Oued Rheris II: A new site of rock paintings in the South of Morocco.

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Inhaltsverzeichnis
(der kompletten Print-Version)
Hans-Joachim Ulbrich:
Die prähispanischen Ortsnamen in der Lanzarote-Karte
von Dámaso de Quezada y Chaves (18. Jh.) .................................................. 7
Samia Ait Ali Yahia:
Nouvelles stèles à inscriptions libyques de la Grande Kabylie ...................... 17
Franz Trost:
Das Feindbild der alten Ägypter .................................................................. 27
Nicole Honoré, Susan Searight-Martinet, France & François Soleilhavoup:
Wa-n-Kalia, un site rupestre dans l'Aramat, Libye ...................................... 65
Joaquín Caridad Arias:
Las antiguas divinidades Tanit, Támara o Tamar,
Tara o Tana y su proyección en la religión de los canarios ...................... 95
Werner Pichler & Alain Rodrigue:
Oued Rheris II: A new site of rock paintings in the South of Morocco ...... 113
Franz Trost:
Bemerkungen zu Herodots Angaben über ägyptische Könige .................... 135
Alain Rodrigue:
Les gravures rupestres de Smara (Sahara Occidental) –
note complémentaire .................................................................................. 139
Yves Gauthier, Bernard Veneur, Norbert Desaphy, Pierre Seuriel:
Nouvelles gravures en style de Tazina:
figurations du Nord de l'Immidir, Algérie ................................................. 149
Hartwig-E. Steiner:
Archäologische Fundstätten auf Selvagem Grande.
Erweiterte, revidierte Fundkarte nach der 2. IC-Expedition 2007. ............. 193
Hartwig-E. Steiner:
Historische Wirtschaftsbauten auf
Selvagem Grande / Ilhas Selvagens, Portugal ............................................. 205
Friedrich Berger:
Felskunst westlich von Dakhla (Ägypten) – Beispiele für
Darstellungen von Naturphänomenen, insbesondere von Wasser .................. 269
 
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Pichler, Werner; Rodrigue, Alain (2010): Oued Rheris II: A new site of rock
paintings in the South of Morocco.- Almogaren XLI (Institutum Canarium), Wien,
113-134
Zitieren Sie bitte diesen Aufsatz folgendermaßen / Please cite this article as follows:
ALMOGAREN XLI/2010MM113
Almogaren XLI / 2010 Wien 2010 113 - 134
Werner Pichler & Alain Rodrigue
Oued Rheris II:
A new site of rock paintings in the South of Morocco
Keywords: Morocco, Oued Rheris, rock art, Libyco-Berber inscriptions
Résumé:
Le cours moyen de l'Oued Rheris, dans la région de Taouz (Sud Marocain), a été l'objet de
la découverte de quatre sites comportant des inscriptions Libyco-Berbères. Il s'agit
d'inscriptions gravées, à l'exception des signes du site II, sous abri, qui consistent tous en
des signes peints. La densité et l'originalité des inscriptions confèrent au gisement un
intérêt certain, tandis que celles-ci enrichissent notablement le corpus actuellement en
constitution des inscriptions Libyco-Berbères du Maroc. Sur la plupart des dix huit
panneaux les inscriptions Libyco-Berbères sont mélangées avec des dessins géométriques
et anthropomorphiques.
Abstract:
The middle course of the Oued Rheris, in the region of Taouz (Morocco), was the subject
of the discovery of four sites including Libyco-Berber inscriptions. All are engraved
inscriptions, except those of the site II, a shelter where the signs are painted. The density
and the originality of the inscriptions attribute a real interest to the site, while these
paintings notably enlarge the corpus of the Libyco-Berber inscriptions of Morocco, which
is progressively making up. On most of the eighteen panels the Libyco-Berber inscriptions
are mixed up with geometric and anthropomorphic depictions.
Zusammenfassung:
Im Mittellauf des Oued Rheris in der Region Taouz (Marokko) wurden vier neue Fund-stellen
mit libysch-berberischen Inschriften entdeckt. Alle sind graviert mit Ausnahme
der Fundstelle II, einem Abri mit gemalten Zeichen. Das Ausmaß und die Originalität der
Inschriften sind beachtlich und stellen eine Bereicherung des Corpus der Inschriften Ma-rokkos
dar. Auf den meisten der achtzehn Paneele treten die libysch-berberischen In-schriften
zusammen mit geometrischen und anthropomorphen Darstellungen auf.
The site
The painted shelter of Rheris II was discovered by L. Masselin and A. Rod-rigue
in May 2006. After a first evaluation and the taking of a date in May
2007, the paintings of the inscriptions were briefly published by two of us (A.
Rodrigue, W. Pichler, 2008). The present note is the results of the new and
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extended works on the site by W. Pichler, A. Rodrigue and L. Masselin in
2007 and presents the inscriptions within their context.
The shelter of Rheris II is located at the beginning of a narrow and dry
valley (a shaba in Arabic) which comes to its way out in the main valley of the
Wadi Rheris, coming itself out of the mountain pass (a foum or a fam) between
Jebel Mechot and Jebel Talhamadat. The shelter itself is located on the left
bank and some 12 meters from the bottom of the dry valley (Fig. 1 - 3). It's
facing the west and our plan gives the precise location of the painted stratum
(Fig. 4). Figure 5 provides the exact position of the eighteen painted panels.
