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Thesis: Neolithic Southern Badari contemporaries were not sedentary
Approximately two millennia separate the inception of a neolithic economy in the Nile Valley from the period of state formation in Egypt and Lower Nubia. In characterizing this transition, archaeologists have tended to adopt the basic interpretative framework established by Childe (1936), according to which the establishment of a sedentary village economy, based on food production, sets in motion a process of urbanization and increasing social complexity (e.g. Hassan 1988; Kemp 1989; Wilkinson 1999). Political centralization is accordingly viewed as a conceptual and economic outgrowth of the settled way of life, as opposed to the mobile existence of hunter-gatherers. This view is maintained in spite of a lack of evidence for large, planned settlements in late prehistoric and Early Dynastic Egypt, which is often explained in terms of fieldwork bias or poor archaeological preservation (Kemp 1977).
An opposing view, most famously articulated by Wilson (1960), emphasizes the indigenous importance of mortuary culture and kingship as unifying social institutions in Egypt, by contrast with the central conceptual and political role of the city in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia (see, more recently, Baines and Yoffee 1998). Accordingly, the absence of an urban context for Egyptian state formation, and the prominence of funerary monuments in the archaeological record, is viewed as a positive indication of the “insignificant role played by the concept of the city in the political thought of the Egyptians” (Frankfort 1951: 83). In what follows, I extend the context of this debate both temporally, by placing it against the backdrop of neolithic economy and society, and spatially, by developing an integrated interpretation of early neolithic transformations in the Egyptian and Sudanese Nile Valley, based on the evidence outlined above.
In Egypt, the only clear evidence for permanent village life during the early neolithic period derives from Merimda Beni Salama, on the fringes of the Nile Delta. The material culture of this site, and the burials found there, exhibit little sign of the technological innovations, circulation of exotic materials, and elaborate forms of personal display evident in contemporary cemeteries of the Nile Valley (cf. Hoffman 1979: 143, 181–189). Despite their original designation as “villages”, the occupation middens associated with Badarian cemeteries in Middle Egypt exhibit no such evidence of a permanent constructed environment. The most carefully excavated of these sites, at Hammamiya, was in fact interpreted by Caton-Thompson as a “temporary camping ground” (Brunton and Caton-Thompson 1928: 74). More recently, Butzer (1976: 14) has related the distribution of early neolithic (Badarian) sites along the outskirts of the Nile Valley to pastoral activity, while Midant-Reynes (2000: 160) sees them as “mainly … the result of pastoralism” and a “relatively mobile existence”. Clark (1971: 36) similarly observed of Badarian sites that “the circle of grain pits surrounding a central area of ash and pottery suggests a plan similar to that of the Nilotic, cattle-herding Jie in Uganda, the Songhai south of the Niger bend and other Central African peoples where a central stock pen is surrounded by the grain stores and temporary or permanent dwellings of the inhabitants”. The recent excavations at Maghara 2 support the view that the formation of early neolithic sites in the Nile Valley was generated through the seasonal sojourns of mobile herding groups, rather than the establishment of permanent farming villages (Wengrow 2001: 95, 99 n. 5). Despite the lack of evidence for permanent dwellings or organized sedentary life, many commentators continue to describe early neolithic habitation sites in the Egyptian Nile Valley as “villages”, “settlements”, “homesteads”, or even “hamlets” (e.g. Bard 1987: 86, 1994: 24; Hassan 1988: 154; Hendrickx and Vermeersch 2000: 40– 42; Hoffman 1979; Krzyzaniak 1977: 81–82; Wetterstrom 1993: 215). It is often suggested that more substantial settlements were established close to the Nile floodplain, where horticulture was possible, and have therefore been destroyed or buried by the changing course of the river, or through the recent spread of irrigation (Bard 1994: 24; Hendrickx and Vermeersch 2000: 42–43; Midant-Reynes 2000: 160; Trigger 1983: 10). However, there remains little evidence that cereal production became an important economic pursuit in Egypt prior to late neolithic (Naqada I–II) times (Wetterstrom 1993). It cannot, therefore, be assumed on ecological grounds that early neolithic occupation of the landscape would have gravitated towards the floodplain. Curiously, there have been no such efforts to explain away the lack of villages in neolithic Central Sudan. The adoption of domesticated animals in the latter region, where cereal farming played no known role in the neolithic economy, is in fact associated with a marked decline in the number of occupation sites adjacent to the floodplain:
Mesolithic gatherers and fishers were apparently more permanently attracted by riverine resources than neolithic pastoralists who probably came to the river only seasonally … The complete transition to pastoralism seems to have led to the abandonment of permanent sites in favor of pastoral camps. The shift must have forced the inhabitants of the region to adopt a different life-style, consistent with the mobility required for stock breeding communities in arid climates. Therefore, although the region was probably just as intensively inhabited as before, as indicated by the numerous graveyards of this period, these seasonal sites have left few traces due to the ephemeral nature of the equipment used. (Caneva 1991: 7)
Similarities in patterns of site formation, material culture, exchange, and mortuary practices, described above, suggest that this interpretation might be applied with equal validity to the Egyptian Nile Valley (contra Caneva 1991: 6). Its ongoing resistance can only be accounted for by the assumption that emergent cultural complexity, as documented in early neolithic burials, is “inconsistent with the small, poor camp sites and with the pastoral economy that seems to have been the sole support for these communities” (Caneva 1991: 7–8).
