AMMAN — Thousands of inscriptions from different historical periods can be detected in the Eastern Black Desert.

 

Inscriptions of people who lived in the Black Desert represent their voice, said Ali Manaser from the Hashemite University during a lecture titled "Insights from the Badia Epigraphic Survey [BES]: Preliminary Findings and Field Perspectives," held at American Centre of Research on Thursday.

 

These inscriptions and petroglyphs are tales of love, life and sadness, Manaser said, noting that most of them are short but very important for studying the regional past.

 

"Inscriptions are one of the oldest ways to transmit communication," said the professor, adding that they were tweets written on rocks for people of different eras.

 

It was a kind of ancient network covered not in digital code, but stones.

 

The area of Black Desert covers 40 square kilometres stretching from the south Syria to northern Saudi Arabia.

 

The major epigraphic project the Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia [OCIANA] aims to help transform the knowledge of the history, languages and cultures of ancient Arabia by creating a digital corpus of all known Ancient North Arabian inscriptions in North and Central Arabia, and elsewhere.

 

"For each inscription, it provides a reading the text in roman transliteration, together with a translation in English, references to earlier readings, commentary where necessary, bibliography, and all known information about the inscription [provenance, relationship to other texts or to rock drawings and/or symbols, structures, etc.]," Manaser added.

 

The OCIANA team faced a setback that most images were without the GPS information, the scholar explained, adding that the OCIANA database is essential for understanding of the BES.

 

Images of game animals and horsemen are often depicted on stones and researchers operated in the four areas of the Black Desert. In one of them epigraphists discovered more than 5,000 images, Manaser said.

 

"A Syriac inscription was found and was dated to 11the century AD," he continued, adding that some early Islamic inscriptions from the Umayyad Period were also discovered.

 

These inscriptions are significant for studies of the early Arabic writing.

 

"In our data base we have almost 2000 inscriptions from the 13th century," Manaser highlighted, noting that most recent messages were written as well by the local Bedouins.

 

Scholars also found a grave when they cleaned the area, discovering a human skeleton and at the end the team was lucky to document the damage of the inscriptions.

 

"Unfortunately, the desert is affected by the urban development, looting and agriculture," said Manaser, noting that locals use stones from ancient tombs as building material.

 

According to the scholar, two types of mosques were built in the desert, short and long term structures.

 

"Our main objective was to add inscriptions from the Black Desert to the World heritage list," Manaser underscored.