Problems of documentation
Normally methods of DIP (Digital Image Processing) are a very helpful
tool to clarify hardly visible rock paintings. At the site Oued Rheris II there are
two difficulties:
• There is no sun on the panels of the shelter, especially at panel 9/
inscription 4 which has an inclination of 180° (looking to the ground).
• The rock surface itself presents red/brown colours so that there is a very
bad contrast to the red paintings.
To solve these problems of documentation we tried different methods of
image enhancement and compared the results to obtain an optimal solution.
The basis of every examination is to enhance colours and contrast by
“standard” methods which are provided by widely used programs such as
ADOBE PHOTOSHOP or COREL PHOTO-PAINT:
• Saturation adjustment: changes the selected colour intensities
• Hue rotation: transforms targeted colours
• Curves: adjusts the tonal levels
• Levels: darkens rock art/lightens background
For complicated cases it is recommended to use special programs like D-Stretch
by Jon Harman which is able to bring out elements nearly invisible to
the eye by applying a Karhunen-Loeve transform to the colours of the image.
For red paintings it is recommended to use the LRE- or YBR-colour spaces.
In our special case of painted inscriptions with very vague outlines it is
important to define the edges of the painted areas. This is possible by the
method of vectorizing the image with programs such as COREL TRACE: the
picture is divided into some thousands of objects with different colours (the
amount of objects depends on the selected percentage of exactness). Now one
can delete all objects with “non-red-colours”. If B/W images are needed for
publication, you can mark the contours with black lines or fill up the painted
areas with black.
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Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Libyco-Berber inscriptions
The shelter of Rheris II presents at least 18 panels with painted figures (some
additional ones show now only traces of colour), 7 of them containing Libyco-
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Berber inscriptions. All of them are situated on slim rock bands – this may be
the purpose why four of the ten script lines are written horizontally: there is
no smooth surface for longer vertical inscriptions.
Inscription 1 (panel 3): a horizontal line with some clearly identifiable
Libyco-Berber characters (in the left part) amongst additional signs such as
anthropomorphic and geometric figures.
Fig. 3
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Fig. 4
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Transliteration: TMLR or TMNYR.
Inscription 2 (panel 5): a very tiny horizontal line, the left part is clearly
Libyco-Berber script; the right part is hardly visible.
Transliteration: WDGST.
Inscription 3 (panel 8): the upper and lower part of this great panel (looking
to the ground!) is consisting of rather chaotic arrangement of signs, most of
them possibly Libyco-Berber characters (using two different colours!). The
middle part presents possibly four vertical lines of Libyco-Berber script, but
very hardly visible. The drawings are only an attempt of reconstruction and
should not be used for epigraphic analysis.
Inscription 4 (panel 9): a vertical line of four characters including one
anthropomorphic figure.
Transliteration: T*DST.
Inscription 5 (panel 10): a horizontal line with Libyco-Berber characters
which is continued to the right by some hardly visible anthropomorphic or
geometric figures.
Transliteration: NZMT.
Inscription 6 (panel 16): presenting seven signs, most of them possibly
Libyco-Berber characters, using two different colours.
Inscription 7 (panel 17): a vertical line with 3 signs: the upper one is
presenting no Libyco-Berber character; perhaps the present situation is
fragmentary.
Transliteration: FS*
The alphabet
The seven inscriptions of Rheris II contain approximately 40 – 50 charac-ters,
most of them in clear lines, some as isolated signs. Thus it cannot be
expected that they cover the whole alphabet: at any rate it is surprising that
Fig. 5
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only the signs for /b/, /y/ or /k/ are missing. Anyway, there is not the slightest
indication for elements of the Transitional of Tifinagh alphabets (such as
pointed signs or typical incipits) so that we can attribute the inscriptions to the
ancient Libyco-Berber alphabet.
The context of the inscriptions
In the case of the site Rheris II it is impossible to draw the line between
script signs and not-script signs. There are a lot of isolated signs such as crosses
or circles which, of course, could be characters. In addition there are a lot of
signs which look like characters but are not belonging to a Libyco-Berber
alphabet.
Thus the whole sample of approximately 160 figures can be divided only
roughly into some groups. One third is characterized in distinct script lines. 20
% can be called script-like signs (Fig. 6, third line). Some of them look like
Libyco-Berber characters (1 – 3 from left), others even like Roman or Arabic
numerals (6 and 8 from left). Another 20 % are isolated geometric figures
such as circles, squares, most of them divided into parts by one or two lines
(Fig. 6, second line). However, the most typical feature of the shelter of Rheris
II is approximately 27 anthropomorphic depictions, all of them painted in a
very abstract, geometric way, so that there are melting transitions to simple
crosses and “tree-like” signs (Fig. 6, first line).
Commentary to the figures 7 - 26
As it was not possible to publish the paintings in colour we decided to do
without the original photos because they can give no illusion of the graphic
representations. The documentation is carried out in three steps:
Fig. 6
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1: it presents the best results of DIP. Unfortunately this result is reduced
considerably by printing in black-and-white.
2: it shows the result of vectorizing, converting the original red and yellow
colours into black.
3: as both methods provide differences in details of the contours of the
paintings we decided to add a subjective interpretation by drawing generalized
contours of what we believe to be the original paintings – to the best of our
knowledge and belief.
References
Rodrigue, A.; Pichler, W. (2008): Nouvel abri peint au Maroc. Bulletin no.
57 de la Société d'Études et de Recherches Préhistoriques des Eyzies. 57-61.
The panels  
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Fig. 13. Panel 11
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