A NDRE G INGRICH Camels in Star Mythology and in Everyday Rural Life: Ethnographic Observations in South-West Arabia’s Tihāma Lowlands This short chapter discusses certain local south-west Arabian notions about the dromedary. The- se are connected with star lore among groups of inhabitants of the coastal plain along the eastern shores of the Red Sea, i.e. the Tihāma. Similar to other regions of the Middle East, local resi- dents of rural areas in the Saudi and Yemeni Tihāma often tend to attribute anthropomorphic qualities to camels. They are seen as strong and enduring, but also as unpredictable and uneven- ly tempered. With regard to several aspects of relations to the environment, dromedaries are perceived as being much more sensitive than humans. This obviously includes their ability to notice the proximity of moisture and water. In the winter of 1981/82, during the third phase of a joint Saudi-Austrian ethnographic field work project, several elderly gentlemen living near the villages of Khamīs al-Qawz and Dawqa 'l-‘Ulā (about 200 km south of Jidda) told me independently of each other that the camel’s be- havior informed them each year in advance when the summer period of drought would come to a close and when the Pleiades would return. 1 The ways in which these accounts were presented featured a curious combination of pragmatic experience and mythological symbolism. In this contribution I will contextualize, examine, and unpack these folk concepts about the camel. I will begin with a section on camels’ usage in their material contexts, which provides the basis for the second section and its more specialized analysis of camels’ role in local star calendars. The whole chapter then concludes with a final section offering a set of interpretations. USING CAMELS IN THEIR MATERIAL CONTEXTS The lowlands of the Red Sea coastal plains (see graph 29) are among the world’s hottest areas. Mean annual temperatures range between 29 and 30° C and thus are slightly above tropical heat. For the Yemeni Tihāma, and for the Saudi Tihāma to the south of Jidda, the figures for mean annual rainfall in the late 1970s were 50–300 mm (Abdulfattah 1981:36; Map 3, Stone 1985:9). In the Tihāma adjoining southern Hijāz and northern ‛Asīr, most of a year’s precipitation con- centrates in the two solar months of August and January. Anticipating the rainy seasons could thus be essential for the economic and, in fact, for the physical survival of local households. A wide range of star calendars, of mnemonic references and other related observations therefore represent widespread intellectual resources among local residents in this regard. This cognitive legacy also includes local folk notions about dromedaries’ specific relation to the climate at the end of the summer drought season. Camels’ behavior was also said to indicate the return of the Pleiades, as the main constellation in the most widespread local calendar. As one of the most conspicuous constellations in the sky, the Pleiades play an important part in many folk calendars 1 This cooperation between King Saud University (Riyad) and the University of Vienna was funded by the King- dom of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Higher Education and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). The main results were edited by Walter Dostal (1983a; 2006). I would like to thank the editors of this volume for initiating the conference and the ensuing publication, and in addition, Najwa Adra, Dan Varisco (Long Island, N.Y.) and Jo- hann Heiss (Vienna) for their helpful comments on a first draft of this text. Host Kopp (Erlangen-Nürnberg) and his team generously contributed the accompanying map. This chapter follows Arabic transliteration rules of the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies except for Anglicized terms (e.g., Mecca).