ibexes appear at 58% of the sites in the Eastern Desert (179 out of 308), or 81% of the sites with animal images (179 out of 221), they appear at only 11% of the sites in the Nubian part of the Nile Valley (33 out of 309), and at these 33 sites there is a total of 108 ibex images. Hellström reports no ibex images at all, although a few of the animals he lists as “antelopes” or “goats” are probably ibexes (H Corpus L166, 169, 170 and 225; D3 and 22 for example). However none of these have the very exaggerated semi-circular horns so characteristic of the Eastern Desert ibexes, and they may indeed be antelopes, possibly scimitar-horned oryxes. There are about 38 ibex images at site V39, but this is not a large number in comparison with the hundreds of images at this extensive site.

All the crocodiles appear singly or in pairs apart from at site OT025 where there is a group of three (O Abb.131), and at site AAKA, near Tumas, where there is a row of at least five (some of the images are ambiguous) together with a hippopotamus, another indeterminate animal, some branching lines that might represent vegetation, and four other images (A Figure 242). These last appear to depict long-bodied quadrupeds with short limbs, long tails and rounded heads, seen from above. It is very surprising that the row of crocodiles is similar in many respects to the group of these animals at sites ATW2 and AB2 in the Wadi Atwani some 400 kilometres away to the north. Equally

This marked difference in distribution is an indication that, at least as far as these animals are concerned, the petroglyph artists drew what they saw in their immediate surroundings: ibexes, being predominantly mountain animals, were common in the foothills of the Red Sea mountains, not so prevalent in the south-west of the Eastern Desert which is farther from the high ground, and almost absent from the alluvial land by the Nile.

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boat (O Abb.4a), and at OT087 a person appears to hold an ass by the tail (O Abb.606).

Ostriches Ostriches are represented at 90 sites in Nubia, 29% of the total, compared with 45% in the Eastern Desert, so ostrich images are less common in the Valley than in the Desert, but to a less marked extent than ibexes. Hellström and Langballe report 130 images of what they conservatively call “birds”, but all except 10 or 11 are clearly ostriches (H Corpus Q). All are side views. One (image Q9) might, judging by the shape of its head, be a flamingo, but this is unlikely as its neck is straight, not S-shaped.

Addaxes Only three addax petroglyphs in Nubia have been reported (A Figure 115; C Abbn.412 and 416). Among all the 4657 petroglyph images of mammals reported by Hellström and Langballe there is not one with helical horns. The absence of images of a desert animal by the river is not surprising, but reinforces the conclusion that, in the main, people drew petroglyphs of animals that were present in the vicinity. (Two animals identified as addaxes by Otto and Buschendorf-Otto (O Abb.4a) seem more likely to be cattle.)

In both Nubia and the Eastern Desert ostriches usually appear in ones or twos associated with other animals. There are small flocks at sites H160s (H Plate 51) and D026 (D Figure 22), and larger flocks at sites AANK (A Figures 3 and 94)), V10 and V39 (V Tafeln 27 and 164), but few others. Dunbar reports three ostriches being hunted by an archer at site D019 (D Figure 24), and there are two possible images of ostrich hunts at site V39 (V Tafeln 199 and 224). At site D016 there is an ostrich apparently tethered to a stake and held by a man who grasps a rope tied to its tail (D Figure 23). Above the bird is a U-shaped mark that might be intended to represent its raised wings. At site AANK an ostrich overlies, and therefore presumably postdates, a Type C elephant (A Figure 28), and at site V39 an ostrich apparently overlies an antelope (V Tafel 194).

Oryxes Hellström and Langballe do not distinguish the various species of antelope but among the images they present there are perhaps four dammah oryxes and 14 Beisa (H Corpus L127-130, 152-158, 161, 162, 168-170, 219 and 220). Almost all of them are at Second Cataract sites, on rock faces crowded with other antelopes, ostriches, giraffes and other animals, where individual images, apparently of different ages, overlap. Almagro Basch and Almagro Gorbea identify several images as oryxes but in the present author’s opinion, based on the extreme curvature of their horns, many of them are more likely to be ibexes. There are only about four images that are probably oryxes, the most interesting of which, at site AAKZ, apparently shows a group of animals being chased by dogs that are wearing collars (A Figure 131). Váhala and Červíček report many images that appear to represent antelopes but in very few cases is it possible to identify the species. There is one, at site V39, that seems most likely to be a Beisa oryx (V Tafel 195). Otto and Buschendorf-Otto report three images that seem likely to represent scimitar-horned oryxes (O Abbn.39, 441 and 613), one that may be a Beisa oryx (O Abb.656c), and few others that may be oryxes but are not clear enough to be certain. The animal at Oshinardje, site OT069, appears to be the quarry of a hunt by men with bows and dogs (O Abb.441).

“Wild Asses” Although images of maned wild asses appear at at least 44 sites in the Eastern Desert there is none in the Nile Valley. One possible example is illustrated by Hellström and Langballe (H Corpus J52), but it is very rough and, although it appears to have a “mane”, it has only one “ear” and differs in general appearance from the image standard in the Eastern Desert. Another at site V09 lacks a rounded muzzle and again does not resemble the Eastern Desert images (V Tafel 25.81). Hellström and Langballe designate several images as “asses” but few of them have the rounded muzzle characteristic of the Eastern Desert images. Several appear at site H378 together with images of many other animals (all facing right) (H Plate 86.1). Whatever the maned animal was either it was absent from Nubia or else the artistic style in which it was represented was unique to the desert.

The overall conclusion is that oryx petroglyphs are rare in the Nile Valley in Nubia apart from the region of the Second Cataract.

A possible “unmaned” ass at site D017 may have a tether or halter, but it is not held by anyone or attached to anything (D Figure 102). At site OT050 there is an ass (although the identification is rather dubious) that may be bearing a burden (O Abb.227). If it is it is the only image of a domesticated donkey in either Nubia or the Eastern Desert. It appears to be accompanied by three dogs. It might on the other hand be a rather inexact image of a camel. At site OT003 an image of an ass is overlain by a

Gerenuks In Nubia there are many petroglyphs of animals with horns that curve forwards at the tips. Of the 227 animals Hellström and Langballe identify as “antelopes” about half have this feature. It is far from clear, however, that they are all gerenuks because only a few of them have a conspicuously long neck, the distinctive feature of the Eastern Desert images (H Corpus L123-126 and 213-216,

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ROCK ART OF THE EASTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

farther south near Sarras (O Abbn.453, 498 and 580). No similar images have been found in the Eastern Desert.

for example). The identity of the others is open to question – they may be dibatags or Dorcas gazelles but it is not possible to be sure. It seems likely however that some species of antelope with forward-curved horns, other than gerenuk, was plentiful in the region of the Second Cataract and was of interest to the petroglyph artists. As with the oryxes the images usually occur on crowded rock faces with animals of several other species.

There is one scorpion and possibly a second at the Second Cataract (H Corpus T1,T2). In addition there is a third near Wadi Halfa that is grasping an anthropoid. It is near an inscription that records an expedition by Pharaoh Djer to the Second Cataract and might refer to the Scorpion King (Needler 1967). Hellström reports a few images of snakes, some little more than wavy lines (H Corpus S1-10). At Khor Rhama there is a realistic cobra (V Tafel 5). As in the Eastern Desert, there are very few venomous animals.

Almagro Basch and Almagro Gorbea report antelopes with forward-tipped horns at five sites. At site AANK at Nag Kolorodna several of them are shown as being hunted by dogs (A Figures 8, 42 and 49). At site AAKK they appear in the company of giraffes and ostriches (A Figure 157) and at site AAKM there are five particularly fine images similar in quality to the best from the Eastern Desert (A Figure 185). Dunbar notes these animals only at site D017 (D Figures 13 and 102). Two gerenuks, accompanied by ostriches and other animals, are reported at Khor Fahnu (Curto et al 1987 Tavola 32 Figure 38). Váhala and Červíček report several animals with long necks and forward-tipped horns. Some appear to be being hunted by dogs (V Tafeln 10, 110, 163 and 182), others are in groups, sometimes with several other animals (V Tafeln 65,76,98), and others are alone or in pairs (V Tafeln 8, 66, 105, 117, 164, 197, 203, 209, 210 and 241). The group at site V06 near Khor Rhama are drawn in a particularly lively and realistic style, with the animals’ heads turned to look at the dog pursuing them (V Tafel 10). Weigall notes what appears to be a gerenuk suckling its young at Gerf Hussein (Weigall 1907 Plate XXXVIII.11). The presence of these images gives the impression that gerenuks were fairly common and of interest to the rock artists at several places in northern Nubia, and of rather greater importance than in the Eastern Desert. They were often represented in similar styles – with elegantly-exaggerated necks and gracefullycurved horns – in both locations.

Cattle – Style Images of cattle are very numerous in Nubia. The above sources provide images of 2480. Hellström gives 553, of which 468 are at the Second Cataract (although some of them are so imprecise that they have not been included in this study – see H Corpus C167, C185, C361, C467 and C548 for example). Váhala and Červíček report a total of 617, of which 489 are at Korosko. Otto and BuschendorfOtto report the largest number, about 1083 which, even though the number is rather uncertain because some of their images are indistinct, is as many images of cattle as of all other animals and birds in their report put together. There is a clear trend that the predominance of cattle images increases with distance to the south. In broad terms the styles of the cattle images in Nubia are similar to those of the Eastern desert but the frequencies with which they occur are rather different, as indicated in Table 12. The similarity is certainly not as close as in the case of giraffes, which may show that while there was cultural homogeneity between the two regions during the period when the cattle petroglyphs were drawn it was not as close as when the giraffes were the objects of the artists’ interest (without giving any indication as to whether the giraffes were drawn before, at the same time as, or after, the cattle). Alternatively it might indicate that the people who drew the giraffes had wider cultural contacts than their cattle-drawing colleagues, whose imaginative horizons were closer to their immediate communities.

There are fewer such images farther south. Otto and Buschendorf-Otto report images of antelopes with forwardtipped horns and long necks at only two sites, OT066 (Auleko) and OT087 (Aruse) (O Abbn.352a and 593). At the latter there are three animals, depicted particularly clearly, that may be being hunted by men accompanied by dogs. They also report a few of the short-necked animals (O Abbn.254, 319, 427 and 612).

Sex is indicated in even fewer of the Nubian cattle than in those of the Eastern Desert, as shown in Table 13. There are differences in the way the horns of the animals are indicated. The styles prevalent in the Eastern Desert are all present in Nubia, although there are proportionately fewer instances of incurved horns. There are 55 examples of the “drooping” configuration in which one of the horns is curved down in front of the animal’s head. Most of these images are at Korosko (see for example V Tafeln 162, 186, 189 or 190). There are proportionally more examples of this image in the Eastern Desert but the number there (seven) is so small that the difference is unlikely to be

Other wild animals As noted above there are many other unidentifiable antelope images, especially at the Second Cataract, usually at sites where there are many animals. They are often crudely drawn without obvious distinguishing features. An exception is a group of animals with lyre-shaped horns at site AAIS (A Figures 284-287). These might be hartebeests, but it is not certain. There may be some similar images at the Second Cataract (H Corpus L174-182), and

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last images shows the lines crossing the whole neck as if to represent some form of decorative collar (V Tafel 91), but there is no such indication in any of the others. There is only one instance of this neck appendage in the Eastern Desert, at site SHA in the extreme south of the region.

statistically significant. However it is of interest to note that in both regions most of the “drooping” horns occur in clusters at a small number of sites. In addition some of the animals in the Valley have very long horns shown with a span exceeding the length of its body (for example V Tafeln 26 and 185; Weigall 1907 Plate LXVII.3). This configuration is not found in the Eastern Desert, but it is reminiscent of certain images found in the Central Sahara (see Chapter 6 below). The numbers of the various horn configurations are shown in Table 14.

Before the UNESCO data became available Huard collected 143 similar examples of rock art images (both petroglyphs and paintings) of cattle with neck appendages from publications covering the whole of the Sahara (Huard 1965a). He suggests several interpretations. Rejecting the possibility that they represent natural features of the animals as very unlikely in view of the numbers, he concludes that they refer in some way to a form of domestication.

It is possible that the bovids with very long horns are actually the now-extinct giant buffalo, archaeological remains of which have been found in many places in the Western and Central Sahara, the southern part of the Egyptian Western Desert and in the north of the Sudan, but not in the Nile Valley north of the Third Cataract or in the Eastern Desert (Gautier and Muzzolini 1991). They may have been present in the Nile Valley in Egypt and Nubia at one time, but it is not likely (ibid p56). The many petroglyph representations of this animal in the western and central Sahara, in the Atlas mountains and in the Fezzan and Tassili regions of southern Algeria and Libya are in a realistic style that makes it clear that they are indeed buffaloes, not cattle. The same cannot be said of the long-horned petroglyph bovids of the Nile Valley, but there is a possibility that some of them represent giant buffaloes.

There are three images of cattle with pronounced humps (V Tafeln 77 and 124; H Corpus C433). These might refer to the introduction of zebus from Asia into Egypt in the Dynastic period. Cattle – Context There are three instances of an animal with what appears to be a structure on its back (O Abbn. 399, 415 and 513). All are in the region of Sarras south of the Second Cataract. All three are very simple in form, being shaped like an inverted “U”. In one case (Abb. 399) vertical lines on the animal’s flank might indicate attachment straps, and in another (Abb. 513) there is an arch-shaped mark on the flank. Another animal at the same site has a similar mark on its flank but no structure (Abb. 486). There are no images of structures as elaborate as those found in the region of the Wadi Sha’it in the Eastern Desert. There are two instances in which a line joining the tips of the horns is shown, as if to represent some form of decoration (V Tafel 132; H Corpus C264). H Corpus C266 and C362 might be two other instances but they are not clear.

There are six examples of distorted and multiple horns (H corpus C130, C418, C429 and C511; V Tafel 186: A Figures 29 and 243), a feature that occurs at only one site (two animals) in the Eastern Desert. There are fewer shorthorned cattle in Nubia. In almost all cases while the animal is drawn as if seen from the side the horns are shown as if seen from the front. However in a few cases in Nubia (but never in the Desert) the horns are shown as if seen from above (V Tafeln 62 and 91: H Corpus C417). In a particularly striking case two animals portrayed in this manner have horns that spiral inwards through 360 degrees at the tip (V Tafel 58). There are two other animals with spiral horns (O Abb.762), but they are drawn in a different style. There are two instances of an animal with horns that sweep downwards in front of its head, at site V21 (V Tafel 59) and at site G006 (Curto et al 1987 Tavola 26 Figure 15). They are reminiscent of the similar image at site DB1 in the Eastern Desert.

The image of an anthropoid figure holding what appears to be a rope attached to an animal’s horns appears at several sites in Nubia. At site AANK (A Figure 71) there are three such images, at V28 (V Tafel 79) there are two, and at each of OT006, OT012 and OT075 (O Abbn. 12b, 37 and 463) there is one. The image at OT006 is unusual in that the “rope” is attached to the tip of the horn rather than the base and there is a second anthropoid standing by the animal’s head. At OT075 the anthropoid holding the “rope” stands in front of the animal. At OT009 (O Abb. 31) an anthropoid apparently holds a halter attached to a collar round the animal’s neck. At site CCK22 a single man holds two animals, one on each side (C Abb. 412: this image was republished by Váhala and Červíček in 1999 (Tafel 69) without cross-reference).

The proportion of the cattle images in the Nubia that face to the right – 65% – is a little less than the 70% proportion in the Eastern Desert. Some of the Nubian cattle appear to have an appendage shown as a short vertical line attached below the neck. This is present on 253 images, 10% of the total. In a few cases there are multiple lines: 16 images have two lines, five have three, one has four and three have five. One of these

There are six other possible examples, four of which are at the Second Cataract but they are uncertain and quite

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from the Eastern Desert, apart from the cow which appears to suckle a human child at site SHL.

different in appearance from those in the Eastern Desert. One is at site H157 (H Plate 31.2) and two at H384 (H Plates 119.6 and 121.1), but in these cases the “rope” is much shorter than in the northern images. At site H169 the man holding the rope floats above the bull to which it is attached. This bull is also unusual in that its horns are shown to meet to form the shape of a heart. Further possible examples are at sites V08 (V Tafel 23) and OT080 (O Abb. 558). It is remarkable that this image, which occurs in connection with 26 out of the 426 cattle in the Eastern Desert and is particularly common in the north, is relatively scarce in Nubia where it occurs at most (including all the doubtful cases) on 17 out of 2419 animals.

Anthropoids – Style While the animal images of Nubia are in general quite similar to those of the Eastern Desert the anthropoids are different. In almost all cases it would not be possible to tell where an animal image, seen in isolation, comes from, but many of the images in human form are distinctive, found only in either Nubia or the Desert. There are 1243 human images, separate from boats, shown in the Nubian sources. As before images that are clearly Pharaonic in style have not been included. There are very few images of anthropoids in boats in the Valley (see below). The most obvious feature of the Nubian anthropoids is their variety both of style and attitude, much greater than that of the Eastern Desert anthropoids. While almost all the latter are shown standing upright and seen from the front many of the former appear to be walking, running or even dancing, often seen from the side, sometimes bending or gesturing or brandishing objects they hold.

The image of a figure standing behind the animal and grasping its tail is, in contrast, common in the Korosko region where it occurs 22 times. There are in addition two instances at site OT066 but it is very rare at, if not absent from, the Second Cataract. At site H387 a man holds the tail of an animal that Hellström calls an antelope but which in the opinion of the author is more likely to be a bull (H Plate 91.3). At the same site there are two instances of men standing behind cattle but not quite holding the tail (H Plates 90.1 and 90.5). At site H160 a man brandishing a club stands behind a cow and there is a similar image at site V13 (V Tafel 39). At site OT102 a man behind an animal appears to be nearly holding its tail.

There are two images at site H157 that might represent hunts but might equally relate to herding (H Plates 31.4 and 32.6). At site G013 a bovid is surrounded by men some of whom may have bows (Curto et al 1987 Tavola 40 Figure 62). At site V39 an archer accompanied by two dogs appears to be attacking two animals and an ostrich, while at sites V39 and V10 men with bows are shown among cattle but it is not clear whether they are hunting them (V Tafeln 224, 117 and 29). There is a similarly confused series of images at site OT128 (O Abb. 761) which appears to show both ostriches and cattle being hunted.

In the Desert some 7% of the images have heads represented by a square or a trapezium. This image is absent from the Valley. In Nubia there is in general less emphasis on the head and in about 47% of cases it is rather small, compared with 30% in the Desert. Wedge-shaped bodies are about equally frequent in Nubia and the Desert, as is the steatopygous form. The linear “matchstick man” style is rather more common in Nubia than the Desert (25% as against 8%). It is very noticeable that the “round-arm” style that is common in the Desert is almost entirely absent from the Valley, as is also the “orant” posture shown with arms curved above the head (although some are shown with arms raised but not curved). A penis is represented on considerably fewer of the Nubian images than on those in the Desert (10% in contrast to 25%), but in two thirds of the Valley images it is shown as projecting to one side of the body whereas in the Desert it is shown in this way in only one third of the cases. Few of the Nubian anthropoids are shown with distinctive female features (if the few that appear to wear skirts are discounted). At site OT087, however, there are two similar groups of three figures, each comprising a “matchstick man” with two companions which might be women in long skirts (O Abb. 588), while at site G013 there are, apparently, four steatopygous women in long skirts (Curto et al 1987 Tavole 38 and 39, Figures 56 and 58). There is nothing comparable in the Eastern Desert, but remarkably the four women are very like others at Dakhla in the Western Desert (see Chapter 6 below).

At sites V10 and V35 there are images of cows being milked (V Tafeln 35 and 90). This image is entirely absent

In the vicinity of Khor Zuqan, near Tumas, there are at least 30 images remarkable in that they lack arms

In the Valley, as in the Desert, there are several large “herds” of cattle. At site AAKA there are many cattle including a group of about 24 all depicted in a similar style, unpatterned, with long horns of various shapes (A Figure 243). At site G214 there are 21 animals all in a similar style but with horns of various configurations (Curto et al Tavola 49). At the Second Cataract sites there are large herds at sites H375 and H379 (H Plates 65 and 98). Farther south there are herds at sites OT015, OT040 and OT066 (O Abbn. 42b, 178 and 356). As in the Desert herds the style of drawing in each herd is uniform but the patterns of individual animals and the shapes of their horns are different.

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image might not have been intended to represent an actual act of leading but possibly the capture of a wild animal or alternatively a close but abstract relationship such as ownership.

completely (and indeed there is some doubt as to whether they are rightly classified as anthropoids) (see for example A Figures 123-128 and 132-136). There is a single similar figure at site OT058 near Sarras (O Abb. 300). At Khor el Aqiba there are some even more stylised images (A Figures 239-241). Nothing like any of these has been found in the Eastern Desert.

In marked contrast to the Desert there are few hunting scenes in Nubia. At site D019 an archer appears to point an arrow at a giraffe (D Figure 85), and at V39 another may be hunting an oryx (V Tafel 224). There are some other instances of anthropoids carrying bows with animals nearby (O Abbn. 441 and 761 for example) but it is not clear that they represent hunts. There are no elaborate scenes with hunters, dogs and several quarry animals such as are found in the Desert. At site D016 there is a remarkable scene showing what appears to be a lion hunt in which one of the hunters has been killed (D Figure 93), but it is unlike anything in the Desert in both style and subject matter.

Perhaps the most remarkable difference between Nubia and the Valley is the comparative absence of “plumes”, represented by curved or straight lines rising from the head, in the latter. Only 7% of the Nubian anthropoids have plumes, compared with 22% in the Desert. Moreover the plumes of the Nubian people are in general shorter and less prominent, and there are only 13 examples of multiple plumes. About 100 of the Nubian anthropoids carry a bow. This is about half the frequency with which bows appear in the Desert. The most striking difference however is in the way they are held. As pointed out above, in the Desert most of the bows are held asymmetrically, nearer the top than in the centre, a position that would be quite inappropriate for use. This image never appears in Nubia, where bows are almost always shown as if in use. It is as if in the Desert a bow was often shown as a decoration or distinction, but that this was never done in Nubia. A further 130 or so of the Valley images appear to carry another sort of object, perhaps a stick or some form of weapon held above the head, in other cases possibly a stave held vertically. Near Attiri several anthropoids brandish objects that look like boomerangs (O Abbn. 700 and 711). There are very few instances in which a recognizable weapon (apart from a bow) is deployed, but there are a few images that appear to show men holding shields. There are no shields in the Desert.

In Nubia, as in the Desert, there are a few small groups that might represent families. Examples are at sites V06 and V39 (V Tafeln 11 and 99). Also at site V30 there are two very similar images of two anthropoids apparently embracing (V Tafeln 119 and 120: see also D Figure 92). None of these images, however, bears any close resemblance to the “family group” images of the Desert. At OT099 there are two remarkable group scenes. One shows a row of 13 figures, possibly alternately male and female, with joined hands, and with a small figure below. It looks very much like a representation of a dance (O Abb.673). At the same site there is another row of five figures (possibly more) with joined hands, each apparently wearing a triangular headdress (O Abb.681). They bear resemblance to the rows of figures at sites RM1 and SBI in the Eastern Desert.

Anthropoids – Context Boats – Numbers Many of the anthropoids are shown with animals, often cattle. The images of a person holding what appears to be a rope tied to the animal’s horns, or holding the animal’s tail, both of which appear in the Desert, are also to be found in Nubia. However their frequencies are different as shown in Table 15.

Images of boats are very unevenly distributed in Nubia. Throughout most of the region they are relatively few compared with images of animals, but Engelmayer (1964) reports remarkably large numbers in the vicinity of Sayala, some 130 kilometres south of Aswan. Unfortunately he does not give details of other categories of images, so it is not possible to say whether Sayala was home to a great concentration of petroglyphs in general, or only of boats.

Images of people in intimate contact with cattle occur with about half the frequency in Nubia than in the Desert, but there are proportionally more of them holding the animal’s tail than a “rope” attached to the horns. However at one site, V10, in Nubia there are five images of people milking cows, a scene which has never been found in the Desert (V Tafel 35). At site V39 a person leads an animal by the horns and at the same time holds another by the tail. There are two images of a single person leading two bovids. There are also 15 images of people apparently leading other animals, including two, at sites V05 and V06, involving giraffes (V Tafeln 8 and 9). This suggests that the

Engelmayer gives descriptions of 476 boat images but presents only 443 of the images themselves, mostly in the form of tracings. There are photographs of only 95. Some of the tracings are, in the opinion of the present author, either dubious as to whether they are boats at all or so vestigial that nothing useful can be said about them. (The photographs are not helpful in making judgments because for almost all of them the image was chalked so that the

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Nubian artists were more interested in real boats as they saw them on the river, while most of those in the Desert had more idealized, imaginary boats in mind, or alternatively as if the Desert artists were more interested in ceremonial boats (like Khufu’s funerary boat at Giza) while their counterparts in Nubia preferred workaday vessels. A general impression is that boats in Nubia were more often drawn in a simple diagrammatic manner that appears to modern eyes as sketchy, almost careless.

details are obscured.) There are, however, 341 images that are reasonably clear and suitable for analysis. No details of the locations of the petroglyphs are given, only that they lay within a 15 kilometre length on both sides of the river around Sayala. Within that reach Engelmayer identifies 22 Stationen containing widely different numbers of images. The Stationen are divided into Fundstellen, at 210 of which there are boats (no details of the other images are given apart from the few that appear accidentally in some of the photographs). Each Fundstelle is assumed to be the equivalent of a petroglyph site.

However, as in the case of most classes of images, there are few clear distinctions between those from Nubia and the Desert. Most of the features that characterize the Desert boats can be found in the Valley, if with very different frequency. The only exception is the “flower” decoration that is particularly notable in the region of Kanais in the Desert.

Apart from those reported by Engelmayer the above sources give images of 526 boats in Nubia. Table 16 shows that this number is considerably smaller, in comparison with the number of animal images, than the corresponding number in the Eastern Desert. Engelmayer’s 341 reliable boat images have been excluded from this comparison because he gives no details of the numbers of animal images at his sites. However even if they had been included it would still be the case that cattle outnumber boats by about 3 to 1 in Nubia, whereas in the Desert the ratio is the reverse.

Geometric Patterns As in the Desert there are relatively few nonrepresentational petroglyphs in Nubia. At site AAKM there is a double-lined square with looped corners (A Figure 137), and at Abu Zana there are three examples of a looped pattern (V Tafel 77), one apparently drawn over a bovid. These are similar, but not identical, to patterns that appear in the Desert. There are circles with radiating lines at AAKM (A Figure 191) and H160 (H Corpus X1), concentric circles and spirals at various sites, including a particularly complex pattern at site OT007 (O Abb. 19), and two examples of pentagrams at site V039 (V Tafeln 130 and 238), but none of these patterns appears in large enough numbers to suggest that they had great or widespread significance. There are two images that might be djed pillars (H Corpus X61 and X100).

In the Desert images of boats are the most common. As pointed out in Chapter 4 this is to a large extent because in the Desert there are some sites that have very large numbers of boat images. This is true of Nubia as well, the difference being that there are many fewer such sites. There are only nine sites in Nubia that have 15 or more boat images (compared with 13 in the Desert – see Table 4 above). Most of these are in the vicinity either of Korosko, Gerf Hussein or Sayala, and there is one at Sheragoshe. It is most noticeable that there are no sites with large numbers of boats among the large concentration of petroglyphs at the Second Cataract.

Symbols What appear to be symbols or images in the form of a sandal or a pair of sandals, and images of footprints, are more widespread in Nubia than in the Desert, particularly in the lower reaches (V, many sites), less so at the Second Cataract (H Corpus Aa4-Aa8 and Aa17-Aa33).

Boats – Representation Table 17 shows the numbers of boat images exhibiting each of the 14 features described in Chapter 4 above, with the data from the Eastern Desert for comparison. Engelmayer’s 341 boats have been included. It will be seen that there are marked differences. Fewer of the Nubian boats have bow or stern finials, and there is very much less emphasis on their elaboration or decoration. In particular the “flower” decoration, which is such a prominent feature of a minority of the Desert boats, is completely absent from Nubia. Fewer of the Nubian boats have occupants, either the crew shown in a diagrammatic manner or apparently important passengers shown in detail, and there are very few examples in Nubia of boats apparently being towed. Proportionately more of the Desert boats have elaborate decoration, notably of the finials, whereas in contrast more of the Nubian boats have navigational equipment, such as oars, rigging, and especially steering oars. It is as if the

“Maps” In Nubia there are no clear examples of the networks like those in the Desert that could be maps of the wadis. There are some branching patterns that could possibly be maps but are more likely to be trees (H Corpus U1-15; V Tafeln 5 and 6; A Figure 242). Subject Matter and Style The differences and similarities between the petroglyphs of the Eastern Desert and the Nubian reaches of the Valley can be summarised as follows.

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the few there are show that the animals drawn in large numbers could have been the hunters’ or trappers’ quarries. There is a single scene of an elephant hunt in the Desert and possibly two in Nubia. There are no giraffe hunts in the Desert and only one, a very uncertain indication, in Nubia. In both regions there seems to have been less interest in hunting these very large animals.

Similarities Both Desert and Nubia have many petroglyph images of Large wild animals – giraffes, elephants, ostriches, antelopes (apparently of various species) Domestic animals – cattle, dogs, Anthropoids (male in the cases where sex is indicated), and Boats.

Cattle were clearly of great importance in both the Desert and Nubia, and in both regions they were observed closely and drawn carefully. In both regions long-horned animals predominated, but because of the possibility of artificial modification of the shape of the horns it is not safe to draw conclusions about the presence of short-horned stock from the presence of images of short-horned animals, except to note that if there were any, they were less important. There are very few images of cattle being hunted in either region, and several indications of some degree of domestication in both.

Both Desert and Nubia have few petroglyph images, or none, of Small wild animals, Birds (apart from ostriches), Sheep, Dangerous or obnoxious animals, reptiles or insects, Fish, Women, Social activities (apart from hunts), Artefacts (apart from boats), or Trees or other vegetation.

The rarity of images of sheep and goats in both the Desert and Nubia is surprising, particularly in view of the prevalence of images of cattle. Domestic ovicaprines were being kept in Egypt from the Neolithic onwards (see Chapter 3 above) and appear to have been as important in economic terms as cattle. The petroglyphs give no indication as to why, in the corpora of both the Desert and Nubia, cattle are numerous and sheep and goats almost completely absent. However this similarity is a strong indication that the cultures of the two regions were themselves very similar.

Images that might be expected but are absent or nearly so from Nubia include buildings such as huts or other dwellings, chariots or wheeled vehicles of any sort. There are none of the curvilinear images, possible fish traps, that have been found near El Hosh farther north in the Nile Valley (Huyge 1998). There are no scenes of a ceremonial nature apart from the handful of rows of anthropoid figures (in both locations) who might be dancing. There are no scenes of economic activity (such as agriculture, fishing, butchery, preparing food, cooking, manufacturing, construction or boat-building) apart from hunting. There are only a few scorpions and wavy lines that might be snakes. Images of felines are scarce. There are no mice, gerboas, foxes, hares or hyraxes, and only a few small birds. In Nubia there are only two or three images that might represent fish and there is none in the Desert. There are no theriomorphic (part-man, part-animal) figures.

The Eastern Desert and Nubia are similar in that they both have images of anthropoids and of boats, but the similarity ends there, because there are differences in the ways they are represented. Differences The differences between the images that make up the two corpora are summarised in Table 19. It will be seen that there are comparatively few absolute differences. Very few categories of image are completely absent from one or other location: only “maned” asses and addaxes are found only in the Desert; only rhinoceroses and “hartebeests” are found only in Nubia. Among the images of cattle only in Nubia are there cattle being milked, cattle with neck appendages and cattle with very long horns; only in the Desert are there cattle with very elaborate structures on their backs. Apart from these the differences are in details and style of representation, but they are nevertheless striking. The characteristic image of an elephant with only one ear raised, which occurs quite frequently in Nubia, is notable because of its absence from the Desert.

