ROCK ART OF THE BLACK DESERT OF JORDAN:

Humans have lived in the Levant for a very long time, and have left a many traces of past existences. I am going to look at two types of evidence, the ancient rock art, and ancient geoglyphs, but first the rock art.

Ostriches and two canids. The inscription records the artist's name. Brusgaard and Ackermans, 2021, fig. 9d.

In the local dialect the Jordanian Black Desert in known as a ‘harrah’. “A harrah, or basalt desert stretches from southern Syria across northeastern Jordan into northern Saudi Arabia. It is one of manjy such areas of lava produced by volcanoes along the eastern side of the Dead Sea Transform. The harrah in southern Syria and northeastern Jordan is the result of successive eruptions of the volcanoes which today constitute Jabal Al-‘Arab (formerly Jabal al-Druze) and others.” (Macdonald and Al-Manaser, 2019: 205) As we know from so many other locations, basalt is a great material for petroglyphs. It develops a dark patina that helps them show up, and it’s hardness fights erosion giving them a longer life.

Small hunter (highlighted) confronting a wild ass, with inscription. Photograph by Nathalie Brusgaard.

In further describing the Black Desert, Michael MacDonald and Ali Al-Manaser (20190 wrote “The harrah stretches from the eastern slope of jabal al-’Arab east and southeast for roughly a hundred kilometers. After the lava runs out, the underlying limestone desert (hamad) reappears and stretches north and east into Syria and Iraq, and south until it meets the sand desert of the Great Nefud in northern Saudi Arabia. The hamad was known to the nomads in the last centuries BC and the first few centuries AD as the mdbr ‘the inner desert’ where many of them pastured their flocks and herds from just after the first rains of the year in October until the pasture dried up or had been consumed by the animals.” (Macdonald, and Al-Manaser 2019:205)

Archer confronting his prey. From Brusgaard and Akkermans, 2021, fig. 9.4b.

Nathalie Brusgaard has written a number of papers on the rock art of the Black Desert. In describing it she says “Carved into the desert’s dark basalt stones, the rock art depict an array of zoomorphic, anthropomorphic, and geometric motifs, ranging from wild and domestic animals, such as lions, oryxes, dogs, and camels, to anthropomorphic figures, such as women and archers. Often these motifs are combined in scenes that may depict hunting, raiding, travelling, and dancing. Frequently, the petroglyphs are accompanied by inscriptions, written in an Ancient North Arabian script called Safaitic, which provide a rare glimpse into the lives of the nomads who once inhabited the desert.” (Brusgaard 2015:761)

Camel petroglyph with inscription. Photograph by Nathalie Brusgaard.

Many of the petroglyphs are accompanied by text, as described here. “Pictorial and textual engravings can be found in vast numbers across the Black Desert of Northern Arabia, a basalt desert that stretches from southern Syria through northeastern Jordan into northern Saudi Arabia.The carvings were made by nomadic peoples inhabiting the desert in the late first millennium BC and early first millennium AD. The rock art is figurative in nature, depicting anthropomorphic figures such as archers and women, zoomorphic figures such as dromedaries, horses, lions, and ibex, as well as various geometric designs. The figures are depicted individually, accumulated on panels, and in scenes interacting with one another. The inscriptions, written in the Ancient North Arabian Safaitic script, are intrinsically linked to the pictorial engravings. A common composition is a rock art figure or scene associated with an inscription in which the author states his or her name and genealogy and “signs” the image. Some texts also contain a narrative component in which the author states, for example, that he pastured his camels, migrated to another area, spent the winter in a particular place, or mourned the loss of a loved one. Based on these unique insights into the authors’ lives, the image emerges that these peoples were nomads who moved through the desert, subsisting at least in part on owning dromedaries and possibly ovicaprids and horses, built cairns for their dead, and worshipped a range of deities.” (Brusgaard and Akkermans 2021:134) While we struggle to figure out who created the rock art in our part of the world, in the Black Rock Desert of Jordan, many of the creators signed their work.

"Hidden hunter" theme. The hunter is concealed from the herd of animals around the corner of the rock. From Brusgaard, 2024, Fig. 3, p. 261.

But, the artist identifying their own work is not the only unique thing found in this area. In her paper in 2024, Brusgaard (page 264) described a unique type of incorporation found in a number of hunting scenes in the Black Desert which she has called the ‘hidden hunter’ theme. “In one scene, both hunter and prey are immediately visible to the audience. In another, the rock art appears at first glance to just depict a herd of ibex, a common occurrence. However, when the viewer looks at the boulder from another angle, the archer becomes visible and the hunting scene unveils itself. The nature of the boulder with scene 149 almost obscures the hunter altogether, although the archer’s bow and arrow on the main panel gives away his or her presence. Indeed, perhaps the depiction of the weapon on the main panel is meant to draw attention to the fact that a hunter lies around the corner; if one looks at the main panel carefully, one cannot miss it even if the hunter is concealed. It is apparent that this extra element is significant to the narrative because five out of the seven scenes featuring a hidden archer depict the bow and arrow curving onto the main panel.” Considering the significance that is placed on incorporation, this is a very clever application. To have the animals showing and a hunter hiding around the corner of the rock, exactly as he might have done in real life strikes me as very inventive. Have we even thought to look for this manner of incorporation in our part of the world?

So, with signatures and unique incorporation, this is not only a fascinating type of rock art, but an impressive job of analysis. Good work all around.

REFERENCES:

Brusgaard, Nathalie O., 2024, Hidden Hunters: Hunting Scenes as Micro-Landscapes in Black Desert Rock Art, in In Düring, B.S. and J.-H. Plug (eds) 2024. The Archaeology of the ‘Margins’. Studies on Ancient West Asia in Honour of Peter M.M.G. Akkermans. Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia 53. Leiden: Sidestone Press, pp. 257-272. DOI: 10.59641/h66998kt. Accessed online 9 March 2025.

Brusgaard, Nathalie O., 2015, Pastoralist rock art in the Black Desert of Jordan, in IFRAO 2015, XIX International Rock Art Conference, in Caceres, Extremadura, Spain. Accessed online 9 March 2025.

Brusgaard, Nathalie O., and Keshia A.N. Akkermans, 2021, Hunting and Havoc, Narrative Scenes in the Black Desert Rock Art of Jebel Qurma, Jordan,   pp. 134-149, in Making Scenes, Global Perspectives on Scenes in Rock Art, ed. By Ian Davidson and April Nowell, Berghahn Books, New York. Accessed at Researchgate.net. https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/365911512 on 9 March 2025.

Macdonald, Michael C.A., and Ali Al-Manaser, 2019, Recording Graffiti in the Black Desert: Past, Present, and Future, Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies, Vol. 7 (2) pp. 205-222. Accessed online 9 March 2025.