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It is almost 50 years after the Nubia salvage campaign that excavated some of the sites along the Nile that were about to be submerged under the waters of Lake Nasser in the 1960s. One of the things that came out of these excavations was the Qustul incense burner and the presence of a so-called "A-Group Nubian" culture and civilization between Aswan and the 1st cataract. And every since that time, these findings have been part of the back and forth over whether or not the ancient Nile valley was an African culture or not (as dumb as it sounds).
First, more about the Nubia Salvage campaign itself:
quote:
In 1954 the decision to build the Aswan High Dam was made. This dam would lead to the creation of a huge artificial lake covering the Upper Nile Valley from Aswan in Egypt to the Dal Cataract in Sudan - a culturally extremely rich area, which has been known as Nubia since antiquity.
In 1959 the Egyptian and the Sudanese Governments requested UNESCO to assist their countries in the protection and rescue of the endangered monuments and sites. In 1960, the Director-General of UNESCO launched an appeal to the Member States for an International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia. This appeal resulted in the excavation and recording of hundreds of sites, the recovery of thousands of objects, and the salvage and relocation of a number of important temples to higher ground, the most famous of them the temple complexes of Abu Simbel and Philae. The campaign ended on 10 March 1980 as a complete and spectacular success.
Within the International Campaign, UNESCO played the role of a coordinator and intermediary between the donor States and the Egyptian and Sudanese Governments and facilitated their efforts to save the cultural heritage of Nubia. As a control panel for these activities, the Executive Committee of the International Campaign was created in 1960 and a Trust Fund was established.
Which led to various teams excavating numerous sites including the Oriental Institute:
quote: The Oriental Institute participated in the UNESCO international salvage excavation project in the reservoir area of the Aswan High Dam in Upper Egypt in 1960-64. The project was directed by Keith Seele, Professor of Egyptology at the Institute. The expedition was based on the former Cook tourist boat "Fostat", accompanied by another houseboat, the "Barbara", a tug boat, and a motor launch, all purchased and modified to provide mobile housing, laboratories and storage space. In the first season the project produced an epigraphic record of the Beit El-Wali Temple, near the High Dam. In subsequent seasons the expedition moved its little fleet up the Nile to a new concession between the temples at Abu Simbel and the border of the Sudanese Republic. Excavations were conducted in a monastery, at habitation sites, and in a number of cemeteries extending for miles along both banks of the Nile. These excavations contributed information on every period of Egyptian Nubia from the Old Kingdom through Coptic times.
The Qustul site was excavated by the Oriental Institute where they found the Qustul Incense burner.
quote: This volume is the first of twelve scheduled to present the materials excavated under the direction of Professor Keith C. Seele in a concession that extended from the Abu Simbel temples to the Sudan frontier in two seasons, 1962-63 and 1963-64. It presents, in detail, Cemetery L at Qustul, which is a small cemetery containing unusually large and wealthy tombs of A-Group. The tombs, badly plundered and fire damaged, contained pharaonic images on A-Group objects, indicating that they belonged to rulers from the period before Egypt's First Dynasty. Many finds are unique; decorated objects give direct evidence in context for the date of famous carved stone and ivory objects from early Egypt. This lavishly illustrated volume details the elaborate A-Group painted pottery and decorated objects as well as more common finds, with individual chapters on the tombs, pottery, small objects, epigraphy, and a discussion of the special importance of Cemetery L in early Nubia with its possible role in the development of pharaonic Egypt.
Given all of what has been found, it should be obvious that the Aswan Dam submerged a lot more historical sites. And Qustul is just one example of some of the things that may have been submerged, filling in the picture of the evolution of Nile valley cultures leading up to the predynastic. Other researchers have been able to fill in a lot of this history but having the Nile Dam at such a critical location in terms of the historical junction of this evolution obviously doesn't help.
Of course, much of the scholarship surrounding the ancient history of this region and other regions in Africa in connection to the Nile Valley is in European institutions. The issue comes down to how this information is presented and summarized within Egyptology, which often presents itself as an isolated discipline and an isolated history.
