Some shoot out of the delicate rock like reptiles bathing within the solar. Others are mysterious depressions resembling an historic board sport performed all over the world. And some are straight-up puzzling.
On a desolate and windswept nook of Qatar’s northeastern coast, among the many sand dunes of the barren desert, lies Al Jassasiya, the Gulf nation’s largest and most necessary rock artwork website.
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Right here, folks centuries in the past used a collection of low-lying limestone outcrops as a canvas on which they carved symbols, motifs and objects that they noticed of their surroundings.
Total, archaeologists have discovered a complete of some 900 rock carvings, or “petroglyphs,” at Al Jassasiya.
They’re principally enigmatic cup marks organized in numerous patterns, together with rows and rosettes, but additionally eye-catching representations of crusing ships, normally seen from above but additionally depicted in linear profile, amongst different symbols and indicators.
“Though rock artwork is widespread within the Arabian Peninsula, among the carvings in Al Jassasiya are distinctive and can’t be discovered wherever else,” Ferhan Sakal, head of excavation and website administration at Qatar Museums, advised CNN, referring to the petroglyphs of ships seen from a chicken’s-eye view.
“These carvings signify a excessive diploma of creativity and remark abilities (on the a part of) the artists who made them,” he mentioned.
“Additionally (of) summary pondering, as they weren’t capable of see the dhow (a conventional ship) from above.”
Cup marks
There are about 12 notable petroglyph websites in Qatar, situated principally alongside the nation’s coasts — though some carvings may even be seen within the coronary heart of Doha’s Al Bidda Par, overlooking the Corniche, a well-liked waterfront promenade.
Al Jassasiya, about an hour north of Qatar’s uber-modern capital and close to the outdated pearling port of Al Huwaila, was found in 1957.
Over six weeks in late 1973 and early 1974, a Danish crew led by archaeologist Holger Kapel and his son Hans undertook a research which painstakingly cataloged your entire website in images and drawings.
Of all of the documented single figures and compositions, greater than a 3rd encompass cup marks in numerous configurations, sizes and styles.
Credit score: Dimitris Sideridis/CNN
Essentially the most distinguished sample includes two parallel rows of seven holes, main some to imagine that these have been used to play mancala, a board sport well-liked in lots of components of the world since antiquity during which two contestants drop odd and even numbers of small stones into the depressions.
Others have disputed this concept, pointing to the truth that among the holes at Al Jassasiya are too small to carry any of the stones, whereas others will be discovered on slopes – an impractical selection that may have resulted within the counters falling out.
Additional recommendations embody the cup formations getting used indirectly for divination; or for the sorting and storage of pearls; or as programs to calculate the time and tides.
Sport concept
So, what have been they really for and what do they imply?
“It is extremely troublesome to reply,” acknowledged Sakal, who additionally doesn’t aspect with the board-game concept.
“We now have no direct clues in regards to the motifs utilized in Al Jassasiya,” he mentioned.
“For my part, they may have a ritual that means and performance, which could be very outdated in order that it can’t be defined ethnographically.”
However how outdated?
“We actually have no idea,” conceded Sakal, explaining that petroglyphs — and rock artwork, usually — are very difficult thus far.
“There are wild hypotheses in regards to the age, starting from Neolithic to late Islamic instances,” he added.
“I personally assume that not all carvings have been made on the similar time.”
A decade in the past, one scientific research of 9 totally different petroglyphs at Al Jassasiya discovered no proof of them being quite a lot of hundred years outdated, however the researchers concluded that extra research are wanted, together with the event of latest strategies particular to limestone carvings.
Whereas specialists can not absolutely say when the Al Jassasiya petroglyphs have been created, and by whom, all of them agree that essentially the most fascinating — and strange — carvings on the website are these of the boats.
These creations present necessary details about the varieties of vessels used within the thriving fishing and pearling industries (for hundreds of years, the mainstays of Qatar’s financial system), in addition to their numerous components.
Many of the boats seen from above are normally fish-shaped with pointed sterns and rows of oars, carved with a pointed metallic software.
They comprise a number of particulars, corresponding to crossing ribs and holes seemingly exhibiting the position of masts and thwarts.
In some instances, an extended line from the strict depicts a rope ending both in a conventional Arabic anchor (triangular stone anchor with two holes) or a European one (a metallic anchor with an extended shank and two curved arms, first used within the area about seven centuries in the past).
Journey to the afterlife
“On among the boats the oars should not parallel, as they must be when used for rowing, however pointing in numerous places,” Frances Gillespie and Faisal Abdulla Al-Naimi wrote in “Hidden within the Sands: Uncovering Qatar’s Previous. “
“That is how they might have regarded when the boats have been anchored out on the pearl banks and the oars have been left in place for the divers to cling to and relaxation every time they got here up.”
Consultants say they will solely speculate as to why there may be such a excessive focus of ship carvings at Al Jassasiya, in comparison with different coastal petroglyphic websites in Qatar.
“Ships held a strong function within the beliefs of historic peoples, who noticed them as a symbolic technique of transit from this world to the subsequent,” Gillespie and Al-Naimi famous.
“Each Babylonians and historic Egyptians believed that the lifeless reached the afterworld on a ship. Greek myths spoke of the ferryman Charon who carried the souls of the lifeless throughout the river Styx to the underworld. It could be that the oldest of the ship carvings are echoes of a folks reminiscence reaching far again into pre-historic instances.”
Regardless of the purpose, guests ought to bear in mind to take water with them and put on a hat and sunscreen when wandering among the many carvings to ponder their that means.
The fenced website doesn’t have any shaded areas, so the most effective instances to go to are at dawn and sundown.
Al Jassasiya is situated simply south of the favored Azerbaijani Seashore, so an tour there can be mixed with a calming day beside the ocean.
