(2021) Animals in Egyptian rock art (original) (raw)
Related papers
2021
No doubt, Egypt is best known for its monumental architecture and art from the Pharaonic period. However, the archaeological remains in that land are far more diversified and include a wealth of both post-and predynastic material. It should not be surprising then that prehistory constitutes a large field of research, encompassing remains from Lower Palaeolithic until the onset of historical times. Egypt's Nile valley and, particularly, its deserts are very rich in prehistoric sites, among which rock art is found in abundance. In this paper a brief overview and characterisation of the main periods of rock art production is provided. Firstly, the oldest Saharan petroglyphic tradition, dated to Late Palaeolithic, is presented. All the subsequent rock art traditions are dated to the Holocene period and are associated, respectively, with the Epipalaeolithic groups of hunter-fisher-gatherers, mid-Holocene "pastroforagers" of the Western Desert, late Holocene cattle pastoralists, and Nile valley's first agricultural societies of the Naqada period. This paper focuses solely on the theme of animals and describes all the mentioned rock art traditions in this respect. In order to contextualize the studied material, a short overview of climatic fluctuations in the Eastern Sahara is first provided.
Animal representations in the Late Palaeolithic rock art of Qurta (Upper Egypt)
Huyge D. & Ikram S. 2009: Animal representations in the Late Palaeolithic rock art of Qurta (Upper Egypt), in Riemer H., Förster F., Herb M. & Pöllath N. (Eds.): Desert Animals in the Eastern Sahara: Status, Economic Significance and Cultural Reflection in Antiquity (Colloquium Africanum 4), Köln: Heinrich-Barth-Institut, 157-174. Abstract. - With 93.3 % of animal figures and only 6.7 % of anthropomorphs and signs, the Late Palaeolithic rock art of Qurta is definitely an ‘art animalier’. This contribution presents a brief and preliminary account of the animal representations in the Qurta rock art: bovids (cattle), birds, indeterminate mammals, hippopotami, gazelle, fish and hartebeest. It focuses on the archaeozoological aspects of the images, not on the stylistic or technical issues.
(2020) Animal Hill – a Large Prehistoric Rock Art Site CO178 in the Central Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt
Archaeologia Polona, vol. 58: 289–310, 2020
This article introduces one of the largest rock art sites found in the central Dakhleh Oasis. Firstly, an overview of all the panels with petroglyphs is provided and the images briefly described. The panels’ description contains basic information on their location and visibility, motifs and their compositional aspects, and chronology. This is followed by a brief summary of the presented data and a discussion situating the site in the broader context of Dakhleh and the surrounding Western Desert. Particular motifs and their arrangements, like a herd of giraffes, are further briefly discussed, and parallels from the Dakhleh region and the Nile valley cited in order to compare the CO178 rock art. KEY-WORDS: Rock art, Petroglyphs, Giraffe, Oryx, Dakhleh Oasis
Hierakonpolis (ancient Nekhen) near Edfu, in Upper Egypt, is well known for its late Predynastic and Early Dynastic archaeological localities, which have been excavated and researched over many decades. These localities lie in the desert, west of the Nile River, adjacent to rock beds and hills that exhibit rock art and inscriptions representing a very broad span of time. While much of the rock art occurs near areas that had permanent settlement or funerary sites in the Predynastic period, there are also a number of seasonal or temporary campsites and shelters incorporating petroglyphs ranging from abstract compositions to 'fauna' and 'boats'. The themes purportedly depicted in the rock art and its close proximity to areas rich in archaeological heritage present unique research opportunities in associating the two, and many of the motifs depicted in rock art here have parallels in other media of the Predynastic period. Of the rock art recorded to date, the figural motifs have the closest affinity to specific iconography known from other aspects of Predynastic material culture such as pottery, potmarks and 'palettes'. This paper will consider a selection of the animal motifs from the site and assess their level of coherence with Predynastic iconography as it is known from these other media. This coherence is examined at a number of levels: the types of infill used to decorate the bodies of animals; to their distinctive morphologies; and finally their inclusion in compositions such as purported hunting scenes.
The paper introduces two new rock art sites from the Dakhla region in Egypt’s Western Desert showing representations of Barbary sheep (Ammotragus lervia) being hunted by dogs. Together with another site discovered a few years ago in the same region, altogether three sites with engraved depictions of these animals are now known from the central Western Desert – a fact that contrasts with the scarcity in both rock art and archaeozoological evidence of Barbary sheep west of the Nile. Judging from stylistic and iconographic parallels in pictorial representations of Ammotragus lervia in the Nile Valley, arguments are presented for a dating of the new Barbary sheep hunting scenes into Late Predynastic/Early Dynastic times, i. e. around 3000 BC. Likewise, this implies a close cultural affiliation to an iconographic tradition that seems to attest ancient Egyptian activity in the central Western Desert during a time when this was hitherto not expected. In the inner Western Desert, the occurrence of the hunting scenes, moreover, questions the past distribution of Barbary sheep in Egypt where this species is currently critically endangered with extinction, and reduced to refuges in the Eastern Desert and the Jebel Ouenat/Gilf Kebir region in Egypt’s far southwest. Predynastic female figurines from the Nile Valley, decorated with painted hunting scenes (including representations of Barbary sheep), are considered the predecessors of the women of the ‘Acacia House’ textually attested by the beginning of the Old Kingdom, and illustrate the ritual context of desert hunting, which is at the same time an important element of elite behaviour.