A striking observation is that in both the Desert and Nubia almost all the petroglyphs that appear to be intended to represent something, represent something large. With very few exceptions the smallest objects drawn were ibexes, and all the other animals and birds were larger. Moreover the greatest numbers of animal images were of the very largest animals present at the time – elephants, giraffes and cattle. The boats, too, were large: in many cases the large size was emphasised by showing large numbers of oarsmen. In both the Desert and Nubia there are only a few images of dangerous animals such as felines or rhinoceroses. Some of the animals that were drawn in large numbers – the ibexes, ostriches and wild asses – were, apparently, hunted or trapped, presumably for food. There are not very many explicit hunting scenes or images of trapped animals but

There are also very significant differences in the numbers of images. It is particularly noticeable that there are

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with square or trapezium-shaped heads in the Desert but not Nubia. The general impression to the modern viewer is that the anthropoid images in Nubia represent in the main ordinary people performing various every-day activities, while those in the Desert, apart from the hunters, represent people in formal poses.

proportionally fewer boats in Nubia than in the Desert, and that those in the Desert, in the main, carry more crew and passengers and are more stylised, while those in Nubia are more workmanlike. There are also proportionally far more images of cattle in the Valley than in the Desert. These two differences – more boats and fewer cattle in the Desert than in Nubia – make up the overriding contrast between the petroglyph corpora of the two regions.

Images of boats are proportionately more frequent in the Desert than in Nubia and many of them are very different. While there are many simple and crude boat images in both locations, in Nubia the boats that are drawn carefully and in detail are mostly shown with mast and rigging, cabin, steering oar or oars, and often sails or oars for propulsion. The crew is rarely shown and they never have “passengers” of exaggerated proportions. Although not included in the above analysis it is of interest to note that a group of images of boats with just these characteristics has been reported from considerably farther south, about 60 kilometeres north of Dongola (Chittick, 1962). In contrast the carefully-drawn boats in the Desert usually have elaborately-decorated finials, propulsion oars and oarsmen but no mast or sail, and very often one or more large “passenger” who often has plumes on his or her head. The strong impression is that the boats in Nubia are real boats whereas those in the Desert are idealised imaginary vessels.

As far as the wild animals are concerned the main differences of substance – the absence of addaxes and ibexes from Nubia – can be explained by an interest of the artists in the animals they saw around them. Other differences – how the elephant’s ears are shown, whether the giraffe faces right or left – appear to be merely of style; not of what to draw but of how to draw it. There are comparable stylistic differences between different wadis in the Desert, and differences between the Desert and Nubia are probably no more significant than these. The same applies up to a point to the domestic animals: there are differences in the way the cattle are drawn, and the presence of many more images of distorted horns and of very long horns in Nubia but not in the Desert is outstanding, but there is clearly a common interest. However there are significant differences in the features that indicate domestication – milking and neck appendages in Nubia, tail-holding and elaborate structures in the Desert. It is as if domestication was practised in different ways, or different aspects of domestication were practised, in the Desert and Nubia. Domestication in Nubia seems to have involved closer contact between man and beast than in the Desert. However the images of cattle that are “controlled” by a figure holding some sort of “rope” attached to the horns are common to both.

Comparison with the Eastern Desert – summary It is clear that the petroglyphs of the Nile Valley in Nubia and of the Eastern Desert are very similar and that the cultures of the groups of people who drew them were, if not identical, closely related. Their interests in wild animals were apparently the same, and the only differences in the way they represented them were due merely to differences in the fauna of the vicinity, or to stylistic preferences of individual artists or groups. There may have been slightly greater differences between them with respect to domestic cattle, in that either different forms, or different aspects, of domestication were practised in Nubia and the Desert. They were alike in their far greater interest, for whatever reason, in images of cattle than of sheep or goats.

The people themselves – the anthropoid images – of the Desert and Nubia are very different. In Nubia, for the most part, the images are simple. In most cases they are little more than “matchstick men”, but they are shown in a variety of realistic poses: there are people walking, running, sitting, dancing, and holding objects (possibly weapons) in their hands and brandishing them. In complete contrast most of the images in the Desert show anthropoids either standing stiffly erect or in formal postures. The three most common of these are the “orant” posture with arms raised and curved over the head, the “round-armed” posture with hands on hips, and that of a figure holding what may be a bow in an asymmetrical manner. Of them only the “round-arms” appear in Nubia, and these only infrequently. The other clear difference is the larger number of anthropoids in the Desert that are shown with what appear to be plumed headdresses, and the greater length and elaboration of their plumes. There are also stylistic differences, for example the representation of anthropoids

There were greater differences in the aspects of life that led the people to draw images of anthropoids and boats. In both of these the Desert seems to have been the place for more formal imagery while Nubia was where more everyday pictures were expected. It is as if the people in the Desert (whether they were temporary visitors or residents) were more interested in ceremony or ritual. None of these distinctions between Nubia and the Desert is absolute. Examples of almost any category of petroglyph image can be found in both regions. With only a few exceptions the differences are statistical, concerning the relative numbers of different images. This in itself demonstrates the cultural closeness of Nubia to the Desert.

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6 WESTERN PETROGLYPHS outlines of the drawings are filled with incised lines giving a striated appearance that is quite unlike that of the Eastern Desert petroglyphs. There is also what may be a representation of a boat, but that interpretation is disputed (Campbell 2005). If it is a boat it is again in a different style from any in the Eastern Desert or the Nile Valley, the “oars” appearing particularly untidy. Campbell suggests that it is a rain cloud. He also reports a series of negative hand-prints.

INTRODUCTION In recent years there has been a great deal of archaeological work in the Western Desert but little of it has been directed specifically at the rock art. In general the publications have included, along with details of many other finds, descriptions and images of some of the rock art, but in most cases not all of it. The result is that no comprehensive corpus of rock art images is available on which a detailed statistical assessment, such as is presented in Chapters 3, 4 and 5 above, could be based. The data available are patchy and incomplete, permitting only piecemeal comparisons on which impressions rather than firm comparisons with the Eastern Desert can be based. The exception is the region of the Gilf Kebir and the Uweinat massif in the extreme south-west of Egypt, which have been reported more systematically. A comprehensive publication of the rock art of this region has facilitated a better comparison with the Eastern Desert.

The drawing technique and general appearance of the petroglyphs in both these caves may be determined, as pointed out above, by the nature of the limestone substrate, and this may explain the fact that the style is different from that of the Eastern Desert images, most of which are drawn on sandstone. Kharga About 50 kilometres north of Qasr Kharga, near the Roman fort at Qasr Gib, on a sandstone outcrop, there are petroglyph images of anthropoids and what might be a boat (Rowe and Schacht 2004). The boat, if that is what it is, is quite rudimentary, consisting of little more than a deeplyincised curved line with no finials. There are incised lines that may be a deck, mast and sail, but they may be unconnected patterns. Certainly, if it is a boat, it is unlike any in the Eastern Desert. The three anthropoids are all in an elaborate style that again is unlike any of the Eastern Desert and appears to be more like that of West Africa. They may be contemporaneous with adjacent Arabic inscriptions. Farther south, nearer the oasis and on the Gebel el-Teir, there are petroglyphs of men with bows, dogs, cattle, a man leading what might be an addax on a halter, a giraffe, and a simple square boat with 8 oars (Fakhry 1951). Again the style is not like that of the Eastern Desert. Both of these sites are close to the ancient Darb al Arba’in.

As explained above the detailed comparison has not been extended farther west. There has been a great interest in the rock art, both petroglyphs and paintings, of the Central and Western Sahara in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Chad and elsewhere, resulting in many important publications. However partly because any influence from there on the rock art of the Eastern Desert would presumably be apparent also within the Western Desert of Egypt, and partly because a line has to be drawn somewhere, no detailed study of this large body has been made. Interest has been confined to a few outstanding points of particular importance, as indicated below. THE WESTERN DESERT Farafra Between Farafra and Assiut the limestone plateau has been only partially explored and is rarely visited. It was crossed in 1873 by Rohlfs who discovered at Djara a limestone cave, decorated with petroglyphs and containing many lithics. The cave was visited again in 1990, and images of addaxes, oryxes and other animals, ostriches and a few anthropoids were reported (Kuper 1996). There do not appear to be any cattle, giraffes, elephants or boats. In general the subject matter and style are not particularly similar to anything in the Eastern Desert.

By the side of one of the ancient tracks that lead to Dakhla, between Ayn Lebakha and the fortress at Umm el Dabadib, petroglyphs from many periods have been found (Rossi and Ikram 2002). Among them are images of cattle, some with tasseled tails, that the authors believe to date from the Arabic period. There is a boat with a curved hull, small or non-existent finials and possibly a cabin, but no oars, crew or passengers, and at least three anthropoid figures in a more elaborate style than is found in the Eastern Desert. There are also images of sandals and footprints, various geometric patterns, and Demotic and Greek inscriptions.

Some 40 kilometres north of Farafra there is another natural limestone cave in the northern escarpment of the oasis. It has petroglyph images of about eight animals, possibly oryxes, one possibly originally a very large giraffe (it is 2 metres across) but altered later, and some modelled animal pawprints and hoofprints (Barich 1998). The

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what seem to be people holding hands – the “chorus-line” image noted at a few sites in the Eastern Desert (ibid Plates III.2 and LV.1). Another image that Winkler assigns to the Arabic period is of a boat with three decks carrying what appear to be crowds of people.

Dakhla The other route from Kharga to Dakhla, which is that followed by the modern road, is the Darb al-Ghabari. On the south side of the road some 15 kilometres south-east of Tineida, there is a group of sandstone outcrops on which there are many petroglyph images and inscriptions. A lot of them are modern and many have been vandalised. There are animals, including camels, antelopes and others that are hard to identify, mostly executed in a simple linear style in which body and limbs are represented by single incised lines. The only elaboration is that in some cases the tail is embellished by a series of short lines crossing it at rightangles. This imagery is unknown in the Eastern Desert. The rock is very soft and both the undisturbed surface and the petroglyphs are devoid of patina, presumably because of rapid erosion, so it is very difficult to form any impression of age.

In general the petroglyphs of this region share much of their subject matter with the Eastern Desert – giraffes, elephants, crocodiles, cattle held by the tail, anthropoids and boats – but the style and technique of representation are in the main rather different. The desert west of Dakhla Little was known of the rock art of this region before the last decade of the last century. Rohlfs traversed it westwards and then north from Dakhla to Siwa in 1874 but reported no rock art. Abu Ballas, an isolated conical hill notable for the large collection of water pots at its foot, was discovered by Ball in 1917. It has a few petroglyphs including an addax, a cow suckling a calf (both in a very realistic style) and an archer hunting some indeterminate animals (Le Quellec et al 2005 pp46-47).

On the hills to the north of the road there are many more petroglyphs, some of which appear to be much older. Most remarkable of these are several very stylised images of what appear to be women wearing voluminous decorated skirts. The upper body is usually indicated only schematically by a single line with small circles for head and breasts and sometimes no arms. The skirt is often shown to be splayed to one side, or possibly behind as if covering a bustle. Winkler observed 27 such images, although some of them are so rudimentary that it is not clear that they are women at all (Winkler 1939 Plates XLVII and XLVIII).

The picture was changed dramatically in the late 1990s by the observations of Carlo Bergmann, who travelled widely by camel. He has discovered evidence of extensive activity in the region and routes across it dating to the period of the Old Kingdom and earlier. At a site which he calls “Djedefre’s Water Mountain”, which is at an undisclosed location north of Abu Ballas, there are hieroglyphic inscriptions, one of which relates to the pharaoh Djedefre, the son of Khufu (Kuper and Förster 2003; Negro et al 2005). There and nearby there are many petroglyphs, to the extent that the area has been called a “new rock art province”. There are various animals including oryxes, sheep and giraffes, and hieroglyphic inscriptions (Le Quellec et al 2005 pp 40-45). The most striking images are several more examples of the women with large skirts and stick-like upper bodies reported by Winkler near the Darb al-Ghubari. Some of these are overlain by giraffes depicted in the “Type B” style (see Chapter 3 above) that is familiar in the Eastern Desert.

There are also the giraffes with exaggerated tail hair, mentioned in Chapter 3 above (ibid Plate LIV.1), and another giraffe the style of which is unlike that of those in the Eastern Desert (ibid Plate L.2). There is a single elephant (ibid Plate LVI.1), a few antelopes, including what may be some gerenuks (ibid Plate L.1), and a simple image of a crocodile, with the lines crossing its tail as described above, that is eating a man. The subject matter is the same as that of the crocodile at site DAH2 in the Eastern Desert, but the style is quite different (Morrow and Morrow 2002 p150.D; Winkler 1939 Plate IV.2). Winkler concludes that this image dates to the Arabic period. There are a few cattle, including two that are shown with long forward-curving horns seen as from above. This is an image absent from the Eastern Desert but which appears in the Nile Valley (for example Váhala and Červíček 1999 Tafel 64; Helström and Langballe 1970 Corpus C417; Curto et al 1987 Tavole 38 and 39 ).

Some 6 kilometres to the south is another hill which has several petroglyphs including an incised boat with a curved hull, no finials, a cabin and steering oars but no crew or “passengers” (Morelli et al 2006 Figure 2). A farther two kilometres south is yet another hill with two rock panels of petroglyph images of various animals, including oryxes and sheep drawn skilfully in an extremely realistic style (ibid Figures 7 and 9). There is also another unidentified animal (ibid Figure 8).

Some of the anthropoid images differ from those in the Eastern Desert in that they show the fingers (Winkler 1939 Plates XVIII.2 and 3, and LV.2), and others in that their head decoration is different (ibid Plate LIV.1). There is a single image of what appears to be a man holding a bovid by the tail (ibid Plate XXXIX.1), and there are two lines of

Some of the subjects of these petroglyph sites are similar to those of the Eastern Desert but others, such as the sheep and the women in large skirts, have no counterparts there.

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similar to the images in the Wadi Umm Salam, being particularly remarkable). Apart from these, and possibly the crocodile at Dakhla, the wild animal images found in the Western Desert are of animals that would have been present there. The styles in which they are drawn are similar to those of the Eastern Desert apart from that of cross-markings on the tails, found near Dakhla, which might be a modern innovation.

In the main the style of representation is different, often being rather more realistic. However the image of the boat (ibid Figure 2) could be mistaken for one from the Eastern Desert. Northern Sudan The modern frontier at 22º N between Egypt and the Sudan is of course entirely arbitrary and would have been no barrier at the time when the petroglyphs were being drawn. The frontier region has not been explored systematically for rock art but a few examples have been found. Shaw (1953) reports petroglyphs found in 1935 at Umm Tawasir, about 1000 kilometres south of Dakhla. There are cattle, including a herd of over 30 animals all facing to the right and two others with tails grasped by anthropoids, giraffes being hunted by steatopygous men with bows, and various antelopes. At Wadi Hassein there is a large herd of cattle, some with girth stripes, and a few giraffes. Farther to the east, in the Wadi Howar, there are giraffes, cattle, antelopes, ostriches, an elephant and a few anthropoids, together with geometric patterns including several grids (Jesse 2005). The style is not unlike that of the Eastern Desert.

As in the Eastern Desert images of cattle are widespread, and in the main their style is similar although there is less variety. The numbers are much smaller but in the south there are a few instances of what might be regarded as herds and presumably refer to domestication. Anthropoids There are a few anthropoid images in the Western Desert that have similarities with those of the Eastern Desert, for example the row of individuals at Dakhla that suggest a dancing scene, but in general the farther from the river the more the differences. At Kharga the style is quite different. The most strikingly different images are those that appear to be of women wearing long skirts at Dakhla and farther west again at “Djedefre’s Water Mountain”. These are quite unlike anything in the Eastern Desert, not only because of their remarkable form but also because of their clear feminine features. Women are very conspicuous by their absence from the Eastern Desert.

Rhotert, reporting the finds of the German DIAFE expeditions in 1933-35, presents many images of cattle and giraffes at several sites in the north of the Sudan. At Zolat el Hamad, which is near to the Wadi Howar, there is a confused hunting scene involving men with bows. Their prey may be either giraffes or wild cattle: the latter seem to overlie the former (Rhotert 1952 Tafel XLV.3). At the same site there are at least two images of elephants.

Boats Images of boats are quite widespread in the Western Desert but they are scarce by comparison with the large numbers in the Eastern Desert or the Nile Valley south of Kom Ombo. Most of them show technical details and equipment, rather like those in the Valley and less like the highlydecorated images of the Eastern Desert. To find boats at Dakhla and deep in the desert south of “Djedfre’s Water Mountain”, so far from navigable water, is as remarkable as finding them in the Eastern Desert. It is to be noted, however, that, as is now becoming understood, people from Pharaonic Egypt were present and active in these places. There are no boats in north-western Sudan, but there are no hieroglyphs either.

These sparse reports cannot be taken as an adequate survey of the rock art of the region, but they do indicate that some of the themes familiar in the Eastern Desert continue well to the south-west. Comparison with the Eastern Desert The quantity of known rock art in the Western Desert is small in comparison with that of the Eastern Desert, partly because there are fewer rocks, and partly because, in this vast area, there has been less exploration. Because of the sparseness of material it is not possible to make firmlybased generalisations about it. Nevertheless there are some outstanding features that may provide some insight into the relationship between the inhabitants of the region and their eastern neighbours.

THE GILF KEBIR AND UWEINAT For a long time the south-west of Egypt was unknown to Europe apart from legends such as that of the “Lost Oasis of Zerzura”. The story of its “discovery” is told by Kelly (2002). The first scientific account, which referred in passing to the rock art, was that of Hassanein Bey who reached Uweinat in 1923. This expedition was followed by that of Prince Kamal el Din in 1925, who is credited with the earliest petroglyph discoveries. During the 1930s expeditions led by Bagnold, Almásy, Frobenius and others

Animals Giraffes, elephants, antelopes and ibexes are found in small numbers at various locations in the Western Desert. The giraffe images are in the main similar to those in the Eastern Desert (those with exaggerated tails at Dakhla,

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the west erosion of the granite has formed piles of boulders among which are caves, some with rock art.

began to reveal the extent of the rock art. The first significant publication was by Winkler (1939). After the Second World War exploration was not resumed on a large scale until the 1970s. It is still far from complete and major finds are still being made.

The Gilf Kebir is quite different in form. It is a sandstone plateau sloping gently upwards from north-east to southwest and its surface is in many places quite flat. At the northern end it merges into the Great Sand Sea while on the other sides it is surrounded by cliffs, the highest of which, on the west, are in places 600 metres high. It is divided by the Wadi el-Aqaba, a low gap running from north to south. The north-western part is cut by large north-flowing wadis. There are few caves in the wadis but there are several at the foot of the western cliffs, many of which are rock art sites. The south-eastern part of the plateau is surrounded by cliffs and cut by east-flowing wadis and has fewer rock art sites.

In terms of numbers of sites and of images, as well as of their interest and indeed beauty, this region is arguably the most important rock art province of North Africa. There are both paintings and petroglyphs and it is the former that are, deservedly, famous. Publication has been sporadic and piecemeal but fortunately Zboray, who has himself been active in making new discoveries, has issued a wellillustrated DVD compilation of photographs of all the then known rock art of the region together with a description of the geology and geography and a summary of the history of the rock art discoveries (Zboray 2005). This, supplemented by Le Quellec’s thorough review of the rock art of the region (which contains a few images which were not available to Zboray) (Le Quellec et al 2005), together with a few more recent reports and the author’s own observations, has been used as the basis of the following comparison.

Both Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir are high enough to have attracted, and to a limited extent still to attract, rainfall. At an early period the resulting runoff carved the wadis. At a later stage it gave rise to the caves in the Uweinat wadis. Surface water percolated down through the rock until arrested by an impervious layer, at which point it was diverted horizontally. At the point of exit it displaced the relatively soft sandstone to form a cave. The same mechanism may have been responsible for the caves in the western wall of the Gilf Kebir, although it appears to have been less effective at forming caves in the Gilf Kebir wadis. A similar mechanism does not seem to have been at work in the Eastern Desert, but it is not clear whether this is due to different climatic conditions or different rocks.

The Environment Uweinat is a small mountain massif, about 50 kilometres from east to west and 30 from north to south. It occupies the extreme south-western corner of Egypt and straddles the triple border with Libya and the Sudan. Some 100 kilometres to the north-east is the southern tip of the Gilf Kebir, a triangular plateau about 200 kilometres from north to south and at its greatest extent 150 from east to west, which lies within Egypt with its western edge close to the Libyan border. There are several smaller mountain features in the vicinity. All are surrounded by the Libyan Desert. To the north and north-east is the Great Sand Sea, 300 kilometres wide between the Gilf Kebir and Dakhla Oasis; to the north-west is the Calaniscio Sand Sea in Libya; to the east the Selima Sand Sheet separates Uweinat from the Nile Valley some 600 kilometres away; to the south and south-west the desert plain stretches 500 kilometres to the Wadi Howar in the Sudan and the Ennedi and Tibesti mountains in Chad.

Uweinat is higher than the Gilf Kebir so it has more rain and as a result there is more vegetation in its wadis than in those of either the Gilf Kebir or the Eastern Desert. In the Karkur Talh wadi, for example there is a little surfacerooted vegetation and many acacia trees. These are deeprooted and presumably rely on subsurface water. There is little evidence of transient surface water or flash floods (such as is readily apparent in the Eastern Desert). There are wells at the periphery of the Uweinat massif, at Ain Doua and Ain Ghazal (both in Libya), which until the 1920s permitted habitation and still provide welcome relief for travellers. It seems that in general the region was subject to the same changes in overall climate as the rest of North Africa, including the Eastern Desert. In particular it suffered the most recent major change, from moderate rainfall enough to support savannah vegetation to the current very arid conditions, at around the end of the fourth millennium BC. Before this time the area, and in particular Uweinat, appears to have provided an attractive environment for living because it had water in the form of wells and possibly springs, sufficient vegetation to support animals for food (either domestic cattle or wild animals that could be hunted), and shelter in the form of the caves. In this last

The western part of Uweinat is a mountain of volcanic origin composed of igneous rock. To the east of it there is a raised sandstone plateau, the part of the sedimentary layer which was disrupted by the volcanic intrusion. The highest peak of the massif, which is over 1900 metres high, rises from this plateau. The massif is dissected by several large tortuous wadis which spread radially from the central height and open onto the desert plain. The walls of these wadis are in the main steep rugged cliffs some 100 metres high, often skirted with boulders which have fallen from them. In the sandstone walls of the eastern wadis there are many small caves which are often the sites of rock art. In

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of petroglyphs in the Eastern Desert. However in the Eastern Desert there are some petroglyph sites that occupy locations that are very prominent, as if they were chosen by the artists so that their work would be readily conspicuous and easily seen by passers-by. Sites JCB1 at Kanais, BAR4 in the Wadi Barramiya, MLM1 in the Wadi Mineh, DR2 in the Wadi Abu Wasil and SH5 in the Wadi Sha’it are examples. None of the sites in the Uweinat or Gilf Kebir regions stands out as assertively as these.

respect it was different from the Eastern Desert, which provided water and pasturage, but few natural shelters. Rock Art Media Zboray gives details and images of the rock art at 591 sites, each of which he denotes by an alpha-numeric name. In many cases sites are quite close – that is within a few tens of metres of each other. In such cases Zboray denotes neighbouring sites by the alpha-numeric name followed by a suffix, A, B, C, etc., for each individual site. As pointed out above other authors might prefer to use the word “site” for what Zboray refers to as a group of neighbouring sites. In what follows however “site” is used to mean the locations denoted by Zboray’s suffix letters. The result is that a “site” is a group of images located close together, within a space of 10 metres or so, often less.

There are far more rock art sites in the Uweinat massif than in the Gilf Kebir or the other rocky areas in the vicinity. Of Zboray’s 591 sites 512 are at Uweinat. Of these 274 have paintings and 272 petroglyphs (34 having both). The Karkur Talh, which is a large east-flowing wadi in Uweinat, has the most sites and is the richest source of rock art, both paintings and petroglyphs, in the region (although the richest individual site is in the Gilf Kebir).

The most striking difference between the rock art of Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir on the one hand and that of the Eastern Desert on the other is the presence of rock paintings in the former areas and their almost complete absence from the latter. Indeed the Gilf Kebir rock paintings are the most varied and numerous in the whole of North Africa, and therefore the most famous. For this reason, in the attention they receive, they tend to overshadow the petroglyphs. However the paintings are not significantly more numerous than the petroglyphs. Paintings have been found at 319 of the 591 sites covered by Zboray’s compilation, while there are petroglyphs at 316. (At a few sites, 44 in all, there are both petroglyphs and paintings.)

This section is concerned with a comparison of the petroglyphs of the Eastern Desert with those of Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir, the rock paintings being set aside from the discussion. The methodology is similar to that described in Chapter 3 above. Subject Matter Animals Table 20 compares the petroglyphs of Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir region with those of the Eastern Desert in terms of the numbers of sites at which images of various animals are found. The column headed “Gilf Kebir etc.” includes sites at Gebel Arkenu, Gebel Kissu, Yerguehda Hill, an unnamed plateau and a feature called “Elephant Rocks” – i.e. all the sites reported by Zboray except those at Uweinat.

The recorded painting sites are mostly in caves of the type described above, which may suggest that the caves were used as shelters or living accommodation by the artists. They are often painted on the rear wall and the ceiling of the cave. Many of these caves contain large numbers, often dozens, sometimes hundreds, of individual images. Most of the images are of cattle or of human figures. The paint is most often brown, red-orange or white in colour, less frequently yellow. The standard of artistry is, to modern eyes, very high: the images are drawn with clearly-defined flowing outlines filled with even colouration; often the pattern of the hide of the animals is represented by the use of paint of two colours; the representations of animals and people are accurately proportioned; and, most strikingly, the postures of both animals and people are varied and realistic.

It will be seen that there are major differences between the regions. While in all the regions images of cattle are very widespread they are found at even more of the sites at Uweinat (more than 50%) than in the Eastern Desert. Images of giraffes and ostriches are widespread in all regions but whereas there are more ostrich sites than giraffe sites in the Eastern Desert the reverse is the case at Uweinat. However the most remarkable differences are the complete lack of ibex images and the almost complete lack of images of elephants in the Gilf Kebir area. Two elephants are reported by Zboray, one at site ER1 some 100 kilometres west of the Gilf Kebir, in Libya, and the other among the hundreds of painted images at site WG21 about 10 kilometres north-west of the Wadi Sura. The first is in a more realistic style than any in the Eastern Desert, while the latter has tapered legs and trunk and is unlike those in the east. In addition there is at least one elephant at Ain Dua on the southern flank of Uweinat (Rhotert 1952 Tafel II.6), and recently two more have been reported at a site

In contrast petroglyphs are rarely found on the walls or ceiling of a cave. A few (at the 44 sites mentioned above) have been drawn on the floor or the rim of a cave or on boulders in the vicinity. There are one or two cases where petroglyphs appear in a cave with no paintings. The great majority however are in the open, on the walls of a wadi or on boulders lying in a wadi. This is similar to the location

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near the Wadi Sura on the western side of the Gilf Kebir (Morelli et al 2006). These are all in a fairly realistic style without erect ears.

Style

Images of ibexes are very common in the Eastern Desert. They are completely absent from Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir, presumably because ibexes were never present there. However it must be borne in mind that there is some uncertainty in distinguishing representations of ibexes from those of antelopes and, possibly, other animals. The criterion used above is that an image of an animal with horns that curve through an arc of more than 90 degrees is assumed to be of an ibex. No animal images at Uweinat or in the Gilf Kebir region pass this test.

Two styles in which giraffes are depicted in the Eastern Desert are identified above (see Chapter 3). While examples of the same styles can be identified at Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir the frequencies with which they occur are very different. In the Eastern Desert only 21% of the images are of Type A, the more realistic style, while at Uweinat 88% are of this type. Moreover the reticulation is drawn more carefully and uniformly in many of the Uweinat images, emphasising the general impression that most of the Uweinat giraffes were done with what appears to modern eyes to be more attention to accurate representation than those in the Eastern Desert. Some of the images of Type A giraffes at Uweinat differ slightly from those in the Eastern Desert in that the neck of the animal is curved rather than straight. A few of the images have curly tails (as in the Eastern Desert).

Wild Animals

In all regions there are other animal images some of which can be identified with various degrees of certainty. Many appear to be antelopes, of different species. There are some oryxes (animals with long horns pointing backwards, either straight or slightly curved) and a few addaxes (animals with helically twisted horns) in all locations. Gerenuks (animals with horns curved forward at the tip) are absent from Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir whereas they are fairly frequent in the Eastern Desert. In general there are more antelope images in the Eastern Desert. The overall impression is that the Eastern Desert petroglyphs are richer and more varied in the range of animals they depict.

A notable feature of some of the giraffes at Uweinat is that the legs are exaggerated in length. At site WG22 in the Gilf Kebir there are giraffes with tapering legs that are in some ways reminiscent of the “Tazina” style of petroglyph which is found in depictions of animals of various species in various places farther to the west, in the Messak in Libya, for example, (Le Quellec 1998 pp155-173) and in Morocco (Pichler and Rodrigue 2003). There are no such images in the Eastern Desert.

People The number of sites displaying anthropoid images in each of the regions is shown in Table 20. It will be seen that there is a very marked difference between the Eastern Desert and the other regions in this respect. Images of people are much more widespread in the Eastern Desert, occurring at half the sites, whereas at Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir they are found at only about a quarter.

As in the Eastern Desert there are a few sites where large numbers of giraffe images have been drawn, notably sites KT25B, KT47 and KT68, which are concentrated in a small region of the Karkur Talh. The last has a particularly large number of very lifelike Type A images. There is another concentration of some 60 giraffes at site WH1 in the Wadi Hamra in the northern part of the Gilf Kebir. These are in a range of styles of Types A and B (Le Quellec et al 2005 pp149-154). In contrast in the Eastern Desert the concentrations of giraffe images, for example at site SB4 (see above), are less realistic, mostly Type B. Two-thirds of the Wadi Hamra giraffes face to the right.

Boats There are images of boats at 250 out of 284 sites in the Eastern Desert (88%), where they are the most common of the petroglyph images. In contrast there is only one possible petroglyph boat image at Uweinat, at site KT11D in the Karkur Talh. It is very faint and its interpretation as a boat is dubious. It is surrounded by images of cattle. Interestingly at a site in the Karkur Murr there is a cave with a painted frieze that contains, among many other images, several white shallow arcs, some of which might represent simple banana-shaped boats (Winkler 1939 Plate XXIV.2; Zboray et al 2007 Figure 7b).

A surprising image – that of a giraffe with a tail of exaggerated length and with still more exaggeration of the tuft of hair at its end – is almost unique to the Eastern Desert. There are 11 such images in the Eastern Desert and 3 at Kharga Oasis (Winkler 1939). It is therefore remarkable that there is a further single example at the Gilf Kebir, at site WG64. This is on the western side of the Gilf, the side farthest from Kharga. As in the Eastern Desert there are few if any representations of giraffes being hunted. There is one rather dubious example at site KTN29B near the Karkur Talh.

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Images of ostriches are widespread in both regions and there is no obvious difference in terms of style. In both regions most of the ostriches appear to be static, but a few are shown in a running pose and some have raised wings. In general antelopes, the species of which is often hard to determine, are represented in similar styles in both locations.

animal shown with a person apparently grasping its tail at site KT48B in the Karkur Talh. In the Eastern Desert there are 5 examples of this image, all within a few kilometres of each other in the Wadi Sha’it, and there are others in the Nile Valley. It is very hard to understand why a single example of a so remarkable an image should appear so far away.

Cattle

Another remarkable image found in the Eastern Desert is that of cattle with some sort of structure on their backs. There may be two such images at site KT82 in the Karkur Talh. They are however not at all clear: the animals might not be cattle and the objects on their backs might be riders. There is another possible example at site KTS32 in an adjacent branch of the Karkur Talh. It is clearly a bovid but the nature of the structure is not clear. It might be a rider.

