Le cheval dans l’Arabie méridionale antique
Abstract
Jacques Ryckmans demonstrated in 1963 that horses had appeared in South Arabia in the 1st century AD. Of the numerous epigraphic texts and carved representations published since, briefly summarized by the authors, none of them contradict this hypothesis. However, two points can be clarified. Firstly, the fact that horses do not appear in epigraphic and visual sources until the late 1st century AD does not necessarily mean that it was introduced at that time. This introduction must have spanned a long period of time, with many failures and renewed attempts.The second important development has to do with the scarcity of horses, greater than previously expected, until Late Antiquity. This was already suggested by the corpus of South Arabian inscriptions; and it has since been proven by the petroglyphs discovered in the region of Ḥimā in southern Saudi Arabia. Most of the many engravings of horsemen to be found there can be attributed to the Islamic period. In fact, representations of horsemen confidently dated to the pre-Islamic period are exceptionally rare.
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