The Desert and its Peoples

Abstract

In many cases, they are little more than lists of names of peoples with occasional details about their relationship with settled states, such as Strabo's description of the skenitai or “tentdwellers” of Syria and Mesopotamia, or Pliny's lists of nomads and sedentaries along the Red Sea coast. Across the deserts from central Syria to the borders of Yemen, nomads covered the rocks with scores of thousands of graffiti in dialects and scripts which are known today as Ancient North Arabian. In good years, individual families of nomads would sometimes plough small areas of the harra which were without stones and sow cereals opportunistically, and as many as six rock drawings showing ploughing and signed in Safaitic have been found far out in the desert. As well as camels, sheep, and goats, the nomads bred horses and these are frequently mentioned in the graffiti and shown in rock drawings signed by the artists in Safaitic.