David Wengrow in: Ancient Egypt in AfricaPosts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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So the Egyptians began their ascent to civilization while still cattle pastoralists...I've actually known about this for a while, but it's still amazing to ponder nonetheless.
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Interesting stuff. Quite possibly true going back to the Badari. But by Naqada 2 times, there were apparently significant urban settlements or at least sedentary settlements in place.
============================== "Excavations made early in the twentieth century at Abydos revealed that a brick-built town arose here toward the end of the Predynastic period (early Naqada III)." --Civilizations of the ancient Near East: Volume 2. Jack M. Sasson - 1995 - 2966 pages
"In recent years, however, detailed archaeological investigations at sites such as Abydos, Elephantine and Buto have begun to reveal the existence of large, and complex communities at a time when Egypt's distinctive civilization was beginning." -- Ancient Egypt By David P. Silverman, Oxford, 2003, pg 68
It may also be true thaat Egyptologists want to see "urban settlements" as part of the progression of the Dynastic Civ, but Egyptologist Barry kemp in 'Anatomy of a Civ also notes that the term "urban"is a very fuzzy one. Small scale farming communities in ancient AE he says, would well do with small scale admin centers that might not be much bigger than nearby local villages.
"This does not mean that ancient Egypt was under- urbanized, Rather it exemplifies the generally more modest scale of Egyptian society compared with what it normal experience in much of the present world, a scale commensurate with the modest size of the population." pg 194
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In another work, (The archaeology of early Egypt: social transformations in North-East Africa- By D. Wengrow) Wengrow also notes the expansion of Upper Egyptian influence over the north, including urbanization centered in various city-states of the south. So the cutting edge of long-term urbanization has its driving force from the south.
Another point to ponder is the assumption that cultural complexity (such as the Neolithic burials) needs sedentary settlements versus more mobile pastoral models. If Wengrow is right, then such an assumption may not hold. The semi-sedentary Badari were quite capable of the cultural elaboration than led ultimately to the Dynaastic era.
Can anyone think of a situation where peoples with a pastoral or semi-settled model created more elaborate cultural complexity - as shown in burials, constructions, etc etc..?
In other words, does "civilization" mean you HAVE to have certain "prerequisites" such as permanent agricultural settlements?
Food for thought.
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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Ques 1: Can anyone think of another situat where peoples with a pastoral or semi-settled model created more elaborate cultural complexity - as shown in burials, constructions, etc etc..?
Ques 2: Does "civilization" mean you HAVE to have certain "prerequisites" such as permanent agricultural settlements?
ques 3: Is there an Egyptian "mortuary" model based on a centralized, bureaucratic state centered on godlike powers of a king, versus a smaller, more decentralized, "polis" model in Mesopotamia? "Conservatism" of AE versus the more free-wheeling flexibility of Mesopotamia? Not saying it is so, just throwing out the question.
