Traditional Music or Religious Ritual? Ancient Rock Art Illumined by Bedouin Custom

This paper deals with four basalt stones found in Wadi Salmā, in the desert of north-eastern Jordan, during a survey of the OCIANA project (Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia) in April 2015. These stones bear depictions of musicians with their instruments alongside Safaitic inscriptions. This paper will present an analysis of the musical instruments represented on these stones. It appears that five distinct musical instruments are depicted. It can be surmised that these instruments needed to be light and easily transportable on account of the pastoral, nomadic life that the peoples inhabiting the region led. It also appears from the depictions that women played a prominent role in musical gatherings