IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE TUAREGS

A journey to the Tassili n'Ajjer plateau in Algeria reveals rock paintings dating back millennia

- Alice Brouard

Wrapped in a superb, green-blue cotton takakat and a white tagelmust around his head, our Tuareg guide's fiery coal eyes are riveted on the horizon. Agaoued Mechar leans on a stick, his chest bent by years of work on this inhospitable land. And what a land! "It's beautiful. It's good!" he says.

Agaoued encourages us to take photos, happy that foreign tourists are once again allowed to visit the Tassili n'Ajjer plateau in southeastern Algeria. From 2008 to 2019, Algeria's Ministry of Foreign Affairs recommended that tourists avoid the area because of a high risk of terrorist activity.

We are standing at the foot of the plateau. An ocean of rocks and sand, it seems to have fallen from the moon: dried wadis, gaping canyons, excavated cliffs and blocks of reddish sandstone burned, crumbled, eroded.At an altitude of 2,000 metres and covering 72,000 square kilometers, the vast area sits on Algeria's borders with Libya and Niger. In this rugged environment, Neolithic peoples painted images of their daily lives, beliefs and myths on walls, crevices and cavities.

Agaoued, 79, knows the plateau down to its smallest folds and can easily find these treasures. Born and raised here, he followed in the footsteps of his father, who guided French explorer Henri Lhote in 1950s expeditions to inventory and reproduce the Tassili n'Ajjer rock paintings.

At the time, few foreigners dared to venture into this remote region. Copies of the paintings made by Lhote and his team, traced on sandstone and then painted with gouache on paper, were exhibited at the Louvre in Paris, bringing world renown to the Tassilian wall art. But the methods employed by Lhote and his team also caused controversy: Moistening the walls to eliminate millennia of dust buildup damaged the original works.