Rock Art Research

‘Animal’ petroglyphs of the Eastern Desert of Egypt are reviewed with the intention of determining what they reveal about the people who drew them. It is argued that attempts to determine what they meant to the artists are fruitless and likely to be misleading. It is nevertheless possible to deduce, simply from the form of the images, certain conclusions about the artists and the communities in which they lived, which have the advantage of being reliable because they are not based on conjecture. They provide insights into certain aspects of the way of life of the people who frequented the Eastern Desert in the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE.