Rock Art Rocks

One of the major techniques used by prehistoric desert artists is to chip and scrape the varnish, or patina, off of hard rocks. Known as petroglyphs, we occassionally visit such images on our hikes in the American Southwest. We are pleased to discover that there are lots of petroglyphs near our home here in the Negev desert.

So far, we've found lots petroglyphs around the area of Avdat. This area features a scenic spring and the site of an ancient city that was once a major stopping point for Nabatean spice caravans that traveled between Petra and Gaza. The petroglyphs here are found on limestone rock outcrops that are hard enough that they've taken on a dark brown desert varnish. Few of the limestone rocks around here are hard enough to take on a varnish. The varnish forms from minerals contained in rainwater and runoff that then bakes in the hot desert sun. Although it's hard to tell how old petroglyphs are, from poking around on the Internet it looks to me like the images near our house are probably less than four thousand years old.

Here is a picture of two explorers checking out some of the first images we found.


We were led to our first set of images by our dear friend and neighbor Yocheved Gordon. Here is a picture of her sitting with her husband Jeff.

We even got Yocheved, or Yokhi as she is better known to us, to pose with our family.


Below is a gallery of just some of the images we found in two locations. Most seem to be animals but there are other geometric forms that we couldn't identify. Of the animals, the most easily identified are the ibex.