DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.66493#0039
These pictures were given serious attention some forty years ago
by the geologist Hamand and the geographer Gautier, whom we
must thank for the new vision they gave us of the geological and
artistic past of the country. In 1913 the diafe vi with a staff of four
painters set out for this region, first, to excavate prehistoric tumuli
and dolmen and, second, to copy the much older rock pictures and
so to lay the foundations of what has now become the prehistoric
Reichsfelsbildergalerie with facsimiles of more than three thousand
rock pictures from Africa and Europe. The work began in the neigh-
borhood of Figig with the pictures of the Jaschu Plateau, continued
southward to Taghit and later eastward to Afflu, el Richa and Djelfa.
The results of the expedition dovetailed neatly with the conclusions
of the French scholars and are contained in Haclschra Maktuba^ to
which Professor Obermaier was kind enough to contribute a foreword.
“In the Sahara Atlas,” writes Frobenius, “the enormous difference
between the ur-historic (original) culture, no matter to what period
it has still remained alive, and the rigid archaeological cultures com-
ing from the Mediterranean is sharply apparent. The rock pictures of
the latter are characterized by script signs, chariot wheels and other
symbols and, above all, by their smallness. In contrast we have the
splendid conception of the wild animals found in the monumental pic-
tures of the bubalus antiquus (old buffalo) and of the elephant, a con-
Rock engraving. Two fighting buffaloes. Sahara Atlas, North Africa (catalog no. 87)
1 Kurt Wolff Verlag, Munich, 1925.
37
Univ. Bayreuth
Univ. Blbllothek
by the geologist Hamand and the geographer Gautier, whom we
must thank for the new vision they gave us of the geological and
artistic past of the country. In 1913 the diafe vi with a staff of four
painters set out for this region, first, to excavate prehistoric tumuli
and dolmen and, second, to copy the much older rock pictures and
so to lay the foundations of what has now become the prehistoric
Reichsfelsbildergalerie with facsimiles of more than three thousand
rock pictures from Africa and Europe. The work began in the neigh-
borhood of Figig with the pictures of the Jaschu Plateau, continued
southward to Taghit and later eastward to Afflu, el Richa and Djelfa.
The results of the expedition dovetailed neatly with the conclusions
of the French scholars and are contained in Haclschra Maktuba^ to
which Professor Obermaier was kind enough to contribute a foreword.
“In the Sahara Atlas,” writes Frobenius, “the enormous difference
between the ur-historic (original) culture, no matter to what period
it has still remained alive, and the rigid archaeological cultures com-
ing from the Mediterranean is sharply apparent. The rock pictures of
the latter are characterized by script signs, chariot wheels and other
symbols and, above all, by their smallness. In contrast we have the
splendid conception of the wild animals found in the monumental pic-
tures of the bubalus antiquus (old buffalo) and of the elephant, a con-
Rock engraving. Two fighting buffaloes. Sahara Atlas, North Africa (catalog no. 87)
1 Kurt Wolff Verlag, Munich, 1925.
37
Univ. Bayreuth
Univ. Blbllothek