Abstract
M.E. F. GAUTIER has published in l'Anthropologie (xv., 1904, p. 497) an illustrated account of a recent of rock carvings in the ravine of Zenaga, between Figuig and Beni-Ounif, in Sahara. The drawings are in deep outline and of large size, sometimes life-size, and their antiquity is established by the patina in the cuts being as pronounced as that on the surface, and by the fact that some of the animals represented, such as the elephant, no longer exist there, while others, lfke the buffalo, are now extinct. In Fig. 1 we have two recognisable portraits of Bubalus antiquus and one of an elephant. Several South Oranais petroglyphs represent a ram or goat with a spheroid on its head, provided with projecting appendages (Fig. 2). It is suggested that the spheroid is a solar disc flanked on each side by a snake (uraeus), and this would be a representation of the great god Ammon, of Thebes. If this be so, the question arises, did the inspiration of the South Oranais engraving come from Egypt, or had the god Ammon a Libyan origin? The goat (Ovis longipes) of differs in some details from those of Bou-Alem, and the “solar disc” is provided with rays. The other drawings of this problematic design were exhibited at the International Congress of Anthropology of 1900, and gave rise to a long discussion.
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H., A. North African Petroglyphs . Nature 71, 570–571 (1905). https://doi.org/10.1038/071570a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/071570a0