Free The Salt Road by Jane Johnson Page A

red leather embellished with gold leaf. She lay with her knees bent towards her chest upon the decayed fragments of a wooden bier secured with braided cords of coloured leather and cloth. Her head had been covered by a white veil and three ostrich feathers; two emeralds hung from her earlobes, nine gold bracelets were upon one arm and eight silver bracelets on the other. Around her ankles, neck and waist were scattered beads of carnelian, agate and amazonite.
From such details it was ascertained that the body was that of a woman of high birth. Professors Maurice Reygasse and Gautiers of the Ethnographical Museum believe this site to have contained the remains of the legendary queen Tin Hinan.
Tin Hinan (lit. ‘She of the Tents’) is the founding mother and spiritual leader of the desert nomad people known to themselves as the Kel Tagelmust (‘People of the Veil’) or the Kel Tamacheq (‘Those Who Speak Tamacheq ’). To the Arabs they are known as the Tuareg . Tuareg is an Arab term and according to some means ‘cast out by God’, since these nomad people fiercely resisted the Islamic invasion in the 8th century. According to their mythology, Tin Hinan came from the Berber region of the Tafilalt in the south of Morocco and walked alone, or with a single maidservant according to another version of the legend, a thousand miles across the desert to the Hoggar and there established her tribe. She was given the title Tamenokalt (m. Amenokal, f. takes the Berber ‘t’ beginning and end) and is known even to modern tribespeople as the Mother of Us All. Aristocratic Tuaregs claim to be able to trace their ancestry directly back to her.
Found by de Prorok amongst the funerary items in the monument was a wooden bowl commonly used for camel’s milk. On its base was the impression of a gold coin bearing the head of the Emperor Constantine II (AD 337–340). The nature of the burial is incompatible with Muslim burial rites (Islam was introduced to the region by Arabs from the East c . the 8th century). There was also found a perfectly preserved clay lamp of common Roman design, well used and smoke-blackened. Experts have dated this style of lamp to between the 3rd and 4th centuries. Thus from these details we can with some confidence state that the gravesite is likely to date from the 4th century AD and is certainly contemporary with the later Roman Empire.
The amulet we found at the site is similar to those tcherots worn as talismans by the men and women of the Tuareg to ward off various evils, but why it was overlooked by the 1925 excavators and then by those who followed in the 1930s or 1950s, I cannot imagine. We discovered it just inside the antechamber, lying on the surface and showing no trace of having been interred. Moreover, it bears inscriptions from the Adagh region, and the red carnelian discs are more recent than the carnelian beads found in the gravesite. On the rock wall above it we found an inscription, which I have copied below; but no one has been able to decipher it and the provenance of the object remains a mystery.
    Beneath this was a series of odd-looking symbols inscribed in blue ink.
    I took off the amulet and regarded it solemnly. Did I hold in my hand one of the grave-goods of a legendary queen; or was the mystery deeper still?

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    In her haste to escape the encampment and the wrath of Rhossi ag Bahedi, Mariata had been able to carry only one saddle with her to the camel enclosure: the one she had brought from her home in the Alhaggar. It was a beautiful thing passed down from her great-grandmother, made from leather and carved wood decorated with brass appliqué and copper nails. Sitting in it made her feel like the princess she considered herself to be. She didn’t want to offer it to the older woman, but forced herself, out of politeness.
    Rahma took one look at it and laughed. ‘You think I need that unwieldy old thing?’ She clicked her tongue till the mehari folded its legs, attached her