As pointed out above cattle are represented in the Eastern Desert in a limited range of styles. In most cases they are fairly realistic and the main variations are in the pattern on the animal’s hide and the length and shape of its horns. There is more variety among the cattle representations at Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir. Most, as in the Eastern Desert, are quite realistic, without gross exaggeration, except in a few cases in the length of the horns, but there are some notable styles that do not appear in the Eastern Desert.

At site WH1 in the Wadi Hamra in the Gilf Kebir there is what might be an image of a cow suckling a person while a calf seems to look on. There is one similar image in the Eastern Desert.

In the Gilf Kebir there are a few examples of animals drawn with deeply incised lines and characterised by legs that are elongated, ending in a point with no representation of the hooves. This, as in the case of the giraffe images mentioned above, is reminiscent of the “Tazina” style. As in the case of giraffes there are no “Tazina” cattle in the Eastern Desert.

People Not only are anthropoid images rarer at Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir than in the Eastern Desert (see Table 20) but also they are represented in a more limited range of styles. There are, for example, no images with square or trapezoidal heads or “earrings”, very few with steatopygous bodies, and only a few with distinctly wedgeshaped bodies (at sites ER2 and KT23E). All of these features can be found in the Eastern Desert. It is particularly noticeable that a “round arm” (the arm shown as a semicircular line as if the hand is on the hip), a feature of 29% of the Eastern Desert images, occurs only once at Uweinat, at site KTN11B. Even more striking is the complete absence of the “orant” posture (with arms curved above the head) which occurs in 8% of all the Eastern Desert anthropoid images and 18% of the images associated with boats.

A greater proportion of the cattle, especially those at Uweinat, are shown with markings or patterns on the hide. In the Eastern Desert there are several (19%) with girth bands and a few (4%) with reticulation. At Uweinat a greater variety of markings are shown: a few have girth bands and some have more complex patterns. Particularly noticeable are several that are covered with a reticulated pattern. Sometimes this takes the form of an almost regular rectangular grid while sometimes it is a close pattern of uniform cells that appear almost like fish scales. Animals decorated in this way are often carefully drawn and many of them have a distinctive rectangular outline. There are particularly good examples of this style at sites KT15, KT23A, KT77 and KT78, all in the Karkur Talh. There are no similar images in the Eastern Desert.

About 28% of the heads of the Eastern Desert images are shown with one or more prominent vertical lines, sometimes curved, which may have been intended to represent decorative plumes. There are no plumed images in the Gilf Kebir. At Uweinat there are only a few, notably at neighbouring sites KT26C, KT73B, KT76A and KT76B in the Karkur Talh. There are only two examples in which the “plumes” are prominent as if they were an important feature of the image. These are at site KT32B, where a figure with two “plumes” wields a club and stands behind a reticulated bovid, and at site KT76A where a figure with raised arms, who might also be carrying a club, has three prominent “rays” radiating from his or her head. At one site, WW43, there are several stick figures that appear to have no heads but in their places are headdresses indicated by pairs of lines diverging like letters “V” from the tops of

Most cattle at Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir have long horns while a significant minority have short, as in the Eastern Desert. At site KT48B in the Karkur Talh there are cattle with multiple horns and one with horns that meet to form a ring. Of the particular Eastern Desert images of cattle described above that of an animal apparently with a rope attached to its horns and held at the other end by a human figure probably does not appear at all in Uweinat or the Gilf Kebir (although there is a very indistinct image at site KT39A that might represent such a scene). However, very surprisingly, there is a solitary example of the image of an

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people or like beings that were conceived to be in the shape of men or women. Not only is there considerable similarity in terms of subject matter, there is also similarity of style. While it is not possible to be precise in this matter, perusal of Zboray’s compilation leaves one with the general impression that about half of the petroglyph images from Uweinat or the Gilf Kebir are indistinguishable from images found in the Eastern Desert: if one did not know one would not be able to guess from which region they came.

their bodies. These images occur nowhere else in the region or in the Eastern Desert. If the anthropoid images at Uweinat and in the Gilf Kebir are themselves less diverse than those in the Eastern Desert the reverse is true of the objects they appear to be shown to carry. A few have what appear to be bows. These are always held in the centre, in contrast to the bows of the Eastern Desert which are usually shown as being held asymmetrically, nearer to the top than the centre. Many of the Uweinat people however hold other objects of various shapes which are often hard to recognise. A lot of the people carry what appear to be staves or spears, often brandished over the head. Some of these, at site KT34B, for example, are very long. Many carry what may be shields. At site KT45 there are several figures carrying a range of objects, some of which might be clubs, and some of which, possibly shields, are shown in the form of rectangles filled with a square grid pattern. There is nothing like this in the Eastern Desert.

That said there are several very clear differences. The most obvious is the almost, probably quite, complete absence of images of boats from Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir. Almost as remarkable is the complete lack of images of ibexes and the presence of only five images of elephants, when ibex images are very common in the Eastern Desert and elephant images are not uncommon. Presumably ibexes were absent from the region while they were common in the Eastern Desert (where they are still to be found). The near absence of elephant petroglyphs must also mean that these animals were not among the wild fauna of the region, or they were very rare, whereas they were present in the Eastern Desert (unless the Eastern Desert elephant petroglyphs refer to the importation of elephants in the Ptolemaic era).

There is a single instance of a row of figures apparently holding hands, at site KT72A. There are a few examples of this image in the Eastern Desert. At site KT35A in the Karkur Talh three sheep with arched horns are being hunted by an archer accompanied by two dogs. The scene is quite similar to the hunting scenes of the Eastern Desert except, of course, that the quarry is different. There are few other hunting scenes in the region. At site WH1 in the Wadi Hamra a dog chases a sheep but there appears to be no hunter in attendance (Le Quellec et al 2005 p148). There are a few other scenes at Uweinat that may represent hunts, for example at sites KT11C, KT43B, KTN27D and KTS15A, but none in the Gilf Kebir. At site KT43A a figure stands between two ostriches and grasps both of them.

Anthropoid images are less common than in the Eastern Desert and they are shown with fewer varieties of style. The formal poses such as the “round arms” and the “orants”, the “plumed” decorations and the asymmetric bows are hardly present. Wedge-shaped or steatopygous bodies, square or trapezoidal heads, are almost absent. In contrast the western anthropoids hold a different range of objects and adopt a wider range of poses. In this respect they are more like the human representations of the Nile Valley than those of the Eastern Desert.

Comparison with the Eastern Desert Although the petroglyph sites in the west are, so far as is known, readily visible (rather than being hidden in the depths of caves) none of them is in a commanding position like, for example, sites MLM1, DR2, HSQ3 or SH5 in the Eastern Desert. These are all elevated on large vertical rock faces so that they can be seen from afar. The Uweinat and Gilf Kebir artists seem to have been more modest, less anxious for publicity than their eastern counterparts.

Similarities and Dissimilarities In general the corpora of petroglyphs in the regions of the Gilf Kebir and Uweinat have both similarities to and differences from that of the Eastern Desert. Much of the subject matter is similar: in all regions most of the images are of animals; in all regions cattle are the most frequently represented; in all there are many images of giraffes. In all regions the techniques used are similar (most images are pecked while some are incised) and the dimensions of the images are in similar ranges (most are between 30 and 100 centimetres in length or height). In all regions most petroglyphs (or at least those that have been found) are in exposed locations, visible to the passer-by. Most of the images are recognizable in terms of the animal portrayed, and most if not all represent animals that were probably present in the locality. In all three regions a substantial minority of the images are anthropoid: they look either like

Cultural continuity? The balance of similarities and dissimilarities suggests the question of the extent to which the people who drew the petroglyphs were culturally similar; whether at the time they were drawn the groups to which the artists belonged were in touch with each other in the sense of exchanging ideas, whether they were separate, or whether while currently separate they sprang from common forbears and

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shared some aspects of a common culture (see, for example, Le Quellec 1998 p 483).

roots (unless cattle were domesticated independently by different groups).

In considering this question it is important to recognise at the outset that the corpora of animal images are selective. In all three regions there were undoubtedly animals and other aspects of the natural environment that were not depicted as petroglyphs. In none of the regions are there any images of birds apart from ostriches. There are no snakes (apart from a few dubious examples in the Eastern Desert), no insects and no arthropods apart from one or two possible scorpions. There are no small animals apart from dogs and there are hardly any predatory animals. There are almost no plants. It is clear that in none of the regions were the petroglyph artists attempting to draw the entirety of what they saw. On the other hand the large numbers of most of the images suggests strongly that they drew things – animals in the main – that were present around them. They concentrated their efforts on what particularly interested them or their communities. That implies that in all regions cattle were very important. At Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir giraffes were also important, while in the Eastern Desert ibexes attracted great interest, possibly more so than giraffes or elephants.

The techniques used in drawing petroglyphs would probably have developed spontaneously. Given that one wanted to draw an image on the rock pecking or incising with a hard stone is the obvious way to do it. As the sandstone of all three regions is similar in texture and patination it seems unlikely that techniques for drawing on it had to be learnt, and so does not suggest cultural contact. As for the idea of drawing on the rock, the fact that rock art is so widespread throughout the world suggests either that it tends to arise unbidden in any society or that it is inherited from the earliest age of the human race. Either way it does not mean that the people of Uweinat or the Gilf Kebir learnt it from those of the Eastern Desert or vice versa. On the other hand the choice of scale may suggest some closer cultural contact, particularly because in other parts of the Sahara, the Messak in south-western Libya, for example, there are many petroglyphs that are much larger, showing animals full size. While it can be seen that drawing techniques might have arisen quickly without any obvious development it is harder to believe that style developed without obvious traces. The range of styles among the images of giraffes in the Eastern Desert may be a surviving record of the artists’ efforts to improve their work. It is possible (although by no means certain, as explained above) that the diagrammatic, almost caricature Type B giraffe images are older than the realistic Type A depictions, and that they show the gradual development of an ability (or a wish) to draw an image that is accurate in form. If this is the case, it suggests that the Uweinat and Gilf Kebir giraffe artists learnt their skill elsewhere, because if they or their forbears had learnt it in those localities the earlier unskilful diagrammatic attempts would be there for us to see.

It is of course not possible to deduce from the relative number of images alone anything about the relative abundance of the various animal species, because the interest in them might not have arisen at the same time. For example at Uweinat giraffes might have been important at an earlier time and cattle later. There is a little evidence from differences in patination and superposition of images in the Eastern Desert to suggest that interest in wild animals came before interest in cattle, but there is not enough evidence of this type from Uweinat or the Gilf Kebir to permit any comparable judgement to be made. The main similarities between the petroglyphs of the three regions – the preponderance of animals and among them of cattle and giraffes – suggests that the people who drew them were of cultures that had similarities. Because there are few if any indications of cattle being hunted the great interest in these animals almost certainly implies that they were in some sense domesticated, at least at some stage. Giraffes (and elephants in the Eastern Desert) may have been hunted, but as there are hardly any images of the practice it seems more likely that the interest in them was based on admiration. These would have been the largest animals to be seen and must have generated excitement and awe. There is however no evidence from the petroglyphs that they commanded religious feelings (there are few images involving giraffes and people, for example). The presence of giraffe petroglyphs in all the regions does not in itself imply cultural continuity. The presence of cattle petroglyphs on the other hand, if they are indeed indicative of domestication, does imply at least common cultural

The presence of anthropoid images in all three regions is hardly indicative of any cultural contact: if one has the idea of drawing anything the possibility of drawing oneself, or other members of one’s family or group, or the principal members of one’s group, or one’s gods if they are thought of in human form, must come quickly to mind. On the contrary the differences between the anthropoid images of the Eastern Desert and those of Uweinat or the Gilf Kebir are strong indications of cultural differences. Whatever the “plumes” or the “orant” posture meant they were important in the Eastern Desert and not so at Uweinat or the Gilf Kebir. Similarly the strange rectangular “shields” held aloft by the people depicted at Uweinat were not part of the culture of the Eastern Desert people. And most obviously whatever the role of boats in the culture of the Eastern Desert – and it must have been an important one – things were quite different in the other regions.

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that they were drawn by the same artist, or by a Gilf Kebir artist who had seen examples of the image in the east.

The conclusion of a consideration of the general features of the petroglyph corpora in these three regions must in summary be that while they appear to have been drawn by members of groups of people with similar ways of life there is little to indicate that they were culturally linked, except possibly that they shared some ancestral cultural roots. It is really only the similarity of the scale to which individual images were drawn that suggests that the people who drew them knew about the other groups, and this is hardly strong evidence: it could be coincidence, or some involuntary response on the part of the artists to the medium in which they worked. The absence of evidence of development of style, notably among the giraffe images, at Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir, suggests the possibility of several stages of migration. In some location, such as the Nile Valley, for example, the style for drawing wild animal petroglyphs might have developed through a phase of diagrammatic images towards greater realism. When the realistic style had become established some of these people migrated to the Uweinat region where they found giraffes (but not elephants) and drew them. At some stage they became separated from the occupants of their former homeland, possibly as increasing aridity made the desert impassable. Both groups continued to develop new artistic styles, now drawing both cattle and anthropoid beings, but their styles and their wider cultures diverged so that these images show marked differences.

The other four examples all concern cattle. The image of a person apparently holding the tail of an animal at site KT48B is unique in the region, but there are five similar images in the Wadi Sha’it in the Eastern Desert and eleven in the Nile Valley south of Aswan. Clearly the tail-grasping image was not a matter of importance at Uweinat (otherwise it would appear more often), so again the presence there of a single example seems to indicate that the artist had seen the image somewhere in the east. There are images of cattle with what appears to be some form of structure on their backs at sites KT82 (where there are two) and KTS32. This image is even rarer than that of the animal held by the tail: it appears eight times in the Wadi Sha’it and nearby, and only twice in the Nile Valley. Again it seems that the artist must have seen the eastern examples. When these exceptional images are taken into account the overall conclusion is modified slightly. It still seems that the people who were responsible for the Uweinat and Gilf Kebir petroglyphs were culturally distinct from the people of the Eastern Desert. They used an independent system of imagery. Some aspects of their culture were similar (not least the fact that at some time they had cattle they had domesticated to some extent), but that might have been because they had a common cultural ancestry. However they were not completely isolated from each other: there were contacts: people travelled across the intervening desert and, by drawing copies of what they had seen elsewhere, left a permanent record of their journeys.

This is only one possibility, and as there is no other evidence of migration from east to west it is not very likely. An alternative is that the difference between Types A and B giraffes is not a matter of developing technique but rather of preference: at one time artists chose to draw “caricature” giraffes with round bodies and exaggerated necks, and at another they preferred realism; or possibly different artistic “schools” coexisted. Whatever the reason the absence of Type B giraffes from Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir indicates a lack of cultural continuity with the east.

The Rock Paintings In passing it should be noted that there seems to be almost no connection at all between the many rock paintings of Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir and the petroglyphs of the Eastern Desert. (In fact they have little in common with the petroglyphs of the same regions.) The subject matter is rather different in that while the paintings are mostly of cattle or anthropoids (who, because they are usually shown in realistic social situations, have to be taken to be almost certainly humans) there are few images of other animals. The style is different, not only because of the different technique but also in the way people and cattle are drawn. There are paintings of dwellings and domestic equipment, of people sitting, lying, kneeling, running and in other postures. There are the famous “swimmers” and “divers” of the Wadi Sura, and there are negative hand prints and headless “beasts” in the Foggini-Mestakawi cave. Nothing of this great variety of imagery has any equivalent in the Eastern Desert.

Cultural Contacts? It must however be emphasised that this conclusion is based on generalities about the petroglyphs: it is what the great majority of the images tell us. When attention is turned to some of the individual images, the exceptional unusual ones, the picture changes. Specifically, there are five images (out of several thousand) that are unusual if not unique in their regions but so similar to images in the Eastern Desert that they seem to indicate close personal contact. The first of these is the giraffe with the elongated tail and exaggerated tail hair at site WG64 on the western edge of the Gilf Kebir. The image is quite distinctive and occurs nowhere else there or at Uweinat. The nearest similar examples are at Kharga, but there are at least 11 in the Eastern Desert, most of them in the Wadi Umm Salam. The similarity is so great that it seems certain

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in a similar way: that it was inherited from a time in the distant past in a place from which people migrated to both regions, carrying with them memories of when they were one group with one culture. Alternatively the interest in large animals might be in some sense part of a natural culture, something that hunter-gatherers, closely dependent on the natural world about them, inevitably have and inevitably express in a visual manner by drawing on rocks. Either way the similarity of the subject matter of the rock art of the Sahara and the Eastern Desert does not necessarily indicate a common culture at the time when the images were drawn.

CENTRAL AND WESTERN SAHARA As stated at the beginning of this chapter there is no intention here to analyse the enormous amount of rock art in the rest of the Sahara or the many publications relating to it. However it is appropriate to make a few observations on it in order to show its relationship to that of the Eastern Desert. As will be seen the main conclusion is that the relationship is in fact very slight: it seems that the Calanisco Sand Sea acted as a severe barrier to any significant connection from the Messak in western Libya to the Gilf Kebir or Uweinat in terms of rock art, let alone to Egypt east of the Nile. Nevertheless there are a few similarities worth noting because they might indicate some minor influence or connection.

This conclusion has to be modified a little, however, in the light of the details as opposed to the broad themes. Mention has been made above of the images of giraffes with exaggerated tails. There are similar images of animals with monstrous tassels on their tails even as far away as the Western Sahara (Soler Subils 2006 et al Figure 36) and the Ennedi region of Chad (Gauthier and Gauthier 2006 p166). Another image that occurs very infrequently but over a very wide area is that of the bovid bearing a form of “structure” on its back, also mentioned above. Similar images occur in the central Sahara (Huard 1968 Figures 1.1, 1.3) and Algeria (ibid Figures 2.1-2.4; Soleilhavoup 1997 Figure 4). Some of these similarities are so close that, as argued above, it seems that individuals, possibly the artists themselves, must have travelled between the Eastern Desert and other places in the Sahara.

Subjects In some respects rock artists across the Sahara favoured the same subjects. Everywhere the main interest was in animals, mainly large ones. The rock art of the Tassili region in the extreme south of Algeria can serve as an example. It was explored in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Soleilhavoup, whose publications summarize the images found and present a selection of them (Soleilhavoup 1988, 1993, 1997). Most of the images are of animals, including elephants, giraffes, rhinoceroses, buffaloes, hippopotamuses, ostriches and gazelles. There are human figures, some of whom carry bows. There are also camels and horses. All of these are found in the Eastern Desert apart from the rhinoceroses and buffaloes, the absence of which is easily explained because they were probably never present there. The interest of the rock artists appears to have been the same in both regions, and indeed throughout the Sahara: they drew people and the larger local fauna.

Hunting scenes occur in many regions. As in the Eastern Desert they are not particularly common, but their presence, along with associated images such as animals (or ostriches) that appear to be caught in traps, suggests that there was at one time a hunting culture common throughout the region, and that it was represented in the rock art (Huard 1965; Huard and Leclant 1973). The existence of this common theme does not necessarily, however, suggest direct influence of the rock artists of one region on those of another. It may be that the technique of snaring ostriches, for example, was part of the common cultural heritage, and that being the case it was inevitable that from time to time an artist would draw an image of a snared ostrich. He or she would have thought of drawing it without it being suggested by someone from afar.

But there are major differences. One is the almost complete absence of images of boats from the Gilf Kebir and everywhere to the west. For example, in his wide-ranging survey of the rock art of Libya Graziosi reports only four boats, at a group of sites near the western frontier (Graziosi 1941 Tavole 58, 59 and 103). Another, equally important, is the presence of therianthropes – animal-human chimeras – which occur notably in the Messak (see for example Le Quellec 1998 pp336-357). In that region of western Libya there are images of humans with wolf heads, images that are entirely absent from Egyptian rock art. Le Quellec has pointed out that this is unexpected, because therianthropic images of gods are familiar in Dynastic Egypt. He concludes that there was no direct influence of the Sahara on the classical Egyptian imagery, but rather that the people of both Egypt and the central Sahara inherited the idea of men with animal heads from some common cultural heritage from a distant past (ibid pp468-470). It may be that the interest in large animals that is common to the rock art of the Sahara and the Eastern Desert is to be explained

Style It is the style rather than subject matter that differentiates the rock art of the central and western Sahara most clearly from that of Egypt. The images from the Messak, the Tassili and elsewhere do not look anything like those of the Eastern Desert, Uweinat or the Gilf Kebir. Reference to Soleilhavoup’s publications mentioned above, or to images from the Messak, make that clear. The first and most important difference is that of size. The images in the Tassili are large (see, for example, Soleilhavoup 1988

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Desert artists did, producing images that are clear and strong.

Figures 18 and 19: all the elephants are at least a metre long; also Soleilhavoup 1993 Figure 15: the bovids are just as large). In the Messak there are life-sized elephants (Le Quellec 1998 p88). Secondly, as these references show, the images are realistic, even lifelike; details of the animals’ shape and the texture of their hide are shown and they are portrayed in a variety of different poses. They are far removed from the unrealistic and stylised or simplified images of the Eastern Desert or the Nile Valley.

The inevitable conclusion is that there was no direct influence from the central Sahara on the rock art of the Eastern Desert, apart possibly from a few rare instances of individual travellers who transferred the occasional idea and drew an image they had seen somewhere else. The similarities, and they are many, can be explained either as the result of common cultural inheritance, or as coincidence in the sense that similar surroundings and ways of life gave rise to similar concerns and interests, and therefore to similar artistic expressions.

The drawing technique is in most cases quite different. Most of the western artists cut the outlines of their images deeply into the rock and polished the incision. They did not rely merely on removing the patina, as most of the Eastern

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7 EASTERN PETROGLYPHS with bows and arrows and accompanied by dogs (for example ibid pp43 or 49).

INTRODUCTION The purpose of this chapter is to review what is known of the petroglyphs in regions to the east of the Eastern Desert that are contiguous or reasonably close to it, regions from or to which cultural influences affecting rock art might be expected. The choice of regions reviewed is strongly influenced by the availability of published data that include images of the rock art. As in the case of the Western Desert the sources are to various degrees incomplete. It has been possible to cover three main regions: Sinai and the Negev; south-eastern Egypt; and the Arabian peninsula. In addition a few images from other regions are available.

The earlest of these (“Style II”, 5th and 4th millennia BC according to Anati) are characterized by isolated ibexes and antelopes, relatively few anthropoids, and an absence of domestic animals apart from dogs. There are also a few stylized ostriches and geometric designs. Then came hunting scenes (“Style III”, contemporaneous with Style II but lasting through the 3rd millennium) in which the archers are represented in realistic and varied poses and wield bows which they hold symmetrically, and also a few cattle. Later the animals and anthropoids are more stylized (“Style IV”, 2nd millennium). The range of subjects is greater than in the earlier styles and as a result Anati subdivides it into 3, Styles IVA, B and C. There are anthropoids holding objects which might be musical instruments while (according to Anati) they are engaged in a dance (ibid p50); and there is at least one example of what appears to be a battle scene involving chariots (ibid p52). It is noticeable that the anthropoids, who are now often “stick men”, frequently have penises. Some of the images in Style IVC are accompanied by inscriptions in Thamudic and other scripts. The later material (“Styles VVII”) typically involves images of camels.

SINAI AND THE NEGEV In contrast to that of Arabia, the rock art of the region between the Isthmus of Suez and the Dead Sea was studied only sporadically before the 1970s. There are a few publications of the discoveries of travelers and expeditions with mainly archaeological or theological interest (for example Horsfield et al 1933, Horsfield 1943), but it was only when Anati, who as a member of an archaeological expedition in 1954 had noticed engraved images, undertook expeditions with the specific intent of finding and recording the rock art that its existence became widely known. His publications remain the principal source of data, but they are concerned mainly with their significance (see for example Anati 1982, 1999) and there is no convenient systematic publication of the complete corpus of known images. The present discussion is based on a publication which, while it presents a range of representative images, is concerned mainly with a particular view of their chronology and interpretation in terms of the nature of the society that produced them (Anati 1979). It is therefore not a basis for statistical assessment and can be used only for an incomplete qualitative comparison with the rock art of the Eastern Desert, bearing in mind that the images it presents were selected to support the author’s argument and may not be representative of the entire corpus.

Comparison with the Eastern Desert Most of the images selected by Anati have close counterparts in Egypt. The images of ibexes are, apparently, identical to those found almost everywhere in the Eastern Desert, and the hunting scenes are indistinguishable from several similar scenes there. The outstanding differences are the absence of much if not most of the Egyptian imagery. There are no giraffes or elephants and – conspicuously – very few cattle. There are no anthropoids with “plumes” on their heads or carrying staves or bows held asymmetrically. Anati mentions only two boats, both sailing vessels (Anati 1982). On the other hand in the Eastern Desert there are none of the chariots that are to be found in the Negev. The range of styles in which the animals and anthropoids are represented seems to be less varied in Sinai and beyond than in the Eastern Desert, and in particular there appear to be few parallels to the finely-worked images of animals, anthropoids and boats. Even making allowance for the selective nature of Anati’s publications the absence or rarity of so many types of image that are common in the Eastern Desert must denote real differences between the regional rock art corpora.

Subject matter On the basis of superpositions and differences of patina of images on the same rock surface (see, for example, Anati 1979 pp20 and 22), of execution technique and of subject matter, Anati detects ten different styles and sub-styles to which he is able to assign a chronology (ibid p28). Five of these, some associated with written inscriptions, date to the second half of the first millennium BC (the Iron Age) or later. Among the material that Anati presents in his illustrations the items that he finds to date from earlier periods are in the main images of animals (predominantly ibexes), and hunting scenes in which the hunters are armed

The general impression is that the rock art of Sinai and the Negev is in style and subject matter, by comparison with that of the Eastern Desert, impoverished in that it consists of a small number of types of images, presented in a

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Forschungsexpedition) under the leadership of Leo Frobenius. This started in the Nile Valley, traveling from El Kab up to Aswan, and then moved to the south-east, to the Wadi Hodein and the vicinity of Gebel Abrak, about 60 kilometres inland from the Red Sea and some 150 kilometres north of the Sudanese frontier. There they discovered and recorded a large quantity of striking rock art. Only a few of their data were made available at the time and the bulk of their findings remained largely unknown for many years. A selection was included by Resch in his 1967 survey of Nubian rock art, but it was not until 1974 that the whole corpus was published by Červíček. He reported more than 500 images and inscriptions found at 20 or so rock art sites. (The relationship of images to sites, as the term is used in connection with the Eastern Desert, is not clear in all cases.) Frobenius and his colleagues recorded some of the images in photographs but the majority in chalk or pencil drawings. Červíček provides tracings of all the records together with a few of the photographs. Resch provides photographs of a few of the drawings.

limited range of styles. It appears to belong to the same cultural complex as that of the Eastern Desert, but to only a small subset of it. It is as if the Eastern desert people were in contact with the region to the north-east only for a limited period, or alternatively only a few of them, mainly the hunters of ibexes, penetrated there. Sinai is 300 kilometres as the crow flies, or more than 500 by land, from the part of the Eastern Desert which is the arena of the present study. It is therefore not surprising that its rock art is different. What is missing from this argument however is any knowledge of what happened in the intervening region. Almost no rock art has been reported from the Eastern Desert north of 26º N. This may be because there has been little effort to find it, or because what was there once has been lost, or because none was drawn because the rock was not suitable, or because there was never any interest in drawing. The rock in this region is different from that farther south: in the east, bordering the Nile Valley, it is mainly limestone, and in the west are the hard igneous rocks of the Red Sea mountains. The limestone, unlike the sandstone in the south, does not form a hard coloured patina so it is a less attractive medium for a rock artist because the images do not show up with the same striking contrast, and also the surface weathers more uniformly so that any images deteriorate. In addition any images that have survived to the present are likely to be less prominent and more likely to have escaped detection by modern eyes. The igneous rocks also lack a contrasting patina and, being harder, are more difficult to work, so they too provide a less attractive medium for rock art. Thus quite probably there was never so much rock art in the region, less of such rock art as there was has survived, and less of what has survived has been noticed. In conclusion rock art is not able to provide us with evidence about cultural activity in or across the region, or to tell us about cultural influences on the Eastern Desert from the north-east.

As shown in Map 11 the Wadis Hodein and Naam run south-south-east from a point about 80 kilometres west of Berenike. Some of the sites found by Frobenius are in side wadis to the west and are scattered over a distance of about 40 kilometres, while others are about 30 kilometres away, across the watershed in the Wadi Abrak, which leads eventually to the Wadi el Kharit (Červíček 1974, Map 3). The distances may be significant in that many more than a few tens of rock art sites, or indeed a few hundred images, would be expected to be found in reaches of Eastern Desert wadis of similar length. This suggests that the coverage of the area might not have been as thorough as that of the Eastern Desert. There is no reason to believe that the region between Gebel Abrak and the Wadi Sha’it 150 kilometres away to the north-west is devoid of petroglyphs. It is probable therefore that the rock art of the Eastern Desert, as defined in Chapter 3 above, and that of the Wadi Hodein region of south-east Egypt, are parts of a continuous rock art “province” that should be seen as a whole. However nothing is known as yet about what lies between these extremities, and in particular the Wadi el Kharit has never been surveyed (see Map 11). It is possible only to compare the two extremities and in so doing attempt to ascertain how they might be connected.

SOUTH-EASTERN EGYPT The recent activity to record the rock art of the Eastern Desert has been limited because in the last few years permission to travel south of the Kom Ombo watershed has not been granted, presumably for military and security reasons. Unfortunately almost nothing is known about rock art in the desert south to the Sudanese border and beyond, apart from a very brief report by Field (1955). Apart from the excavations at Berenike on the Red Sea coast and nearby (Sidebotham and Wendrich 2002, Sidebotham et al 2004), and the rescue work in the Nile Valley described in Chapter 5 above, there has been no archaeological work in the region since the Second World War.

Subject Matter Červíček presents the DIAFE VIII images from the six Felsbildstationen in the vicinity of the Wadi Hodein in the form of Abbildungen, which are tracings of the original recordings (which are in various formats). They are related as follows: Abrak (Abbn.1-50), Abu Safaa (Abb.51), Aigat (Abbn.56-65), El-Beida (Abbn.95-108), Galt el-Aguz

The most important earlier expedition was 1926 DIAFE VIII (the eighth Deutsche Inner-Afrikanische

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have a single appendage beneath the neck (C Abbn.65, 98, 333, 346 and 351; R Tafeln 38b and 41a). There are no multiple appendages. There are no images of animals with structures of any sort on their backs.

(Abbn.160-224), Magal Hodein (Abbn.316-358). There are 815 individual images, mostly of animals. Table 17 shows the subjects. In the following discussion the references are abbreviated as follows. Červíček (1974) is denoted by “C” and Resch 1967 by “R”.

At Galt el-Aguz there is a group of cattle that appear to be a herd (C Abb.167). They are drawn in uniform style and scale, apparently by the same artist, and do not overlap. Most of them are marked with different patterns. There is another group at Magal Hodein (C Abb.346; R Tafel 38b). At many other sites there are several cattle images but these are the only two in the region where the artist appears to have intended to draw a herd.

Animals It will be seen that of the 560 animal images 40% are of cattle and 23% ostriches. There are a lot of images that cannot be identified with certainty, although many of them might be antelopes of some species. There are comparatively few ibexes and there are no crocodiles, hippopotamuses or wild asses (unless they are among the unidentified images). There are a few camels and horses, presumably late arrivals in the vicinity.

