Transportation-Carvings - Desert edition

So far, the series of transportation-carvings has concentrated on wagon and water transport, with a small view to transportation in mountainous areas, but an other field of interest also regarding the Roman period, has so far not been mentioned; the Desert. Large areas of the southern and eastern parts of the Roman Empire was desert-land, which required extraordinary skills to survive and even more to deal with transportation.

The old Egyptians used wagon-transportation, but since the sandy ground is not well fit for heavy wagons, it is difficult to believe that their use of wheeled transportation went beyond the chariots used in war. In stead of wagons, camels were (are) used for transporting goods in this dry climate, and more roman carvings actually show pictures of this peculiar kind of transportation.

One carving in the Capitoline museum (see photo right) show the camel with a saddle and in front of it the owner pulling a rope. This carving has no inscription or modern sign saying what it is or where it come from, but the idea that it might stem from a monument dealing with trade or a tradesman in the desert-region is supported by another carving, this time in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. This carving also show the camel and the owner, but here the camel is showed in the background and focus is on the man.

This latter carving (see photo right) is more easily recognised in type, since it is carved in a style known from the Roman province of Syria, which again, especially, is widespread in the area around Palmyra. Roman Palmyra was for many years one of the most important cities in the Roman east and it got rich due to its location as desert trade-station on the silk-road. Therefor a lot of tradesmen lived here and took care of the difficult and dangerous transport of goods through the desert, and when they died, they where buried in different types of tombs/monuments. The type of carving shown here is often seen as a portrait of the buried person in the tomb of which the carving stem, and carvings of this type are exhibited in more museums around Europe. In this example we have a representation of a man and his work, which can be compared to the carvings from the northern provinces showing the “daily-life”-scenes, and therefor this, along with the carving from the Capitoline Museum, can be categorized as Transportation-Carvings.

Nowadays researchers has successfully tried to find some of the old/Roman Caravan-routes in north Africa, and one of these field-projects is based at the University of Bergen, Norway. For more info please check: www.hist.uib.no/ and click “Antikksider” under the “links”-menu.