Rock painting sites
of Jubbah and Al-Shuwaymas, Saudi Arabia may have changed the long standing conservative monarchy's phobia for pre-Islamic art as some of the Kingdom's cultural sites are on their way at getting UNESCO's
World Heritage List.
According to Arab
News, The Kingdom has started efforts to register the ancient rock paintings of
Jubbah and Al-Shuwaymas for a possible listing on the world body’s prestigious
listing.
The kingdom, until now, consider all art and cultural beliefs that pre-date Islam as unsuitable for spiritual value of Muslims. It was reported, few days ago that the President of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and
Antiquities (SCTA), Prince Sultan bin Salman made the announcement in a recent
meeting of the country’s Consultative Committee for Antiquities and Museums at
the SCTA headquarters in Riyadh.
Rock painting site in Saudi Arabia |
The Jubbah site lies
on an ancient lakebed stretching eastward from the sandstone mountain of Jabal
Umm Sanaman (Two Camel-Hump Mountain).
In March 2001, a
teacher from Nufud Desert, Mahboub Al-Rasheedi was said to have discovered The
Shuwaymas rock paintings. “Shuwaymas stands ready to surpass ... any other
rock-art site on the Arabian Peninsula," Robert Bednarik, the founder of
the International Federation of Rock Art Organizations (IFRAO) had said of the
site. "The Shuwaymas area is densely peppered with rock art, and it likely
had a very heavy and significant concentration of Neolithic people,"
Bednarik noted.
Features of the
site: Shuwaymas is surrounded by black volcanic lava. It shows images of
cheetah, hyenas, dogs, long- and short-horned cattle, oryx, ibex, horses,
mules, camels and ostrich; human figures; geometric shapes, serpentine
squiggles, inscrutable symbols, carved-out footprints and hoof prints.
Visiting Hail in 1879, Lady Anne Blunt,
granddaughter of Lord Byron, said: "Jubbah is one of the most curious
places in the world and to my mind one of the most beautiful."
In the last two
years Saudi Arabia has been showcasing its cultural value across Europe and the
U.S. One of gthe shows, a Saudi archaeological masterpieces exhibition opened
in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. on November 25 2012. The tour
exhibition, it was said attracted 1.5 million people in France, Spain, Russia
and Germany.
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