Umm Arak Rock Art Sits on Egypt’s Sinai Tourism Map

Egypt’s antiquities service documented a sandstone rock shelter more than 100 meters long on the Umm Arak Plateau in South Sinai in February 2026, with the oldest red paintings tentatively dated between 10,000 and 5,500 BCE. The overhang sits about 5 kilometers northeast of the Temple of Serabit el-Khadim, and a local sheikh walked the team to the door.

Tourism and Antiquities Minister Sherif Fathy called the record a major addition to Egypt’s archaeological map and said finds of this kind lift the country’s place on the cultural tourism circuit. The ceiling, at its lowest, is half a meter high.

The Shelter Drops to Half a Meter

The Egyptian mission from the Supreme Council of Antiquities fully recorded a naturally formed sandstone overhang along the eastern side of the plateau. Depth runs between two and three meters. Roof height slopes from about 1.5 meters to half a meter, so much of the painted ceiling is seen from a crouch.

Hisham Hussein, head of the Central Administration for Lower Egypt Antiquities and leader of the mission, said the team found large quantities of animal droppings inside, a sign the space later sheltered people and livestock from rain, storms, and cold. Stone partitions forming separate living units turned up as well, with traces of fire layers in their centers.

Survey around the overhang also produced flint tools and many pottery fragments. Some pots are believed to date to the Middle Kingdom. Others belong to the Roman period, specifically the third century CE. Some English releases used Umm Irak for the same Arabic name, أم عِراك; the State Information Service also printed Umm Arak.

THE OVERHANG IN FIGURES

• Length: More than 100 meters along the eastern flank of the plateau.
• Depth: Between two and three meters from the drip line into the rock.
• Roof: About 1.5 meters at the higher end, falling to half a meter farther in.
• Fix on the map: About 5 kilometers northeast of Serabit el-Khadim, looking north toward the Tih Plateau.

Hussein’s team treated those remains as proof of repeated stops, not a single camp. The plateau sits in a sandy belt with a wide view north, which the ministry said points to a lookout, a meeting ground, and a rest stop used across long stretches of time.

Five Kilometers From Hathor’s Turquoise Temple

Umm Arak is not a blank patch of desert that suddenly grew a museum. It sits in the old mining country of southwest Sinai, about 5 kilometers northeast of the Temple of Serabit el-Khadim and the copper and turquoise workings that fed pharaonic expeditions. NASA’s Earth Observatory, writing from Landsat imagery of those mountains, notes that ancient Egyptians called the peninsula the Country of Turquoise, or Mafkat, and that miners were cutting those deposits by about 3,500 BCE.

The Hathor temple on that plateau, enlarged through the Middle and New Kingdoms, is one of the few standing pharaonic monuments in Sinai. About 30 short Proto-Sinaitic texts from the mines are among the earliest alphabetic inscriptions known. Flinders Petrie’s 1904-05 season made the place famous. Ibex still belong to this range; NASA lists ibex, gazelles, jackals, and sand foxes among the animals that persist in a dry, high, thinly settled province.

That geography is why a hunter with dogs on an ibex is not a decorative surprise on a nearby overhang. It is the same fauna, the same plateau country, and the same habit of stopping under rock. Southern Sinai already carries a huge written residue on stone. Published tallies compiled by Uzi Avner and colleagues reached about 3,920 Nabataean inscriptions in Sinai by the mid-1990s, on top of older Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum lists. A 2020 survey recorded another rock-art group about 60 kilometers southeast of Serabit el-Khadim, also placed near the 10,000-year mark on stylistic grounds.

North Sinai has been filling in on a different register, including a fortress dig elsewhere in Sinai that picked up military architecture rather than painted ceilings. Umm Arak belongs with the southern inscription belt, not with that coastal fortress line.

Sheikh Rabie Barakat Walked the Team In

Mohamed Abdel Badie, head of the Egyptian Antiquities Sector, said the find came during an ongoing survey of rock inscriptions in South Sinai, with guidance from Sheikh Rabie Barakat, a resident of the Serabit el-Khadim locality. The ministry’s own language stressed the role of Sinai residents in backing state heritage work.

Barakat did not publish a paper. He knew a plateau the scientific map had not yet named. The shelter was described as previously unknown to researchers, which is a narrower claim than unknown to everyone who lives around Serabit el-Khadim. The mission’s job was to measure, photograph, and sort the marks into groups, then hand that file to Cairo.

That sequence is how a lot of Sinai rock work actually moves: a local walk, a state survey, a tourism-and-antiquities statement. The overhang had livestock dung in it. People had been using the shade in living memory of the animals, even if they were not dating red pigment on the roof.