-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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I believe Ausar has pointed this fact out time and time again-- that Egypt has often been nicknamed the "civilization without cities" since there were relatively few towns and urban centers when compared to contemporary civilizations in the 'Near East' or India etc. It's funny that the often ignored cultures in Sub-Sahara such as the forest kingdoms of West Africa have actually built more urban centers and cities than Egypt!
quote:Originally posted by Kalonji: Curiously, there have been no such efforts to explain away the lack of villages in neolithic Central Sudan. The adoption of domesticated animals in the latter region, where cereal farming played no known role in the neolithic economy, is in fact associated with a marked decline in the number of occupation sites adjacent to the floodplain:
Yes, as usual Sudan or 'Nubia' has always been a victim to the double standard where Egypt is always put first in priority. I have been doing some research on the Khartoum Mesolithic and apparently archaeologists believe the peoples of that area were more sedentary than those of Egypt.
quote:Originally posted by Truthcentric: So the Egyptians began their ascent to civilization while still cattle pastoralists...I've actually known about this for a while, but it's still amazing to ponder nonetheless.
Yes, we know you've read Wilkinson's Genesis of the Pharaohs book and seem to be a fan. I remember there was thread here years back that even stated that the early Egyptian pastoralists even fed on the blood of their cattle like Nilotic tribes such as the Masai do today. Again much of their complex culture-- the cattle cult, the cult of the divine king and associated funerary cults all began with these pastoralists.
quote:Originally posted by zarahan: Ques 1: Can anyone think of another situation where peoples with a pastoral or semi-settled model created more elaborate cultural complexity - as shown in burials, constructions, etc etc..?
Yes, the Altaic steppe nomads like the Mongols and Turks, though probably an even greater example would be the pre-Incan cultures who were llama pastoralists.
quote:Ques 2: Does "civilization" mean you HAVE to have certain "prerequisites" such as permanent agricultural settlements?
Of course not. This question has been discussed much here in this forum. Even though the root word 'civil' means city, anthropologists today acknowledge that civilization should mean complex culture in general and not necessarily urbanized.
quote:ques 3: Is there an Egyptian "mortuary" model based on a centralized, bureaucratic state centered on godlike powers of a king, versus a smaller, more decentralized, "polis" model in Mesopotamia? "Conservatism" of AE versus the more free-wheeling flexibility of Mesopotamia? Not saying it is so, just throwing out the question.
This topic has also been discussed numerous times. Even though the pharaoh had supreme power in theory, in practice he was kept in check but certain system of what we today call 'checks and balances' in our American government. Even though the pharaoh was supreme, every nome or province in Egypt had its own central authority and within each nome there were many villages or communities that were self-governed also. In essence the pharaoh was more concerned with national or federal matters and he allowed and was suppose to allow nome and local authorities govern their own peoples. That pharaohs should allow freedom to their people and not be tyrants was part of the sacred mandate or decree of Ma'at. In Mesopotamia on the other hand, even though kings were not viewed as divine and therefore not supreme they still struggled and did more harm to keep the city-states in possession than the pharaohs of Egypt.
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I have been doing some research on the Khartoum Mesolithic and apparently archaeologists believe the peoples of that area were more sedentary than those of Egypt.
^Djehuti, do you have any references/text on this?
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: This topic has also been discussed numerous times. Even though the pharaoh had supreme power in theory, in practice he was kept in check but certain system of what we today call 'checks and balances' in our American government. Even though the pharaoh was supreme, every nome or province in Egypt had its own central authority and within each nome there were many villages or communities that were self-governed also. In essence the pharaoh was more concerned with national or federal matters and he allowed and was suppose to allow nome and local authorities govern their own peoples. That pharaohs should allow freedom to their people and not be tyrants was part of the sacred mandate or decree of Ma'at. In Mesopotamia on the other hand, even though kings were not viewed as divine and therefore not supreme they still struggled and did more harm to keep the city-states in possession than the pharaohs of Egypt.
I swear, there's a trend in African history for local governors to have substantial influence over the king at court. The Mali Empire had a council of clan leaders who assisted the Mansa in government, and elder councils were also influential in some Yoruba govermments. It seems that Africans have traditionally favored oligarchy over total dictatorship.
However, wasn't the position of nomarch eventually abolished in Egypt by the New Kingdom, with the Pharaoh taking control of the administration of the whole nation?
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quote:Originally posted by zarahan: Ques 1: Can anyone think of another situat where peoples with a pastoral or semi-settled model created more elaborate cultural complexity - as shown in burials, constructions, etc etc..?
