Rock Art Research

This article identifies two sets of Neolithic symbols from the eastern and western ends of the Sahara, which seem so similar, isolated at their loci and unlikely to result from parallel evolution, because of the variety and intimate association of the symbols in the sets, that the similarities may indicate a cultural connection; and perhaps even a displacement between 4000 and 3700 BCE, rather than cultural diffusion during the earlier westward spread of pastoralism. Several observers, including Henri Lhote and Raymond Vaufrey, have already noted individual resemblances between central and western Saharan iconography and Egyptian symbols, such as falcon imagery and rams wearing discs between their horns. But this article argues that the set of similarities is both larger than reported and more concentrated, with several strands of evidence converging on a zone encompassing the Kem-Kem Hamada and Wadi Draa on the Algerian-Moroccan border. While some of these similarities probably derive from the common roots of Nilotic and Saharan cultures during the spread of pastoralism from Nubia to the Maghreb from 6000 to 5400 cal. BCE, others — such as grinding platforms with low relief, inwardly spiralled snakes on their backs, which occur in the western Sahara as part of a tradition of decorated querns, and northern Nubia, where there was apparently no such tradition — may signal a later connection. The article weighs the probability of a westward contact versus an eastward one around 4000 BCE and speculates that some of the resemblances may represent the arrival in the Nile Valley of refugees who fled the increasing aridity of the 4th millennium BCE by retracing the steps of pastoral ancestors. If this scenario is correct, some of the elements of Egyptian theology that became the prerogatives of royalty and the rationale for kingship, including the Horus-Osiris cycle, arrived from the west as the result of an exodus caused by climate change.