digital photograph(colour)
- Museum number
- 2013,2034.3505
- Description
-
Digital photograph (colour); view desert landscape Foreground left: four unidentified people on a sandstone cliff, clapping and using stones to play music. Background: wadi course and Messak plateau. Wadi Sharuma, Libya.
Scanned
- Production date
-
07 March 2008 (date digitized)
-
March 1998 (original photograph)
- Dimensions
-
File size: 69.90 megabytes
-
Resolution: 300 dots per inch
- Curator's comments
- The photograph shows four tuaregs clapping and probably using stones to mark the rhythm on the top of a sandstone cliff at wadi Sharuma.
This dry riverbed is located at the southwestern corner of the Northern Messak Plateau (Messak Settafet), near the Tilemsin pass that divides the Messak Settafet from the Messak Mellet (the Southern Messak Plateau). Although located at the south of the main area of engravings around the Wadis Tilizaghen and Mathendous, its rock art shares similar features with the core area, including the distribution of depictions on vertical rocks along the wadi, the absence of painting and the styles documented within it, mostly Bubalus, Pastoral, Tazina, Horse and Camel periods. Depictions include wild animals -ostriches, giraffes, rhinos and antelopes- and domestic species as dogs and cows, as well as human figures and therianthropes.
The Messak rock art has been known since Heinrich Barth’s expedition in 1850, although it wasn’t until 1932 when the engravings were systematically studied by Leo Frobenius. In more recent times the area has been extensively studied by Pesce (1969), Graziosi (1970) and Jelinek (1984, 1985). Figures appear both isolated and within complex scenes which include engraved life-size elephants, giraffes, crocodiles, buffaloes and figures which mix human and animal features (therianthropes) along with numerous figures of more modern periods as horses and camels. Most of the engravings belong to the so called Bubalus style, but Tazina, Pastoral, Horse and Camel styles are also well represented. The area is home to some of the oldest engravings in the Sahara desert (around 10,000 years old) and some of the most popular depictions in Saharan rock art, as the “Sparring Cats” or the so-called “Apollo of the Garamantes”.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 2013
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- 2013,2034.3505
- Additional IDs
-
Previous owner/ex-collection number: LIBMES0230108 (TARA number)
