A new history of Arabia, written in stone

May 17, 2019 6:02 AM

On a small rock found in Jordan, Ahmad Al-Jallad, a linguistics professor in the Netherlands, discovered text that he thought could be the oldest known record of literary expression in Arabic.
posted by bile and syntax (4 comments total)

As far as Bedouin nomads who lived in the area [and who] composed exquisite poetry to record the feats of their tribes, here's an episode of the BBC podcast In Our Time from a few months ago which discusses Antarah ibn Shaddad, a pre-Islamic knight and all-around fascinating dude, and his poetry.
posted by XMLicious at 6:46 AM on May 17, 2019 [6 favorites]

Having just spent some time in Utah checking out petroglyphs and pictographs, I just love love love seeing ancient rock art from different places. A connection to other humans, deep in the past, on the other side of an unknowable divide...*shivers*
posted by notsnot at 7:54 AM on May 17, 2019 [3 favorites]

Those horses etched in stone! So elegant!
posted by Oyéah at 8:47 AM on May 17, 2019 [3 favorites]

That bit about working out the zodiac is brilliant.
posted by lucidium at 5:38 AM on May 20, 2019