‘Rain snakes’ from the Senqu River: new light on Qing's commentary on San rock art from Sehonghong, Lesotho

Abstract

Previously unpublished rock art in Lesotho, southern Africa, is believed to explain the words of Qing — the San (Bushman) man who gave interpretations of paintings in the vicinity. Published in 1874, his testimony, when closely read and compared with other sources, has since become the single most important source for the decipherment of rock art in the sub-continent. One seemingly incomprehensible phrase, though, concerning the famous rain-making depiction at Sehonghong Shelter, Lesotho, has worried scholars for some time. Here, we make a connection that sets Qing's words within the context of the other rock art sites, and the greater cosmology, that he knew. Far from being too young, uninitiated or unfamiliar with the mythology and religion, as this painted site — Rain Snake Shelter — shows, Qing was more than conversant with San cosmology and ritual practice. His testimony is therefore more reliable than was hitherto granted.

De l'art rupestre du Lesotho, jusqu'ici non publié, semble expliquer les propos de Qing, l'informateur San qui fournit des interprétations des peintures de cette zone. Publié en 1874, le témoignage de Qing est depuis devenu - lorsqu'il est lu attentivement et comparé avec d'autres documents — la source la plus importante pour le décryptage de l'art rupestre en Afrique méridionale. Une phrase qui paraissait incompréhensible, concernant une représentation d'un rituel de la pluie à l'abri sous roche de Sehonghong, Lesotho, perturbe depuis un certain temps les chercheurs. Nous faisons ici une connexion qui place les mots de Qing dans le contexte d'autres sites rupestres et de la cosmologie plus vaste qu'il connaissait. Ce site — Rain Snake Shelter — montre que, loin d’être trop jeune, non-initié ou peu familier avec la mythologie et la religion, Qing était tout à fait informé de la cosmologie et la pratique rituelle san. Il s'ensuit que son témoignage est plus fiable que l'on n'avait jusqu'ici pensé.

Keywords:

• San rock art
• snakes
• rain
• mythology Qing
• Orpen
• Sehonghong

Acknowledgements

We should like to acknowledge the assistance of Mme Ntsema Khitsane and Mme Moitheri Molibeli at the Department of Culture (Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Culture) and the Protection and Preservation Commission, Kingdom of Lesotho. David Pearce and David Lewis-Williams read and commented on earlier drafts of this paper; we are grateful to them for their useful insights. We also thank our reviewers for their comments and suggestions. Research grants to visit the sites came, in 2007, from Oxford University and the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom and, in 2010, from the University of the Witwatersrand and the KwaZulu-Natal Museum. We are grateful to the librarian at the Jagger Library, University of Cape Town, for permission to reproduce images from the Bleek and Lloyd Collection and to the The Digital Bleek and Lloyd for the digitised scans; to Lucas Smits for permission to reproduce the Vinnicombe copy of the ‘rain animal scene’; and to Iziko Museums and SARADA for permission to reproduce the Orpen copy of the Sehonghong images. Kevin Crause produced the enhanced images — an invaluable contribution to our research.

Notes on contributors

Sam Challis is Lecturer in rock art studies in the Division of Archaeology, School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He lectures in World Rock Art and World Hunter-Gatherers and runs a multi-disciplinary archaeology programme in Matatiele, South Africa: www.marasurvey.com. His doctoral research (Oxford, 2008) was on the nineteenth-century rock art of creolised groups in the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains.

Jeremy Hollmann has been engaged in southern African rock art for over 20 years. He has worked at the Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, and at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum. His PhD was on a complex of rock art sites in South Africa's North West Province. He is currently a post-doctoral researcher in the Division of Archaeology, University of the Witwatersrand.

Mark McGranaghan is a post-doctoral researcher at the Rock Art Research Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand. He received his doctorate, an historical ethnography of the /Xam San of South Africa's Northern Cape Province in the nineteenth century, from the University of Oxford in June 2012. His research interests include the interaction of hunter-gatherers with farmers and pastoralists, the historical archaeology of the Northern Cape and the role of oral narrative in enforcing socio-cultural norms in putatively ‘egalitarian’ hunter-gatherer groups.

Notes

1. The site was subsequently excavated by Peter Mitchell in 1992, who focused on its Later Stone Age deposits, (Mitchell 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996a, 1996b, 1996c, 1996d) and it has been the subject of renewed investigation by Brian Stewart and Genevieve Dewar in an ongoing project emphasising its Middle Stone Age sequence since 2008 (www.amemsa.com).

2. This refers to the original Bleek-Lloyd notebook. Throughout our paper these references take the form: LL.II.13.1250. LL/WB refers to the collector, II.13, to the narrator and notebook and the final number to the specific page. These notebooks can be found online at: http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/books.html

3. During the 2009 excavations led by Brian Stewart and Genevieve Dewar, stones from Carter's backfill, which had originally formed part of a small livestock enclosure, were placed at the foot of the paintings to prevent livestock and people getting too close to the rock art.

4. This may be an oversimplification: //kabbo (famously) was a ‘mantis's man’, a /kaggən-ka-!kui, because he ‘had’ mantises (LL.VIII.23.8033). In this case, the possessor (!kui) appears to follow the possessed object (/kaggən).

5. Used to describe Scolopendra centipedes (LL.VIII.21.7820; LL.VIII.17.7514′; LL.VIII.31.8791) or certain species of caterpillar (LL.VIII.1.6074). /han≠kass'o gave an alternate phrase !khwa !uhain (rain-navel) that referred to these creatures, when describing a rock art copy shown him (LL.VIII.1.6062′).

6. Recalling a restriction on consumption of /kappəm water tortoises (Psammobates tentorius), eaten only by old women (LL.VIII.26.8303).

7. The waves of the sea were also described as the ribs of the puffadder (LL.VIII.29.8562′); Lucy Lloyd's mistranslation of the word ‘ripples’ (!gu; D. Bleek 1956: 387) as snake (LL.VIII.17.7475) may indicate further links between the two.

8. The anti-social !khwa, unlike the socially responsible San individual, was rather unwilling to share his meat (McGranaghan 2012: 183–184, 436, 441).