Cave of Swimmers: Prehistoric Rock Art of the Gilf Kebir

The Cave of Swimmers is a shallow rock shelter in Wadi Sura, on the edge of the Gilf Kebir plateau in Egypt’s remote Western Desert, decorated with prehistoric paintings of small human figures that appear to be swimming. Painted probably between about 8000 and 5000 BC, when the Sahara was far greener than today, the figures became a famous symbol of the region’s lost wet past after the explorer László Almásy reached the site in 1933. Their meaning, and whether they show swimming at all, is still debated.

The setting: Gilf Kebir and Wadi Sura

The Gilf Kebir, Arabic for “great barrier”, is a sandstone plateau covering roughly 7,800 square kilometres, rising up to about 300 metres above the surrounding desert in the south-western corner of Egypt. It lies close to the borders with Libya and Sudan, hundreds of kilometres from the nearest permanent settlement. Today it receives almost no rain.

Wadi Sura, “the valley of pictures”, is a small embayment on the plateau’s south-western side. Its cliffs contain several decorated shelters. The best known is the Cave of Swimmers, sometimes called Wadi Sura I. Other shelters in the same embayment hold further paintings.

The Gilf Kebir was almost unknown to outsiders until the 1920s. The Egyptian prince Kamal el Dine Hussein explored its edges in 1926, and British and Hungarian expeditions mapped it in the following years, partly while searching for Zerzura, a legendary lost oasis of Arabic tradition.

Discovery by László Almásy

László Almásy (1895–1951) was a Hungarian aviator, driver and desert explorer who led several motorised expeditions into the Libyan Desert in the early 1930s. In October 1933, during an expedition to the Gilf Kebir, he reached Wadi Sura and found the painted shelters.

Almásy described the paintings in his book Unbekannte Sahara (“Unknown Sahara”), published in German in 1939. He interpreted the small horizontal figures as people swimming and argued that there must once have been water nearby, at a time when this was a bold claim about a desert regarded as unchanging. Later research on lake sediments, pollen and animal bones confirmed that the Sahara had indeed been much wetter during the early and middle Holocene.

During the Second World War Almásy served with German forces in North Africa. In 1942 he guided two German agents across the desert to the Nile Valley in what was known as Operation Salam, a part of his life that later fiction largely reshaped.

What the paintings show

The paintings are small, mostly in red and brown ochre with some white and yellow. They show slender human figures, many no more than a hand’s length, with their bodies horizontal and their arms and legs stretched out as if paddling or floating. Some are grouped in rows; others are scattered across the rock face.

Alongside the “swimmers” are standing human figures and negative hand stencils, made by blowing or spattering pigment around a hand pressed against the rock. Similar hand stencils appear at other sites in the Gilf Kebir and in the nearby Jebel Uweinat mountains.

The paintings are now faded and damaged. Parts have flaked away, and visitors in the past have wetted the surfaces to make the colours stand out for photographs, which speeds up their decay.

Dating the art

No pigment from the Cave of Swimmers has been dated directly, so its age is estimated in other ways. Researchers compare its style with other rock art in the region and use the dated record of human settlement in the Eastern Sahara.

Excavations led by Rudolph Kuper and Stefan Kröpelin of the University of Cologne showed that monsoon rains returned to the Eastern Sahara around 8500 BC. Hunter-gatherers and later herders moved into the region. As the climate dried after about 5300 BC, people concentrated in higher areas such as the Gilf Kebir and Jebel Uweinat, before largely abandoning them by around 3500 BC.

The Wadi Sura paintings are generally placed within this wetter era, most often between about 8000 and 5000 BC. Some scholars prefer a somewhat later date, so the figure should be treated as an informed estimate rather than a fixed date.

Swimmers, spirits or something else?

Almásy’s reading of the figures as swimmers is still the popular one, and it fits the idea of a Green Sahara with lakes and pools. However, there is little evidence of a large permanent lake directly in Wadi Sura, though seasonal pools and wetter ground are likely.

Many specialists now think the figures may not show ordinary swimming at all. They might represent floating spirits, the dead, people in a trance or figures from a myth about a watery world. The case for a symbolic meaning grew stronger in 2002, when a much larger painted shelter was found about 10 kilometres away.

That shelter, known as the Cave of Beasts or the Foggini-Mestekawi Cave after its finders, contains thousands of painted figures. Among them are similar “swimming” figures arranged around strange headless animals. A Cologne team documented it in detail, and the resulting study, edited by Kuper, was published in 2013. The new find showed that the swimmers belong to a rich and complex tradition of imagery whose meaning remains uncertain.

The English Patient and fame

The Cave of Swimmers became world-famous through Michael Ondaatje’s novel The English Patient (1992) and Anthony Minghella’s 1996 film adaptation, which won nine Academy Awards. Both use the cave as a central setting and borrow Almásy’s name for the main character.

The fictional Almásy, however, is a romantic invention, and many events of the story have no basis in his real life. The cave scenes in the film were shot elsewhere using a reconstruction. The film did spark a rise in desert tourism to the Gilf Kebir, which brought both interest and new risks to the fragile paintings.

Protection and access

The Gilf Kebir and Jebel Uweinat area was declared the Gilf Kebir National Park by Egypt in 2007. Visits require permits and organised expeditions with experienced guides, and access depends on security conditions in the border region.

Conservationists ask visitors not to touch the rock or pour water on it. Photographic and digital recording projects are now the main way most people can see the art.

Timeline

• c. 8500 BC: Monsoon rains return to the Eastern Sahara, and people begin to resettle the region.
• c. 8000–5000 BC (estimated): Paintings in Wadi Sura, including the Cave of Swimmers, are most likely made.
• c. 5300 BC: As the climate dries, settlement shifts towards higher areas such as the Gilf Kebir.
• c. 3500 BC: The Gilf Kebir region is largely abandoned as desert conditions return.
• 1926: Prince Kamal el Dine Hussein explores the Gilf Kebir.
• 1933, October: László Almásy reaches Wadi Sura and finds the painted shelters.
• 1939: Almásy publishes Unbekannte Sahara, describing the “swimmers”.
• 1996: The film The English Patient makes the cave internationally famous.
• 2002: The Cave of Beasts is discovered about 10 kilometres away.
• 2007: Egypt creates the Gilf Kebir National Park.

Why it matters

The Cave of Swimmers is one of the most evocative windows onto the Green Sahara, when people lived, hunted and painted in places that are now among the driest on Earth. Together with sites such as Tassili n’Ajjer, the lakeside cemetery of Gobero and the herders’ monuments of Nabta Playa, it shows how strongly climate shaped where and how people lived in North Africa, and how much of their world of ideas remains a mystery.