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Appendix – Rock-Carvings at Kharsah Fadel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 March 2015
Extract
[Dr Fadel was kind enough to provide the information given below at very short notice in two notes, one in English and one in Arabic (which was originally translated for us by Raymond Stock, M.A., Asian and Middle Eastern Department, University of Pennsylvania). The contents of the two notes have been combined here, after helpful discussion with Dr Hafid Walda of King's College London. We look forward to a more complete presentation of this important site in the near future (D.W., J.M.R.).]
The rock-carvings which are the subject of this note were found in 1980 when a group of amateur archaeologists from Derna discovered an ancient site near modern Kharsah (in antiquity the small harbour of Chersis, Ptolemy, Geog. IV.2). The group, consisting of Faraj Al-Mzaini, Mustapha Ab-Shiha, Abdulla Ben Umran, Murzook Husain and Salheen Mansuri, observed traces of ancient occuption on the summit of the coastal hill known as Ras el-Gemal (Camel's Head), c. 20 km west of Derna, near the offshore island identifiable as ancient Aphrodisias (S. Stucchi, Architettura Cirenaica [Roma 1975] 108, n. 3), and beside a small wadi bringing water to the sea from the Gebel to the south. On the hill, which is a rocky outcrop full of caves, Mr Ramadan Kwaider, Inspector in Charge of Museums in the Department of Antiquities at Shahat, reported rock-cut representations of animals. They include long-horned cattle, certainly a cow (fig. 5), perhaps a bull, although this may be a Barbary sheep (fig. 6), along with an animal that resembles an elephant, drawn below the cow, at the bottom of the carved area – it is very small, but the space available was very small.
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- Copyright © Society for Libyan Studies 1994
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