Paintings that are more than 7,000 years old
The legend of the crying cow in Tassili
The Crying Cow is a rock engraving located about 25 km from the Djanet Oasis in southeastern Algeria, on the eastern border of Erg Admer towards Tassili N'Ajjer in the Tigregart region, dating back more than 7,000 years.
The rock inscriptions are considered masterpieces of the Neolithic era. The inscriptions were executed in relief and are of extraordinary workmanship and harmony. They are made of deep grooves carved in the rock. The inscriptions lean toward a small depression at the bottom of the rock, and represent a small herd of cows. It appears that the cows are waiting for the arrival of Water to drink from The tears shed by one of these cows have given rise to many interpretations and legends.
In the middle of the dunes, rocks have been standing for thousands of years, silently telling thousands of stories about people, the desert, and livestock... the diaries of men who were there one day and then they became ashes, blown away by the wind, and their souls mixed with the sand... Arab Shorouk, for the first time, narrates a story from the rocks, And about a cow that shed tears and became a legend.
In the Saharan Atlas and in the Central Sahara, especially in the Tassili and the Hvar, man engraved and engraved his life, and summarized it in drawings, which have remained in place since time immemorial. Thousands of inscriptions dating back to the Neolithic period. How could he not draw and sculpt, when he had invented agriculture and refined tools, and begun to settle down, and had shifted from an economy of predation to an economy of animal husbandry and production?
Desert rock art was closely linked to this radical change in human life. No rock mural is without a representation of livestock, especially cows.
One of the most symbolic inscriptions of “Tassili N’Ajjer” is undoubtedly the inscription of the “Tigergart” cattle, more commonly known as the crying cow.
A tear in a cow's eye
This fresco is located 25 kilometers from Djanet, on a flat mountain wall. It represents a small herd of cattle. Rock art specialists consider this surface sculpture on a monochromatic background to be an unparalleled masterpiece in the world. The grooves dug into the rock, with high technology, added another, more realistic dimension, as if the cattle were speaking to you and narrating their suffering to you.
The Crying Cow mural is considered one of the oldest murals in Tassili N'Ajjer, as it is more than 7,000 years old. Its secret, which has baffled experts, is the sculptor’s depiction of cattle, with a tear in the corner of their eyes, as if it were a sparkling diamond. These tears sparked great controversy, opinions differed, interpretations varied, and myths were woven around them. Some say the explanation is purely scientific. When cows lack water, their eyes secrete a fluid. According to others, it is just a colored spot on the face of this species of cow. But those with imagination and weavers of tales will tell you that these cows used to visit a secret water spring during the dry season, when finding water became a rarity... so the cows shed tears of sadness over the state of the region.
The most plausible explanation is that the artist who sculpted this masterpiece wanted to chronicle the period of drought, which transformed the region from plains and fields into a barren desert, and to recall the tragedy of the scarcity of valleys and streams, and the worsening phenomenon of desertification. It should be noted that desertification did not occur suddenly, but rather due to climate fluctuations, which led to alternating wet and arid periods in the region.
Source: websites