Anthropoids The representations of human form among the images of the region are all very simple. In none of them are facial features shown and none has any details of dress. Many are simple “stick” figures. At Galt el-Aguz there are several figures in the “round-armed” configuration (shown with hand on hip but with a continuous arc for the arm lacking indication of an elbow) (C Abbn.164, 165, 166, 170, 215 and 221; R Tafeln 47, 48b and 49a for example). Some of the images at Galt el-Aguz are steatopygous. The only indications of any form of decoration are a single figure with a single “plume” on his or her head (C Abb.105, detailed in Abb.108), and three figures apparently wearing some other form of headdress or hair decoration (C Abbn.176, 178 and 203). A few ithyphallic figures would recall Min if they had plumes (C Abb.165; R Tafel 49a for example).

At Abrak there is a single image of a male rhinoceros with two horns being attacked by an archer and a man wielding what may be a club (C Abb.23; R Tafel 35a). There may be a second at Magal Hodein, but the image is incomplete and equivocal at best (C Abb.345). There are three elephants, two at Abrak and one at Galt el-Aguz (C Abbn.29, 30 and 224; R Tafel 35b). At Abrak there is a presumably relatively recent scene of what appears to be a feline, possibly a leopard, being hunted by men mounted on camels and an archer on foot (C Abb.27). Another feline, at Galt el-Aguz, appears to be older than a bovid adjacent to it (C Abb.165; R Tafel 49a). At Abrak there is an apparently Dynastic image of a falcon (C Abb.24). Of the 226 images of cattle 162 (72%) face to the right and 64 to the left. Very few have clear indication of sex: there are 24 cows (11% of the total), about half of them attended by calves, and a few that are clearly bulls, although the number is very uncertain because many of the images, as presented by Červíček, are not clear. There are no images of cattle with short horns or horns curved inwards so that they meet. There are about 14 images of animals with very long horns, the span of which equals or exceeds the length of the body, and there are four with one horn swept down in front of the head (C Abbn.171, 197, 336 and 344; R Tafel 40b). One animal is shown with what may be a headdress in the form of a vertical line projecting from the top of its head between the horns (C Abb.60). In almost all cases the horns are seen as from the front while the body is in profile.

Many of the human figures are hunters, some on foot and others mounted on camels or horses. Most are armed with bows, and most of these are held normally. However there are a few examples of bows held nearer the top than in the centre (C Abbn.216, 222 and 336; R Tafeln 44a (immediately to the right of the large bovid on the left) and 45b). Some carry objects that might be staves or clubs. At Aigat there are seven images that show anthropoids holding in one hand what appears to be a rope or stick attached to a small wheel (C Abbn.56 and 57). There is no indication of the meaning of these strange images. At Galt el-Aguz and Magal Hodein there are at least nine examples of figures who appear to grasp the tail of a bovid (C Abbn.171, 194, 197, 346 and 352; R Tafel 41b, for example).The animal in C Abb.346 is attended by a second figure who appears to hold its muzzle. It also has a neck appendage. At El-Beida a figure is shown apparently milking a cow (C Abb.106). There are, however, no images of anthropoid figures holding ropes attached to the horns of bovids. Field (1955) reports images at Bir Abrak of cattle having their throats cut by anthropoids with long knives, but it is not possible to confirm the accuracy of this

About 19 of the cattle (again, the number is uncertain because many of the images are unclear) have a vertical band or stripe around the girth. There are a few animals that have reticulated markings on the hide (C Abbn.65, 183, 222 and 351; R Tafel 41a) and there are several that have various numbers of circular marks (for example C Abbn.106, 167, 171 and 194; R Tafel 49b). Five animals

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Possibly these species inhabited the valleys that opened to the west, to the Nile Valley, but never penetrated the more mountainous area close to the Red Sea.

observation. It does not seem to correspond to any of the images at Abrak reported by Červíček (C Abbn.1-50). Also at Galt el-Aguz there is a group of seven ambiguous figures that might be men with exaggerated penises, or alternatively might be lizards (C Abb.208). They are accompanied by three ostriches.

The presence of large numbers of cattle images, which implies that large numbers of cattle were present, indicates that the Wadi Hodein and its tributaries were moist enough to support adequate grazing. The absence of any hunting scene involving cattle might suggest that there were never any wild cattle in the region and that they were introduced from the north-west, presumably by people seeking pasture for their domestic stock. The images of cattle controlled by a person holding the animal’s tail, similar to those in the Eastern Desert, indicate that cattle were domesticated to some degree. However the absence of the image of a person apparently leading a bovid by means of a rope attached to its horns, one that is quite common in the Eastern Desert, indicates that the style of animal husbandry, or at least the techniques used, were different. These images and those from the Nile Valley south of Aswan suggest a north-south divide: rope to the horns in the north; grasp of the tail in the south.

Boats There are nine images of boats in the region, and two very dubious images that might also be of boats (C Abbn.33 and 322). The four at Abrak (C Abbn.19, 26, 41 and 42) are very similar: each has a curved hull, one or two steering oars and one or more cabins. Two of these are also reported by Field (1955). At Galt el-Aguz there is one which may be similar but is partially obscured by a bovid that has been drawn over it (C Abb.179; R Tafel 50b). At Magal Hodein there are four boats of quite different design (C Abbn.335, 343, 344 and 345: R Tafel 40). Each of these (except possibly Abb.345 which is partly obliterated) has a curved hull with a steering oar and a mast set with a square sail. Two of them, Abbn.343 and 344, are on the same rock and are very similar. Each appears to be drawn over an image of a bovid, but in such a way as to incorporate a line of the bovid into the image of the boat. Each of the boats has a single crewman, and is accompanied by several smaller animal images.

There are both similarities and differences in the way cattle are represented. The representation of the horns is more like that found in the Nubian part of the Nile Valley than in the Eastern Desert. There are no animals with very long horns and few with one horn curved downwards in front of the head in the Eastern Desert, but both characteristics are often found in Nubia and the south-east. On the other hand there are no short-horned cattle in the south-east. All the regions of Egypt and Nubia share the convention that the horns are always seen as from the front, very rarely as from above. In both regions some of the cattle have patterned hides, but the girth stripe, common in the Eastern Desert, is rare in the south-east, while the multiple round marks (whether they are natural or applied indications of ownership) that occur in some cases in the latter are absent from the former. It is of interest to note that images of cattle with girth stripes have been reported from farther south in a tributary of the Wadi Allaqi (Parker and Burkett 1932).

There are no images of boats with oars or the vertical strokes that appear to represent large numbers of crew members. None of the boats has a prominent gigantic passenger. Comparison with the Eastern Desert Animals The range of animals represented in the petroglyphs of south-eastern Egypt is more limited than that of the Eastern Desert. There are no giraffes, very few elephants, and no “wild asses”, all animals that appear frequently farther north. Also there are no addaxes. The only additional animal is the single rhinoceros. The numbers of cattle are fairly similar, about 30% of the total number of images in both cases, as is the number of ostriches. The very small number of ibexes is however in marked contrast to the Eastern Desert.

Anthropoids In general the images of the human form in the south-east are even less elaborate than those of the Eastern Desert. There is little variety of form or pose, and many are reduced to “stick men”. Only one anthropoid in the southeast has a “plume” headdress, an image that is common in the Eastern Desert. There are a few indications of other styles of decoration but not nearly as many as in the north. However one notable characteristic of the Eastern Desert anthropoids, the “round-arm” pose (in which the figure’s hand is on the hip but the shape of the arm is a smooth curve without an elbow), is found in the south-east.

The lack of giraffes and the very small number of elephants is rather unexpected. If these species were present in what is now the desert when the climate was more moist, and were driven southwards into their present range as it became drier, and if the desiccation advanced from north to south, it would seem that they would have been present in the south of Egypt for longer than in the centre and therefore to have been subjects for rock artists for longer.

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subject matter and of style, and in a few cases, such as that of the “round-armed” anthropoids, the styles are so similar as to indicate close personal contact between the two regions, but overall the differences show that such contacts were the exception rather than the rule. The absence of giraffes presumably reflects the fact that they were not present in the south-east. The alternative – that there were giraffes in the region but the rock artists did not draw images of them – is difficult to believe because it implies a profound cultural difference from the rest of the Eastern Desert, the Nile Valley and the Western Desert where giraffes were of such great interest.

As in the Eastern Desert the only recognizable activity in which the anthropoids of the south-east are engaged is hunting. However the prey they hunt is different. In the south-east in one case the quarry is an ibex and in one it is an oryx, while in all other cases it is an ostrich. There are no giraffe-hunts or ass-hunts. As in the Eastern Desert the hunters are armed with bows, but they are never accompanied by dogs. Another remarkable image that appears in both regions is that of an anthropoid holding what appears to be a long bow, but holding it near the end rather than at the centre. Boats

Clearly cattle were as important in the south-east as in the rest of the Eastern Desert, and apparently the importance was based on some form of domestication. However there were differences either in the details of the relationships between man and beast or in the way the relationships were represented. Again, the impression is of similar but not identical cultures. In the same way the presence of images of boats in the south-east indicates an important cultural connection, but the differences in the way they were drawn, notably the realism, the care taken over the drawing, the presence of masts and sails and the absence of large “passengers”, imply considerable difference in the nature of the artists’ interests or the means they chose to display them.

The most remarkable similarity of the boat images in the two regions is their presence. In both cases it is very surprising that there should be any boats at all so far from navigable water. In both cases the fact that the inhabitants drew images of large and elaborate boats implies that they had some particular cultural significance, and not that they were present in reality. Beyond that, however, there are few similarities. There are relatively few boats in the south-east, and they are drawn in only two styles, in contrast to the many styles of the Eastern Desert. Both styles have smoothly curved hulls, steering oars and superstructure on the deck, and the main difference between them is that one has a mast supported by stays and a square sail. Analogues to both of these styles can be found in the Eastern Desert, but they are rare. Many of the features that are common there, such as decorated stem and stern posts, banks of oars, crews, tow-ropes, and, outstandingly, “passengers” of exaggerated size, are completely absent in the south-east. Perhaps the most revealing absence is that of the many simplified, crudely drawn boats of the Eastern Desert. The impression is that while the drawing of boats there was practised widely by all sorts of people, in the south-east it was done rarely and by skilled artists.

ARABIA There is an enormous amount of rock art in the Arabian peninsula, probably far more than in Egypt, and it is mostly in the form of petroglyphs. The observations of several expeditions to limited areas, mostly from the 1930s onward, have been published in various degrees of detail and have revealed something of its extent (Nayeem 2000, pp1-5). Among the most important of these was that led in 1932 by Horsfield which revealed the rock art at Kilwa on the border of Arabia and what was then Transjordan (Horsfield et al 1933; Horsfield 1943). The site was visited again by members of the Frobenius Institute in 1934. Howe reported various images of animals including cattle and some anthropomorphs at Taif and Mahad Dahab respectively southeast and north of Mecca (Howe 1950). Later the findings of an expedition to the region south of Jeddah in 1951-2 were utilized by Anati to construct a chronology of the rock art. The only systematic study, which attempted the very large task of surveying all the epigraphic material, including the rock art, of the whole of Saudi Arabia, was started in 1984 by the Saudi Department of Antiquities and Museums (Livingstone et al 1985), and preliminary reports were published in subsequent editions of Atlal, the journal of the department. These reports contain few photographs, however, and there has so far been no final report, at least in English. There are no systematic surveys of the other nations of the peninsula.

Summary As pointed out above very little is known about the rock art in this area. Only the vicinity of the Wadi Hodein, some 150 kilometres distant from the Wadi Sha’it, has been explored and images from only about 20 sites, spread over several tens of kilometres of wadis, have been published. Compared with the Eastern Desert this is a small number of sites for so large an area, and it suggests that the exploration was not thorough and that there are in fact many more sites as yet undiscovered. In addition it is almost certain that there are yet more in the tract between there and the Wadi Sha’it. The general impression is that the rock art images of the south-east of Egypt are culturally related to those of the Eastern Desert, but not closely so. There are similarities of

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Wadi Aday in the Jebel Akhdar in northern Oman (Nayeem 2000 pp419-420). The last appears to bear a howdah and the line of its back is convex upwards, which is characteristic of Indian elephants, while the Al Ula animal has a concave back making it more like an African elephant. It is suggested that the latter image is related to an invasion of the region from Abyssinia in the 6th century AD (Nayeem 2000 p107). There are no details of the Bisha elephant. There are images of lions at several locations in north-west and south-west Saudi Arabia (Nayeem 2000 pp128, 155, 162, 179, 202 and 243), and one in Oman (ibid p425) which appears to be being hunted.

Although the preliminary reports in Atlal have few illustrations the deficiency has been made good, to some extent, by Nayeem (2000). His large publication covers the whole peninsula and provides over 600 photographs of a few thousand individual petroglyph images, but, as he points out, it is only a selection and is biased towards the images that are “best” (in artistic terms) and appear to give the most important archaeological insight. It is noticeable, for example, that although images of camels are more numerous than those of cattle, he presents more pictures of the latter than the former. The publication has therefore to be used with care and does not form a suitable basis for a statistical study (in contrast to Zboray’s compilation of images from south-western Egypt referred to in Chapter 6 above). There are nevertheless enough images in Nayeem’s publication to make a qualitative comparison with the Eastern Desert, bearing in mind that the comparison contains a subjective element of uncertain importance.

No images of crocodiles or hippopotamuses are reported. Desert Animals Ibexes and ostriches are fairly common, being reported as present in most regions and at most rock art sites in the west of the peninsula but noticeably less so in the east. There are several images of ibexes being hunted, often by archers accompanied by dogs, all in the western part of the peninsula (Livingstone et al 1985 p133; Al-Kabawi et al 1989 pp42 and 43; Nayeem 2000 pp202, 455 and 467). There are fewer ostrich hunts (Khan et al 1986 p84; AlKabawi et al 1990 p38). There are many images of what are probably antelopes but the species is usually unclear. There is at least one scene of what appears to be an oryx being hunted (Nayeem 2000 p173), and there are a few images of animals with horns that turn forward at the tips that might be gerenuks (ibid p124). In Sharjah there is an image of what might be a wild ass (ibid p396).

The areas that appear, on the basis of what has been published, to have the highest concentrations of rock art are in the northwest of Saudi Arabia near the Jordanian frontier, particularly in the vicinity of Tabuk; some 400 kilometres farther to the east around Jubbah; in the southwest of Saudi Arabia around Hima and across the border into northern Yemen (the region that used to be known as Arabia Felix); and in the eastern part of the peninsula in Oman, the Emirates and Qatar. The six preliminary reports of the Saudi Arabian epigraphic material (Livingstone et al 1985; Khan et al 1986; Khan et al 1988; Al-Kabawi et al 1989; Al-Kabawi et al 1990; and Bakar-Kabawi et al 1996) give limited statistical information about the petroglyphs. Between them they indicate that over six seasons of observations some 41000 representational petroglyphs were noted at about 1000 sites (the numbers are somewhat unclear). In the last four reports there is a little more information. These tabulate 14685 individual images at 431 petroglyph sites (an average of about 34 images per site, indicating that the authors use the designation “site” in a similar manner to that in which it is used for the Eastern Desert). Of the images 2493 (17%) are anthropoids, 780 (5%) are cattle, 3649 (25%) are camels, and the remainder are other animals.

Cattle Images of cattle occur fairly frequently in the western and northern part of the peninsula, making up some 5% of the representational rock art (Khan et al 1988 p73; Al-Kabawi et al 1989 p45; Al-Kabawi et al 1990 p40), but they are rare in the east. Some of the images are particularly striking. At Hanakiya there are several almost life-sized carefully-worked images of long-horned cattle, each drawn with the body in profile but with the forward-pointing horns and the head as seen from above. The flanks of the animals bear different patterns, some of which are somewhat similar to the girth bands shown on some Eastern Desert images (for example Nayeem 2000 pp72, 117 and 123). Others are shown as being attended by anthropomorphic figures (ibid pp114-117). Similar images are found at Jubbah (ibid p151) to the north and at AlMusaiqrah (ibid pp223, 228 and 457). At several of the same sites, however, there are also images, apparently drawn less carefully, of cattle with backward-pointing horns seen from above (ibid pp132, 154 and 228). Elsewhere there are images of cattle with the body and head seen from the side but the horns – most of which are

Subject Matter Savannah and Riverine Animals There is a single report of a giraffe at Tayma in the northwest of Saudi Arabia, some 300 kilometres east of Sinai, but the image has not been published (Al-Kabawi et al 1989 p42). There are three reports of elephants, one in the Wadi Kura at Al Ula, about 200 kilometres south of Tayma (Nayeem 2000 p108), one at Bisha in the south-west of Saudi Arabia (Al-Kabawi et al 1990 p35), and one in the

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headdresses like enormous combs (ibid p199). In the same region there are what appear to be rows of figures with joined hands, some of them wearing masks (ibid pp195, 196 and 200). In the Yemen there are many realistic figures, often with raised arms and holding implements or weapons (ibid pp459, 464 and 467). In the north-west there is a group of “idoliform” anthropoid representations, in which the body is simplified so that some or all the limbs are absent, although some of them have facial features (ibid pp64, 90 and 92).

shorter and have many different shapes – seen from the front (ibid pp58, 61, 87, 92, 100, 257 and 260). There are many different patterns on the flanks of these animals. Nayeem interprets these as representing the marks or brands denoting ownership which would have been placed on the real animals, and believes that they are the origin of the tribal wusum signs that are often inscribed on the rocks (ibid p343). In the south-east of Saudi Arabia there are some images of wild cattle being hunted (BakarKabawi et al 1996 p56).

Other Images Camels There are three images of horse-drawn chariots (Nayeem 2000 pp71, 95 and 166). The first of these is drawn in a fairly realistic style as seen from the side. It has two occupants, a driver and an archer, and is drawn by what may be a single horse, but as the legs appear to be multiplied may be a representation of two horses, the nearer almost obscuring the farther. The other two chariots are drawn in a schematic manner with the body of the chariot seen from above while the wheels are seen from the side. One has four horses and the other two.

The most commonly depicted animals are camels, which make up about 25% of the representational images (Khan et al 1988 p73; Al-Kabawi et al 1989 p45; Al-Kabawi et al 1990 p40). They are frequently shown in what are clearly domestic situations, with riders (Nayeem 2000 pp54 and 425), used in warfare (ibid p162), in a caravan (ibid p423), held on halters (ibid p157) and associated with wusum (ibid p157). In a few cases they appear to be hunted (Khan et al 1986 p84, Nayeem 2000 p225). Equids

There are several images of trees (ibid pp76, 94, 178, 205 and 444), but very few of footprints or sandals (ibid pp69 and 220) (or few have been noted by Nayeem). There are various geometrical designs, some of which are quite elaborate (ibid pp69, 106, 176, 189 and 205 for example).

There are many images of horses, usually being ridden in hunting scenes (Nayeem 2000 pp84 and 224) or in combat (ibid pp73, 76 and 489). Often the riders wield lances of exaggerated length (ibid pp55, 69 and 160). At Jebal AlQahr there is a troupe of particularly beautiful stylized mounted horses (ibid p268).

Boats Images of boats appear to be completely absent from the west of the peninsula. However in the east there are several. In Qatar there are open rowing boats seen from above, showing the outline of the hull with some internal details, and with up to 15 oars on either side (ibid pp370374). In contrast in Oman sailing vessels with mast and rigging are shown from the side (ibid pp427 and 445).

Anthropoids There is great variety in the way human figures are represented. Throughout the peninsula there are many simplified “stick men” images, often with their limbs in stylized poses (Nayeem 2000 pp65, 66, 106, 173, 393 or 418 for example). There are also examples of much more elaborate and finely-worked images. At Jubbah there are many large anthropoid images, all strikingly characterized by slightly bent knees and small heads with no facial features. Many of them are dressed in elaborately detailed clothes and some carry weapons (ibid pp132, 133, 134, 139 and 141). Farther to the south in the vicinity of Hima there are other large anthropoid images characterized by long hair (or headdresses), arms raised in an “orant” posture, and broad (presumably female) hips (ibid pp243, 246, 249 and 269). In the same region there are somewhat similar figures (presumably male) that brandish weapons (ibid pp236, 237 and 280). An “armed man” at Shaib Samma, who unusually has facial features, has a headdress of what may be three plumes (ibid p234).

Dating Images The chronology of the rock art of Saudi Arabia advanced by Anati (see above) has been questioned both on the grounds of inconsistency and because it relates to a geographically small area (Khan 1996). Aware of this Nayeem has suggested alternative chronologies for the rock art in the north and south of Saudi Arabia (Nayeem 2000 p301), based on a general chronology derived from the work of McClure and others (ibid p35). The latter takes account of changes in climate, and in particular of a moist era in the period around 4500 – 2800 BC which was followed, at least in the north of the peninsula, by a change to the current arid regime.

Near Sakaka in the north of Saudi Arabia there are groups of stick figures with raised arms and remarkable

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The images of men on horseback, armed with lances or swords and shields, often in combat, appear frequently in association with inscriptions and are dated to the first millennium BC or later.

Nayeem’s principal assumption is that, in the main, the images of specific animals were drawn at a time when those animals were actually present. This is coupled with observations of superposition of images and of differences of patina. The overall conclusion is that the northern images of cattle date mainly to the moist period while images of other animals, notably camels and antelopes, were drawn later. Ibexes appear to have been drawn from the earliest times, from before 6000 BC according to Nayeem. Anthropoid images are numerous from the Neolithic but rare from before it. Notably at Jubbah there are many large and detailed anthropoids, in many cases associated with equally detailed cattle images. As the climate became dryer cattle were replaced in most places by antelopes and from around 2000 BC by camels. However at Jubbah cattle seem to have been drawn throughout the period, which leads Nayeem to conjecture that the region benefited from a source of water, in the form of a lake, which persisted for many years.

The dating of the origin of the Thamudic script to the first millennium BC appears at first sight to be in conflict with the observation in the north-west of Saudi Arabia of images of cattle associated with Thamudic inscriptions (Livingstone et al 1985 p132), since at that time the climate was quite arid. The conclusion drawn is that either the script was developed much earlier or, more likely, that the cattle images are “cult animals”, animals remembered from previous ages, possibly in a religions context. This explanation calls into question the basic assumption on which the dating of the petroglyphs depends, that the images are of animals that were present when they were drawn. However it is but a single example and as such, in the context of thousands of animal images, can probably be set aside.

Over the same period the anthropoid images appear to have become more stylized and in the Bronze and Iron Ages increasing numbers of “stick” figures appear, shown in a number of standard postures. Another development was the appearance in the north of anthropoid “stick men”, sometimes in rows, with what appear to be animal-shaped masks, possibly in the form of equids (ibid p330), and others with the amazing comb-shaped headdresses (ibid p329). In the south, where in general the rock art seems to have developed later than in the north, the large and dramatic apparently female figures with broad hips, upraised arms, and long hair (or possibly veils) obscuring the features appear to date from the first millennium BC at the earliest.

Migration

There is very little evidence by which the boat images in Qatar can be dated, but such as it is suggests that they were drawn at some time between the third and first millennia BC (ibid p375). There is no indication of the date of the painted boats in Oman.

The presence in Arabia of rock art apparently dating to all periods suggests that the peninsula was inhabited continuously throughout the Holocene and before. However archaeological and documentary evidence from neighbouring regions suggests that from time to time there were significant movements of people out of Arabia into the Fertile Crescent and possibly into Africa. One such movement appears to have been precipitated by the end of the moist phase of the climate around 2500 BC, which gave rise to movements both to the eastern part of the Fertile Crescent in Mesopotamia and also to the west towards Syria and Palestine. Červíček suggests that these people spread the characteristic images of ibexes with exaggerated horns from Arabia to the Negev and then into Egypt (Červíček 1979), but Nayeem suggests that desiccation of the region of Sinai and the isthmus of Suez prevented migration into Egypt (Nayeem 2000 p325).

Inscriptions

Comparison with the Eastern Desert

A major feature of the Arabian rock art is the presence among the representational images of many inscriptions in various scripts, and also of many tribal signs or wusum. Nayeem notes that wusum are often found adjacent to images of animals, and infers that they imply some sense of ownership of the animal by an individual or a tribe. He goes considerably further, however, to suggest that the marking on the flanks of many of the animals, especially the cattle, represent wusum that were branded on real animals (ibid p343). He then advances a theory that the wusum developed into signs that became the letters of early alphabetic scripts such as Thamudic from around 1000 BC (ibid p352). Another suggestion is that the stylized “stick” men images developed into letters (ibid p351).

Subject Matter The proportions of anthropoids (17%), cattle (5%) and camels (25%) in the petroglyph corpus given above are very different from those for the Eastern Desert and the Nile Valley. For example Hellström and Langballe (1970) report 6999 images of which 696 (10%) are of anthropoids, 2606 (37%) are of cattle and only 17 (0.2%) are of camels. This presumably reflects the fact that wild camels became indigenous to Arabia probably in the second millennium BC but domesticated camels were introduced into Egypt much later.

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In comparing the images of animals in the rock art of Arabia with those of the Eastern Desert of Egypt major differences are immediately apparent. Most notably giraffes and elephants are almost entirely absent and hippopotamuses and crocodiles completely so. Addaxes and the ambiguous animals called here “wild asses” (see Chapter 3 above) also seem to be absent from Arabia, but this is less certain because of the selective nature of the available publications. Ibexes, while fairly common, seem to be less so than in the Eastern Desert (where they are almost ubiquitous). There are many images of antelopes in both regions, but it is not possible to deduce from the unsystematic Arabian publications whether the same species are represented with similar frequencies. In one respect the corpora of animal images in the two regions are very similar: in neither are there any images of small mammals or, apart from a few scorpions, any insects or arthropods, or any birds apart from ostriches.

There are hunting scenes in both regions but, while in the Eastern Desert the hunters are always on foot, in Arabia they are often mounted on camels or horses. In both the hunters are usually armed with bows and ostriches are sometimes the quarry, but while in Egypt wild asses or giraffes are also hunted in Arabia they are not: there antelopes or wild cattle are the prey. Khan et al. make the interesting point that in the north-west of Arabia, while there are several hunting scenes, they are too few in number to be interpreted as representations of daily life. If hunting was an important means of subsistence and every hunt, or even a significant proportion of the hunts, was drawn there would be many more hunt images than there are. Their conclusion is that each hunting scene was a feature of a place where some form of rite to ensure the success of the hunt was performed (Khan et al 1986 p89). This observation could equally be applied to the Eastern Desert.

There are no images of trees or any other vegetation in the Eastern Desert (although there are some in the Nile Valley), but there are a few images of palm trees in Arabia.

(There are many images of warriors armed with lances and shields and mounted on horses in the Eastern Desert but they have been ignored in this study because they postdate the Dynastic period. It is of interest to note however that there are many very similar images in Arabia.)

Cattle are found in both regions, but although Nayeem, for example, attaches significance to them (see, for example, Nayeem 2000 pp345-346), the above statistics show that they form a small proportion of the Arabian corpus. In both Arabia and the Eastern Desert cattle are often shown in association with anthropoids, but the particular images that appear to show people controlling cattle by means of a rope attached to the horns, or by grasping the tail, are completely absent from Arabia. In addition there are no images of cattle with any form of structure on their backs in Arabia.

Style Many of the images of cattle in Arabia are quite different in style from those in the Eastern Desert. At Jubbah, for example, several animals are shown with the body in profile while the head and horns are seen as from above. The long horns are exaggerated in length and the ears indicated clearly but the head itself is very small and in some cases almost vanishes. This style is unknown in Egypt. In Nubia there are some images of cattle with the horns seen from above, but there is none in the Eastern Desert.

Anthropoid images are common in both regions, but their dress and accoutrements are different. In the Eastern Desert many of the anthropoids hold what appear to be bows (usually held asymmetrically) and others hold vertical staves. Both of these objects are absent from Arabia. In Egypt many of the anthropoids are decorated with what may be plumed headdresses, but while their Arabian counterparts often have some sort of headdress the “plumes” (represented by a line or lines from the top of the head) are very rare. In Arabia considerable attention was given to the clothes of the anthropoids whereas in the Eastern Desert there was almost none.

The Jubbah cattle, and many others in Arabia, are shown with elaborate markings covering their flanks. The patterns are formed by the contrast between large areas of the rock that have been excised and smoothed and others that have been left untouched. Each animal has a different pattern. In the Eastern Desert there are many cattle that are marked with a vertical stripe or band and some that are speckled or reticulated, but none with any more elaborate pattern. Červíček notes the markings of the Eastern Desert cattle, and those of the Arabian cattle, and suggests that the portrayal of stylized decoration spread from Arabia to Egypt (Červíček 1979). The similarities do not in fact seem close enough to make this very likely.

Boats, which form so prominent a feature of the Eastern Desert rock art corpus, are completely absent from western Arabia, although there are a few in the extreme east of the peninsula. There seem to be some geometric designs, such as circles with radiating lines, that appear in both regions, as well as hand prints, footprints and images of sandals, in both regions, but the treatment of these items in the Arabian publications is so sketchy that it is not possible to make a proper comparison.

A further difference between the cattle images in the two regions is that of scale. Some of the Arabian images, those at Jubbah for example, are large and almost life-sized. There is only one large cattle image in Egypt. It is in the Wadi Sha’it, and is about a metre long. All the other animal

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while when it comes to the more elaborate images there is no connection. Few of the Arabian images could be mistaken for Eastern Desert images.

images are much smaller, typically 30 centimetres long, 50 at most. Many of the Arabian anthropoid images are quite different from any in Egypt. The large carefully-worked images shown with the torso seen from the front and the legs, with slightly bent knees, seen from the side, and with elaborately detailed dress, are unknown in Egypt, as are the female figures with long hair or veils. Nayeem presents compilations of the Arabian anthropoid images (Nayeem 2000 pp329-334, 339-342), illustrating 20 or so different styles. None of them apart from the simplest has any equivalent in Egypt. As in the case of the cattle images some of the anthropoids are nearly life-sized, unlike any in Egypt. None of the Egyptian images shows any indication of dress apart, in a few cases, from a simple skirt or kilt.

Summary The similarities and differences between the reported rock art images of animals in the Arabian peninsula and those in the Eastern Desert can be explained by similarities and differences of environment, and there is no evidence of cultural influence except in the most general terms. In almost all cases the Arabian rock art is concerned with animals that were presumably present, such as ibexes, ostriches, antelopes of various species, cattle (images of which probably date from the period when the climate was sufficiently moist to support them) and camels. The styles in which cattle, for example, are shown are in many cases quite different from anything in Egypt and the only possible inference about cultural influence would concern the spread of the practice of domestication. In both regions there was an interest only in large animals, not small. It is not clear whether this could have been the result of some common cultural influence, or whether it was in some way an innate and natural human reaction to the faunal environment.

The “stick man” style of representing a human figure was used in both Egypt and Arabia, but the “stick men” in Egypt are not in the stylized poses of those in Arabia. In both regions there are “orant” figures with arms raised as if in prayer, but the shape of the arms is different. In Arabia the upper arms are horizontal, the elbow is bent and the lower arms are held vertical. In Egypt, in contrast, the arms are shown curved in smooth arcs with no indication of the angle of the elbow, and the hands (which are not indicated) point inwards above the head or downwards.

In general the few similarities in the style of the anthropoid images – such as the presence of “stick men” in both regions – appear most likely to be coincidences and there is no indication of cultural influence in either direction. The considerable differences between the majority of the anthropoids, and in particular the elaboration and variety of the Arabian images, tend to indicate that there was a distinct lack of cultural contact. The similarity of some of the Omani boat images to some of those of the Eastern Desert probably has more to do with the mobility of maritime technology than with any contact between rock artists.

In both regions most of the anthropoid images are without indication of facial features. Only one has been found in Egypt. In Arabia there are a few more, some with erect hair (ibid pp318 and 319). A few of the Arabian “idoliform” images, in which the arms and legs are vestigial or completely absent and the head is indicated by a semicircle at the top of a rectangular “body”, have facial features (ibid p334). There are no exact parallels to these “idoliforms” in the Eastern Desert but they bear some resemblance to the figures in the Wadi Sha’it with vestigial limbs, and others in Nubia.

