Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has finished documenting ancient graffiti found in a small cave in the South Sinai.
It is modestly sized, standing 22 meters wide, 3.5 meters high and 3 meters deep, and is decorated with an array of ancient cave paintings dating back to different eras.
Some of the oldest depict animals resembling donkeys or mules and are thought to belong to a period sometime between 5,500 and 10,000 BCE, the ministry says. In another section of the cave, the ministry reports scenes of women and animals thought to date back to the Chalcolithic Period Ancient cave paintings of animals in red pigment. The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities have finished documenting the paintings found in a small cave in the Sinai.
According to Darnell, red painted imagery is not as commonly found as incised images and text. While a painting seeming to illustrate a camel suggests that at least some of the graffiti is no older than the first millennium BCE, and could be later.The ministry has also documented the presence of a series of human hand prints on the cave ceiling.
In addition to all the ancient artwork, the ministry report other signs of past inhabitation. The presence of animal excrement suggests it was once used by Bedouins, desert nomads in the Middle East, and their livestock as shelter from storms and the cold."Egypt has a long history of rock art and inscriptions, and reveals a complex tradition of human interactions with the landscape," said Darnell.
The documentation of the paintings appears to be part of an ongoing effort to document this part of the country.
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