Rock art surveys in the Sudanese Eastern Desert: results of the 2018–2019 Atbai Survey Project

Julien Cooper, Dorian Vanhulle

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    Abstract

    The Sudanese Eastern Desert or the ‘Atbai’ is still largely unexplored from the point of view of rock art surveys. As part of the Atbai Survey Project’s fieldwork program, surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019 identified new rock art sites in the deserts around Gebel Nahoganet. Findings included a large tableau of a boat ‘fleet’ along with numerous sites yielding faunal rock art and surface remains. While a generalized boat motif is relatively commonplace in the corpus of rock art from Egypt and Nubia, this specific type of boat encountered in this distant desert exhibits a number of unique features. Notably, the tableau is carved within the walls of a natural tunnel and the features and manner of its execution have few parallels elsewhere. This contribution introduces the hypothesis that these boat motifs may have been the products of local Nubian groups including the A-Group horizon (c. 3800–3100 BCE).
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)189-208
    Number of pages20
    JournalJournal of Egyptian Archaeology
    Volume109
    Issue number1-2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jun 2023

    Bibliographical note

    Copyright the Author(s) 2023. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

    Keywords

    • Nubia
    • rock art
    • Eastern Desert
    • Atbai
    • Predynastic

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