Arab. arch. epig. 2001: 12: 96–102 Copyright C Munksgaard 2001 Printed in Denmark. All rights reserved ISSN 0905-7196 Graffiti from Qusayr ‘Amra: A note on dating of Arabian rock carvings ALISON V. G. BETTS University of Sydney, Australia Over several millennia, from prehistoric times onwards, the rocks of the desert re- gions of Arabia have provided a surface for the production of engravings. These vary greatly in content, from abstract designs through realistic depictions of animals and human figures to fantastic images of sur- real anthropomorphic and zoomorphic creatures. There are also many inscriptions, in a variety of scripts and languages, some in association with abstract or realistic im- ages. The corpus of rock art of Arabia has re- ceived little formal study. This is due in part to the remoteness of many of the re- gions where rock art is concentrated, but another factor may well be that it is ex- tremely difficult to date a large proportion of the engravings. Reliable dating of rock art is a universal problem and Arabia is no exception. The most extensive work on the subject is by Anati (1) who has provided a broad framework based on style, pati- nation and overcutting. While most rock art is found on exposed outcrops without clearly associated archaeological deposits, some prehistoric carvings on loose stones have been found in stratified contexts (2). For the later periods, a considerable amount of the known rock art of Arabia can be broadly dated on the basis of direct 96 association with pre-Islamic inscriptions through reference to the image in the text accompanying it (3). These texts, in lan- guages related to Arabic, date broadly from the mid-first millennium BC to the period of Roman/Byzantine influence in the Middle East. They include scripts, dialects and languages such as Nabatean, Safaitic, Hismaic and various forms of Thamudic. The Safaitic, Hismaic and Thamudic texts are the graffiti of the nomads of the Syro- Arabian desert. It is difficult to date the texts but the Safaitic inscriptions are gener- ally thought to belong to the period from the first century BC to the fourth century AD, and the different types of Thamudic to approximately the seventh century BC to the third century AD (4). To these may be added the South Arabian texts which, in the south of the Arabian peninsula, are also occasionally directly associated with carved images. The texts provide only an approximate date range. They do not pro- vide absolute dates although they may contain such formulae as ‘the year the king died’. In practice, although it might be possible to speculate as to the meaning of such formulae, they are not a reliable means of absolute dating. The inscriptions can also only be used for general dating purposes where the text gives specific ref-