digital photograph(colour)
- Museum number
- 2013,2034.7870
- Description
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Digital photograph (colour); view of engraved rock on a rock face, including landscape and showing twenty-seven camels, two riders on camels, a human figure, and a goat. Most of the animals are distributed along several rows, infilled with pecking and depicted upright facing left or right. The camels with riders have reins and saddles depicted, one of them hunting? a pecked goat. Camel Period. A desert plain can be seen in the background. Dezirum, Chad.
Scanned
- Production date
-
November 1996 (original photograph)
-
14 December 2005 (date digitized)
- Dimensions
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File size: 122 megabytes
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Resolution: 300 dots per inch
- Curator's comments
- See 2013,2034.78569 and 2013,2034.7871 for other views of this excellent example of Camel Period rock art. This complex panel could correspond to a herding scene.
The Tibesti Mountains are placed at the north-western corner of Chad, with a small part of them running into Libya. The central area of the Tibesti Mountains has a volcanic origin, with one third of the range covered by five volcanoes. That origin has formed vast plateaus as well as fumaroles, sulphur and natron deposits and other geologic formations. The erosion has shaped big canyons were seasonal rivers (wadis) flow irregularly. Rock art was discovered at the Tibesti Mountains as soon as 1869, although it was between the 1910’s and 1930’s when the first preliminary studies started to be carried on by François D’Alverny. However, the main boost in the research came in the 50’s and 60’s thanks to the work of Paul Huard. During the last 50 years, researchers have found thousands of depictions throughout the region, most of them engravings although paintings are well represented, too.
As in the Ennedi plateau, the Tibesti Mountains engravings are more modern than those placed to the north, dating of about 5000 years BC, with the oldest images being related to the Round Heads style in the Central Sahara. Later depictions are very numerous, especially engravings and paintings of the Pastoral, Camel and Horse periods. As happens in the Ennedi Plateau, the Tibesti Mountains are characterized by the existence of different local styles, with differences between the northern and southern ranges.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 2013
- Department
- Africa, Oceania and the Americas
- Registration number
- 2013,2034.7870
- Additional IDs
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Previous owner/ex-collection number: CHATEK0040033 (TARA number)