So far most rock art has been discovered in the north-west of Saudi Arabia, near the border with Jordan, and the south-west near Yemen. The latter region is about 1000 kilometres from the Eastern Desert of Egypt and separated from it by more than 100 kilometres of the Red Sea, so little cultural contact is to be expected. The former, however, is in the path that any land-based contact would have taken. There certainly were contacts between Asia and Africa through this region and across Sinai, but the rock art seems to throw no light on them.

None of the Egyptian boats is seen from above, as are those from Qatar. On the other hand the Omani painted boats which have masts and rigging have a few counterparts in the Eastern Desert. The overall impression, when comparing the rock art images of the two regions, is that while there is some similarity as far as the subject matter is concerned there are significant differences, and that in the matter of style it is only in the simpler images that similarities can be found

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8 DATING had been hunted and caught by being lassoed. He also assumed that what have been assumed here to be exaggerated penises were actually penis sheaths.

PROPOSED CHRONOLOGIES Winkler’s chronology

The distinction between square and sickle boats is very important because Winkler believed that the square boats were from Mesopotamia. That is why he called the group to which he assigned them “Eastern Invaders”. The conclusion was based on the observation that Egyptian boats, as shown in illustrations and models, have curved hulls whereas Mesopotamian sources, in particular the Gebel-el-Arak knife handle and a Sumerian cylinder-seal, show boats with flat hulls and vertical finials (ibid p38).

Winkler observed some of the rock art of the Eastern Desert, the Nile Valley and the edge of the Western Desert north of Armant in the winter of 1936-7 (Winkler 1938). Combining these observations with some he had made earlier he believed that he was able to distinguish the work of several different groups of people. Some of these groups (Arabic, Coptic, Blemyan, Graeco-Roman and Dynastic) he identified by means of inscriptions written in various scripts, the presence of images of horses and camels, and, in the case of the Dynastic group, clear similarity in subject and style to the formal art of Pharaonic Egypt. These correspond with the groups of petroglyphs that have been excluded from the present study.

Winkler deduced the chronological sequence of the four groups mainly from differences of patination (ibid pp3334). He took into account the variability of patination rates and used the average colour (measured on a scale of his own invention) of large numbers of images as a mark of age. He concluded that the Earliest Hunters lived in “a very remote time”, that they were followed by the Autochthonous Mountain-dwellers who introduced cattle into the region (ibid p24), that the Eastern Invaders were contemporaneous with the Autochthonous Mountaindwellers during the earlier part of their presence and that the Early Nile-valley Dwellers were later, contemporaneous with both of these groups.

The remainder, the prehistoric rock art, he divided into four groups of images, each of which he assigned to a different ethnic group of people. He then deduced the sequence in which they appeared and their chronology. His four ethnic groups, and the classes of petroglyph images which he lists as being most frequently associated with each, are as follows. Earliest Hunters (spiral designs, elephants, giraffes, crocodiles, Cshaped bows, nets), Autochthonous Mountain-dwellers (long-horned cattle, ibexes, antelopes, ostriches, dogs, animal traps, 3-shaped bows, penis sheaths, wedge-shaped bodies), Eastern Invaders (square boats with large crews, lassoed cattle, maned asses, headdresses with long plumes, skirted women), Early Nile-valley Dwellers (sickle boats, decorated boats, ibexes, antelopes, asses, felines, ostriches, “orant” figures).

Because Winkler did not make clear the criteria he used to distinguish his various groups of petroglyphs it is not possible to apply his method to the larger corpus of images now available. Moreover his practice of chalking the images to make them clear in his photographs makes it impossible to verify the conclusions he bases on differences of patination. However in general terms his chronology is compatible with the suggestions for relative chronology made below. His conclusion that the bringers of cattle (the Autochthonous Mountain-dwellers) came later than a group interested mainly in giraffes and elephants (the Earliest Hunters) agrees with the observation, detailed below, that the giraffe and elephant petroglyphs tend to precede those of cattle. His conclusion that the peoples who drew the boats (his Eastern Invaders and Early Nile-valley Dwellers) came later than the other groups agrees similarly with the observation that animal petroglyphs tend to precede those of boats.

(A “C-shaped” bow is curved in a single arc: a “3-shaped” bow is curved at each end with a straight section in the middle.) It is not clear from his descriptions how Winkler made many of the distinctions between the groups of petroglyph images (Winkler 1938 pp18-29). For example he assigned most of the archers with C-shaped bows to the Earliest Hunters group, but put one among the Early Nile-valley Dwellers (ibid p24). He wrote that giraffes “are common” among the Earliest Hunters’ images but also noted that they appear in smaller numbers in the work of all the other groups. He assumed that the images referred to above in Chapter 3 as “captive cattle” were actually of animals that

While Winkler did not attempt to date the petroglyphs (apart from what is implied by relating sickle boats to “Predynastic decorated pots” (ibid p24)) he believed that the Earliest Hunters were present in the distant past (without venturing to say how distant). This seems to have been based on the very dark patination of the images he associated with this group. However he does not seem to have taken into account the fact that, as pointed out above,

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Horizon D (400-150 BC) (boats with sails, chariots, circles), Horizon E (150 BC-250 AD) (Graeco-Roman boats, footprints, horned altars, camels, various geometric designs), Horizon F (After 250 AD) (Christian motifs, mounted warriors, various geometric designs).

the rate of patination would have been greater when the climate was moister. The very dark petroglyphs were probably drawn before the lighter ones, but not necessarily long before. Nothing that has been found in the Eastern Desert since Winkler’s time would go to confirm his belief in the exotic origin of the square boats. The evidence for a Mesopotamian connection, while real, is slender, and the many intermediate forms between square and sickle make it at least possible, if not probable, that the distinction is false.

It will be seen that the petroglyphs on which the present study is based are covered by Horizons A to C, and that Horizon B covers a particularly long period, to the extent that it is not very useful as a means of discrimination. For example, on grounds of style (ibid p81) it includes almost all the wild animal images. As indicated in Chapter 3 above there are in fact very marked differences between the styles in which giraffes, for example, or ibexes are represented. It is unfortunate that Červíček’s method is unable to make use of these distinctions. This shortcoming seems to be in part a consequence of the very wide geographical area covered: coherency is being sought in a region that is not entirely coherent. It is also due to the reliance on images that can be dated by reference to datable artifacts, because there are in fact very few such comparisons to be made for the period before the first millennium.

Červíček’s Chronology Červíček, working with a different and much more widelydispersed set of petroglyph images, adopted a different approach to dating them (Červíček 1986). He abandoned Winkler’s “ethnological” approach based on relating different groups of petroglyph images to the ethnic groups of people who drew them and instead identified isochronological “horizons”. Each of these horizons is a group of petroglyph motifs or styles that appear to have been drawn in the same broad period. Červíček started by defining a horizon as consisting of certain images that can be dated by archaeological means. To these he then added images that appear to be contemporaneous with the archaeologically datable images because they are juxtaposed or show the same degree of patination or belong to the same culture (ibid p75).

An important weakness in Červíček’s approach is his initial assumption that the whole of North-eastern Africa was culturally homogeneous at any one time. It is indeed possible to deduce, from the petroglyph record, that there were contacts throughout the Eastern Desert and even beyond in the periods when they were being drawn, but it is misleading to start from this position because it may lead to incorrect selection of evidence. For example, petroglyphs may be assigned to one horizon or another because they coincide with preconceived ideas as to what is expected rather than because of their intrinsic properties. In his criticism of earlier attempts to date the rock art of the Central Sahara Muzzolini is particularly scathing about assumptions that each petroglyph “school” or “style” corresponds to a unique “period”, that the “periods” so identified run in sequence (rather than being contemporaneous), and that the sequence was followed all across the Sahara (that it was “pan-Saharan”), because none of these assumptions can be justified (Muzzolini 1989 p268). This criticism applies equally to the Eastern Desert.

Červíček used petroglyph images from all over Egypt (including the Nile Valley and the Western Desert) and Nubia in the identification of these horizons, and made use of Winkler’s published and unpublished material. (He did not, of course, have access to the recently-published Eastern Desert material on which the present study is based.) In working on this very broad canvas he made the explicit assumption of cultural homogeneity across this wide area at all times from before 4000 BC to the current era. He states that “the world was at any moment in history an entity” (ibid p73), and by this he implies that at any time people all over Egypt and Nubia were drawing the same sorts of petroglyphs. The six horizons are as follows. Horizon A (Before 4000 BC) (wavy lines, curved lines, spirals, concentric circles, handprints, giraffes, cattle, crosses, strokes), Horizon B (4000-2100 BC) (sickle boats (Naqada II), anthropomorphs (including “orants”), various animals, sandals), Horizon C (2100-400 BC) (boats with rudders, steatopygous anthropomorphs, long-horned cattle, cattle held by the tail, sandals),

Muzzolini’s Chronology Muzzolini (1980) addressed the question of the chronology of the rock art of Uweinat and in particular the temporal relationship between the petroglyphs and the paintings. He criticised earlier chronologies and, based mainly on comparisons with the rock art of the Central Sahara, suggested that the petroglyphs were drawn not before but after the paintings and that all date to later than about 2500 BC. Recent work, particularly that on changes in the

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Horizon III (Naqada III and Dynasties 1 and 2) (various boats, steatopygous anthropoids, cattle with U-shaped horns, hunting scenes), Horizon IV (Old Kingdom) (cattle with lyre-shaped horns, sickle boats, boats with masts, wedge-shaped anthropoids, incised drawings), Horizon V (Middle and New Kingdoms) (cattle with V-shaped horns, sickle boats, ostriches), Horizon VI (Late and Graeco-Roman Periods) (camels, few boats, no cattle, “matchstick” anthropoids), Horizon VII (Christian and Islamic Periods) (camels, incised animals and anthropoids).

climate, has cast serious doubts on these conclusions (see, for example, Le Quellec et al. 2005, pp286-289), but some of the steps in his argument throw light on some aspects of the Eastern Desert petroglyph corpus. One component of Muzzolini’s argument concerns the arms wielded by the people represented in the rock art. He notes that throughout the Sahara shields, lances, javelins and the curved throwing-sticks that look rather like boomerangs were unknown before the first or at most the second millennium BC, and that bows were usual earlier. In the Eastern Desert, as pointed out above, bows are common, while shields and lances appear only in the battle scenes involving warriors mounted on horses or camels that have been excluded from the present study. Muzzolini also notes that, in the Central Sahara, hunting scenes involving Barbary sheep and ostriches date to the horse and camel periods. There are no sheep hunts in the Eastern Desert but there are a few ostrich hunts. There is nothing to suggest that they are as recent as the images of horses and camels, but, bearing in mind that ostriches would have been present in all periods, it is possible that some of them are comparatively recent.

This chronology is based on the 354 petroglyphs that have been observed at El Kab – a relatively small number. As pointed out in Chapter 5 above they differ statistically from the Eastern Desert petroglyphs, most notably in that the images of anthropoids seem to be rather different, and that there are relatively few ostriches, anthropoids or boats. This suggests that the drawing of boats had a different significance, and implies that the conclusion about the dating of the boats may not be applicable to the Eastern Desert. With respect to the animal images the chronology is compatible with the conclusions about relative dating outlined below, and has the additional advantage of providing absolute dates.

Muzzolini notes that cattle with “geometric designs” on their coats (the “fish-scale” pattern described in Chapter 6 above) are unknown in the oldest periods, and also that the representation of the animals’ hooves as forked or by round “blobs” are recent traits. He states too that images of deformed and multiple horns relate to domestic animals rather than the wild quarry of the hunters. He suggests that “schematisation” of images is a characteristic of relatively recent periods. The Eastern Desert cattle images give little support to these suggestions: there are no “fish-scale” cattle there, and there is some compelling evidence that some at least of the more realistic images are later than the diagrammatic ones (see Chapter 3 above). There are cattle and other animals with forked or “blob” feet in the Eastern Desert but there is nothing to suggest anything about the period in which they were drawn: they seem more likely to be the products of the particular styles of individual artists or of evanescent fashions in individual wadis.

DATING METHODS The dating of rock art the world over presents many difficulties because it is rarely found in situations that can be dated by conventional archaeological means, and because it is usually of an informal or vernacular nature. There are however a number of techniques that can sometimes be used to provide indications about dates. Muzzolini (1992) suggests that data from several sources, taken together, can be used to give accurate though imprecise dates. By this he means that the rock art can be placed with certainty in a time band, but the band may be quite wide, say +/- 500 years. The available techniques for dating rock art are described usefully by Taçon and Chippindale (1998). Although they write in the context of the rock art of Arnhem Land in north-western Australia the framework they describe is applicable in any geographical context. It is summarised in the following list, which follows Taçon and Chippindale but uses a slightly different nomenclature more appropriate to the Egyptian context.

Huyge’s Chronology Huyge (2002) has dated the petroglyphs at El Kab (see Chapter 5 above). He used both intrinsic methods such as superposition and patination and archaeological methods (see below) to divide them into seven Horizons numbered I to VII covering the period from 4000 BC to 1000 AD (they are not the same as Červíček’s above). They are as follows. Horizon I (Naqada I) (mainly Type B giraffes), Horizon II (Naqada II) (sickle boats, square boats, “orant” anthropoids, ibexes, asses, no cattle),

Informed Methods depend on access to the rock artists themselves either directly or indirectly by means of historical records or cultural continuity. These are particularly important in Australia where it is sometimes possible to ask the artist himself or

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Dynastic Egypt that relates to the desert petroglyphs. There are, of course, many hieroglyphic inscriptions in the Eastern Desert, notably in and around the quarries in the Wadi Hammamat, and also at Kanais, Bir Shallul, Bir Mineh and elsewhere, but these do not refer to images of animals, boats or anthropoids that are to be found at the more remote sites.

herself about the work, or to have older work explained by people who belong to or understand the culture from which it was derived. Formal Methods depend on knowledge about the subject matter of representational rock art. It may be known that the subjects had been present, or absent, at certain times.

Thus there appears to be no possibility of “informed” dating information.

Stratigraphic Methods depend on superposition of images. If one image lies on top of another it must have been drawn later. It is, however, not always possible to be certain which of two conflicting images was superposed. Moreover there may be nothing to say whether the superposition happened after a few days or a few centuries.

Formal Methods Animals As pointed out above the presence of images that appear to represent animals such as giraffes and elephants that could not survive in the Eastern Desert as it is now, but are known to have been present in the past when the climate was moister, leads to the conclusion that they date to the fourth millennium BC or earlier. This is an example of dating by a “formal” method – i.e. it is based on the form of the images.

Comparative Methods depend on similarities with rock art images in some other locality which can themselves be dated. Such comparisons assume, of course, that there is some degree of cultural continuity with the other locality. Archaeological Methods depend on placing the rock art in an environment that can be dated by archaeological means, or on recognising close similarity between the rock art image and an image on a datable artefact.

It rests on two important assumptions: that the images were intended to represent the animals that they appear, to modern viewers, to represent; and that the animals represented were actually present when and where the images were drawn. The first of these assumptions can be justified to the extent that the images are realistic, although this is by no means universally the case. As pointed out above only 22% of the giraffe images are realistic (“Type A” in Chapter 3 above), and none of the elephants is. The other, non-realistic, images however have prominent features (long necks in the case of the giraffes, trunks and large ears in the case of elephants) that show that they are in some sense “about” giraffes or elephants: that the artists knew about the animals, at least by reputation if they had not actually seen them.

Weathering Methods depend on changes to the image that occur naturally, by for example fading of the pigments of rock paintings, erosion by windborn dust or water, or patination. Patination is of most importance as far as the Eastern Desert petroglyphs are concerned. Direct Methods depend on the presence of material, usually organic, associated with the image that can be dated by physical methods such as carbon-14 assay.

The second assumption, that the animals were present when they were drawn, is justified by the large numbers of images. There are 59 giraffes and 41 elephants. Moreover they are drawn in many different styles that suggest strongly that they are the work of many different artists. It is possible that one or two artists might have seen the animals in the course of travels (to modern Kenya, for example, which is 1500 kilometres away), or heard travellers’ tales of them, but it seems most unlikely that many such artists had.

The application of each of these dating methods is examined below in order to arrive at a chronological framework for the Eastern Desert petroglyphs. Informed Methods Since this study is addressed to the petroglyphs that appear to date to the Predynastic or at the latest (in the case of the boats) to the Dynastic period there is obviously no possibility of consulting the artists who drew them. (This would not necessarily be true in the case of the few images – of motor vehicles, for example – that are clearly modern, or possibly of the tribal signs.)

If these two assumptions are accepted the giraffes, and probably the elephants, must date to the fourth millennium or earlier. However there is, as pointed out in Chapter 3, the possibility that some of the latter date to the Ptolemaic period when, as historical records attest, elephants were imported from what is now Somalia for military use. Lack

In addition there appears to be no documentary evidence, in the form of monumental inscriptions or papyri, from

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feathered headdresses that adorn Dynastic images of the gods such as Amun and Min they suggest, although not strongly, a date nearer to the start of the Dynastic period around 3000 BC.

of patination (see below) suggests that the elephant at site GP1 is in this category. These arguments apply equally to the small number of images of felines and leads to the conclusion that most of them are from the fourth millennium. Most are quite realistic, to the extent that it seems certain that the artists had seen the animals. However there are a few images of lions showing the animals’ manes which may be later. One at site HW21 is shown fighting a man, and another at site SHA14 is adjacent to a seated man.

In most cases there is a clear distinction between these, apparently Predynastic, petroglyph anthropoid images and the more realistic images, excluded from the present study, that have been assumed to be Dynastic. Examples of the latter are to be found in the Wadi Hammamat. They are drawn in a realistic style, almost always as if seen from the side, and often their clothes, such as kilts, are indicated (see for example Rohl 2000 p126.10, p130.5). Farther south, in the Wadi el Hudi, there are several similar images, about 10% of which have plumes, all single and curving slightly to the rear (Fakhry 1952). Many of these images are associated with Middle Kingdom inscriptions, indicating that they are indeed Dynastic.

In contrast to these savannah animals the other wild animals and the ostriches could have been present in the Eastern Desert at any time, in most cases until quite recently. Ibexes are still to be found, ostriches and addaxes are known to have been present as late as the 20th century AD, and the other antelopes may well have been also. It is therefore not possible to say anything about dating of these images on formal grounds, and indeed it seems quite likely that images of ibexes, of which there are many, date from all periods. While it is not clear what the animals with long ears and what appear to be manes actually are, if, as suggested above, they are wild asses they also could date, on formal grounds, to any period up to the 20th century. The situation with respect to the crocodiles and hippopotamuses is a little different in that, as argued in Chapter 3 above, there is some doubt as to whether they were present in the places where they were drawn. However as they were present in the Nile until the 19th Century AD no conclusions about their dates can be drawn.

Boats As pointed out above in Chapter 4 the images of boats are very varied in form, so much so that Červíček (1974) discerns 33 different “types”. For many of these he is able to suggest a date based on resemblance to boats that are known to have been in use in various periods. As a result he ascribes dates to different types ranging from Naqada II to the Graeco-Roman period. The later boats are, according to Červíček, in general those with masts, rigging and sails. Among the earlier boat images the most prominent distinction is between those in which the base of the hull is represented by a curved line and those in which it is straight. The largest numbers of these are called respectively types 1 and 2 by Červíček, and “sickle boats” and “square boats” by Winkler (1938). (It is pointed out above that the distinction is in practice hard to make clearly: there are many boat images with slightly curved hulls or hulls partly curved and partly straight that could be assigned to either class. One consequence of this ambiguity is the large number of subsidiary types identified by Červíček.)

The cattle images are numerous, widespread, realistic and varied in detail. For these reasons it seems certain that they were intended to represent real animals that were present when they were drawn, and therefore that they date, like the savannah animals, to the fourth millennium BC or earlier (see also Judd 2007 p75). Anthropoids The presence, by itself, of anthropoid images gives no indication of when they were drawn. The forms of the Eastern Desert images of the anthropoids themselves have few distinctive features, but some of them have accoutrements that may give some indication of date. The two outstanding such features are the bow-like objects carried by 25% of the free-standing figures and 2% of those in boats, and the “plumes” that decorate the heads of 25% of the free-standing figures and 34% of those in boats.

Almost all the actual boats that sailed on the Nile seem, however, to have had curved hulls. This form can be seen for example in the funerary boat of Khufu that is preserved at Giza (Vinson 1994 p21), the boats illustrated in the Old Kingdom tomb of Ti (Steindorff, 1913), model boats from Middle Kingdom tombs (Jones 1995 pp30-31) and in the New Kingdom account of the expedition to Punt in the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari (Vinson 1994 p40). The supernatural boats that are shown in many tombs and papyri transporting the dead through the underworld have, in most cases, the same form (Jones 1995 Plate 1). Boats with straight hulls are almost unknown in Egypt (apart from in the rock art). This led Winkler to the

The use of arrows in late Palaeolithic Egypt in the 11th millennium or earlier is attested by finds at Jebel Sahaba (Hoffman 1979 p67), so the depiction of bows gives only the very wide chronological indication that the images were probably drawn after around 10000 or 11000 BC. However if the “plumes” are taken to be precursors of the

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At sites SAL40 and DUC there are many superpositions. At both there are many images drawn on top of each other in a very confused manner. Most of the images are of animals but at SAL40 there are also a few boats and at DUC there are images that might be highly stylized anthropoids. The masses of images are so confusing that it is not possible to determine which is superposed on which or to draw any conclusions about the sequence in which they were drawn.

conclusion that his square boats belonged to fourthmillennium invaders from Mesopotamia. The earliest boats in Egypt are attested in the 6th millennium (Vinson 1994 p11), and farther south, near Omdurman, a pebble bearing a fragmentary image of a boat with a curved hull has been found in a context dated to around 7000 BC (Usai and Salvatori 2007). Thus the mere presence of a boat image indicates only that it was drawn at some time later. However the details of its form can in some cases allow more precise dating, in most cases by comparison with images of boats on datable artefacts (see below).

Davis applies stratigraphy in another sense to the petroglyphs of the Nile Valley (Davis 1978). Analysing data published by Hellström and Langballe (1970) he finds a relationship between different classes of image (defined in terms of subject matter and degree of patination) and vertical elevation. He suggests this to be related to the maximum height of the annual Nile flood, which has declined steadily since the early Holocene. He notes a sequence from higher to lower (and therefore, he concludes, from older to more recent) of geometric designs, then wild animals, then cattle. This approach is, of course, not directly applicable to areas of the Eastern Desert which were never affected by the inundations, and no systematic relationship between image subject, style or patination and elevation has been noted there. However Davis’ observations provide some support for a similar sequence there.

Stratigraphic Methods If one image lies over another clearly it was drawn later so in principle superposition is a reliable indication of chronological sequence of images. In practice however it is less useful for petroglyphs than rock paintings because it is often easier to determine reliably which layer of paint lies on top of another than which incisions or peck marks were made first. Sometimes the rock surface has to be examined closely before the sequence is clear. Photographs can be used if the definition is good, and colour photographs are better because slight differences in the colour of the patina can be of assistance. In consequence published images, which are usually black-and-white and not always of the highest quality, are often disappointing in this regard: a conflict where two images cross may be shown but it may be impossible to decide with certainty which came later.

Comparative Methods As is indicated above in Chapters 5-7 there are few similarities between the rock art of the Eastern Desert and that of any other adjacent region (apart from the Nile Valley), and for none of these regions is there reliable dating information, not available for the Eastern Desert, that might be used to date analogous images. For example the giraffe images of Uweinat can be dated by using the same argument – that they presumably date to the moist period before 3000 BC – that applies to the Eastern Desert giraffes. Muzzolini advanced a different argument about these giraffes – that they were drawn very much later, after 2500 BC, and refer to a residual population that survived in the relatively moist environment of Uweinat while the surrounding areas became arid (Muzzolini 1980). There is no evidence that conditions of a similar nature occurred in the Eastern Desert: the giraffes would have retreated steadily as desiccation advanced from north to south.

Among the images in the sources used in Chapters 3 and 4 there are 49 reliable examples of superpositions. The number is quite small because, apart from the “confused” sites mentioned below, the earlier petroglyph artists seem to have avoided obscuring their predecessors’ work. (The later artists, particularly those who drew scenes of battle between armed men, were much less considerate in this respect and often placed their work on top of earlier images.) The images reported by Winkler (1938) are of little value for this purpose because in many cases he enhanced the petroglyphs with chalk before photographing them thus obscuring the differences in shade that might have indicated the order in which they were drawn. There are too few superpositions to make firm deductions but evidence can be drawn from them to support conclusions arrived at by other means. The outstanding observations are that there are 23 cases in which an image of a boat overlies another image (13 animals, four anthropoids, three other boats, and three nonrepresentational patterns), but in contrast in only five cases is a boat overlain by another image. This lends support to a general conclusion that the boat images are, in the main, later than the animal images.

Some dating information about the petroglyphs of the Nile Valley can, however, be applied in an indicative manner to the Eastern Desert and examples of this are covered in the following paragraphs (see under Archaeological Methods and Direct Methods).

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rock art images. The boats are sometimes seen from above (Midant-Reynes 2000 p173), a view that never appears in the Eastern Desert, and the giraffes are shaped and decorated differently from those in the rock art images. Moreover some of the animals on the Naqada I pots, such as the long-horned sheep and the hippopotamuses, are rare in the rock art of the Eastern Desert.

Archaeological Methods Archaeological Context The only instances where the Eastern Desert rock art is in a context or environment that might be dated by archaeological means have arisen on the few occasions when small pottery shards have been found on the ground nearby. None of these shards has been formally dated, and indeed little would be gained if they were because it would be impossible to be certain that they were connected with the adjacent rock art in any way. The gravel and stones that form the floors of the wadis are occasionally redistributed by floods, and any pieces of pottery among them would have been relocated. Dating in this way – by juxtaposition of rock art and datable archaeological material – is inevitably unreliable and although often practised for images in the central Sahara in the 1950s and 60s has fallen from favour recently (Davis 1979: Bednarik 1995 note 1).

A shard found in a Naqada I tomb bears a modelled outline in the shape of the red crown of Lower Egypt (MidantReynes 2000 p182). At site HW18 in the Wadi Qash there are two petroglyph images of anthropoids wearing headdresses decorated with the scroll that is a feature of the red crown. Midant-Reynes concludes that the HW18 anthropoids together with the adjacent images therefore date to the Naqada I period. While this may be the case, although it hardly seems certain because the images of the red crown was current not only in Naqada I but also for 3000 years thereafter, it is of little help in dating other petroglyphs because these two images are unique: no other examples have been found anywhere in the Eastern Desert.

Two pieces of archaeological dating evidence have been found in Nubia, however. At Abka, near the Second Cataract, images of animals (including elephants, addaxes, bovids, giraffes and ostriches), anthropoids, hand prints and geometric designs including wavy lines (that might represent snakes) were found buried under a deposit that has been dated by its 14C content (Myers 1958, 1960). The “snakes” were dated to about 7500 BC and the anthropoids to about 6000 BC. At Sayala, some 130 kilometres south of Aswan, a rock bearing part of an image that appeared to be of a giraffe was found forming part of the structure of a shelter dated to the 4th millennium BC (Bietak and Engelmeyer 1963). In both these cases the petroglyphs are very similar to some in the Eastern Desert, so their dates may also be similar.

Naqada II vessels (3600 - 3200 BC) sometimes show ibexes and birds which might be ostriches (or alternatively flamingos, see Baumgartel 1955 p11) but not the giraffes and elephants so characteristic of the petroglyphs. In addition many late Naqada II funerary pots bear images of boats (see for example Baumgartel 1955 Plate IX.4; Asselberghs 1961 Afb.15; Midant-Reynes 2000 pp189191). Most of these boats are sickle-shaped with hulls of which the outlines are parallel arcs that do not converge at the bow and stern. They usually have two "eared" cabins (Baumgartel (1955 p13) thinks they are shrines) and often palm-frond decorations at one end. They always have what appear to be oars, characteristically in two banks with a gap in the centre, but no oarsmen. They bear so close a resemblance to the petroglyph images of boats with curved hulls that are found particularly in the region of the Wadi Hammamat that they are widely taken to be contemporaneous. There are however some differences. While the Naqada II pottery boats have two cabins the petroglyphs almost always have only one. Most of the petroglyph sickle boats have oarsmen and fewer have oars, whereas the pottery boats have oars but no oarsmen. Those petroglyph boats with oars show them in a single bank with no break whereas those on the pots always have a gap in the centre. The petroglyph boats rarely have palm fronds. In contrast a late Naqada II pot shows a boat with a hull that is nearly straight, vertical finials (not incurved) and a sail (Asselberghs 1961 Afb.21).

Archaeological Artefacts - Predynastic Pottery is an important source of datable images from the Predynastic. Badarian pottery does not bear pictorial decoration so it is no help in this respect, but animals, anthropoids, boats and geometric designs are found on Naqada pottery. Some Naqada I vessels (4000 – 3600 BC) are decorated with images of antelopes, giraffes, ibexes, hippopotamuses, sheep and other animals, boats and anthropoids (some with raised arms) (see for example Midant-Reynes 2000 pp172-173; Wilkinson 2003 pp6667). In particular the horns of the sheep on these vessels are shaped similarly to those of five of the Eastern Desert petroglyph sheep. Hippopotamuses appear frequently (Baumgartel 1955 p30 and Plate VI.8) and in particular there is a picture of a hippopotamus hunt which bears remarkably close similarity to a petroglyph scene in the Wadi Mineh (Ayrton and Loat 1911 plate XXVII.13; Resch 1967 p51). A Naqada I vase shows antelopes being hunted by dogs (Hendrickx1992). However the Naqada I pottery images are not, in the main, similar in style to the

Many of the Naqada II funerary pots are all very similar in style, to the extent that they appear to come from a single source or “factory”. It may be, therefore, that the characteristic features of their boats (the two cabins, the divided bank of oars, etc.) are the marks of one school of artists. If this is the case the majority of the boats on the

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This, and its black colour, suggests that it might have been a later addition, painted over a sixth sickle boat.

pots can be regarded as a single variation among many of a common theme, the other variations – the contemporary work of several other groups or individuals – being those seen in the rock art. The theme would have been a sickleshaped (or banana-shaped) boat with cabins and oars.

The boats shown in the knife-handles, the fragment of cloth and the tomb painting, all have some similarity with some of the rock art boats, mainly those with sickle-shaped or banana-shaped hulls, but also in a few cases with those with flat hulls. In no case is the similarity exact: none of these images is identical with any of the petroglyph images, but they are close enough to suggest at least the possibility that some of the petroglyphs are from the Naqada I or II periods.

The boats on the Naqada II funerary pots are often accompanied by figures with raised arms curved over the head in the “orant” posture (ibid Afb.17). Ceramic figurines of anthropomorphs, usually female, sometimes male, standing upright with their arms in the same “orant” posture, have also been found. While many of them are unprovenanced some, found at El Ma’mariya, can be dated to Naqada II (Needler 1984). Taken together the figures on the funerary pots and the figurines suggest strongly that the petroglyph “orant” figures, which occur both in boats and standing free, date from the Naqada II period.

The handle of a mace found in an A-group tomb at Sayala in Nubia, dating to the end of the 4th millennium, bears images of an elephant, a giraffe, an oryx and a gerenuk, all animals familiar in the Eastern Desert petroglyphs, as well as a lion, a stork and what might be two hyenas (MidantReynes 2000 pp193-195).

A fragment of cloth from Gebelein, 30 kilometres south of Luxor on the west bank of the Nile, bears the remains of illustrations of four sickle boats, some of which have oars and oarsmen. One has a steersman with a steering oar. All have cabins and two seem to have two. The cloth dates from about 3500 BC (Williams and Logan 1987 Figure15).

Some of the Naqada II funerary pots are decorated with spirals (see, for example, Midant-Reynes 2000 p190), as are some earlier vessels (Baumgartel 1955 p75). Similar spirals appear among the Eastern Desert petroglyphs (see Chapter 4 above). However it seems quite probable that the similarity is coincidental: anyone seeking to draw a decorative pattern, on either a rock or a pot, could hit upon this simple and satisfying shape. Even if there is a connection the fact that spirals appear on pottery from the mid-fifth to the late-fourth millennia offers little help in dating the rock patterns.

