digital photograph(colour)
- Museum number
- 2013,2034.6338
- Description
-
Digital photograph (colour); view of desert landscape. In the foreground, to the left Alec Campbell is sat down on a rocky outcrop, recording a rock art panel. Several rocky outcrops can be seen in the background. Bishagara, Chad.
Scanned
- Production date
-
14 June 2006 (date digitized)
-
November 1996 (original photograph)
- Dimensions
-
File size: 124 megabytes
-
Resolution: 300 dots per inch
- Curator's comments
- The tableau shows a complex scene probably representing a camp or village with herds of cattle and camels.
The Ennedi Plateau is located at the north-eastern corner of Chad, on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. It is a sandstone massif carved by erosion in a series of superimposed terraces, alternating plains and ragged cliffs crossed by seasonal rivers (wadis). Unlike other areas in the Sahara with rock art engravings or paintings, the Ennedi Plateau receives rain regularly –if scarce- during the summer, and thus it is a more benign environment to human life that other areas placed to the north, as the Messak plateau, the Tassili or the Tibesti Mountains. However, its position far from the main trade routes made its rock art being unknown to Europe until the 1930’s, when Burthe d’Annelet gave notice of them and De Saint-Floris published the first paper on the subject. The main effort to document this rock art came in 1956-1957 when Gerard Bailloud documented more than 500 rock art sites within an area of just one sixth of the entire plateau.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 2013
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- 2013,2034.6338
- Additional IDs
-
Previous owner/ex-collection number: CHAENP0020017 (TARA number)