What the Red Paint and Later Riders Show

The ceiling holds a large set of drawings in red pigment, animals and symbols still under study, plus a grey group the mission said it had documented for the first time. Engravings run in several techniques. A preliminary sort split the pictures into chronological groups. The oldest, painted in red, is the band tentatively dated between 10,000 and 5,500 BCE and is said to show animals of those early periods, with the oldest images near the entrance.

Incised scenes include a hunter using a bow on an ibex with hunting dogs. Later groups show camels and horses ridden by armed figures, some with Nabataean inscriptions. Arabic inscriptions were recorded as well, which the ministry took as evidence of use in early Islamic periods and after. Nabataean Aramaic belongs to the people who built Petra and who, on conventional political dates, flourished in this region from the fourth century BCE until Rome annexed their kingdom in 106 CE; their graffiti in Sinai runs well beyond a single capital’s lifespan.

LAYERS ON THE SAME OVERHANG

Those rows share one roof. A traveller who ducked into the eastern overhang in the third century CE was using a shade already painted, already partitioned, already full of older names.

Cairo Is Selling Sinai as a Cultural Map

Hisham el Leithy, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the chronological and technical spread of the carvings makes the place an open-air natural museum of rock carvings, documenting human artistic and symbolic expression from prehistoric times through the Islamic periods. He also said study would continue in preparation for a comprehensive plan to protect and document the site.

The chronological and technical diversity of the rock carvings at the Umm Arak plateau makes it an open-air natural museum documenting the development of human artistic and symbolic expression from prehistoric times through to the Islamic periods, giving the site exceptional scientific importance.

Hisham el Leithy, Secretary-General, Supreme Council of Antiquities

Fathy’s comments ran on a second track. Successive civilizations on this part of Egypt’s land, he said, and a boost to cultural tourism. The Information and Decision Support Center, the Egyptian Cabinet’s think tank, put the same pairing on video on 23 February 2026: a new proof of civilizations in Sinai, under the name Umm Arak.

دليل جديد على تعاقب الحضارات في أرض سيناء عبر آلاف السنين..

اكتشاف أثري لم يكن معروفًا من قبل باسم هضبة "أم عِراك".

للمزيد من التفاصيل.. شاهد هذا الفيديو!#مصر #الحضارة_المصرية_القديمة #سيناء pic.twitter.com/TtRdMEu7Vw

— مركز المعلومات ودعم اتخاذ القرار (@EgyptCabinet) February 23, 2026

That is the frame Cairo wanted. It matches a peninsula already being rebuilt for visitors. Around Saint Catherine, farther south in the high mountains, the Great Transfiguration project was launched in 2021 at about EGP 25 billion ($526 million), with hotels, a Peace Square, and airport work, and with the first phase scheduled for October 2026. UNESCO’s World Heritage file on Saint Catherine has pressed Egypt over extra building in that sacred landscape, and Bedouin residents have said the same works erase local ground. Umm Arak is not inside that monastery buffer. It is inventory for the same pitch: Sinai as a deep human corridor, safe to sell.

The state has already poured billions of pounds in Sinai projects into roads, security, and coastal rooms. A 100-meter painted overhang near a Hathor temple is useful on that map even if nobody yet sells a ticket to crawl under a half-meter roof.

The Oldest Dates Rest on Style, Not Labs

The ministry’s own wording on the red paintings is “tentatively dated.” No radiocarbon result, pigment assay, or peer-reviewed sequence was released with the February announcement. Márcia Jamille, an Egyptologist who covers new fieldwork, said in February 2026 that the dating was already generating debate. The 10,000-year figure in headlines is the upper end of a style window, not a stamped age for every mark on the stone.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The architecture: A sandstone shelter more than 100 meters long, two to three meters deep, roof from about 1.5 meters to half a meter, on the eastern side of Umm Arak.
• The neighbour: About 5 kilometers northeast of Serabit el-Khadim and the old turquoise and copper mines.
• The guide: Sheikh Rabie Barakat of the Serabit el-Khadim locality led the survey team to the site.
• The stack: Red and grey paintings, an ibex hunt, armed riders, Nabataean and Arabic text, flint, Middle Kingdom pots, and third-century CE Roman pots.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The 10,000 BCE edge: The oldest red group is a style date between 10,000 and 5,500 BCE, still under study.
• The grey set: Newly recorded, with no public age attached.
• A protection plan: Promised as the next step after analysis; no later public plan was issued with the find.
• Visitor access: No opening, path, or ticketing was announced.

El Leithy said analysis of the inscriptions and drawings would continue toward that protection and documentation plan. Until a lab date or a full catalogue appears, the overhang is a measured shelter with a mixed wall, 5 kilometers from a turquoise temple, entered first in this round of paperwork because a sheikh from Serabit el-Khadim knew where to walk.