The Gebel-el-Arak knife (Asselberghs 1961 Afb.55) dates from the same period. Its hippopotamus-ivory handle is decorated with complex scenes which include sickle boats and square boats. Neither of these has many of the elaborate distinguishing features of the petroglyphs, but their presence indicates that in addition to the sickle boats some at least of the square boats may date from the same period. A similar knife handle now in the Metropolitan Museum may also depict both sickle and square boats (Williams and Logan 1987 Figure 1).

Archaeological Artefacts - Dynastic Boats appear in the decoration of temples and tombs from all Dynastic periods (see above under “Formal Methods”). They are often associated with the after-life, bearing gods or deceased persons on their journeys through the underworld. They are usually sickle-shaped, although the larger boats have longer hulls which are flatter and so have a squarer appearance. The extreme of the square form, with flat hull and vertical posts at prow and stern so that the outline is three sides of a rectangle, while common in petroglyphs, is not seen in formal Dynastic imagery. The elaborate decoration of the stern-post, with horns or rays emanating from a disc-shaped or shield-shaped hub (referred to as a “flower” in Chapter 4 above), is unique to the more carefully-drawn square boat petroglyphs and does not occur in the formal Dynastic images. In addition there are no Dynastic boats with large numbers of oars and oarsmen. An important point of similarity between the petroglyph boats and the Dynastic imagery however is the presence in some cases of people towing the boat (Weeks 2001 passim, and see Chapter 9 below under Dynastic funerary imagery).

The wall-painting from Tomb 100 at Hierakonpolis, from the Naqada IIc period (3400 - 3300 BC), showed five rather crude sickle boats (Asselberghs 1961 Afb.33,34). Each had two eared cabins, no oars or oarsmen and no prow or stern decorations. Three had what may be steering oars (although one had a "steering oar" at both ends!). All had light-coloured hulls and two had dark panels amidships. They thus had some similarity to the sickle boat petroglyphs and there is even one petroglyph in the Wadi Hammamat which has two cabins and a dark panel painted on the hull (Rohl 2000 p129.5). The differences could, as in the case of the Naqada II pottery, be the result of local stylistic variations. Most interesting is that the wall-painting also had a sixth boat. It was black, with a single cabin, a steering oar, no other oars or oarsmen but some rather indistinct passengers. It had a high stern but, curiously, no high prow. The stern gave it something of the appearance of a square boat from a petroglyph, but apart from this the shape of the hull was the same as the other five boats in the painting.

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plumed” desert images it gives no clue about their dates: they might be Predynastic precursors or vernacular Dynastic variants.

At El Kab there is a small temple built by Thutmose IV and finished by Amenhotep III of the 18th Dynasty. On the outside of the south wall drawings of several boats have been carved. They are all sickle boats with large cabins and steering oars but no rowing oars or oarsmen and no decoration (Morrow and Morrow 2002 p242). There is a very similar boat drawn over a group of images that clearly date to the Dynastic period in the Wadi Hammamat quarries at site HSQ1 (ibid p215) and there are a small number of petroglyph boats of very similar form at other sites in the Eastern Desert. Each has a hull that is curved uniformly as an arc of a circle and is tapered at the ends, a cabin with a rectangular outline, one or two steering oars, and finials that are either very small or absent entirely. There is one at Site ED1 in the Wadi Barramiya (Rohl 2000 p42) and one at site PC2 in the Wadi Hammamat (ibid p128). A boat that is similar but has larger finials and no steering oar is to be found at Site TJ1 in the Wadi Mineh (ibid p82). The form of the hulls of all these boats is similar to that of the funerary boat of Khufu and the tomb models (see above) but the absence of prominent finials, one of them incurved, makes them more like the latter than the former.

There are images of animals on temples and tombs from throughout the Dynastic period. Cattle are common and wild animals appear frequently, although giraffes and elephants are rare. The animals are usually represented in a very realistic manner and there is none of the exaggeration that is common in the desert rock art. There are no giraffes with elongated necks or tails; no elephants with raised ears or hooked trunks; no ibexes with horns longer than their bodies; no “wild asses” with flowing manes. There are therefore no similarities on which conclusions about dating can be based. There are no cattle with structures on their backs and there are none being “controlled” by means of a rope attached to their horns and held by a man standing in front. However there are a few similarities with the rock art image of a person holding the tail. In offering scenes in which cattle are being presented a man is sometimes shown standing close behind an animal. He may not actually hold its tail but the grouping is quite similar to that of the “tailholding” scenes in the desert. One such scene is in the 5th Dynasty tomb of Ti (Steindorf 1913). It shows a man guiding a bull, with one hand resting on the animal’s back and the other holding a stick. The bull is shown in side view but its horns, one of which droops, are shown from the front. The overall impression is similar to that of some of the Eastern Desert rock art scenes and suggests that they might be contemporaneous.

These comparisons suggest that these particular petroglyphs date to the Dynastic period, and possibly to the New Kingdom. The boats at El Kab and in the Wadi Hammamat quarry may have been cut in imitation of petroglyphs the artists found in the wadis or indeed of the boats they saw in the temples and tombs the modern tourist visits. There might have been at some time a fashion for drawing images of boats on any convenient surface - either a rock face in the desert or the wall of a disused temple. This might have been going on until the comparatively recent past. The only limit that can be placed is to observe that no boat has been found with the absence of patination typical of petroglyphs - or graffiti - of the last century or so.

Weathering Methods – Patination Differences in patination are obvious features of many of the Eastern Desert petroglyphs, and they can sometimes be used to provide information on the sequence in which the images were drawn. The mechanisms by which the patina is formed are described above in Chapter 2, and it has to be remembered that the rate of re-formation of patina on a disturbed surface and its appearance depend in uncertain ways on many circumstances such as the nature of the rock and its orientation and exposure to sun and wind. For this reason it is difficult to compare the patina of images on different rock surfaces in any detailed manner.

There are only a few similarities between the petroglyph anthropoids and Dynastic anthropoids. The rock art images do not adopt the formal stances and attitudes familiar in Dynastic art. While the image of a Pharaoh wielding a bow is common in the walls of the temples in the Nile Valley his gesture and the shape of his bow are unlike anything the desert artists drew. The only similarities are found in the headdresses. As pointed out above some of the Eastern Desert anthropoid images are shown with double vertical lines rising from their heads. If these lines represent plumes they indicate some sort of connection with the twin-plumed representation of Amun and Min that occur in Dynastic art. However, although Min is associated particularly with the Eastern Desert, the “twin-plumed” figures there do not have the other features that characterise him: they are neither mummiform nor ithyphallic and they have no flails. Both Min and Amun were prominent throughout the Dynastic period, so if there is a connection with the “twin-

An ambitious and complicated attempt to do this has been made by Červíček (1973). His method makes use of descriptions of the patina of the petroglyph image and of the surrounding surface in terms of colour (in ten tones) and darkness (in ten grades). He uses similarity of tone and grade to relate petroglyphs to datable rock inscriptions, taking account of the orientation and inclination of the rock surface (variables that affect exposure to sunlight). He applies this technique to a corpus of petroglyphs from the vicinity of Kalabsha and Korosko in the Nile Valley, and is

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several different styles and exhibiting various degrees of patination. Figure 31 is a view of the face made up of two separate photographs that have been amalgamated digitally. Making allowances for the way the patina of the undisturbed rock varies across the rock face it is possible to discern five groups of petroglyphs that appear to have been drawn at around the same time, and to place them in chronological order. The method used (in which there is a significant subjective element in the classification, particularly with respect to style and subject matter) has been described in detail elsewhere (Judd 2008). Figure 32 consists of tracings of the five groups.

able to deduce statistical information about the periods in which images of various classes (boats, anthropoids, animals of various species and abstract symbols) were drawn. An obvious limitation of this method is that it cannot be used to date petroglyphs that are older than the oldest datable inscriptions. Even within this limitation the technique is not appropriate for the Eastern desert for two reasons. Firstly it depends on the presence of a reasonable number of datable inscriptions in different conditions of sunlight. Apart from those at the Wadi Hammamat quarries, the location of which is not representative, there are few inscriptions in the Eastern Desert. Secondly there is not the detailed information on the tone and darkness of patination in the available publications, and such information as there is is not standardised. If the method were to be applied it would be necessary to make carefullycontrolled field observations, or to take colour photographs that include standard colour cards in the field of view. Even with these precautions it is not clear that confusing effects of differences of illumination, caused by different weather conditions or different times of day, could be avoided.

Group 1 These are the darkest and most heavily patinated images on the rock face. Among them are five that might be animals or anthropomorphs, having elliptical “bodies”, four limbs (although one limb is almost missing on the small creature on the far left), a tail and various other features. Group 2 There are several images, made up of curved or straight lines, that are only slightly lighter than Group 1. There is what appears to be a simple representation of a man together with animals, possibly an ibex, a crocodile and an ostrich. There is also an object shaped like a letter “P” and other linear features and indeterminate objects.

In practice all it is possible to say about petroglyphs in different locations is that heavily-patinated images (which are as dark as the undisturbed rock) are “old” (without any indication of how old) and that light images that show the colour of the substrate rock are “recent”. Even this may be misleading because patination seems to have been particularly slow in recent millennia, which have been very arid, so that images drawn 2000 years ago are sometimes as bright as those drawn yesterday.

Group 3 There are several images that appear quite clearly to represent animals, an ostrich, a man. and ibexes. There is a linear feature with branches at its top that in form is akin to Group 2 but is considerably less darkly patinated, and there is a feature consisting of three incomplete touching circles one of which has a dot in its centre.

The situation is not so discouraging for petroglyphs on the same surface. If there are two or more petroglyphs close together it is sometimes possible to discern the order in which they were drawn. If they are in identical positions – that is the images overlap – it is almost always possible to see which was drawn first. If two or three images are close – within say a few tens of centimetres – and if the patination of the surrounding undisturbed rock surface is uniform it is also usually possible to determine the order in which they were drawn in a reliable way. However instances where this is possible for more than a few images, or for images of very different styles, are rare. In the following sections five of these rare cases, rock faces each of which has several petroglyphs with different patination and has characteristics that allow them to be compared, are discussed.

Group 4 There is a particularly light and detailed image of an animal with long straight horns (possibly an oryx) suckling its young and several other animal images, all quite light and comparatively detailed, among which are two ostriches and three wild asses. These images are distinguished from Group 3 by their detail and relative realism. Group 5 The brightest images include a man who appears to be a copy of a nearby Group 2 man. To the left are an archer, another man who carries what may be a bow, and a man riding a camel. To the right there is what appears to be a copy of the threecircle Group 3 object, and also three symbols that might be letters. All are very bright and almost without patina.

Site SH5 This site is in the Wadi Sha’it, some three kilometres from its confluence with the Wadi Muweilhat. It consist of a large fairly smooth rock face, some two metres high and ten metres wide, that is covered with petroglyphs drawn in

This site is not characteristic of the Eastern Desert rock art. Not only has it the five strange Group 1 objects that might be anthropomorphs, but also several of the images common

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horns, together with some other smaller animals. Below the “ibexes” there is a boat, to its right there is what appears to be a giraffe, and above and farther to the right there is another boat. All these images are similarly patinated. On the far left of the face there are more “ibexes” and other animals drawn in a different, somewhat cruder, style. They appear a little lighter in colour but, because they are separated from the foregoing group in a position that might have been exposed to a different patination process, it is not possible to conclude that they are significantly later in date.

elsewhere are absent. It has very few wild animals apart from the Group 4 oryxes, ibexes and ostriches and the Group 2 crocodile; there are no giraffes and no elephants; there are none of the cattle which are very common at many nearby sites in the Wadi Sha’it and its adjoining wadis; and there are no boats. From the average patination of each of the groups it is reasonably clear that they were drawn in sequence, Group 1 being the oldest and Group 5 the newest. The ambiguous Group 1 images that might be either animals or anthropoids are the oldest images. It seems that at most times the petroglyph artists were interested in ibexes because images of these animals appear in both Groups 2 and 3. Other animals, such as oryxes and “wild asses”, were the objects of interest later. Camels appeared later still in the petroglyph record.

However beneath the “wild asses” and the left-hand boat and quite close to them there are some more animals. Some of these are indeterminate as to species (and might not even be animals at all) but one is clearly a cow. The clear difference in patination shows that the cow was drawn significantly later than the “wild asses”, the “ibexes”, the giraffe and the boats.

The sequence of animal images in Groups 2, 3 and 4 show a progression from less to more realistic in style. This confirms an impression gained from other Eastern Desert images, notably of giraffes, but a stylistic development of this nature can be asserted at most for the artists working in the region of the Wadi Shai’t.

The horns of the “ibex” that stands above the centre of the left-hand boat are crossed by the faint dotted outline of an owl, which is superimposed on the ibex and is noticeably less darkly patinated. The form of the owl is similar to the “m” hieroglyph, suggesting that it dates from the Dynastic period.

The Group 5 images were probably drawn in the first millennium BC or later (after the introduction of camels), but apart from this it is not possible to say anything more about the absolute dates with confidence. Because the difference in patination between Groups 4 and 5 is relatively slight it is tempting to conclude that the earlier groups, especially Group 1 which is so dark, were drawn very much earlier, possibly several millennia earlier. However this would not be correct because allowance must be made for changes in climate. Before about 3000 BC, when what is now the Eastern Desert was more humid than it is now, the rate of patination, and especially the rate of discolouration of newly exposed rock surfaces, would have been greater than it was later. Thus while we can conclude that the petroglyphs of Groups 2 and 3 and, most interesting, the strange images of Group 1 were probably drawn before the end of the fourth millennium, it is not possible to say how long before.

The nearby site SB1, shown in Figure 30, has many images of wild animals and anthropoid figures, together with a few boats, all with a very similar degree of patination. Many of the animals are “ibexes” with long curved horns, and there is a large “wild ass” at the top just left of the centre. To its right there is what might, on account of its forward-curved horns, be a gerenuk. At the bottom of the face there are a few lighter-coloured images, notably of cattle, lower left and lower right. Close to each of the cattle is a similarly light-coloured anthropoid. Just to the left of the centre of the face there is a large boat-shaped outline that overlies several animal images and is slightly lighter than them in colour. It appears that at both MUL and SB1 the images of cattle were drawn later than those of the wild animals. Boats, of different styles, appear to be contemporaneous, some with the wild animals, some with the cattle.

Sites MUL and SB1

Site HSQ3

These sites are about 500 metres apart and about nine kilometres from SH5. They have much smaller ranges of patination and therefore give less information about the relative ages, but they both have the images of cattle and boats that SH5 lacks.

This site is on the north side of the Wadi Hammamat, opposite the quarries, 160 kilometres north of SB5. Most of the images are on a single flat rock face about 1.5 metres high and 3 metres wide, facing east. The centre part of the rock face is shown in Figure 5. Most of the images are of wild animals and ostriches: there are a few small indistinct anthropoids at the top and there are several irregular abstract shapes and lines. Many of the animals appear to be ibexes with exaggerated horns, there are several animals

Site MUL is shown in Figure 29. Two groups of similarlycoloured images can be seen. The main group consists of a row of five “wild asses” with their characteristic “manes” in the centre of the rock face. Slightly above and to the right there are three “ibexes” with typically exaggerated

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the boats. This he does by referring to Červíček’s assessment (see above). The boats belong to Types 2, 5 and 7 which Červíček places in the period in question.

with straight or slightly curved horns that may be oryxes, and there is at least one animal that might be a gerenuk. Almost all the animals face to the right. There are at least two running ostriches with raised wings.

Direct Methods There is a wide range of patination. Most of the ibexes are darker than the other animals, and the “gerenuk”, one of the “oryxes” and the two running ostriches are conspicuously lighter. Most interesting is what could be an inscription, possibly hieroglyphic, in the centre of the face, that appears to be as light as the lightest of the animals. The implication is that the oryxes, the gerenuk and the running ostriches date to the Dynastic period, while most of the ibexes are earlier.

Since a petroglyph is made by removing material from the rock the only possibilities of dating it directly arise from examination of the exposed surface or the patina that it acquires after exposure. The available methods are discussed by Bednarik (1996). As explained above in Chapter 2 the patina consists partly of an accretion of tiny sand grains transported by the wind, and among them are occasionally particles of organic material, fibres of decayed vegetation. These can be extracted and, although they are of microscopic dimensions and weigh only a few micrograms, the mass-ratios of the carbon isotopes present can be determined by the use of an accelerator massspectrometer. The ratio of the number of carbon-14 atoms to carbon-12 then gives the length of time that has elapsed since the sample was separated from the atmosphere (after calibration by reference to dendrochronological data to allow for the effect of varying atmospheric carbon-14 concentration). This is known as the “AMS” method of carbon-14 dating.

Site ED1 This site is in the Wadi Barramiya. It is an extensive site with many images including animals, anthropoids and several boats (Rohl 2000, p37). However Rohl’s photographs, though clear as far as the forms of the images are concerned, do not show the differences of patination. They are good illustrations of the need for suitable illumination if photographs are to reveal the patina, and therefore for careful choice of the time of day for the photography.

AMS dating has never been applied to the petroglyphs of the Eastern Desert, but Huyge et al (2001) have applied the technique to petroglyphs from El Hosh, on the west bank of the Nile south of Edfu. The images appear to be of mushroom-shaped objects that are believed to depict early fish-traps (Huyge 1998). His results are very sparse but a fibre from the patina of one petroglyph gave a date of 5900 - 5300 BC. Others gave more recent dates. This indicates that the drawing of petroglyphs was practised in the region at least as early as the 6th millennium BC. As there are no similar images in the Eastern Desert, however, it does nothing more to provide dates for that region.

An earlier survey, which apparently made use of notes made at the site as well as photographs, has revealed the differences of patination (Fuchs 1989). The interpretation of the differences is not straightforward because, as Fuchs notes, different parts of the rock face are exposed differently to the sun (part of it being shaded by an overhanging boulder, for example), and because part of it has been immersed in water. Taking these factors into account Fuchs concludes that many of the images are “contemporaneous”, by which he means not that they were all necessarily drawn in a few days, in a single session, as it were, but that they all date from the “late Prehistoric or early Dynastic period”. The images in this group include “wild asses”, various antelopes, anthropoid figures several of which are decorated with “plumes”, several scenes of anthropoids holding what appear to be ropes attached to the horns of what Fuchs calls “antelopes” (but appear to the present author to be cattle), and, most prominently, at least four elaborate boats that are depicted in different styles. There are also images of horses and camels (some with riders) that are less darkly patinated and are therefore more recent. On different smaller rock faces there is a giraffe that is lighter and therefore more recent than other animals which Fuchs concludes to be antelopes (possibly hartebeest), and a sequence of an ostrich that is darker than two antelopes and other animals, that in turn are darker than camels and a horse with a rider. The conclusion that the main scene dates to the late Predynastic or early Dynastic is based on dating

Summary Relative Dates The Stratification and Weathering Methods, as applied above, give information on the relative dating of the Eastern Desert petroglyphs in the sense of the sequence in which various types of image were drawn. The first, and most important, conclusion is that no clear conclusions can be drawn. It is not possible, on the basis of the application of these methods, to say that all images of any one type were drawn before or after all images of another type. All that can be made are imprecise statements that images of type A were drawn, in the main, earlier (or later) than images of type B. Such statements are based on the observation of more instances of a type A image preceding a type B than of the reverse.

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he dates to the Naqada II period. The main discrepancy is that Huyge places many of the El Kab cattle petroglyphs in the Dynastic period (Horizons IV and V), whereas the Eastern Desert cattle petroglyphs cannot be as late as that if it is correct that they represent animals that were actually present when and where they were drawn. However the El Kab petroglyphs are all within a few kilometres of the Nile, so it is quite possible that there were cattle in or near the mouth of the Wadi Hilal throughout the Dynastic period, present for the artists there to draw.

With this reservation the following statements can be made. Wild animals tend to precede Giraffes and elephants “ Giraffes and elephants “ Animals “ Geometric designs “

Cattle, Cattle, Oryxes and wild asses, Boats, and Representative images.

In addition it seems that ibexes and ostriches were drawn in the same periods as all the other types of image except the geometric designs.

This suggests firstly that in the Predynastic there was close contact, in cultural terms, between the Eastern Desert and the Nile Valley (at least in the region of El Kab), and secondly that the petroglyphs of both regions represent, in the main, what was present at the time. Thus the petroglyph records of Valley and Desert were initially similar, and diverged only when the desiccation of the climate forced people to abandon the Desert, at least for regular habitation or residence. This latter point is emphasized by the comparative lack of petroglyphs in the Eastern Desert that would be assigned by Huyge to Horizons IV and V. They are few because there were few people there in the Dynastic period to draw them.

The tendencies are not of equal strength. In particular the frequency with which animal images precede boats is only slightly greater than the reverse. Absolute Dates The Formal and Archaeological Methods give information on the absolute dates and, in contrast to the imprecision of the above conclusions about relative dates, are in principle precise within clear margins. They are, however, uncertain in that they depend on assumptions which can only be regarded as probably correct. The two most important assumptions are that animals were drawn when the climate in what is now the desert was moist enough to support them; and that the boats and “orant” figures on the Naqada II funerary pottery are the same as the petroglyph boats and “orants”.

Overall Progression These conclusions about relative and absolute dates suggest that petroglyph activity in the Eastern Desert progressed and changed in the following way. Initially, probably before the 4th millennium (but it is not possible to say how long before) people drew non-representative designs consisting of circles, concentric circles and rectangles, spirals, circles with radiating lines and other patterns. Later, possibly in the early part of the 4th millennium, they began to draw the animals they saw around them, mainly the largest, the giraffes and elephants, but also the ostriches, ibexes, antelopes and wild asses. They also drew scenes of their hunting activities with ibexes and asses as their quarry.

The following dates are based on these assumptions and the other firmer dating assertions mentioned above. Giraffes and elephants date to the 4th millennium or earlier, Cattle, similarly, date to the 4th millennium or earlier, Other animals may date to any period before the 20th century AD, Anthropoids with bows date to the 10th millennium or later, Anthropoids with plumes may date to the 4th millennium or later, Anthropoids holding cattle by the tail date to the 4th millennium, “Orant” anthropoids date to the 4th millennium (Naqada II), Boats date to the 6th millennium or later, at least to the New Kingdom, Blunt-ended sickle boats date to the 4th millennium (Naqada II), and Square boats may date to the 4th millennium or later (Mesopotamian influence).

At some time in the 4th millennium they also began to draw the cattle with which they were in some way associated, and they included themselves in the images. In the second half of the millennium, the Naqada II period, they began to draw boats as well. To start with their boat images were quite rough but gradually some of them came to depict actual vessels more accurately. As the climate became drier and the savannah animals disappeared, along with the cattle pastures, fewer people were present regularly. Those who were there still drew the animals about them, but now they were mainly ibexes, addaxes, other antelopes and ostriches. In addition they turned more and more to drawing boats. Some were content with very crude outlines but others were careful to draw elaborate detailed images, although the details were

It will be seen that these dates are entirely consistent with Huyge’s chronology, particularly with his Horizon II, which includes “orants” and blunt-ended boats, and which

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not always realistic. This activity continued throughout the 3rd and 2nd millennia. In the 1st millennium they began to draw the recently-arrived camels and horses.

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9 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE EASTERN DESERT PETROGLYPHS INTRODUCTION

SIGNIFICANCE FOR THE ANCIENT ARTISTS

The petroglyphs are worthy of note because they are interesting, many are attractive, and some even impressive or beautiful. They have an intrinsic aesthetic value which can be appreciated by anyone who sees them and is independent of any knowledge of their origins. But they also have significance as historical documents. They have at least the potential to tell us something about the people who drew them and about the society in which they lived. The historical aspect of the petroglyphs is the subject of this chapter.

Religion Červíček Červíček, setting out his approach to the evaluation of the Eastern Desert rock art (1986 p71), states that his first premise is that, as all rock art, it was primarily religious in character. He goes on to assert that its themes were “numinous beings, religious symbols and myths”, and that its execution was a “cultic act” such as the renovation of an image of itself drawn originally by a deity, or the commemoration of a religious ceremony.

It is first necessary to clarify what is meant by “significance” in this context. When a petroglyph is viewed by a modern observer two people are involved: the viewer and the artist who drew it, and the petroglyph has, or had, significance for both. It may have meant something to the artist in that he or she intended to achieve a purpose in drawing it: and it may also tell the viewer something about the artist and his or her world. This chapter is therefore in two parts. Firstly it reviews attempts to determine the meaning of the Eastern Desert petroglyphs to the people who drew them, and secondly it assesses what the petroglyphs tell us about the artists’ worlds. In broad terms the conclusions are that it is possible to say very little about their meaning for the artists with certainty, but that when they are approached without preconceptions, without any attempt to decide what they meant to the artists, they can provide a quantity of reliable historical data.

He justifies this premise by reference to cases, from Australia, South Africa and North America, in which it has been possible to ascertain the meaning of rock art by asking people who subscribe to the culture which gave rise to it; people who constitute a living link to the artists and who understand, or at least say that they understand, what was in the artists’ minds. From these instances he extrapolates to conclude that “any” rock art is religious in nature. To add support in the case of the Egyptian rock art he quotes a local resident who explained the images at Galt el-Aguz by saying “A sheikh created those rock pictures of animals in order to bring real animals to the dry district” (although he points out that local traditions of this sort are of value only in determining the significance of the rock art to modern people, not to the artists). Červíček goes on to state that the “iconography … of the (Eastern Desert) rock art … implies its religious significance” (ibid p72), and he advances the bananashaped boats (“Naqada ships”), “orant” figures (“C-group goddesses”), cow-and-calf images and footprints as examples. He suggests that the selection of a limited number of animal species for portrayal means that the species rejected (sheep, pigs, cats, cobras, hyraxes, etc.) were “taboo”. He states that the anthropoids are, among other things, “most often shown dancing”, posing in “cultic” attitudes, and wearing “festal” headdresses. He says that the images are rarely found in isolation but “always” concentrated together, often in palimpsest, and that the preferred locations were linked to some form of cult.

Bednarik (2008 pp72-3) tells an amusing story about attempts to ascertain the significance of marks on rocks for the people who made them. It concerns a series of 16 cupules – small hollows in the rock surface made by pounding it with hard stones – in Northern Australia. Enquiries of the local Aboriginal people revealed that the cupules are related to rituals conducted to cause the pink cockatoo to lay more eggs: the dust raised when the cupules are pounded releases the life-essence in the rock and fertilises the female cockatoos. Bednarik’s point is that there is no way in which this could possibly have been deduced by archaeological means. He writes “authentic interpretation of the cupules could never be determined archaeologically”, and he concludes that archaeology without ethnographic observation is “impotent in explaining archaeological phenomena”. Clearly this applies to rock art in general and to the Eastern Desert petroglyphs in particular. Unless rock art is explained by the artist, either orally or by means of documents, we cannot know its significance to him or her, and any conclusions we reach are conjectures. Bednarik calls them “humbug” (ibid p72).

The evidence does not support the conclusions. It cannot be legitimate to argue that because some rock art (from other continents and other epochs) is known to be religious in nature all rock art must be similarly religious. A local traditional story told by someone who sees ancient images through Islamic eyes cannot be taken to be a true account of their meaning. The similarity between images such as the “banana” boats or the “orant” figures and images found

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accompanied by a woman in childbirth, all in a prominent location, he concludes that the group he calls the “Autochthonous Mountain-Dwellers” had religious beliefs that involved cattle (Winkler 1938 p22).

frequently on Naqada II pottery is striking and strongly suggests a connection, but it is not clear that the pottery images are religious except in a very general way. Because they were found in graves it is legitimate to conclude they had a funerary significance, but it is stretching the meaning of the word to term them “religious”.

He makes a rather more substantial case with respect to his “Early Nile-valley Dwellers”. Site HW18 is a cave in which there are many images of boats, “orants” and various animals. Winkler is of the opinion that the boats have funerary significance and that the figures with raised arms, rather than dancing, are praying, in some cases for the dead, in others for “luck in hunting” (ibid p25). From the fact that there are many images crowded onto the cave wall he deduces that the site had “some religious importance”. He goes on to suggest that a figure near some of the boats who appears to wear a Pharaonic crown (ibid Plate XIV.2) “may be a deity”. (It is to be noted that this image, which appears twice at this site (ibid Plate XIII.2) has been found nowhere else in the Eastern Desert.)

It is clear that the artists selected certain animal species for portrayal and rejected others, but it is not certain that the rejects were subject to a religious “taboo”. It might equally have been that the artists portrayed only large animals because they found them impressive, or that they portrayed only animals that they hunted. The statistics do not agree that “most” of the anthropoids are dancing or in “cultic” poses. In fact most of them are standing stiffly and not adopting any pose at all. A few are more animated but even if their poses are conceded to be religious that conclusion cannot be applied to the great majority. The “plumed” headdresses are presumably significant of something, and indeed they are reminiscent of the plumes of the gods as depicted in the Dynastic period, but they might equally well denote a person of secular importance such as a chieftain.

These conclusions, although more tentative than those of Červíček, seem equally ill-supported. The disc and deformed horns indicate some sort of relationship with cattle but not necessarily a religious one (unless, as noted above, “religion” is defined very broadly), and childbirth is so significant in itself that it is not necessary to adduce religion as a reason for depicting it. The cave may have been important mainly because it gave shade. It is not the only cave in which there are many rock art images and inscriptions. Another, site TJ1, has along with many rock art images inscriptions in Greek and Latin recording visits by travellers who sheltered in it from the sun and, probably to while away the time, wrote their names on the wall. It seems most likely that at HW18 travellers of an earlier epoch would have drawn on the wall for no better reason than that they wanted something to do. The cave may have had a religious significance at one time or another, but it is not possible to draw that conclusion from the rock art with any degree of rigour.

Clearly some sites were preferred by the petroglyph artists but they might have been chosen for reasons that had nothing to do with religious cults. Several much-used sites are in shaded locations where people would have congregated for no other reason than to avoid the sun. Others are prominent, visible from a distance, where someone who wanted his or her work to be widely noticed would put it. And there are many images in ones and twos on isolated boulders and rock faces. Červíček may be right to some extent. Some of the rock art of the Eastern Desert may be religious in nature, but it is not possible to be certain and there are other explanations that are equally valid. The images that seem to modern eyes to be most “religious”, such as the “orant” figures and the rows of “dancing” figures, might just as well be related to some secular activity or festival. The definition of “religious” would have to be made wide enough to include any non-economic activity before it could be applied with certainty to the majority of the rock art, and then it would hardly have any meaning left. And to start an investigation of the meaning of the rock art, as Červíček does, with the “premise” that it is religious in nature is explicit prejudice.

Winkler seems to be on firmer ground with his remarks about the funerary significance of the boats, a point that is discussed below. Huyge Huyge discerns the meaning of the earlier petroglyphs at El Kab in terms of cosmology rather than religion (Huyge 2002 p199, Horizons I and II). In particular he sees the giraffes, which make up the majority of the Horizon I images, and some of the Horizon II boats, as bearers of the sun on its diurnal journey, while the Horizon II asses are malicious opponents of the sun. This conclusion is based in part on the observation that almost all of the El Kab giraffes face left, the direction in which the sun is seen to move, and are on rock faces oriented to the west, while the asses face right. The suggestion is that boats replaced

Winkler Winkler does not make an explicit attempt to ascertain the significance of the rock art he observed in the Eastern Desert for its artists, but in the course of describing what he sees as the way of life of the various groups he believes to be responsible for it he draws two conclusions about religion. From the observation of two cows, one with a disc between its horns and another with deformed horns,

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familiar, and then they give rise to hallucinations (ibid p127). Lewis-Williams has found some of these universal forms incorporated into rock art images, thus further supporting his view of a connection with shamanism.

giraffes as bearers of the sun as giraffes became scarcer and aquatic transport on the river became more important towards the end of the Predynastic period. This explanation is a little less secure if it is applied to the Eastern Desert petroglyphs. As pointed out in Chapter 3 above the giraffes there face left and right in equal numbers and most are on north-facing rocks. In addition among the giraffes and boats there are no images of the sun itself. However it does have the advantage of explaining the marked preference for giraffes: the preponderance of giraffes among the depictions of wild animals indicates that they had some special significance for the petroglyph artists, and this may be it.

