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.
