digital photograph(colour)
- Museum number
- 2013,2034.2108
- Description
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Digital photograph (colour); view of painted rock art on rock shelter wall, showing three human figures, four horses, a camel, Libyan Berber or Tifinagh script running figure with arms outstretched and schematic, long thin head and neck. charioteer in intricately painted chariot with spooked wheels, bent forward in process of whipping pair of horses with two-strand whip, held in one hand with reins in the other and back legs of running horses, cut off edge of image at the hip on right hand side. Horses run abreast, one overlapping the other. Below the chariot are the very faint traces of another chariot image in faded red with horses’ legs outstretched and charioteer behind. Emi 'n' Eher, Libya.
Born digital
- Production date
- 13 October 2009
- Dimensions
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File size: 28.70 megabytes
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Resolution: 300 dots per inch
- Curator's comments
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Detail of 2013,2034.2105.
See also 2013,2034.2056-2104 and 2109-2138.
Tassili n’Ajjer is a mountainous sandstone plateau covering around 72,000km² in the mid-Sahara, largely situated in eastern Algeria but straddling the borders with Libya and Niger. The area is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site due to its plethora of rock art, its geological attributes and its unique flora and fauna. Although previously known to the local Tuareg of the Kel Ajjer, the rock art was not discovered to academia until the 1930s, when the renowned French archaeologist and anthropologist, Abbé Henri Breuil was made aware of it by a French Legionnaire who had observed some sites. Ethnographer and explorer Henri Lhote went on to record and publish numerous images, leading to the mounting of a celebrated exhibition of Tassilian art at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1957-8. The rock art of Tassili n’Ajjer, has now been widely studied and discussed within the larger context of ‘Saharan Rock Art’, adjacent as it is to the Libyan ranges of Tadrart Acacus and Messak.
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This image has been digitally altered to render the colouring more true to that of the rock art depicted than in the original photograph. Due to certain variables and constraints, such as lighting at the site, the accuracy of the colouring cannot be guaranteed.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 2013
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- 2013,2034.2108
- Additional IDs
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Previous owner/ex-collection number: LIBLTA0020053 (TARA number)