In shamanism Lewis-Williams finds an explanation for the early Upper Palaeolithic rock paintings of Southern France and Northern Spain. Apart from their early date (typically before 10000 BC) and outstanding artistic qualities the most remarkable thing about these animal images is that they were painted deep in caves, some of which can be reached only with great difficulty and which have no natural light at all. The images and their locations can be explained by their having to do with communications with a spirit world to which shamanistic practices give access (ibid p228ff).

Huyge’s conclusions about the funerary significance of other images are discussed below.

In view of these connections between shamanism and rock art it is of interest to see whether there are any signs of shamanistic practices in the rock art of the Eastern Desert. There are three main clues: the depiction of anthropoids (or animals) involved in shamanistic ceremonies or rituals; the use of the forms characteristic of entoptic visual phenomena; and the use of locations that have significance in terms of communication with the world of spirits.

Shamanism Lewis-Williams has found records of shamanistic practices in the rock art of various cultures in several continents. He defines “shamanism” in terms of altered states of consciousness. A shaman is an individual who is held to have various powers (which would, in our present rationalistic culture, be thought of as “supernatural”) to, for example, heal the sick, control animals, change the weather or communicate with spirits. These powers are believed to be due to the shaman’s ability to gain access, in his or her trance or dream, to an alternative reality (Lewis-Williams 2002 p133). The connection with rock art was made in Southern Africa where, in the first half of the 20th century, various Western anthropologists and linguists had rock art images explained to them by San people. At the time the San languages and the shamanistic and rock art practices were dying out in South Africa itself, but the languages and shamanism are still alive in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana and Namibia. The guidance of the San teachers showed how various aspects of the practice of the shamans are indicated in the rock paintings. In particular the ritual dances, the peculiar bodily posture adopted by a shaman in a trance, and bleeding from the nose (which often takes place during a trance) can be identified (ibid p140). Rock art related to similar practices, both the activities of shamans and also puberty rituals involving the use of hallucinogenic herbs, is to be found in North America as well (ibid p170).

As far as the representation of anthropoids is concerned there is very little evidence of shamanism. As pointed out above most of the images of people in the Eastern Desert show them standing in upright, static poses with no trace of any activity. There are no indications of bleeding noses. There are “matchstick” people with raised knees at sites TJ2 and WD2 but they have no details to suggest they are shamans. The only indications of group activity are the hunting scenes and the rows of figures that might be dancing. The former might refer to some sort of ritual rather than actual hunts, but there is no indication (or at least none that is visible to the modern observer) that the hunters are in a trance. The “dance lines” do presumably refer to some sort of ritual or celebration, but its nature is not made clear. Moreover only two such images have been found, at sites RM1 and SB1 (see Chapter 4 above). Of the geometric shapes associated with entoptic visions some, such as dots and wavy lines, are such basic forms that their presence could not reasonably be interpreted as evidence of shamanism. Grids may be rather more distinctive. There are grids in the Eastern Desert rock art, particularly in the patterning of the hides of giraffes and cattle. However the grid-like reticulation shown on many of the giraffe images can more easily be interpreted as an interpretation of the actual pattern of the animals. The same may be true of the cattle, although in some cases the regularity of the pattern looks to modern eyes rather forced. Only a slight probability of a shamanistic connection can be concluded. (This may not be true for some of the cattle images from the Western Desert, where, as noted in

A person in an altered state of consciousness may undergo visual experiences generated within his or her optic system. These “entoptic” phenomena include appearances of geometric forms, such as dots, zigzags, grids, nests of curved lines and meandering lines, which appear in the field of vision. The forms seem to be universal, functions of the neural system and unrelated to culture, but under some circumstances they can be “seen” by the person experiencing them as some object with which he or she is

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have shamanistic connections. Perhaps his most interesting observation, in the context of the Eastern Desert petroglyphs, is his association of a giraffe image with the Egyptian word sr, to foretell. He notes the insertion of a single giraffe in a row of birds on the Brooklyn knifehandle. In general, however, the paucity of the examples Morenz is able to adduce succeeds in demonstrating that shamanism played no more than a small role, if any at all, in Egypt.

Chapter 6 above, there are images of cattle with flanks covered with a regular grid that in a few cases looks like scales.) The curved lines may be of greater interest. LewisWilliams notes that groups of curved lines “have been mistaken for depictions of boats” (ibid p153). Some of the simplest images that have been assumed above to be of boats (see Chapter 4) are no more than curved lines and might fall into this category. However there are no clear instances of nested groups of curved lines, and certainly none of them is embellished with a zigzag. In view of the fact that many of the boat images are quite elaborate and show features such as steering oars and masts that are clearly meant to refer to real boats it is not possible to conclude that the boats are only representations of trance visions, but that does not preclude the possibility that such visions or hallucinations may have contributed in some cases to the interest in boats shown by the petroglyph artists.

The overall conclusion is that there are no unequivocal or even strong indications that any of the Eastern Desert rock art has to do with shamanism. There are some images that might have had such a connection but, as in the case of religion, it is not possible to say with any certainty that they had any shamanistic significance to the artists who drew them. The possible exception is that shamanistic practices might have been linked in some way, probably only tenuously, with the images of boats. Magic

There is (so far as we know) nothing like the cave art of France and Spain in the Eastern Desert. There is indeed, as pointed out above, rock art in caves, but the caves are few in number and they are very shallow. Although there are some images in narrow passages between boulders the great majority are in places where they can be seen easily, and some seem to be placed where they are prominent and readily seen by the passer-by. Sites such as PL1 at Kanais, MLM1 in the Wadi Mineh, BAR4 in the Wadi Barramiya or DR2 in the Wadi Abu Wasil are examples. Others are in locations distinguished by unusual or dramatic rock formations. Site SAL14 in the Wadi Umm Salam is the outstanding case. It consists of rock faces that overlook a striking circular depression in the rock that was dubbed the “Jacuzzi” by its finders (Morrow and Morrow 2002 p61). Others are on large prominent free-standing rocks, such as HAM1 on the Qusur el Banat in the Wadi Hammamat (ibid p202) and JCB1 at Kanais. Such sites might well have had some spiritual significance but there is nothing to tell the modern observer that shamanism was involved.

While it is not possible to regard the remark of the local resident quoted by Červíček (see above) to suggest that the rock art of Galt el-Aguz was a magic formula to attract animals as an informed explanation of the intent of the artist, it might have been right. The implication would be that the motive for exercising this magic power would have been to ensure success in hunting. Clearly hunting was of interest to at least some of the rock artists, because they drew hunting scenes. There are at least 13 such scenes in the Eastern Desert and there are many images of animals almost all of which could have been hunted. However some of the most frequently-drawn animals, notably the giraffes, rarely appear in the hunting scenes. It is therefore not obvious that giraffes were drawn in order to attract them so that they could be killed. As pointed out by Khan et al. in connection with Arabia (Kahn et al 1986 p89: see Chapter 7 above), there are rather few hunting scenes compared with the number of other images, suggesting that they do not record individual hunts. It seems more likely that their sites were locations that had some particular importance for the hunters. They may have been near good places to hunt – water holes, for example – or alternatively they may have been places where magic rituals to enhance the chances of success in the hunt were performed.

Shamanism is not attested as a feature of the “high culture” of Pharaonic Egypt – the culture of court or priestly circles. There are no explicit references to it in the extant literature. Morenz has investigated the possibility that shamanism might have been practised in the Predynastic period and persisted in the vernacular culture into the Dynastic (Morenz 2003). He observes that the augmentation of normal human capabilities by the shaman was sometimes represented by portraying him or her as having animal characteristics or features. Thus a figure with a human body and the head of an animal might be a shaman. Morenz refers to two such theriomorphs on early Dynastic palettes and gives a few other examples. In addition he suggests that there are features of the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, from the Middle Kingdom, that could

Again we have to conclude that while there may have been an element of magic, presumably related to hunting, in the minds of the artists it does not seem to apply to more than a few of the images. Without documentary evidence we cannot be sure even of that.

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justifies the calling of the petroglyph figures “orants” (Červíček 1993). However the similarity is not at all close: the hieroglyphs are images of people seen from the side and their arms, while raised, have well-defined elbows and hands that are held upwards, not horizontally or downwards as are those of the figures in the petroglyphs and on the pottery. Kendall makes a somewhat closer connection with the “ka” hieroglyph and with the artificially-shaped horns of a bull (Kendall 2004).

Funerary imagery The many inscriptions and images that have been found on the walls of tombs from the Dynastic era and on grave goods from the Predynastic constitute an extensive body of documentary evidence about the nature and use of Egyptian funerary imagery. The appearance of several similar images in the Eastern Desert rock art suggests very strongly that they also had funerary significance and that they were drawn in some sort of funerary context (Wilkinson 2003 p134ff).

While the connection with prayer is far from clear the appearance of the “orants” on Naqada II pottery suggests that the pose is likely to be one of mourning. The Brooklyn Museum terracotta figurines exhibiting the same posture (see Chapter 8 above) were without exception found in graves. Needler suggests that they may possibly have had religious significance, although she is unable to say what it is (Needler 1984 pp.335-344). Whatever their precise meaning, whether or not it involved prayer, the context in which they were found shows that they had some sort of funerary meaning.

Predynastic funerary imagery As has been pointed out above (see Chapter 8, “Archaeological Methods”) some of the Eastern Desert petroglyph images bear resemblance to some extent to the images on the pottery that has often been found in Naqada II graves. The characteristic images of the pottery are Boats with curved hulls, cabins and oars, “Orant” figures, Other figures, Birds, Zigzag borders that might represent mountains, Strings of Z-shaped symbols.

The petroglyph “orants” are very similar to the pottery and figurine “orants”, but not quite identical. The arms of some of the pottery “orants” tend to curve through a greater angle than those of the petroglyphs, so that their hands point downwards over their heads. Nevertheless the likeness is so close that the petroglyph “orants”, both those in boats and those that are free-standing, have to be concluded to have had some sort of funerary significance.

The first four of these, boats, “orants”, other figures and birds, also appear frequently among the petroglyphs, although with some differences.

The other pottery anthropoid figures, apart from the “orants”, are like their petroglyph fellows in some respects. They are usually simplified with round featureless heads. Some have wedge-shaped bodies and some have “plumes”. Their arms are sometimes crooked although they do not adopt the “round-armed” posture. In general the figures on the pots are more varied in posture and style than those among the petroglyphs. The similarities are not great enough to provide strong evidence about the significance of the petroglyph figures but they do admit at least the possibility that they have some connection with funerary practices.

As pointed out in Chapter 8 the pottery boats usually have two cabins and oars in two banks with a gap in the middle, while the petroglyph boats with curved hulls, if they have cabins, almost always have only one and their oars, if they have any, never have a gap. The pottery boats sometimes have a decoration in the form of what appears to be a palm frond at the end of the hull in place of a finial, a feature that does not occur among the petroglyphs. There is, as shown in Chapter 4 above, much more variety among the petroglyph boat images than the pottery boat images, but the similarities are sufficient to suggest that the petroglyphs that resemble the Naqada II pottery images had some sort of funerary significance. This suggestion is strengthened by the resemblance to the boats in the wall-painting from Tomb 100 at Hierakonpolis.

The birds that sometimes appear on the pottery bear some resemblance to the ostrich petroglyphs, but it is not exact. The necks of the birds on the pots are sometimes curved so that they look more like flamingos than ostriches. The pottery birds often appear in rows, as do some of the petroglyph ostriches, but in view of the fact that ostriches were probably plentiful in the Eastern Desert it seems unlikely that many if any of the petroglyph ostriches had funerary significance.

The figures with arms curved over the head have been referred to above as “orants” for convenience, but there is little to suggest that they were intended to represent a person praying. Baumgartel (1955 p81 and Plate XI.1) believed that the pottery “orants” were dancing, and later she suggested that they were representations of the cowgoddess Hathor (Baumgartel 1960 p144). They have been called “dancing goddesses” as a result. Červíček detects similarities between the raised arms and hieroglyphic determinatives relating to rejoicing and adoration, and thus

It is suggested in Chapter 8 above that the funerary pots might have been made at a single “factory”, possibly by or under the direction of a single artist. If this is so it would

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have been made in the vicinity of Naqada where they were found. There is a concentration of boats with curved hulls in and near the Wadi Hammamat, which joins the Nile Valley close to Naqada. This suggests that some at least of the petroglyph boats in that region were drawn by people who were familiar with the imagery of the pottery. As the pottery was manufactured specifically for funerary use, those of the petroglyphs that share its imagery may also have been drawn for funerary purposes.

funerary meaning: that they show either a deceased person on his or her journey to or beyond the grave, or a divine journey through the underworld. However the statistics show that this interpretation can be applied convincingly to only a minority of the petroglyph boats. There are others with features that do not appear on the boats shown in tomb decorations, on coffins or in papyri of the Book of the Dead. Chief among these are oars and oarsmen, and masts, sails and rigging.

Huyge concludes that the Horizon II (Naqada II) boats at El Kab have a funerary significance in addition to their function as bearers of the sun, the connection being a concept of renewal.

Oars are shown on 12% of the petroglyph boats. As noted above they are characteristic of the boats on Predynastic funerary pottery so, although they do not appear in the classical Dynastic funerary imagery of the Nile Valley, it may be that they were still incorporated in funerary boats in Dynastic times by the artists of the Eastern Desert who were less subject to the fashions or conventions that bound their colleagues in the Valley. The wide range of styles and features of the Desert boats suggests that they are more or less informal interpretations of the imagery that appears in a developed and formal manner in the tombs and papyri of the Valley.

In summary, the similarities between the images on the Naqada II funerary pottery and the figurines on the one hand and the petroglyph images, particularly the boats with curved hulls and the “orants”, on the other suggest very strongly that those petroglyphs were also related in some way to funerary beliefs and practices. But while this conclusion seems very likely it cannot be taken to be certain, because the Z-symbols and the zigzag “mountains” are absent from the petroglyphs, and although the boats are similar there are clear differences.

Masts and sails appear on 8% of the Desert boats. They never appear in the funerary context in the formal representations of the Valley. There are fully-rigged boats there, of course (for example the boats of the expedition to Punt in Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple (Vinson 1994 p40)) but those are images of real boats rather than spiritual craft. It may be that, in a similar manner, the boats with masts in the Desert rock art were drawn as images of real vessels which had been seen on the river. This would be consistent with the observation that 24% of the rock art boat images in the Nile Valley in Nubia have masts and sails (Table 17 above), because artists there would have been seeing real boats every day. Alternatively it may be that the Desert artists interpreted the funerary conventions much more freely than the artists who decorated the tombs of the Pharaohs and leading citizens in the Valley.

Dynastic funerary imagery Boats were involved in both the seen and the unseen components of Dynastic funerary ritual. The bier of the deceased would possibly cross the Nile by boat and then be carried to the tomb in a replica boat. Illustrations of these journeys show boats with curved hulls, incurved finials, steering oars and a cabin or baldachin housing the bier (Jones 1995 p19). After burial the deceased was conveyed through the underworld in the company of Ra by boat, as explained in Chapters 98-102 and 136 of the Book of the Dead (see, for example, Budge 1901 pp285-308 and 407413). Illustrations in papyri show boats typically with curved hulls, steering oars and incurved finials (Jones 1995 p15). Tombs and sarcophagi were frequently decorated with scenes showing the diurnal journey of the sun-god, travelling in a similar boat. Ra was often accompanied by other gods such as Wepwawet, Maat or Horus, and the gods were shown as larger-than-life figures standing in the boat. Sometimes the boat was shown as being towed by another group of gods (see, for example, Weeks 2001 pp119, 139, 239, 263 and passim).

The Significance of the Boats For the reasons set out above it seems likely that some if not all of the petroglyph images of boats in the Eastern Desert had some form of funerary significance when they were drawn. It is not clear what the nature of that significance was, but there seem to be two main possibilities. The first is that they marked graves: that they are equivalents, on a much smaller scale, of the decoration typical of tombs in the Nile Valley that illustrate the passages from the Book of the Dead, referred to above, relating to the journey of a deceased person through the underworld.

Some of the petroglyph boats in the Eastern Desert exhibit several of the features of the Dynastic funerary boats. As pointed out in Table 6 above, 43% have curved hulls, 12% have incurved finials, 9% have steering oars and 24% have cabins. More importantly 29% carry large figures (referred to as “passengers” above) and 5% are towed. The similarities with the boats in funerary illustrations referred to above suggest that many of the petroglyph boats had a

No graves are reported to have been found at any of the rock art sites in the Eastern Desert. Because there have never been any excavations this means merely that there

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might be expected in this context, a parallel with hieroglyphs, is not apparent. With the exception of the “orants” and their likeness to certain determinatives (which, as discussed above, is very dubious) none of the petroglyph images suggests in an obvious manner a similarity with the writing system of which they might be expected to be ancestors.

are no obvious surface indications of graves. This may be because any such indications or indeed the graves themselves have been swept away or buried by the flash floods which, as noted above, have at times since the petroglyphs were drawn both removed and deposited substantial quantities of sand and gravel, with depths of several metres, in the wadis of the Eastern Desert. However this does not seem entirely likely because there are at least a few ancient remains in the wadis: there are for example structures that, according to local people, are Islamic graves. No attempt has been made to date any of them but their presence indicates that floods have not succeeded in removing every structure in all the wadis. It is therefore unlikely that all trace of all the graves at every petroglyph site with boat images has been washed away. Somewhere there would almost certainly be some indication remaining.

A more thorough study might reveal a connection with hieroglyphs, or with some other linguistic system, but because nothing is obvious, and because of the lack of success of this type of approach in other contexts (see, for example, Le Quellec 2006), it has not been attempted here. Doodles, mistakes and jokes Watson raises the possibility that some rock art might have had no significance at all for the people who drew it. He suggests that it might have meant nothing more to them than the shapes one draws idly while the mind is engaged but the eyes and the fingers are not, as in a telephone conversation. He explores the possibility that certain shapes which occur “naturally” in such doodles are also to be found in rock art (Watson 2008). He further offers doodles as an alternative explanation of the forms which Lewis-Williams believes to be entoptic (see under “Shamanism” above). It is hard to conclude that very much of the total rock art corpus is to be explained in this manner (as Watson admits), and certainly only a few of the geometric designs in the Eastern Desert (such as the “maps”, see Chapter 4 above) are candidates. Nevertheless Watson’s suggestion raises the general question as to whether there is a tendency to over-interpret rock art: to find greater significance and meaning in the work of the ancient artists than they put into it. There are several reasons to think that the efforts of various authors to interpret the significance of the petroglyphs for the people who drew them, as summarised above, are searches for something that is not always there.

The other, more likely, possibility is that the boats were some form of memorial or cenotaph. If that is the case the sites where there are many boat images, such as sites BAR1 and GP1, might have been where certain individual families or clans recorded and celebrated their dead, possibly over several generations. Smaller sites might record the dead of smaller or possibly poorer families. The simpler and cruder images might denote less formal memorials. The fact that some boat images appear to incorporate Predynastic imagery while others have Dynastic features with even New Kingdom parallels (together with the presence of boat images cut into the wall of the New Kingdom temple of Amenhotep III at El Kab) suggests that the practice of memorialising deaths in this way persisted for two millennia at least. This is consistent with the conclusions on dating noted in Chapter 8 above. Language Tilley, in his study of the rock art of central Sweden, adopts a semiotic approach. He takes the individual images to be linguistic symbols, interprets them in terms of grammar and syntax, and suggests various ways in which they might be read (Tilley 1991). As pointed out above a similar approach has been adopted with respect to some of the rock art images of Arabia (Nayeem 2000).

Firstly, the petroglyphs of the Eastern Desert are very easy to make. Gauthier and Gauthier (2006) report that, during the course of an expedition in Chad, their guide, while otherwise unoccupied, drew a simple image of a camel on a rock in 10-15 minutes. Informal experiments in the eastern desert have confirmed this: that a simple image can be drawn on a patinated sandstone surface very quickly, and not only quickly but also very easily. The patina can be chipped or scratched away using almost any implement, and in most places in the Eastern Desert it requires no more effort than to stoop down and pick up a stone from by one’s foot to be adequately equipped to be a rock artist. The more elaborate petroglyph images would of course take longer, but it is hard to imagine that even the most detailed images of boats, for example, would have taken a practised artist more than half an hour.

At first glance there is nothing to suggest that an approach to the Eastern Desert images in terms of semiotics would reveal anything of importance. Firstly there is great variety in the forms of the individual images. There are many cattle, but there are no clearly standardised cattle images. There are similarities but, for example, although many of the cattle have girth bands they are represented in several different ways. Only one image, an ibex with a rectangle for a body and exaggerated semi-circular horns, occurs often enough to suggest that it might be a sign with an abstract meaning. Secondly, the semiotic parallel that

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site HW18 (see above under “Winkler”). One of them might recount how recently, when he was by the river, he had been lucky enough to get a glimpse of the Pharaoh as he passed on his state barge. “He was wearing a crown like this”, he might say, and pick up stone and draw a sketch to explain the wonder to his friends. While it is impossible to verify any such story, it is equally impossible to be certain that something like it did not happen. This is not to suggest that all the Eastern Desert petroglyphs are frivolous or purposeless, but it seems very likely that some of them, many perhaps, were drawn with no deep purpose at all.

Huard and Allard (1970), commenting on the rock art of North Africa but referring in fact almost entirely to that of the central Sahara, say that the images would have taken months to make and therefore that the artists who drew them must have been strongly motivated. While this may well be true for the large, elaborate, deeply-cut and polished images of the Messak, for example, it is certainly not true of the Eastern Desert. The rock paintings of Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir (see Chapter 6 above) certainly required motivation on the part of the artists because pigments had to be collected and made into paints, but no such forethought was necessary for the images with which we are concerned here. In economic terms they were very cheap.

Le Quellec (2006) is sceptical about attempts to determine the meaning of rock art and he likens the range of possible interpretations – religion, shamanism, language, etc. – to a bunch of keys. The student of rock art can select a key and it will “unlock” a few of the images and open a door to their explanation, but no key has yet been found that will unlock them all, and each separate key leaves most images unexplained. To this metaphor might be added the suggestion that some of the doors – we do not know which – have nothing in the way of explanation behind them at all.

To say that forethought was not necessary does not mean that none was ever given. Clearly some of the images were drawn with care and a considerable degree of skill, but this leads to the second reason to believe that other images had little significance. For that skill had to be learnt. Some of the images, such as the elaborate and detailed boats or the elegant and carefully-finished animals, are far too accomplished to be first attempts. The artists who drew them must have practised somewhere: they must have tried out their techniques and experimented with the forms they drew, if only for an hour or two and only in a handful of unsatisfactory trials. But drawings on the patinated sandstone are ineradicable. The only way an apprentice artist could have deleted his or her mistakes, assuming he or she wanted to, was to obliterate them by scraping away the patina from the whole rock panel. No such erasures have been found, implying that the “student works” and the failed attempts are still present. Not only are they present in the corpus of recorded petroglyphs but also they probably outnumber the “satisfactory” images – those that actually achieved what the artist had in mind.

In the Wadi Beizah there is a petroglyph image of a motor car with the date “1942” (Tracing 30). One wonders what will be made of it by a rock art enthusiast 5000 years in the future. We would regard it as a laughable error if he, she or it (allowing the possibility that in that much more advanced society the interpretation of rock art will have become a province of purely mechanical intelligences) were to conclude that the drawing of a car had been the product of a complex system of thought, such as a religion, or had had semiotic significance as a symbol endowed with meaning beyond what its form represented. We know that it is only a little more than a mindless doodle; that in all probability it was drawn casually, without deep thought, and with no intention of conveying any message.

This assumes that the artist did actually have something in mind when he or she drew. Clearly in some cases there was a well-defined objective, but this was probably not true in all cases. The third reason to be sceptical about the significance of the petroglyph images is the need to recognise that some of them were probably drawn quite casually. To illustrate the point one can imagine the fourthmillennium cattle herder with little to do but keep an eye on the animals. For him or her drawing materials, a stone and a rock surface, are to hand, and, bored by loneliness or alternatively egged on by colleagues, it is almost inevitable that he or she will draw on the rock. The situation would have been the same as that of a bored youth in the 21st century with a cheap can of spray paint and plenty of walls to use it on. He and his friends draw images for fun, for a lark, and his distant Egyptian forbears might well have done the same.

SIGNIFICANCE FOR THE MODERN VIEWER Minimum assumptions The preceding section shows that by following certain conventional approaches to interpretation it is possible to say a little about the possible significance for the people who drew them of the images of boats and some of the anthropoids, but almost nothing about the animals, except for the giraffes that may have been thought of as bearers of

Another imaginative reconstruction would have a group of travellers resting and talking in the shade in the cave that is

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their near neighbours in both space and time, was also like ours. The people who drew the petroglyphs cannot have been culturally far removed from the people who decorated the Old Kingdom tombs at Saqqara.)

the sun and were drawn to assist the sun in its daily journey across the sky. This is unfortunate because animal images outnumber all the others put together. A different approach to them, not based on their meaning to the artists, is needed.

Having made these two initial assumptions we proceed by applying Occam’s razor in the sense of making no further assumptions about the meaning of the petroglyphs to their artists. We confine our investigation to asking what the mere presence and form of the images tell us, and in so doing draw conclusions in the form of the 24 propositions set out below. They form a body of reliable information about the rock artists and their world. Of course they say very little about the artists’ intellectual culture, but they give a certain insight into the physical aspects of their way of life.

The hypothetical 71st-century rock-art expert of the previous section would, in studying the petroglyph of the car, at least in principle be able to make a few deductions that we would regard as correct. He or she (setting aside the machine alternative) would know for example that there was at least one person in the Eastern Desert in 1942, a person who had certain technical and artistic skills and (provided the image could be recognised) knew about cars. In a similar way we can make simple deductions about the people who drew the Predynastic petroglyphs. For example, while the little story about the images of the Pharaoh at site HW18 in the preceding section is merely a flight of fancy, it is possible to say with near certainty that at some time someone who was familiar with the ruler’s regalia was present in the cave, that he or she was interested enough to draw it, and then either the same artist or another drew it again. We cannot know why the images were drawn, but we know for sure that they were drawn.

In what follows this approach is applied to the images of animals and the anthropoids that are not in or related to boats or hunting scenes. There is less value in applying it to the boat images themselves because, as shown above, it is possible to deduce more about their significance for the people who drew them. What do the images of animals tell us?

In determining what the petroglyphs can tell us about the people who drew them we must make two initial assumptions that have to be regarded as self-evident. The first is that they were indeed drawn by people – that they are not natural marks on the rocks, and that they were not made by some non-human agency (such as men from Mars!). Any alternative is taken to be inadmissible.

1 Someone was there to draw them. The most fundamental deduction is that there were people present in the part of what is now the Eastern Desert where petroglyphs have been found (which is indicated in Map 2). There is no direct indication of how many people there were, whether they were resident or occasional visitors, or how the population of the region changed with time. The absence of archaeological evidence of widespread settlement suggests that the people were visitors, but the very large numbers of sites and images suggests that, in the period when animals were being drawn, the visits were frequent. Nothing can be said about the population of the surrounding areas.

The second assumption is that the petroglyph images were intended by those who drew them to have to do with (if not to look like or to represent) what they appear to the modern observer to represent. Thus what looks to us like a giraffe was, we assume, intended to be “about” giraffes in some sense. We are not necessarily able to say that it is a “picture” of a giraffe because we do not know that the artists perceived the world in the way we do, and in particular that they had the same concept of an image, a picture, a likeness, that we are so familiar with. Nevertheless we assume that the artist, as he or she drew, was thinking about giraffes and that ideas of giraffes guided his or her fingers.

2 The artists had physical drawing skills. This in itself is not remarkable because techniques for manipulating stone had been current throughout the Stone Age. It is not possible to infer that the animal petroglyphs were drawn by Neolithic people but the rarity of scratched images, which might be made by metal tools, in comparison with pecked suggests that the artists were at home with stone tools.

(This caution about assigning 21st-century views of representational art to 4th-millennium artists is probably unnecessary. We know that the artists of classical Pharaonic art had a similar understanding of the images they drew to ours. We know that when they drew a picture of a cow, or a boat, or a Pharaoh, it was intended to be a picture of a cow, etc., because they wrote captions on the pictures to that effect. The fact that their understanding of images was so similar to our own suggests very strongly that the understanding of the petroglyph artists, who were

3 Some, but not all, of the artists had the imagination to draw realistic images. Some of the images, of giraffes in particular, are remarkably realistic, while others are more like cartoons or caricatures. It is not possible to say with certainty, based on

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6 The wild-animal artists were very interested in ibexes, and rather less so in antelopes.

the evidence from the Eastern Desert, which came first, and indeed both types of image might have been drawn in the same period. There is a little evidence that the caricature giraffe images are older than the realistic ones but no such sequence can be discerned among the images of elephants, cattle or other animals. The realism of some of the images indicates that the artists wished to produce an image that looked like the animal they were drawing, an intention they shared with the artists of the Nile Valley. There is a little evidence (such as always showing animals’ horns as if seen from in front) to suggest that the Eastern Desert rock art was connected with the development of the Old Kingdom classical artistic tradition. This point is discussed in more detail elsewhere (Judd 2007 p75).

There are many images of ibexes, more than of any other species. However most of them are “caricatures” with exaggerated horns and simplified outline, rather than being realistic. The interest seems therefore to have been different in nature from that in giraffes. The difference may be connected with when the images were drawn, because unlike the savannah animals ibexes have probably been present in the mountains at all periods down to the present. There are a number of images of antelopes, many of indeterminate species. The gerenuks (if that is what they are) and oryxes are in general fairly realistic whereas some of the addaxes are “caricatures” with exaggerated horns. Addaxes, being animals of the semi-desert, were probably always present down to the early 20th century (see Chapter 3 above). There seems to be a tendency for imagery to be less realistic after the region became arid and the giraffes, elephants and many of the antelopes disappeared. The animals designated above as “wild asses” were also of widespread interest. Many of their images were drawn with precision and therefore are presumably realistic (although we cannot be certain because we do not know what they were intended to represent). This, together with the fact that they were sometimes shown as being hunted (see below) suggests that they date to the less arid period.

4 Some of the artists knew about wild savannah animals. The realism of some of the images of giraffes shows that some of the artists were very familiar with the animal, so much so that they must have seen them. This is the primary reason for dating some of the petroglyphs to the fourth millennium or earlier. The lack of realism of most of the elephant images is more problematic. Clearly the artists knew about elephants but most of them, apparently, did not draw them from life. Most of the images have features such as raised ears, elevated tusks, cleft feet or V-shaped trunks, that are more like caricatures than even attempts at accurate depictions. There seem to be two possible explanations: either elephants were not in fact present in the region, so that the artists were relying on descriptions of the animals by travellers from afar who had seen them; or lifelike images were drawn later than the caricatures (because the artists’ skills improved or because fashion changed) and elephants became extinct in the region before giraffes. Remains of elephants and giraffes, dated to around 4000 BC, have been found in the Western Desert but not the Eastern (Osborn 1998), so either alternative is possible. A third possibility, that the elephants date to the Ptolemaic period, seems very unlikely (except in a few cases such as the animal at site GP1) because most of them appear at sites with other animals and with similar patination.

7 The wild-animal artists showed little interest in predatory animals. There are a few images of felines that might be leopards or lionesses and only one possible hyena. There is no archaeological evidence that felines were present but it seems most unlikely that they were not, given that there were many antelopes. Lions and leopards are impressive and exciting to modern people and it is hard to imagine that they were not so to the people of the Eastern Desert. But clearly this excitement, assuming it was felt, did not cause the artists to show as much interest in drawing lions as giraffes. This suggests quite strongly that there was a purpose, a meaning, behind some of the petroglyphs, but gives no indication as to what it was.

