Image Details

AHMAD AL-JALLAD

THE ROCKY BASALT DESERT (Harra, in Arabic), which covers parts of southern Syria, northeastern Jordan, and northern Saudi Arabia, has for millennia been home to nomadic pastoralists. From the Iron Age to modern times, such groups have been using the rocky surfaces to record aspects of their daily life through inscriptions and rock art. This photo captures a landscape in northeastern Jordan; the stone is decorated with a hunting scene and an inscription in an indigenous alphabetic script called Safaitic, dated to around 2,000 years ago.