In the battle scenes, the men were armed with bows, shields, spears and swords. I saw no guns to indicate modern drawings, or shangamangers that might have pointed to a Sudan origin.

The figures in every case were cut on the surface of the Nubian sandstone, a substance that is easily scratched with a knife. A portion of some of the figures given in the plates is shown by means of a dotted line, intended to show that the part thus outlined is uncertain, owing to the rock having been chipped, or to some other cause.

The Gubary road, where most of the graffiti were found, runs near the foot of a scarp that shelters it to a great extent from the strongly predominant northerly winds. But considering the amount of erosion that takes place during the frequent sandstorms from this quarter, after making all allowance for the sheltered position of the rocks upon which these inscriptions occur, their sharp-cut appearance was remarkable, seeming to indicate that they do not date from a very remote period.

Nos. 217 and 218, however, were an exception. These two inscriptions were cut one above the other, about five feet above ground level, on a vertical surface facing about north-west. The rock at this point may perhaps have been unusually soft, but both inscriptions showed most distinct signs of weathering.

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No. 217 appears to be of special interest, as it seems to be written partly in primitive Arabic characters and partly in some script, such as Tifinagh, making use of dotted letters. Inscriptions of this bilingual character have also been found in the Twat group of oases, in the Western Sahara, at Ulad Mahmud, in the Gerara District.[26]

The uncertainty as to the correct position of most of these graffiti, combined with the simple forms that so many of them show and the rough manner in which they have been drawn, renders comparisons with other drawings perhaps dangerous, and in any case requires more expert knowledge than that possessed by the present writer. But the following notes upon them may perhaps be of interest.

Many of the drawings are unquestionably tribal camel brands, as an Arab can often be seen cutting his wasm, or brand, on the ground during a halt, in the same manner as a white man will write his name.

These wasms are probably of great antiquity, and are said by the Arabs who use them to date from pre-Mohammedan times. They are used by the bedawin in a manner analogous to the heraldry of medieval Europe. Each tribe has its own brand, the junior branches and offshoots of the clan adopting the original wasm with a difference, recalling the “marks of cadency” in heraldry.