Untitled Document

Discovery of Late Pleistocene rock art in Egypt

         Maxime Aubert1 and Dirk Huyge2

1 Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia
2 Royal Museums of Art and History, Jubelpark 10, B-1000 Brussels, Belgium

Intensive surveying of the Nubian sandstone cliffs immediately east of the modern village of Qurta, along the northern edge of the Kom Ombo Plain, Egypt in February-March 2007 led to the discovery of three rock art sites, designated Qurta I, II and III.  These sites show petroglyphs executed in a vigorous naturalistic, 'Franco-Cantabrian, Lascaux-like' style (Fig. 1). The Qurta rock art is quite unlike any rock art known elsewhere in Egypt. It is substantially different from the ubiquitous 'classical' Predynastic rock art of the fourth millennium BC, known from hundreds of sites throughout the Nile Valley and the adjacent Eastern and Western deserts. On the basis of style, patination and weathering, these petroglyphs are definitely extremely old. Direct ages for this rock art are not yet available, but analyses are under way to explore its potential for AMS 14C dating of organics in the varnish rind and/or U-series dating.

Figure 1. Detail of a bovid at Qurta II (QII.5.1)