More re Lascaux type images on the Nile
In his archaeological report, a copy of which Al-Ahram Weekly has received, Huyge described the characteristic of the newly-discovered illustrations. He writes that, from a technical point of view, prehistoric men used a special artistic technique of art to engrave and paint their rock images. They hammered and incised the solid surface to transform it into a fine animal, a bird or a scene from the nature around them. In some cases the figures are executed almost in bas-relief, such as the one showing a large bovid found in Qurta II and a fresco of birds which combined three images. "It is really a superb example among the rock art ever found," Huyge commented.
The dimensions of the Qurta images are exceptional. Often the prehistoric bovid stood taller than 0.8 metres, and the largest example ever found measured over 1.8 metres. In this respect the Qurta rock art is quite different in that the size of each animal figure varies by 0.4 to 0.5 metres.
The prehistoric artist or artists at Qurta made use of natural fissures, cracks, curves, arches and brows of the rocks, and integrated them into the art images. A perfect example of this is a rock panel found at Qurta II, where a natural vertical crack was used to render the back part of a bovid. Huyge points out that bovid drawings were deliberately left incomplete. Some had missing legs, tail or horns, while others had numerous scratches over their heads and necks.
The rock supporting this art, the Nubian sandstone, is extremely fragile and still being intensively quarried in the area. The rock art panels are often very large and show numerous cracks and fissures. Huyge believes that since it would almost be impossible to remove the rock art from its original location without seriously damaging it, and since, of course, the rock art is an integral part of the Upper Egyptian desert landscape that should be studied and understood in situ, the only way properly to safeguard this priceless heritage of Egypt is to provide adequate surveillance, with several permanent guards on site. It could eventually be envisaged that the area of the rock art could be secured by building high protective walls around it. "Taking this rock art away from its original location, however, and putting it in a museum would definitely be a substantial impoverishment of Egypt's cultural heritage."
See the above page for her full article.
To see a short overview of some of the problems facing rock art in Egypt, see the following "Potential Damage to Rock Art Sites" Appendix on my Eastern Desert website:
http://www.wadi.cd2.com/html/appendix_a.html
- More Re Qurta Rock Art
Thanks very much to Dirk Huyge for sending me a copy of his upcoming press release about the Qurta rock art in the journal Antiquity. The two page PDF has been stored as two separate JPEGs on this page. Click on each to load them and then again to magnify...
- Daily Photo: Eastern Desert Rock Art
As a nod to the rock art research mentioned above at Dakhleh Oasis in the Western Desert, here are some photographs of rock art in the Eastern Desert - a very different kettle of fish! For a start, except for one known image, all of the rock art in the...
- North Kharga Oasis Survey - 2006 Season - Exploration Of The Darb Ain Amur
NKOS 2006 (S. Ikram and C.Rossi) The NKOS website has been udpated with details of the 2006 season. See the above page for the full story, but here's an extract. The first season of the North Kharga Oasis Survey Phase II (NKOS II) focused on investigating...
- Lascaux Along The Nile’: Late Pleistocene Rock Art In Egypt
http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/huyge/index.html The details of the Qurta rock art site released in a press release copied earlier in this blog have been published in the archaeological journal Antiquity, with a discussion of the factors which might offer...
- 15,000 Year Old Palaeolithic Rock Art At Qurta
15/05/06 Press ReleaseUnfortunately there is no URL for an online home for the following press release, which was sent to me by email: Belgian Arcaheological Mission Traces Oldest Art in Egypt: 15,000 year old Palaeolithic rock art sites at Qurta are...