Source: Yale
Using a new technology known
as optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), a team of Belgian scientists and
Yale Professor of Egyptology John Coleman Darnell have determined that Egyptian
petroglyphs found at the east bank of the Nile are about 15,000 years old,
making them the oldest rock art in Egypt and possibly the earliest known
graphic record in North Africa.
The dating results will be
published in the December issue of Antiquity (Vol 85 Issue 330, pp. 1184-1193).
The rock art sites are
situated near the modern village of Qurta, on the east bank of the Nile, about
40km south of the Upper-Egyptian town of Edfu. First seen by Canadian
archaeologists in the early 1960s, they were subsequently forgotten and
relocated by the Belgian mission in 2005. The rediscovery was announced in the
Project Gallery of Antiquity in 2007.
The rock art at Qurta is
characterized by hammered and incised naturalistic-style images of aurochs and
other wild animals. On the basis of their intrinsic characteristics (subject
matter, technique, and style), their patina and degree of weathering, as well
as the archaeological and geomorphological context, these petroglyphs have been
attributed s the late Pleistocene era, specifically to the late Palaeolithic
period (roughly 23 000 to 11 000 years ago), making them more or less
contemporary with European art from the last Ice Age, such as, most notably,
the wall-paintings of Lascaux and Altamira caves.
"The palaeolithic rock
art at Qurta reveals that the well-known cave art of the late Pleistocene in
Europe was not an isolated phenomenon. Qurta puts North Africa firmly in the
world of the earliest surviving artistic tradition, and shows that tradition to
have been geographically more wide-spread than heretofore imagined,"
commented Darnell in an email.
The authors of the study note
that while archaeologists generally did not dispute the estimated age of the
images, proof in the form of indirect or direct science-based dating had
hitherto been lacking.
In 2008, an interdisciplinary
team of scientists, directed by Dirk Huyge of the Royal Museums of Art and
History in Brussels (Belgium), discovered partly buried rock art panels at one
of the Qurta sites. The deposits covering the rock art, in part composed of
wind-blown sediments, were dated at the Laboratory of Mineralogy and Petrology
(Luminescence Research Group) of Ghent University (Belgium) using OSL dating.
This technology can determine the time that has elapsed since the buried
sediment grains were last exposed to sunlight and offers a direct means for
establishing the time of sediment deposition and accumulation. Based on
analysis provided through this method, it was determined that the petroglyphs
at Qurta are at least 15 000 years old. This is the first solid evidence that
the rock art dates from the Pleistocene age, making it the oldest graphic
activity ever recorded in Egypt and the whole of North Africa. Funding for this
research was provided by the William K. and Marilyn M. Simpson Endowment for
Egyptology of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Yale
University, USA (fieldwork) and the Fund for Scientific Research - Flanders
(laboratory analyses). In addition, the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo
and Vodafone Egypt offered administrative and logistical support.
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