Also, the UNESCO salvage campaign and all the data found as a result has to be seen in the context of the larger UNESCO African history project, of which the 1974 UNESCO Conference in Cairo was a pivotal event. The stated purpose of the conference was Cairo was significant in that it was a debate between the 'international' community over who controls the analysis and dissemination of African history, whether it is up to "international bodies" or African scholars. And this was particularly true in terms of the history of the Nile Valley. So you had UNESCO sponsoring all these digs to salvage artifacts from the Aswan dam, but at the same time, contradicting and obfuscating what those findings represent.
quote: About the Project
In 1964, UNESCO launched the elaboration of the General History of Africa (GHA) with a view to remedy the general ignorance on Africa’s history. The challenge consisted of reconstructing Africa’s history, freeing it from racial prejudices ensuing from slave trade and colonization, and promoting an African perspective. UNESCO therefore called upon the then utmost African and non African experts. These experts’ work represented 35 years of cooperation between more than 230 historians and other specialists, and was overseen by an International Scientific Committee which comprised two-thirds of Africans.
And it was at this conference in 1974 that Chiek Anta Diop most famously presented the findings that the ancient Nile Valley civilizations were rooted in and the result of African evolution and development and not outside invaders or migrants. Yet his work was criticized and rejected despite being well researched and documented. And this is notwithstanding all the data already corroborating many of his views from the previous excavations and ongoing excavations around Aswan. And Qustul is simply one piece of this larger body of evidence that has to be seen in that context.
Since then many other scholars of various backgrounds have also echoed the obvious and overwhelming evidence of the African origins and development leading to the ancient Nile Valley civilizations.
quote: Professor Christopher Ehret’s public lecture at Harvard University on “The Africanity of Ancient Egypt,” is more of a reaffirmation and corroboration of strong claims made by scholars such as Cheikh Anta Diop and Theophile Obenga, much earlier- almost fifty years ago- than a presentation of an original idea or evidence. What is different is that Christopher Ehret presented his argument on the Africanity of Ancient Egypt at Harvard University- the prestigious Ivy League school, that finally opened its doors to hear the arguments for the Africanity of Ancient Egypt.
The argument to place Ancient Egypt in, and of, Africa was cogently put forward by Diop in the UNESCO History of Africa, Volume II. Of course, Diop and Obenga were not invited to present their arguments at Harvard, regarded as the citadel of western intellectual activities. They remained on the fringes, often facing untoward and unreasonable attacks from scholars housed in western institutions of higher learning. Their Africanity- of -Ancient -Egypt arguments are now resurrected and are perhaps heading into the mainstream of knowledge production, thanks to the diligent and consistent arguments presented by scholars like Ehret.
The Africanity of Ancient Egypt was also stated by Bruce Williams who presented comprehensive archaeological evidence to trace back its origin to Nubia. Williams was treated as an outcast for daring to state the archaeological evidence he obtained in places like Qustul, an ancient capital of Nubia.
Ehret utilizes historical linguistics, particularly the examination of early agriculture and words associated with them, to propose a particular place called Laga Oda in eastern Ethiopia as the birthplace of wild grains. The grains became precursors for the development and advancement of farming and the raising of crops. The culture eventually reached ancient Egypt. In other words, according to Ehret, Egyptian agriculture traces its origin in the South in places like Ethiopia. The farming knowledge followed the flow of the Nile to reach Ancient Nubia and Egypt in the North where several advancements, including irrigation agriculture, were made to produce surplus crops. The production of surplus crops enabled the Egyptians to engage in a wide range of cultural and political activities in a sustainable manner. To Ehret, African languages (some say 2,000 of them) originated from a proto-ancient African mother language. The mother language branched out over a long period of time into what Ehret calls daughter languages. The earliest split of the mother language was into proto-Afrasian, which further split into proto-Omotic and proto-Erythraic. While proto-Omotic gave rise to languages, such as Beja and Omotic, proto-Erythraic led to the emergence of what linguists call ancient Egyptian and Coptic. The roots of Ancient Egyptian language may reside in proto-north Erythraic, covering the area in north east Africa straddling the Red Sea, along the mountain chain from the Sudan to Eritrea.
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