The rock engravings of Oued Djerat, located in the Tassili n'Ajjer, Algeria, and dated to the Neolithic period, have many affinities with those of the South Oranese (Algeria) and the Fezzan (Libya). According to Henri Lhote, they date back more than 7000 years. He estimated that they comprise more than 4,000 drawings.
In terms of subject matter, many depictions feature large game animals found today in East Africa. Domestic animals include sheep, goats, and oxen. Depictions of humans reveal information about their clothing and hairstyles. In the Bubaline period, war scenes are absent and hunting scenes are rare. In contrast, sexual scenes are numerous in several periods.
History It seems, writes Henri Lhote, that the engravings of Oued Djerat "have been known for a long time and have been reported to the explorer F. Foureau, during his expedition of 1892–1893 ". In 1932, Lieutenant Brenans made a survey of a certain number of them that he sent to Maurice Reygasse, then curator of the Bardo Museum in Algiers. During the winter of 1934 the professors Émile Félix Gautier and M. Reygasse studied them and published several notes shortly afterwards. Amazed by his great naturalist engravings, he nicknamed the Oued Djerat "the Vézère of the Sahara". The same year, in November, Henri Lhote accompanied the geographer R. Perret. During the winter 1935 M. Reygasse returned to Oued Djerat, accompanied by the painter Rigal who executed some engravings and paintings.
After having raised the paintings of Tassili in 1956–1957, Henri Lhote, encouraged by the General de Gaulle and several ministers, undertakes in 1959, at the head of a team of five people to which several Tuareg collaborators are added, to make an inventory of the engravings of Oued Djerat (which he will see again in 1969 and 1970). Not only did he make surveys and photographs of them, but he also made about sixty casts (liquid latex and siccative). The repertory that he published in 1976 describes 73 stations (numbered by going down the wadi) and includes 2605 figures from different periods. The author, specifying that there are several missing panels that were not numbered, estimates that in total the number of engravings "certainly exceeds 4000". "This figure, exceptional for a single valley and over such a short distance, shows the remarkable character of the wadi Djerat," he concludes.
The Lhote expedition was exceptional by the information it was able to provide, by the endurance of its members in the face of difficult living conditions in the Tassili. However, the brutal methods used at the time by the Lhote team (wetting with a wet sponge, scribbling with charcoal) have destroyed in some places the biological information that would have allowed them to be dated. Today, some paintings are falling apart because of the frequent wetting of the visitors.
Localization
The Djerat wadi is a cañon dug in the Tassili siluro-devonian sandstones which runs between very steep cliffs. It flows into the valley of Illizi, about a hundred kilometers from the Libyan border. The wadi is on average 200 meters wide, its cliffs varying from 25 to 30 meters high at the outlet, reaching 150 meters towards the palm grove of Nafeg and reducing towards its sources. It receives many tributaries, including the wadis Afar and Assahor, which provide a large volume of water at the time of rains. The two banks of the wadi are covered with engravings over a distance, according to the maps published by Lhote in his work, of nearly twenty kilometers.
They are located on the upper terraces of the wadi, on the vertical walls of fallen blocks, most often on the horizontal surface of rocks in place. Being placed at a height of 8 to 12 meters above the lower terrace, the flood level does not reach them.
The research carried out at the foot of the engravings gave no clues as to the polishing process and the tools used, which, given the diversity of the widths and depths of the gutters, must not have been of a single type.
Classification These engravings belong to several periods. Lhote, relying on the differences in the patinas and the techniques of the line, resumes his classification in four periods elaborated from the documents studied in the central Sahara, applied to the rock engravings of the South-Oranese by introducing complementary sub-stages, then extended to those of the Moroccan South and of the Rio de Oro, to the engravings of the South-Algerian and the South-Constantinois, as to those of Fezzan.
Lhote thus distinguishes four periods for the engravings of the oued Djerat.
The Bubalus or Bubaline period
According to Lhote, 1060 engravings can be related to the period of Bubalus antiquus, most often of large size. Their outline is generally polished (in a lowered U-shape), but sometimes in a V-shape or simply staked, and their patina is very dark. If some subjects are depicted below their natural size, others are life-size, if not above, and it is rare that the representations measure less than one meter. Lhote cites a dozen cases in which the image was supplemented by a mediocre copy that seems to be contemporary with it. The style is on the whole naturalistic but some animals (giraffes) may be schematized. In sixteen cases the diocular formula (eyes placed one above the other) is used, as in certain engravings of the South Oranese: one can suppose according to the author that they reflect "what there is of more ancient in Djerat".