Ques 2: Does "civilization" mean you HAVE to have certain "prerequisites" such as permanent agricultural settlements?
ques 3: Is there an Egyptian "mortuary" model based on a centralized, bureaucratic state centered on godlike powers of a king, versus a smaller, more decentralized, "polis" model in Mesopotamia? "Conservatism" of AE versus the more free-wheeling flexibility of Mesopotamia? Not saying it is so, just throwing out the question.
Constructions of prehistoric pastoralism
A nomad power is something inconceivable [for the Ancient Greeks]; if it is power, it cannot be nomad. (Hartog 1988: 202)
The view that mobile, pastoral societies have poor material cultures and were marginal to the main stream of cultural development in the prehistoric and ancient world was a pervasive feature of late 20th century archaeological discourse (e.g. Bar- Yosef and Khazanov 1992; Chang and Koster 1986; Cribb 1991; Gifford 1978; Sadr 1991; Smith 1992; Zeuner 1954: 353, 374). While the economic foundations of early states have conventionally been sought in the development of agrarian production, the archaeological study of pastoralism has concentrated upon “inhospitable hinterlands” (Sadr 1991: 73; cf. Smith 1992: 17). The pastoralist, as Finkelstein (1995) puts it, is to be sought “living on the fringe”, rather than at the hub of social change.
Ethnoarchaeological studies of modern pastoralists in Africa and the Middle East (see Finkelstein 1995: 23 for a survey) have contributed heavily to this image of pastoralism as an inherently marginal pursuit. Hole (1978: 131), for instance, proposed that in order “to gain some perspectives on pastoralism in prehistory”, we must ignore those pastoral groups “whose exceptional exploits have affected history and become the elaborate stuff of myth and legend”, and turn instead to “the tribes of the Zagros slopes, who missed most of the glorious episodes of the past just as they stand outside the course of history today”. Cribb’s (1991: 228) extensive study of pastoralism in modern Turkey leads him to a similar conclusion: “I am confident that nomadic campsites will continue to emerge as a minor component of the archaeological record of the Near East … The significant finding which emerged from this research is that nomadic campsites are structured in a distinctive way that bears the imprint of an inherently unstable mode of subsistence.” Smith (1992: 11), drawing upon descriptions of the Taureg, Nuer, Fulani and Khoikhoi, proposes that “pastoralism is a strategy of residential mobility designed to obtain minimum resources, such as pasture and water for the domestic herds, as well as access to markets where commodities not readily available can be produced by exchange”.
It seems a curious strategy, however, to systematically pursue the minimum rewards, and there are surely echoes here, both of Crawford’s “people without history”, and of a puritanical view of pastoralism, rooted in the Old Testament narrative of pious, ascetic Israelites pitted against the “dark moral exemplar” of urban Canaan and Babylon (McIntosh 1999: 58).3 Since the 1970s, anthropologists have increasingly argued that the widespread occurrence of impoverishment, instability and marginality amongst modern pastoralists is related to the impact of colonialism, urbanization, and the hostile expansion of agro-industrial nation states during the last two centuries (e.g. Asad 1973, 1979; Carr 1977; Comaroff and Comaroff 1992; Galaty and Salzmann 1981; Spencer 1998). The fact that these characteristics are widely present among pastoral populations says more about their resistance to today’s dominant political and economic interests than it does about the inherent ability of pastoralists to alter the course of historical (or prehistorical) events.
This does not imply that archaeologists have nothing to learn from the study of modern pastoralists; rather, that the lesson has nothing to do with the potentialities of a given form of economy. Just as the existence of modern pastoralists is most clearly understood in terms of their relationships with the ‘outside world’ of today (Khazanov 1984), so that of prehistoric pastoralists needs to be understood in terms of the outside world of prehistory. The archaeological ‘invisibility’ of pastoralists may yet be overcome by questioning the arbitrary limits placed upon our vision through uncritical use of ethnographic models, and by critically adapting insights gained from ethnographic experience to meet the challenges posed by the archaeological record.
David Wengrow in: Ancient Egypt in AfricaPosts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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Pastoralism and political space: some examples
As Hartog has demonstrated in his study of Herodotus’ portrayal of the Scythians, the conviction that mobile societies are incapable of generating distinct forms of social power has deep roots in western thought. As a people who were at once mobile herders and yet subject to royal power, the Scythians contravened a basic norm of ancient Greek political thought: the inseparability of political structures from the material framework of the town (polis) and from the practice of agriculture. Like other nomads, they were normally described as a negative reflection of Greek values and practices. In their exercise of military or royal power, however, they could only be represented in the idiom of a settled, ‘domesticated’ people, i.e. according to conventional understandings of the relationship between power, space and labour (Hartog 1988: 200–206; cf. Weissleder 1978).
