DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.66493#0041
Fezzan is the land of the Tuareg and the Tedda who, till recently,
have fought for centuries for the possession of the oases left over from
the Garamantae period. During the War Frobenius was fortunate
enough to encounter African prisoners from this region and to question
them closely concerning it. They reported that in certain valleys there
lived weird spirits which stared out from the rocks, transfixing the
traveler with their gaze and turning him to stone—a belief which was
confirmed later by natives from the Lake Chad region. One thing
dovetailed with another so neatly that Frobenius was determined to
investigate the matter further, a move which invited the skepticism of
the scientific world and the derision of the Italian authorities in Africa.
Mussolini, however, was interested and in 1932 the expedition
(diafe x) started southward, one branch heading for Inner Fezzan
and the stone plateau between Mursuk and Ubari and the other for
Ghat and the Tassili Mountains.
In the deep ravines at the very center of the plateau Frobenius
found no less than four main picture stations. He writes that here
there were two types of pictures, one depicting wild animals, among
them giraffes eighteen feet high, the other human figures sometimes
with animal heads. The most frequently recurring animals were
giraffe, bubalus antiquus, elephant, rhinoceros and crocodile (or
waran). The style in which the human figures were depicted was
apparently related on the one side to that of the levant art of Spain
and on the other to that of early Egyptian art. There were, for in-
stance, no less than four representations of the Egyptian god Bes.
In the second compositions (human figures), among them the
Barth pictures, there often occurred the pictures of cattle which some-
times, Frobenius says, “bore disks between their horns, just as in
Egypt. This reminded us that in the Sahara Atlas were pictures of
rams with disks between their horns and that Georg Schweinfurth
had already posed the question of whether or not these could be the
ur-pictures of the Egyptian ram god, Jupiter Ammon.”
A year later (diafe xi) Frobenius found in the Libyan Desert
39
have fought for centuries for the possession of the oases left over from
the Garamantae period. During the War Frobenius was fortunate
enough to encounter African prisoners from this region and to question
them closely concerning it. They reported that in certain valleys there
lived weird spirits which stared out from the rocks, transfixing the
traveler with their gaze and turning him to stone—a belief which was
confirmed later by natives from the Lake Chad region. One thing
dovetailed with another so neatly that Frobenius was determined to
investigate the matter further, a move which invited the skepticism of
the scientific world and the derision of the Italian authorities in Africa.
Mussolini, however, was interested and in 1932 the expedition
(diafe x) started southward, one branch heading for Inner Fezzan
and the stone plateau between Mursuk and Ubari and the other for
Ghat and the Tassili Mountains.
In the deep ravines at the very center of the plateau Frobenius
found no less than four main picture stations. He writes that here
there were two types of pictures, one depicting wild animals, among
them giraffes eighteen feet high, the other human figures sometimes
with animal heads. The most frequently recurring animals were
giraffe, bubalus antiquus, elephant, rhinoceros and crocodile (or
waran). The style in which the human figures were depicted was
apparently related on the one side to that of the levant art of Spain
and on the other to that of early Egyptian art. There were, for in-
stance, no less than four representations of the Egyptian god Bes.
In the second compositions (human figures), among them the
Barth pictures, there often occurred the pictures of cattle which some-
times, Frobenius says, “bore disks between their horns, just as in
Egypt. This reminded us that in the Sahara Atlas were pictures of
rams with disks between their horns and that Georg Schweinfurth
had already posed the question of whether or not these could be the
ur-pictures of the Egyptian ram god, Jupiter Ammon.”
A year later (diafe xi) Frobenius found in the Libyan Desert
39