In: H. Riemer, F. Förster, M. Herb & N. Pöllath (eds.), Desert animals in the eastern Sahara: Status, economic significance, and cultural reflection in antiquity. Colloquium Africanum 4. Köln: Heinrich-Barth-Institut, 2009, pp. 189–244
The paper introduces two new rock art sites from the Dakhla region in Egypt’s Western Desert showing representations of Barbary sheep (Ammotragus lervia) being hunted by dogs. Together with another site discovered a few years ago in the same region, altogether three sites with engraved depictions of these animals are now known from the central Western Desert – a fact that contrasts with the scarcity in both rock art and archaeozoological evidence of Barbary sheep west of the Nile. Judging from stylistic and iconographic parallels in pictorial representations of Ammotragus lervia in the Nile Valley, arguments are presented for a dating of the new Barbary sheep hunting scenes into Late Predynastic/Early Dynastic times, i. e. around 3000 BC. Likewise, this implies a close cultural affiliation to an iconographic tradition that seems to attest ancient Egyptian activity in the central Western Desert during a time when this was hitherto not expected. In the inner Western Desert, the occurrence of the hunting scenes, moreover, questions the past distribution of Barbary sheep in Egypt where this species is currently critically endangered with extinction, and reduced to refuges in the Eastern Desert and the Jebel Ouenat/Gilf Kebir region in Egypt’s far southwest. Predynastic female figurines from the Nile Valley, decorated with painted hunting scenes (including representations of Barbary sheep), are considered the predecessors of the women of the ‘Acacia House’ textually attested by the beginning of the Old Kingdom, and illustrate the ritual context of desert hunting, which is at the same time an important element of elite behaviour. Keywords: Barbary sheep, wild animals, game, hunting, Western Desert, women of the ‘Acacia House’, Predynastic, Early Dynastic, Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom
Prehistoric landmarks in contrasted territories: Rock art of the Libyan Desert massifs, Egypt
Quaternary International, 2019
In the Libyan Desert, the Gilf el-Kebir and Jebel el-'Uwein at are two large rock formations located in the extreme SouthWest of Egypt, at the edge of the Libyan and Sudanese borders. A hundred and twenty kilometers from each other, they are surrounded by plains and sandy formations, punctuated by a few smaller massifs. Although they are of different ages and geological formations, the two great massifs both offered interesting and complementary refuges for prehistoric groups who used rock shelters, cliffs and boulders for engraving and painting. The existence of a multitude of styles and techniques allow to detect striking parallels between the rock art record of the two regions, providing a dynamic view of the regionalization of rock art and of how these territories were conceived and occupied by semi-nomadic groups during the Holocene optimum period (8000e3500 BCE). Paintings from the Gilf el-Kebir show very close stylistic affinities with representations identified in the Jebel el-'Uwein at. But the fact that they remain a minority in the overall rock art record from both areas tends to evidence that, contrary to what has been hypothesized before, migrations between the Gilf el-Kebir and the Jebel el-'Uwein at were not systematic. This paper also highlights a possible increase in the contacts and migrations between the two massifs after the adoption of pastoralist lifestyles. The repartition of rock art and the evolution through times of the parallels offers interesting insights into land use strategies of both hunter-gatherers and herd keepers in such contrasted environments, and into what can be called symbolic territories.
Late Palaeolithic and Epipalaeolithic rock art in Egypt: Qurta and El-Hosh
Huyge D. 2009: Late Palaeolithic and Epipalaeolithic rock art in Egypt: Qurta and el-Hosh, Archéo-Nil 19: 108-120. Abstract. - Whereas the bulk of Egyptian rock art dealt with in this issue of Archéo-Nil can be ascribed to the Neolithic and Predynastic cultures immediately preceding and foreshadowing pharaonic civilization (5th-4th millennium BC), much older petroglyphs have come to light in the Nile Valley in the course of the past decade. This contribution deals with two major Nilotic rock art assemblages, Qurta and el-Hosh, that can tentatively be attributed to the Late Palaeolithic (c. 16,000-15,000 BP) and the Epipalaeolithic (c. 8,000 BP) respectively. Recently, it has become clear that these assemblages are not isolated occurrences, but part of a much more complex picture. Rather than describing the rock art of Qurta and el-Hosh in detail, which has already been done to some extent in other publications, I will try to sketch the broader environmental and cultural context in which these oldest Egyptian petroglyphic traditions flourish.
New Perspectives on Predynastic and Early Dynastic Rock Art in Egypt (c. 4500-2600 BC)
Rock-Art, A Human Heritage. Proceedings of the XXVIII Valcamonica Symposium, Capo di Ponte (Valcamonica), October 28 to 31, 2021, 2021
Although Predynastic and Early Dynastic rock art in Egypt and Nubia is scientifically addressed for almost a century, interpretative analysis of the thousands of engravings currently catalogued remains scarce and tentative. If important progress has been made in the past two deca- des, recent approaches rarely take into account its great variety and often fail to address all its informative potential. Such studies are focusing on specific areas of the Nile Valley and the surrounding deserts, thus providing local or, at best, regional insights. This paper underlines the extent to which rock art can usefully complement archaeological data. Indeed, rock art has the potential to inform about the various communities that navigated the deserts and were in contact with dominant archaeological assemblages, namely the Naqa- dan cultural facies in Upper Egypt and the “A-Group” ones in Lower Nubia. Moreover, data at hand are now consistent enough to attempt a reassessment of all the available corpora in the perspective of comparative analysis. Preliminary results highlight major disparities between the main concentrations of rock art which are, on the one hand, the Eastern and Western Deserts and, on the other hand, the Nile Valley and its hinterland. It notably appears that Predynastic engravings along the Nile cannot be easily compared with their Eastern Desert counterparts and sometimes share affinities with Lower Nubian rock art, while Protodynastic productions are well attested in the Valley but far less in the Eastern Desert. These observations allow suggesting new research perspectives.