First, fully illustrated, presentation of a large but generally little known assemblage of petroglyphic rock art from the Western Desert of Egypt.

Rock art in Dakhleh was produced for perhaps as long as 10 millennia, resulting in the formation of hundreds of sites displaying thousands of images. In some places, petroglyphs form a true melting pot of iconographic creations, elsewhere only isolated depictions appear on rock surfaces. Various rock art traditions, from prehistoric, through pharaonic, Graeco-Roman, and mediaeval, have all added to a tremendous variety of petroglyphs, their formal traits and subject matter.

This book is the first ever monograph on Dakhleh Oasis rock art, providing both an introduction to the versatile topic as well as an overview of the current state of research. It is designed as a collection of essays that deal with specific aspects of the research. The reader is offered here not only old and new documentation, much of it previously unpublished, but also a great deal of innovative interpretation.

All chapters, although devoted to different case studies, revolve around an all-encompassing concept of landscape of motion. It is argued here that rock art, regardless of its date of origin, was (and is) always involved in certain dynamic contexts. In Dakhleh, the majority of petroglyphs – especially during historical periods – were produced in spatial contexts of paths and routes, and thus by people on the move. It is argued here that various kinds of movement were often a significant factor contributing to the meaning and function of the images. The intention of this book is to explore and unveil such contexts, which may prove somewhat elusive if we focus our analyses exclusively on the representational aspects of rock art. Such a type of integration of rock art, landscape and motion is the major aim of this work, and has hopefully been achieved by merging perspectives and concepts derived from Egyptology, Anthropology, and other social sciences.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• CHAPTER 1. Introduction: Aims, Scope and Theoretical Toolkit
  • 1.1. Aims of the study
  • 1.2. Notes on the oasis’ geography and the territorial scope of the study
  • The oasis’ geography, geomorphology and geology
  • Territorial scope of the study
  • 1.3. The history of rock art research in Dakhleh
  • Before the Second World War
  • The Dakhleh Oasis Project era
  • Research in the Dakhleh environs
  • 1.4. Corpus under the study: Documentation and limiting factors
  • 1.5. The current study: Approach, definitions, methods
  • Major theoretical concepts and terms employed in the study
  • Landscape
  • Ontology
  • BOX 1.1. ONTOLOGICAL TURN(S) IN ANTHROPOLOGY
  • Agency
  • Motion
  • Armed with concepts, ready to march out
• CHAPTER 2. A ‘Passage’ Through Time: Routes and Movement in Dakhleh from Prehistory to Modern Times
  • 2.1. Introduction: Dakhleh’s space-time
  • 2.2. Holocene climatic changes
  • Against determinism
  • Dynamics of climate
  • 2.3. Prehistory: Early to middle Holocene hunter-gatherers (ca. 8250–5600 BCE)
  • The Masara and Bashendi A cultural units in Dakhleh
  • Hunter-gatherers on the move
  • BOX 2.1. TWO (TECHNO)COMPLEXES IN THE WESTERN DESERT
  • 2.4. Prehistory: Middle Holocene hunters and cattle herders (ca. 5500–2200 BCE)
  • The Bashendi B ‘pastro-foragers’
  • The last indigenes or the Sheikh Muftah cultural unit
  • 2.5. Dynastic period: Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period (ca. 2700–2000 BCE)
  • BOX 2.2. ABU BALLAS TRAIL
  • 2.6. Dynastic period: Middle Kingdom to the end of the Late Period (ca. 2000–332 BCE)
  • Dakhleh during the Middle through New Kingdom periods
  • Third Intermediate Period to the end of the pharaonic era
  • 2.7. Dakhleh in the last two millennia (332 BCE to the modern day)
  • Ptolemaic and Roman times: Fringes of the empire
  • Islamic period onwards: Towards the oasis as we know it
  • 2.8. Moving in the landscape that itself is on the move
• CHAPTER 3. A Circle of Life? Prehistoric Anthropomorphic Petroglyphs and Knowledge of the World
  • 3.1. Prehistoric rock art at Dakhleh: a preamble
  • 3.2. Motif of a ‘pregnant woman’
  • Primary characterisation
  • Distribution
  • Dating
  • BOX 3.1. LADIES HILL
  • 3.3. ‘Crux interpretum’: Previous readings of the motif
  • The question of sex
  • 3.4. Anthropomorphs in the Bashendi culture
  • People and their world(s)
  • BOX 3.2. NEW ANIMISM
  • Knowledge dwells in the landscape
  • 3.5. …but knowledge of what?
  • Pregnancy revisited
  • Intercourse discourse
  • Anthropomorphs and animals
  • 3.6. World in motion: a circle of life
  • Beyond the image
  • The audiences
• CHAPTER 4. Animated Landscape of Animals
  • 4.1. Animals and animacy
  • 4.2. Prehistoric zoomorphic depictions in Dakhleh
  • Introductory comments on animal depictions in Dakhleh
  • Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis)
  • Scimitar oryx (Oryx dammah)
  • Gazelles (Gazella and Nanger)
  • Ostrich (Struthio camelus)
  • Further remarks on the zoomorphic figures
  • BOX 4.1. SAVANNAH ANIMALS TODAY
  • 4.3. Trapped between reality and symbols: Zoomorphs in Egypt’s Western Desert
  • ‘Depiction of environment’, or what hunters hunted
  • BOX 4.2. ‘GIRAFE À LIEN’
  • 4.4. Extending the social
  • Humans and animals: Togetherness
  • Shared life on the move
  • 4.5. Zoomorphic rock art: a reassessment
  • Animals present in rock art
  • Nonhuman persons with animal bodies
  • BOX 4.3. MEANDERING CREATURES
  • 4.6. World in motion: All things move
• CHAPTER 5. Pharaonic Rock Art: Negotiating Identities
  • 5.1. Dynastic rock art of Dakhleh: Introduction
  • Sphinx in the desert
  • Introductory remarks
  • 5.2. Rock art and the oasis colonisation (Old Kingdom to early Middle Kingdom): Watch posts, routes and identity
  • Petroglyphs at watch posts: a characterisation
  • Securing the dating
  • Identifying the marks of identity
  • Carving (out) the landscape
  • BOX 5.1. IS THERE SHEIKH MUFTAH ROCK ART?
  • 5.3. Rock art moves in the landscape
  • Movement and the practice of petroglyphing: an example of the southern path
  • Attention, Attraction, Affordances
  • 5.4. World in motion: Bringing Egypt to the desert
• CHAPTER 6. In the Temple of Seth
  • 6.1. The storm
  • 6.2. Lord of the Oasis
  • 6.3. Seth-related rock art in Dakhleh
  • Group 1: Southeast of Teneida
  • Group 2: Gryphon Site
  • Group 3: Central Dakhleh Oasis
  • Subgroup 3a: Seth Hill
  • Subgroup 3b: The environs of the southern path
  • Subgroup 3c: The environs of the northern path
  • A glimpse at the Kharga material
  • General remarks
  • 6.4. Experiencing the landscape
  • Landscape as a body
  • To the West
  • Weather-world and the powers of Seth
  • 6.5. The power of image
  • Deities on the route
  • Places of contact
  • Carvings as non-representations
  • Feet and sandals
  • Ontology of the image
  • Seth images reconsidered
  • 6.6. World in motion: in the temple of Seth
• CHAPTER 7. Epilogue: Time to Move on
  • 7.1. Uncharted territories
  • 7.2. Territories explored
• BIBLIOGRAPHY