5 The wild-animal artists were interested in large savannah animals but not small.

8 The wild-animal artists were predominantly interested in animals that were present in the locality.

It is noticeable that there are no images of the small mammals that must have been and still are present, such as hares, foxes, hyraxes, mice or gerboas, none of small birds or birds of prey, none of insects, only a few of scorpions and few of snakes (if some indeterminate wavy lines are excluded, along with the clearly Dynastic images at sites such as FL1 in the Wadi Hammamat). Clearly the artists were not attempting to record all the wildlife of their region. It seems very unlikely that they did not notice the smaller creatures. There must therefore have been something to excite their interest specifically in the large animals.

There are only a handful of images of animals that could not have survived in desert, semi-desert or savannah environments. These exceptions are the hippopotamuses and crocodiles. It seems unlikely that the region ever had enough large expanses of permanent water for these to have been resident. The presence of these images may be another indication of a purpose in the minds of the artists relating to some special significance of these animals, but that is by no means certain: it might record only the fancy of some herdsmen to recall the remarkable animals they

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elephants with raised ears, the “wild asses” with their “manes”, the cattle with girth bands and the addaxes with exaggerated horns indicate that people travelled throughout the region so that artists were able to see images in one location and reproduce them in another. There is, however, evidence from close similarities of style that individual artists did much of their work in or near specific locations, presumably where they resided or visited habitually. These observations give the impression that the area was occupied by a series of small communities that were selfcontained but shared a common culture.

had seen in the river. The absence of any images of rhinoceroses presumably indicates that these animals never inhabited the region. There is no archaeological evidence of them. 9 The wild-animal artists were interested in hunting. There are several images of hunting. In most cases the quarries are ibexes, ostriches or “wild asses”, less frequently oryxes or other antelopes. The hunters are shown using bows and accompanied by dogs. Some animals are shown as having been caught in traps (or possibly having been tethered).

13 The Eastern Desert artists were familiar with the work of artists in the Nile Valley.

10 Some artists were very interested in cattle, but not in sheep or goats.

There are so many similarities between the images of the Eastern Desert and those of the Nile Valley that there must have been regular contact between the artists of the two regions. However although there are many examples of similar images there are significant differences in the numbers of images of different species. This implies that although an Eastern Desert artist knew how his or her colleagues in the Valley depicted different species the choice of what to draw at home was dictated by local considerations. In the case of ibexes, for example, as pointed out in Chapter 5 above, it seems most likely that it was their presence that mattered, and the same may be true for the other species that appear in large numbers.

It is not possible to say for certain whether the cattle were drawn in the same period or by the same people as the wild animals. However since cattle, either wild or domesticated, would have been present only when pasture was available drawings of cattle and giraffes, for example, might have been contemporaneous. The large numbers of cattle images show clearly that cattle were of great importance. The almost complete absence of images of sheep and goats (unless some of the images that have been assumed to be ibexes are really goats) is surprising. It might imply that the petroglyphs refer only to wild animals and that there were no wild sheep, or that there were no domesticated sheep in the region, or that there was some reason for people to draw images of their cattle in preference to their sheep. The first possibility seems very unlikely because some of the cattle images refer clearly to some form of domestication, and the second is also rather unlikely in view of the fact that even in today’s arid conditions sheep are still to be found in the Eastern Desert. Thus we have to conclude that there was some reason for drawing cattle beyond their mere presence, whether they were wild or domestic.

14 There was more interest in hunting in the Desert than in the Valley. Hunting scenes are rarer among the Nile Valley petroglyphs than those of the Eastern Desert. This is presumably because the savannah terrain and fauna were suitable for hunting, and indicates that the petroglyphs reflect the activities that took place in the locality. It does not tell us whether people from the Valley went to the savannah to hunt. It is possible that different people, who were hunters, lived in the savannah, but if that was the case they were in contact with the dwellers in the Valley.

11 Some of the interest in cattle related to a form of domestication.

15 The Desert cattle artists and those of the Valley were interested in different aspects of domesticity.

The images of cattle held by the tail, controlled by means of a rope attached to the horns or bearing some form of structure on their backs indicates close contact with people and therefore some degree of domestication involving ownership. The attention paid to the markings of some of the cattle, and possibly the scenes of herds, tend also to suggest ownership. However there is at least one image of cattle being hunted so it cannot be concluded that all the cattle images are of domestic animals.

In the Valley there are images of cattle being milked which do not appear in the Desert. Also images of cattle grasped by the tail and cattle with distorted horns are more common than in the Desert. In contrast in the Desert cattle “controlled” by means of a rope attached to the horns and cattle with structures on their backs occur much more frequently than in the Valley. This suggests either that different types of domestication were practised in Desert and Valley (for example they were kept for their meat in the Desert but for milk in the Valley), or that different phases of a domestic cycle took place in Valley and Desert. Whichever of these is the case the fact that the images of

12 The artists of the Eastern Desert knew each others’ work. Similar images can be found all over the Eastern Desert. The ibexes are the most obvious example, but also the

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cattle with very elaborate back structures are confined to a single location in the Wadi Sha’it indicates the possibility of significant local differences in the way cattle were handled.

and those of Arabia. The petroglyphs provide no evidence of contact across the Red Sea.

16 The artists of the Eastern Desert had less in common with those of the Western Desert.

We confine our question here to the anthropoid images that are not associated with animal images (in hunting scenes, for example, or in contact with cattle), and are not in an apparently Dynastic style (such as those in the Wadi Hammamat referred to in Chapter 4 above). With those limitations their mere presence tells us less than that of the animal images because they are far fewer in number and much less varied in form. It is not necessary to restate the obvious implications – that there were people there to draw them and that they had the necessary drawing skills (1 and 2 above), or that the anthropoid artists, like their colleagues who drew animals, were familiar with the images drawn elsewhere in the Eastern Desert (12 above).

What do the images of anthropoids tell us?

The similarities and differences between the animal petroglyphs of the Eastern Desert and those of the regions west of the Nile Valley are detailed in Chapter 6 above. The outstanding similarities are the importance of images of giraffes and cattle throughout both regions. Apart from these, however, the overall conclusion is that the farther to the west the greater the differences, both of the species shown and the style in which they are drawn. There are a few outstanding exceptions, the most notable being the images of giraffes with exaggerated tails in a few western locations that speak of contact with the artist or artists of the Wadi Umm Salam. This suggests, again, localised selfcontained communities that nevertheless had occasional contacts over long distances.

20 The anthropoid artists reflected interest in a limited range of formal poses. The main impression given by the anthropoid images (except those in hunting scenes) is that they are static and formal, and that they lack detail. There are hardly any in which facial features are represented (and the few in which they are represented probably date to a later period). The head is usually indicated by a disc. The cases where it is a square or a trapezium are confined to a few locations and may be the work of individual artists. The body is sometimes a broad vertical stroke and sometimes a wedge, the limbs are always single strokes, and hands or feet are rarely indicated. The figure is almost always standing and seen from the front. Only in this formality of pose is there any apparent relationship with Early Dynastic or Old Kingdom human representations: there is no sign at all of the lifelike modelling familiar in the ceremonial palettes or the tomb reliefs of Saqqara.

17 The artists of the Eastern Desert had little in common with those of South-east Egypt. There are major differences between the animal images of the region of the Wadi Hodein and those of the Eastern Desert (see Chapter 7 above). Chief among these is the complete absence of giraffes. There are a few similarities but the implication is that there was only a little contact between the two regions. It is very unfortunate that our complete ignorance of the rock art of the region between the Wadi Hodein and the Wadi Sha’it (see Map 11) makes it impossible to understand the relationship in any more detail. 18 The artists of the Eastern Desert had even less in common with those of Sinai.

21 There was an interest in anthropoids decorated with what appear to be plumes.

The only animal images that are common both in the Eastern Desert and in Sinai and the Negev are ibexes, often in hunting scenes. The absence of other similarities suggests that there were few contacts. This is somewhat surprising because cultural influences from Asia into Egypt, such as the importation of short-horned cattle, would probably have come via Sinai. The petroglyphs so far reported give no indication of this, although this may be because little is known of the rock art of the northern part of the Eastern Desert or indeed of Sinai.

Without attempting to determine the significance of the decoration in the form of one or more lines, straight or curved, that decorate the heads of some of the anthropoid images we can be certain that they denote some form of distinction. These images indicate that there were individuals who were differentiated in some way from other men and women, although there is no way to know whether they were men or gods. The resemblance to the plumes worn by of some of the gods of Pharaonic Egypt suggests that they might be gods, but equally they might be chieftains who were later deified or provided the pattern for later gods. Whatever the “plumes” meant at the time they suggest that they were the products of a society in which some people were distinguished in some way, a society that was to some extent hierarchical.

19 The artists of the Eastern Desert had no connection with those of Arabia. Apart from similarities of subject matter, which are probably entirely coincidental, there appears to be no connection between the petroglyphs of the Eastern Desert

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22 There was also an interest in anthropoids carrying objects of some sort.

original variations. This however cannot be the whole picture for the following reasons.

Again it is not possible to know what the objects are. Some, called “staves” above, are represented by straight lines about as long as the anthropoid is tall, others are represented by straight lines curved at each end and look quite like bows except that they are held near the top rather than at the centre. There are various others: for example a few images show anthropoids who carry what might be a mace. Whatever they are, however, their presence indicates a society in which certain possessions were valued and apparently acted as marks of distinction.

The main indication that there was meaning in the images is their selectivity. It is hard to believe that people who filled their time by drawing wild animals would never choose to draw a fox, a mouse or a hyrax: that when they turned to domestic animals they would never choose sheep, goats or cats. It is hard to understand why they would choose only animals or people and never their dwellings or artefacts such as pottery (both of which appear in rock paintings in the Western Desert). It is hard to credit that of all the activities they and their friends and families engaged in they would draw only hunting scenes. The fact that the repertoire of petroglyphs is so limited is a clear indication that the choice of images was governed by something, and that it was not a random selection from the range of images that passed before the artists’ eyes in the course of their everyday lives.

23 There was an interest in pairs of anthropoids. It is tempting to interpret these pairs of figures, in some of which one figure is a little shorter than the other, as “family groups”. There are indeed a few groups that include small figures that appear to be children. We do not know their precise significance but the representations of small groups indicate that the artists who drew them lived in a society in which relationships between individuals were important.

A second indication that the selection was not random is that it was widespread. The same range of images is found not only all over the Eastern Desert but also in the Nile Valley and in the western oases. Only farther afield, in the Gilf Kebir, Sinai and south-eastern Egypt, were images selected from a significantly different range. There is only one major difference between the Eastern Desert and the Nile Valley in terms of the types of images drawn and that is the absence of ibexes from the Nubian part of the Valley. Although the numbers of occurrences of other images differ the range from which they are chosen is the same. This indicates not only that there was a governing principle but that it was current throughout the Eastern Desert and extended to the Valley and beyond.

24 There was a particular interest in anthropoids in the “orant” pose. The likelihood that this pose has less to do with prayer than with mourning is discussed above. The fact that individuals in the pose were drawn indicates that it was of interest and importance, and suggests a society which had rituals of some sort. Meaningful or meaningless? For the reasons stated above it is most likely that the images of boats and probably some of the anthropoids, particularly those in the “orant” posture, were drawn in the context of some sort of funerary ritual, and that the boats would have conveyed meanings related to journeys, by a deceased person or possibly by certain deities, through the underworld. The giraffes may have been bearers of the sun. The question remains as to whether the other petroglyphs also had meanings.

It is not possible to say more than this on the basis of the form of the petroglyphs alone, and it seems equally impossible to deduce anything about their meaning from their locations with certainty. Winkler, for example, seems to go too far in concluding that the concentration of petroglyphs in a cave indicates that the cave was a shrine. A simpler assumption is that the cave was a place where people went to escape from the mid-day sun and that they drew on the wall while they waited for the cool of the evening. Many other sites with concentrations of petroglyphs are places where there is shade (for example sites JCB1, PL1 and RH1 at Kanais or the “Jacuzzi” site SAL14). Others, such as MLM1 or DR2, are exposed but therefore are places where people might go to look out for game or to look after their domestic herds. These sites may have had deeper significance but it cannot be deduced from their locations or their images.

Clearly they were not doodles, in the sense in which the word is used to describe the thoughtless drawing of meaningless shapes while the mind is otherwise engaged. A “minimum” interpretation is that some of them might have been drawn merely for the amusement of the artist, with no intention to convey anything to any other viewer. As described above it is possible to imagine someone, having to spend a day in the savannah with nothing to do except keep watch on a herd of animals, picking up a hard stone and occupying the time by pecking a picture of a giraffe he or she could see or remember, or copying a giraffe image from an adjacent rock, possibly with a few

CONCLUSIONS The final conclusion about meaning is that the animal petroglyphs appear to have had some sort of significance

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for the artists and their communities but that, apart from the giraffes, we have no means of knowing what it was. The boats, on the other hand, are most likely to have had a funerary meaning. We do not know its details but it probably related to voyages through the underworld, and the boats may have served as memorials. Even though we know little or nothing about their meaning, however, the presence and form of the petroglyphs tell us a certain amount, detailed in the above 24 propositions, about the people who drew them and their societies. They show us that at some time before the end of the fourth millennium the valleys in what is now the Eastern Desert supported a flora similar to the present-day savannahs of East Africa, which in turn supported herds of giraffes, antelopes of various species, flocks of ostriches and probably elephants. The region was frequented by people who hunted ibexes, oryxes, wild asses, ostriches and other animals using bows and dogs, and also trapped them. We do not know whether they lived in the region or visited it on hunting trips from homes by the Nile. They took a great interest in some of the animals, especially the giraffes. We do not know the nature of the interest but it may have been connected with the hunting or with religious beliefs concerning the sun. Probably towards the end of the fourth millennium cattle became important to the people of the region. To start with the wild cattle were hunted but in due course they were domesticated. We do not know whether the herds were kept all the year round in the valleys that are now the wadis or whether their owners practised a form of transhumance, wintering their animals by the Nile and moving them to summer pasture in the wadis at the time of the inundation. Possibly both were done in different periods or different localities. The people of the Wadi Sha’it, for example, seem to have managed their cattle in different ways from their neighbours. Throughout this period different wadis were frequented or inhabited by separate groups of people. They were in touch with the other groups in the region and there was a certain amount of travel between them. They also travelled farther afield, even to the other side of the Nile on rare occasions. Their groups were organised with some form of hierarchy and important people were distinguished by special decorations such as headdresses. As the climate changed and the wadis gradually dried up the wild animals moved away and it became no longer possible to find pasture for the cattle. People still visited them, however, in order to record or possibly bury their dead and to inscribe memorials to them on the rocks. They continued to do this throughout the third and into the second millennium. This is what we can deduce from the petroglyphs. Any more is conjecture.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank colleagues of the Eastern Desert Survey and the Rock Art Topographical Survey for support and assistance. The work in the desert would not have been possible without the expertise of the staff of Ancient World Tours and, in Egypt, of Mr Hamdi Mahdi and the staff of Pan Arab Tours. Mike and Maggie Morrow, Peter Dixon and Geoff Phillipson have assisted me with this publication by generously providing photographs, as noted above. I am grateful for the guidance of Dr Ian Shaw throughout this project. I have benefited greatly from the help of other members of the staff of the University of Liverpool, of my fellow students, of my wife Diana and my daughter Christine Wendell. It was the enthusiasm of David Rohl that initiated my interest in the Eastern Desert petroglyphs. Tony Judd July 2009

107

Free-standing (426) Feature Head

Body

Arms

Shape Round Small Square Absent Linear Narrow Wedge Steatopygous “Round” “Orant” Linear

Number 364 30 30 2 318 34 48 26 124 20 282

In Boats (151)

% 85 7 7 0 75 8 12 6 29 5 66

Number 114 37 0 0 129 0 21 1 38 27 86

% 75 25 0 0 85 0 14 1 25 18 57

Table 1 Representation of the human form in the Eastern Desert

Free-standing (108)

Number of “Plumes”

Number 51 46 11 51 55 2

Single Double Multiple Straight Curved Wavy

Shape of “Plumes”

In boats (51)

% 47 43 10 47 51 2

Number 19 31 1 37 14 0

% 37 61 2 72 27 0

Table 2 “Plumed” human images in the Eastern Desert

Region 1 2 3 4 5

Range of Latitude 26º10´ to 25º55´ 25º55´ to 25º28´ 25º28´ to 25º10´ 25º10´ to 24º50´ 24º50´ to 24º30´

No. of Sites 48 69 111 36 45

No. of Boat Sites 23 44 76 30 19

No. of Boats 110 175 342 221 55

% of Boat Sites 48 64 68 83 42

Boats per Site 4.8 4.0 4.5 7.4 2.9

Table 3 Numbers of boats and boat sites in the Eastern Desert

Site GP1 BAR4 DR1 WD2 HAM4 SAL7 HAJ1 HAJ3 JCB1 HAM1 HW18 MIN6 BAR2

Wadi Umm Hajalij (South) Barramiya Barramiya Hammamat Hammamat Umm Salam Umm Hajalij (North) Umm Hajalij (North) Abbad Hammamat Qash Mineh Barramiya

Region

No. of Boats

4 4 4 1 1 3 3 3 4 1 1 2 4

31 21 19 16 16 16 16 16 16 15 15 15 15

Table 4 Eastern Desert sites with the largest numbers of boats

109

Feature Single-line hull Curved hull At least one finial Incurved finial Divergent finial(s) Decorated finial(s) “Flower” decoration Oars Steering oar(s) or fender Cabin(s) or awning Mast (and rigging) Passenger(s) Crew Towing crew

Description In some images the hull is represented by a single line while in other it is a broader area that is outlined or filled. This is principally a distinction between the cruder and the more refined images. While some hulls are clearly straight and others are curved there are many for which the distinction is far from clear and for which a subjective judgement has to be made. The criterion used here is whether “most” of the hull is “more-or-less” straight. Finials are the stem and stern-posts at the ends of the hull. One or more is assumed to be intended if it is marked by a distinct corner at the end of the hull or prolongation of the hull upward. Sometimes one of the finials is shown to bend over the hull. Sometimes one or more of the finials is inclined outwards away from the hull at an angle of about 60º to the horizontal. Sometimes one or more of the finials has one or more lines, either straight or wavy, branching from it. This is a special case of the decorated finials. One of them may terminate in a round or shield-shaped feature from which radiate 3 or 4 diagonal lines that may end in blobs. An array of near-vertical lines, usually short, beneath the hull is assumed to represent a bank of oars. Sometimes the blades are shown. One or two larger oars, with blades, at one end of the hull are assumed to be steering oars. A round object attached by a line to one end of the hull may be a fender. Sometimes it is hard to determine which was intended. Curved or rectangular deck-houses are sometimes shown. In a few cases there is a curved line over all or almost all of the boat that might be a canopy or awning. A tall plain vertical line is assumed to be a mast. Sometimes rigging is shown and more rarely a sail. One or more prominent anthropoid figures are assumed to be the important occupants of the boat. An array of short vertical lines above the hull is assumed to represent the crew of oarsmen. In a few cases a line leads from one end of the hull to a group of vertical strokes (or rarely anthropoid figures), giving the appearance that the boat is being towed. Table 5 Boat features

Region

1

2

3

4

5

Total

No. (%)

No .(%)

No. (%)

No. (%)

No. (%)

No. (%)

66

130

230

153

55

634

Single line hull

19 (29)

77 (59)

126 (55)

78 (51)

29 (53)

329 (52)

Curved hull

43 (65)

43 (33)

92 (40)

76 (50)

19 (35)

273 (43)

At least one finial

41 (62)

111 (85)

206 (90)

133 (87)

45 (82)

536 (85)

Incurved finial

13 (20)

14 (11)

20 ( 9)

23 (15)

7 (13)

77 (12)

Number of boats

Divergent finial(s)

3 ( 5)

9 ( 7)

52 (23)

32 (21)

8 (15)

104 (16)

Decorated finial(s)

22 (33)

71 (55)

85 (37)

66 (43)

22 (40)

266 (42)

"Flower"

6 ( 9)

8 ( 6)

7 ( 3)

13 ( 8)

2 ( 4)

36 ( 6)

Oars

9 (14)

15 (12)

28 (12)

16 (10)

5 ( 9)

73 (12)

Steering oar(s)

8 (12)

11 ( 8)

23 (10)

11 ( 7)

5 ( 9)

58 ( 9)

32 (48)

36 (28)

37 (16)

35 (23)

11 (20)

151 (24)

5 ( 8)

11 ( 8)

15 ( 7)

12 ( 8)

5 ( 9)

48 ( 8)

Cabin or awning Mast Passenger(s)

14 (21)

52 (40)

57 (25)

50 (33)

13 (24)

186 (29)

Crew

25 (38)

29 (22)

107 (47)

78 (51)

27 (49)

266 (42)

5 ( 8)

4 ( 3)

14 ( 6)

10 ( 7)

0 ( 0)

33 ( 5)

Towing crew

Table 6 Distribution of boat features in the Eastern Desert

110

Total

Mu Awwad

Abu Iqaydi

Abu Wasil

Mineh

Hammamat

Atwani

Wadi

No. (%)

No. (%)

No. (%)

30

30

13

24

634

Single line hull

4 (28)

3 (12)

22 (73)

19 (63)

8 (62)

11 (46)

329 (52)

Curved hull

5 (36)

19 (73)

10 (33)

7 (23)

6 (46)

12 (50)

273 (43)

At least one finial

13 (93)

11 (42)

22 (73)

30(100)

11 (85)

22 (92)

536 (85)

An incurved finial

3 (21)

4 (15)

2 ( 7)

4 (13)

1 ( 8)

3 (13)

77 (12)

Divergent finial(s)

1 ( 7)

1 ( 4)

3 (10)

2 ( 7)

1 ( 8)

1 ( 4)

104 (16)

Decorated finials

12 (86)

4 (15)

12 (40)

17 (57)

4 (31)

10 (42)

266 (42)

Flower decoration

1 ( 7)

3 (12)

2 ( 7)

2 ( 7)

0 ( 0)

0 ( 0)

36 ( 6)

Oars

5 (36)

4 (15)

2 ( 7)

3 (10)

0 ( 0)

3 (13)

73 (12)

Steering oar(s) etc.

0 ( 0)

5 (19)

2 ( 7)

2 ( 7)

3 (23)

6 (25)

58 ( 9)

Cabin or awning

4 (29)

13 (50)

6 (20)

9 (30)

1 ( 8)

8 (33)

151 (24)

Mast

0 ( 0)

5 (19)

5 (17)

2 ( 7)

4 (31)

2 ( 8)

48 ( 8)

Passenger(s)

6 (43)

5 (19)

6 (20)

14 (47)

6 (46)

4 (17)

186 (29)

12 (86)

7 (27)

3 (10)

11 (37)

4 (31)

9 (38)

266 (42)

0 ( 0)

3 (12)

0 ( 0)

1 ( 3)

0 ( 0)

0 ( 0)

33 ( 5)

No. of boats Single line hull Curved hull

No. (%)

Total

Sha’it

Wadi

Barramiya

Towing crew

Kanais

Crew

Umm Hajalij South

No. (%)

26

Umm Hajalij North

No. (%)

14

Umm Salam

No. (%) No. of boats

No. (%)

No. (%)

No. (%)

No. (%)

No. (%)

No. (%)

114

27

19

30

33

19

No. (%) 634

70 (61)

7 (26)

9 (48)

10 (33)

13 (39)

4 (21)

329 (52)

39 (34)

7 (26)

17 (89)

12 (40)

11 (11)

9 (47)

273 (43)

At least one finial

108 (95)

26 (96)

18 (95)

30(100)

31 (94)

14 (74)

536 (85)

An incurved finial

9 ( 8)

6 (22)

10 (53)

1 ( 3)

4 (12)

4 (21)

77 (12)

Divergent finial(s)

33 (29)

9 (33)

6 (32)

7 (23)

10 (30)

1 ( 5)

104 (16)

Decorated finials

43 (38)

7 (26)

7 ( 7)

11 (37)

17 (17)

7 (37)

266 (42)

Flower decoration

1 ( 1)

1 ( 4)

7 (37)

0 ( 0)

1 ( 3)

2 (11)

36 ( 6)

18 (16)

0 ( 0)

4 (21)

2 ( 7)

3 ( 9)

3 (16)

73 (12)

Oars Steering oar(s) etc. Cabin or awning Mast

4 ( 4)

2 ( 7)

3 (16)

1 ( 3)

3 ( 9)

3 (16)

58 ( 9)

16 (14)

3 (11)

10 (53)

2 ( 7)

8 (24)

9 (47)

151 (24)

1 ( 1)

2 ( 7)

1 ( 5)

0 ( 0)

2 ( 6)

4 (21)

48 ( 8)

Passenger(s)

32 (28)

4 (15)

5 (26)

8 (27)

16 (48)

5 (26)

186 (29)

Crew

57 (50)

12 (44)

11 (58)

17 (57)

26 (79)

8 (42)

266 (42)

7 ( 6)

1 ( 4)

1 ( 5)

4 (13)

1 ( 3)

0 ( 0)

33 ( 5)

Towing crew

Table 7 Descriptions of boats in Eastern Desert locations

111

Location

Region

Sites

Wadi Atwani Wadi Hammamat Wadi Mineh Wadi Abu Wasil

1 1 2 2

Wadi Abu Iqaydi Wadi Mu Awwad Wadi Umm Salam W. Umm Hajalij(N) Kanais W. Umm Hajalij (S) Wadi Barramiya Wadis Sha’it and Muweilhat

3 3 3 3 4 4 4 5

AG1, ER1, AB2, JEW2, RM1 TJ2, WD2, PC2, HAM3 MLM1, JAW1, KE2, MIN3, MIN5, MIN6 DTF2, WAS4, MA1, PCB2, CC1, VF1, DR2, WD1, CT2 IQA5 – IQA14 MUA11 – MUA18 SAL1 – SAL44 HAJ1 – HAJ5 KE1, RH1, JCB1, PL1 GP1, MF1, DB1 DF1, PCB1, DR1, JJH1, ED1, RP1 MUG, MU3, SH3, SH7, SH8, SH11, SHG, SHN, SHX

Table 8 “Locations” of neighbouring sites in the Eastern Desert

Category

El Kab

Eastern Desert

21 1 0 1 0 55 30 60 50 58

59 41 16 33 35 102 71 178 577 903

Giraffes Elephants Felines Crocodiles Hippopotamuses “Wild asses” Antelopes Cattle Anthropoids Boats

Table 9 Comparison of numbers of images in the Eastern Desert and at El Kab

Site V31 V39 AAKK G101 AAIS D008 H152 H160 H154 OT087 OT128 OT129 OT132

Number of Giraffes 18 28 10 11 51 20 16 17 33 29 13 61 20

Location Abidis Korosko East Khor Kilobersa Tonqala Ibrim South Armenna Abka Abka Abka Aruse Sheragoshe Dakke Sarkamatto

Table 10 Nubian sites with most giraffe images

112

Extent (km.) 1.6 2.3 2.6 0.7

No. of Boats 12 26 35 29

2.0 2.5 5.1 0.9 0.7 1.1 3.1 5.6

13 28 114 28 19 30 33 19

Eastern Desert Type A B C Total

Number 41 5 0 46

Nubia % 88 12 0

Number 43 50 20 113

% 38 44 18

Table 11 Types of elephant images in the Eastern Desert and Nubia

Nubia Style Banded Filled Speckled Reticulated Outline only Total

Eastern Desert

Number 183 466 2246 45 1560 2480

% 7 19 9 2 63

Number 35 57 17 8 63 180

% 19 32 9 4 35

Table 12 Cattle styles in the Eastern Desert and Nubia

Nubia Sex Male Female Indeterminate

Eastern Desert

Number 72 128 2280

% 3 5 92

Number 9 19 152

% 5 11 84

Table 13 Sex of cattle in the Eastern Desert and Nubia

Nubia Shape of Horns Long, curved outwards Long, curved inwards Long, meeting at the tip Long, drooping Very long Short

Number 1922 281 25 57 93 102

Eastern Desert % 78 11 1 2 4 4

Number 121 40 3 7 0 9

% 67 22 2 4 0 5

Table 14 Horns in the Eastern Desert and Nubia

Nubia Relationship Holding tail Holding rope attached to horns Total number of anthropoids

Number 26 19 1243

Eastern Desert % 2 2

Number 5 26 426

Table 15 Relationships of anthropoids to cattle in the Eastern Desert and Nubia

113

% 1 6

Image Giraffes Elephants Cattle Anthropoids Boats

Nubia

Eastern Desert

530 131 2419 1218 526

59 41 188 426 634

Table 16 Numbers of images in the Eastern Desert and Nubia

Nubia Feature Single line hull Curved hull At least one finial Incurved finial Divergent finial(s) Decorated finial(s) "Flower" decoration Oars Steering oar(s) Cabin or awning Mast Passenger(s) Crew Towing crew Total number of boats (including those recorded by Engelmayer and Weigall)

No. 442 438 325 20 33 24 0 237 296 205 196 64 87 15

% 51 50 37 2 4 3 0 27 34 24 23 7 10 2

871

Eastern Desert % No. 52 329 43 273 85 536 12 77 16 104 266 42 6 36 12 73 9 58 24 151 8 48 29 186 42 266 5 33 634

Table 17 Features of boat images in the Eastern Desert and Nubia

Subject Cattle Elephants Felines Ibexes 0striches Rhinoceroses Oryxes Falcons Camels Horses Unidentified Animals Anthropoids Boats Total

Number of images 225 3 2 18 127 1 3 1 49 10 122 244 11 815

% of total images 27.5 0.3 0.2 2.2 15.6 0.1 0.3 0.1 6.0 1.2 15.0 29.9 1.3

Table 18 Petroglyph images in south-east Egypt

114

% of identifiable images 32.5 0.4 0.3 2.6 18.3 0.1 0.4 0.1 7.0 1.4 35.2 2.6

Present only in Desert

Present in Desert Rare in Nubia

Elephants with two raised ears Hippopotamuses Ibexes

“Caricature” Elephants Crocodiles Oryxes Gerenuks Ostriches Domestic Animals Realistic Cattle

“Controlled” Cattle Cattle bearing elaborate structures

Present in Nubia Rare in Desert

Wild Animals Realistic Giraffes “Caricature” Giraffes

Long-tailed giraffes Round-bodied giraffes

“Maned” asses Addaxes

Present in both Desert and Nubia

Cattle bearing structures

Present only In Nubia

Feeding giraffes Herds of giraffes Herds of elephants Lions

Elephants with one raised ear Rhinoceroses “Hartebeests”

Cattle with distorted horns Cattle held by the tail Cattle with neck appendages

Cattle with v. long horns Cattle being milked

Animated postures

Armless figures

Dogs Anthropoids Square heads “Orant” postures Asymmetric bows

Formal postures “Round arms” “Plumes” Figures in boats Hunting scenes

Bows

“Boomerangs”

Boats Decorated boats Boats with large crews

Equipped boats

Table 19 Comparative incidence of images in the Eastern Desert and Nubia

Uweinat Total Number of sites Sites with cattle images “ “ giraffe “ “ “ ostrich “ “ “ elephant “ “ “ ibex “ “ “ other animals “ “ anthropoids

272 Number 146 81 70 1 0 84 80

Gilf Kebir etc.

% 54 30 26 0 0 31 29

44 Number 15 19 6 2 0 10 11

% 34 43 14 5 0 23 25

Table 20 Numbers of sites with images of animals and anthropoid in the Eastern Desert and south-west Egypt

115

Eastern Desert 284 Number 110 49 95 35 147 116 141

% 39 17 33 12 52 41 50

116

117

118

119

120

121

122

123

124

125

126

127

128

129

130

131

132

133

134

q 135

136

137

138

139

140

141