The varieties of styles that remain difficult to place in chronological order "seem to correspond to a very long duration of the bubaline period during which changes in lifestyle must have occurred," writes Lhote. For him, the Oxen only appeared in a second period and the "women with spread legs" in a terminal period. Since the work of Lhote, it appeared that the notion of a so-called "period" of the Bubalus, also called "Bubalin" and which would be prior to the Bovidian, does not correspond to reality, because the Bubalus is one of the styles of engravings of the Bovidian, as demonstrated by Alfred Muzzolini in the early 1980s, in work that has been amply confirmed since.. Voir aussi
The period of the Bovidian Pastoralists or Bovidian period
The 300 engravings, generally of more modest dimensions and of a more careless style, that Lhote attributes to him have, on the whole, more figurations with pitted than polished outlines. Their dark patina, most often grayish, no longer reaches the intensity of brilliant black. Most of them feature bovids with stenciled outlines, of a lower quality than the previous works, but also some giraffes, elephants, ostriches, and rare rhinoceroses. "The bovid engravers seem to have made only brief intrusions into Wadi Djerat, whose torrential nature was not conducive to the stay of cattle," concludes the author.
The Horse or Caballine period The Caballine populations, who frequented the region much more than the cattle herders, left more traces of their passage, at least 420 engravings (as well as paintings) of small dimensions. Their staking is fine and regular, their patina buff. The populations of this time, arrived in the Sahara with the tank, used bronze and it is not necessary for their realization to eliminate, according to Lhote, the use of points of this metal.
This period is divided into two sub-periods, one analphabetic, characterized by the chariots, the second alphabetic, with the appearance of Libyan-Berber characters.
Henri Lhote distinguishes four groups from the point of view of style. The first is that of the "chariots with flying gallop" and of the "warriors carrying the Libyan feather", armed with javelins. The zoomorphic headdress of one of them recalls that of the Shardanes of the Sea Peoples.
The second, particular to the Djerat wadi, would be composed of slender human figurations, mainly masculine ithyphallic, wearing feathers and a pointed beard. "Several of them are busy practicing the sexual act," notes Lhote. Several archers "shoot each other" or chase the mouflon.
A third group presents (station I) small figures, several of which carry a javelin, a round shield and a dagger hanging from the arm. The fauna is composed of felines and perhaps a rhinoceros.
A fourth, later group appears to be alphabetical. It is represented by "large figures with rectangular tunics". The fauna is composed of giraffes, lions, cattle, mouflons, ostriches and dogs.
The Camel period
These later engravings, with a light, almost white patina, are clearly less numerous than in the previous period. Made by direct percussion, without the use of an intermediate tool, their contours are very irregular and the subjects (characters, camels, ostriches, horses, oxen) are small. Alphabetical inscriptions appear on them.
The first two periods are prehistoric, the next two historical.
According to Lhote "the interest of the rock paintings of Wadi Djerat lies especially in the engravings of the period of the Bubal (...) both by their quantity and their quality and the problems they raise".
Animal and human representations Wildlife It has about thirty species that show the presence of very abundant vegetation and water bodies of some permanence. The species identified on the engravings are :
the Ancient Buffalo (12 specimens), the Elephant (96 specimens, including one of 470 cm at station XXV, for the bubaline and bovidian periods, represented according to six different formulas), the Hippopotamus (22 specimens), the Rhinoceros (119 specimens at Oued Djerat, which confirm the humidity of the Tassili in the Bubaline period), the Giraffe (54 specimens of which a certain number later than the time of the hartebeestLhote reports, not in Wadi Djerat per se but at the chaaba Ti-n-Tehed, a tributary of the left bank of the wadi, a few dozen meters from the confluence (station LXXXIII), a group of twelve giraffes, engraved on a slab barely inclined, the largest of which measures nearly 850 cm, "the whole covering an area of 120 m2 (1,300 sq ft), which makes it the most monumental parietal work of all prehistoric art. Lhote reports that it did not seem conceivable to André Malraux, interested in the paintings of Tassili and the engravings of the oued Djerat, that the possession of such an aptitude to the drawing "would not have been due to a teaching given by experienced masters, otherwise how to believe that it was possible to a prehistoric man to succeed at once a giraffe of 8,50 m on a horizontal slab? (cf )), the wild donkey, the Horse Antelope (11 specimens, generally from the bubaline period), the Oryx antelope (2 specimens from the bubaline period), the Addax antelope (5 specimens), the Gazelle (little represented but common at the time), the Mouflon, the Warthog (one specimen, the only one in the Sahara, although it must have been very widespread there), the Orycterope (an uncertain specimen), the Cercopithecus (one specimen), the Cynocephalus (4 specimens), the Lion (about ten specimens for the bubaline period, some specimens for the following periods), the Cheetah (3 specimens), the Hyena (3 specimens), the Cynhyene (several uncertain specimens), the Jackal (one specimen), the Hare (one copy but several zoomorphic engravings represent characters with long ears resembling those of the hare), the Ostrich (represented at all times according to various styles), the Pink Flamingo (3 specimens), the Pelican (a group, more likely representing shoebill storks), the Owl (2 specimens probably belonging to a rather late stage of the bubaline period), the Crocodile (4 incomplete specimens), the Python (one specimen), the Viper (3 specimens attributable to the Caballine period), the Snakes (2 specimens of the Caballine period), the manatee (uncertain specimen) the Fish (3 specimens at the station XVII reminding the Mormyre of Niger and Chad).
Domestic animals
Several species are represented: