August 20: What's in a Name?

We delayed leaving Moab for an extra day.  We used the extra day to visit Dead Horse Point again.

That is a "gooseneck" of the Colorado River 2,000 feet below the camera.  The weather was way too overcast to take many landscape photos at this time.  But we want to go on record as debunking the silly story that the state park uses to explain the origin of the name--that horses were trapped on the point and died.  No cowboy or rancher would do this.  This photo from the tip of Dead Horse Point clearly shows the reason for the eponym.

Once again, landscape helps to generate myth.

We did see one of those Bighorn Sheep that appears so often in the Anasazi/Fremont rock art.  Unfortunately, it was behind glass.

But note the powerful horns.  These were undoubtedly regarded by the ancients as a manifestation of special sacred power.

Our main goal on this visit was to find a rock art panel that we were previously unable to locate, even though we knew that it was right across from the site of the shaman with snake in mouth that we discussed a few weeks ago.  See if you can find the rock art panel.

It was right alongside the road, but much smaller than we expected.  Binoculars helped, even close up.

 There are two panels, but the right one is very faint.

It is popularly called the "Intestine Man;" but, again, labels can misrepresent reality.  I had only seen the reproductions of the central figure.  In fact, it is a larger scene.

The central figure is surrounded by rain priests/shamans and strange animal "familiars," as we saw on other Barrier Canyon pictographs.

It is not at all clear, on telescopic close-up, that the central figure is actually an anthropomorphic image.  In any case, we are not looking at an X-ray image of his innards, but at a serpent.  Is this a counterpart to the serpent swallowed by the shaman on the opposite side of the amphitheatrical setting?  (At the auspicious junction of several canyon systems.)  Is it an ornamental design on a garment or bag?  Or is this the swallowed serpent?

The answer lies in the association of the serpent with the canyons (serpentine landscape) and rain.  Notice the rain priests/shamans on each side.  One is enveloped by what looks like a rain symbol;

the other is holding or "implanted" by plant images.

Again, there are other faint images that have been weathered and are obscure, but clearly the serpent is ever-present.

(No, these are not "Garden of Eden" images, as one Utah gentleman kindly tried to explain to us.)

Finally, we noted that the site was used over a long-span of time by other cultures.  Images, popularly called "TV Sheep,"

 and other markings we have seen from Anasazi and Fremont cultures attest to long-term cultural interaction.