Tue 15/05/07 - A Belgian expedition has found a series of important pre-historical rock carvings in Qurta. The carvings have been found in the village of Qurta near Edfu in Egypt. (KMKG) The expedition consisted of an international team of archaeologists headed by Dirk Huyge, the head of the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels.
The expedition in which Ghent University also played a role was funded by Yale University (US).
The drawings are not the first that Dirk Huyge's team discovered in the area. Important prehistoric carvings depicting cattle were found near El-Hosh in the same area around Edfu.
Now the team has found a real treasure trove of pre-historic art including 160 drawings in the vicinity of Qurta, a village on the east bank of the River Nile. (KMKG) "Among oldest art ever found in Egypt" The carvings are made in soft sandstone and portray both cattle and humans.
Some of the drawings also show birds and fish.
Few archaeological remains are still left in the area because of the construction of villages for people who had to move as a result of the building of the Aswan Dam.
The drawings found by the Belgians resemble similar art discovered by Canadian archaeologists in 1962 in the area of Gebel Silsila.
The carvings are believed to date from some 16,000 years ago and are among the oldest works of art ever found in Egypt.
quote:Originally posted by Tigerlily: Belgians find carvings in Egypt The carvings are believed to date from some 16,000 years ago and are among the oldest works of art ever found in Egypt.
Dirk Huyge (Bruxelles, Belgium)
Coa in Africa: the rock art of Qurta (Upper Egypt)
ABSTRACT: In March-April 2004, in the scope of rock art surveying at El-Hosh (Upper Egypt), about 30 km south of Edfu, on the west bank of the Nile, a new and intriguing petroglyph locality was discovered. This locality (Abu Tanqurah Bahari 11) shows, among other items, several images of bovids executed in a ‘Franco-Cantabrian, Lascaux-like’ style. They are quite different from the stylized cattle representations in ‘classical’ Predynastic iconography of the 4th millennium BC. On the basis of patination and weathering, these bovid representations are definitely extremely old. They are comparable to similar bovid images that had been discovered by a Canadian mission in 1962-1963 on the opposite bank of the Nile, about 10 km more to the south, in the Gebel Silsila area. In October-November 2005, we succeeded in relocating these previously found sites. They are part of a huge rock art complex along the northern edge of the Kom Ombo Plain, truly a ‘Lascaux’ along the Nile. Because of their proximity to the village of Qurta, we have called these sites Qurta I and II. The main theme are naturalistically drawn bovids. They vary greatly in size: many are 50 to 80 cm long (much taller than bovid images in 'classical' Predynastic iconography). In addition, there are also representations of gazelle, hippopotami, fish, some monstrous beings and several stylized human figures (of pure Palaeolithic, ‘Magdalenian’ type). All the arguments are circumstantial, but we are quite convinced this is Palaeolithic rock art indeed. Additional circumstantial evidence, the proximity of the rock art to Palaeolithic settlement at two different locations where this type of art occurs, leads us to believe that it predates the ‘Wild Nile’ geological stage, i.e. older than about 14,000 BP. This would definitely make Qurta Egypt’s oldest art and one of the oldest graphic traditions thus far known from the African continent.
quote:Originally posted by Myra Wysinger: Dirk Huyge (Bruxelles, Belgium) -- This would definitely make Qurta Egypt’s oldest art and one of the oldest graphic traditions thus far known from the African continent.
No it's not!
Oldest Rockart in Africa, southwestern Namibia:
Apollo XI Cave: 25,500-23,500 B.C.: Farm Uitsig: Huns Mountains
Until recently, the Apollo 11 stones were the oldest known artwork of any kind from the African continent. More recent discoveries of incised ocher date back almost as far as 100,000 B.C., making Africa home to the oldest images in the world.
Very interesting. Another to add to the collection of prehistoric African art.
By the way Myra, isn't there rock art in Africa that predates the ones in Namibia?
Myra Wysinger Member # 10126
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: By the way Myra, isn't there rock art in Africa that predates the ones in Namibia?
I would love to know if there is Djehuti. Maybe there is someone in this forum who have been keeping up with the archeological findings in Africa too. I try to catch everything, but Africa is so rich in history it's kind of hard to keep up. Something new is being discovered everyday on the African continent, which is down right awesome.
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Myra Wysinger Member # 10126
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quote:Originally posted by Tigerlily: Belgians find carvings in Egypt
"Among oldest art ever found in Egypt" The carvings are made in soft sandstone and portray both cattle and humans.
Figure 8. Three incised stylised human figures with pronounced buttocks (superimposed by the belly-line of a large bovid) at Qurta II (QII.3.1). The rock art of Qurta can be about 15,000 years old. We accordingly propose an attribution of this Qurta rock art to the Late Pleistocene Ballanan-Silsilian culture or a Late Palaeolithic culture of similar nature and age.
quote:Originally posted by Please call me MIDOGBE: I think that the politically influential woman's stoutness feature is more often associated with the Central/Southern part of the continent than in East Africa nowadays in many people's mind. Don't know how accurate is this assumption though.
Senegalese Egyptologist Babacar SALL also pointed out the existence of this feature in Saharan art as well as in Predynastic Egypt, and the only depiction of the Puntite Queen seems to show it as well.
"Among oldest art ever found in Egypt" The rock art of Qurta can be about 15,000 years old.
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