Similarly, Burton (1980: 273) points out the strong tendency “to assume that a village is the primordial fully social arrangement and that the physical existence of clustered habitation sites imbues social relationships with a measure of permanence”. As he demonstrates through a study of Atuot cattle-keepers in the Upper Nile region of southern Sudan, this point of view cannot be applied unquestioningly to mobile populations: “One observes a remarkably higher population in the cattle camps in contrast to the village areas, and, after a period of residence, a greater ‘moral density’ as well. It would perhaps make better sense to speak of cultivation camps and cattle villages” (Burton 1980: 273). Similar observations were made by Evans-Pritchard (1940: 116) in relation to the Nuer, and by Lienhardt with regard to the neighbouring Dinka:
In view of the fact that the permanent settlements of the Dinka contain all their members at two seasons of the year only – for the sowing and around harvest time – it is understandable that political groups should be spoken of in the idiom of the cattleherding group or cattle-camp (wut) and not of the homestead, village, or settlement (baai). (Lienhardt 1961: 7)
Historically, political and religious networks in the Upper Nile region have converged upon focal shrines which take the form of huge earthen mounds. “In a region where people must be continuously on the move, seasonally and periodically,” writes Johnson (1990: 43), “such focal points are mediating centers, bringing together old and new members of the community”. Luang Deng (The Cattle Byre of Deng) is among the oldest functioning mound-shrines in the Upper Nile region. Howell reported that some Dinka buried their dead facing towards it, and hung offerings of cattle-horns, iron bangles and tobacco on two sacred trees located at its summit. Representing the abode of the divinity Deng and his kin, the mound acted to fix “in one spot (rather than only in a succession of persons) the site where Divinity, or a divinity, could be approached” (Johnson 1990: 49; cf. Seligman and Seligman 1932: 180). Mawson (1991) has described events surrounding the construction of another mound-shrine, Luang Mayual of the Agar Dinka. In addition to reconstituting communal bonds through labour, the periodic rebuilding of Luang Mayual also provided an opportunity for the strategic negotiation of social influence. Animal sacrifices performed on the mound acquired a status which transcended immediate kinship relations, while heifers consecrated there acquired a special value in bride-wealth payments. Hence “access to cattle in this context was both a direct indication of relative politico-religious influence and an important way of reproducing influence in the future” (Mawson 1991: 361–362; cf. Johnson 1994: 106).
These modern Nilotic examples serve to illustrate how mobile pastoralists may generate idioms of political organization and practice that cannot be subsumed within models of social development based upon the metaphor of fixed, bounded structures (village, town, city/nation state). What they do not demonstrate is any form of direct relationship between modern and prehistoric peoples of the Nile Valley, beyond the fact that their respective social morphologies differ in similar ways from that of the largely urban intelligentsia which has made them an object of study.
David Wengrow in: Ancient Egypt in AfricaPosts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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Embodiment as an idiom of social power in Ancient Egypt
Of particular interest, in the light of more recent discussions of African political forms (e.g. Arens and Karp 1989; Argenti 1999; Rowlands 1998b, 1999), is Frankfort’s characterization of Ancient Egyptian kingship as the embodiment of sacred power (see especially Frankfort 1948: 45). Although allied to what subsequent commentators have considered an exaggerated account of the king’s divinity (Posener 1960; and see O’Connor and Silverman 1995), discussions of embodiment in Kingship and the Gods also focus to a considerable extent upon the concrete dimensions of experience and activity through which royal power was expressed in Egypt, rather than just its theoretical nature. In addition to archaeological and epigraphic data, Frankfort drew upon descriptions of Shilluk religion to exemplify how a society might recognize that “a succession of individuals embodies the same divine being, yet … not disregard the individuality of each separate ruler” (Frankfort 1948: 199–200). His interpretation stresses the role of the king’s body – and the objects, images and mythologies in which its force was localized, encoded, perpetuated and distributed – as the nexus, both of political power and of society’s ongoing relationship with the cosmos. This aspect of Frankfort’s account finds echoes in more recent studies, in the light of which its main tenets may be briefly reviewed.
Unlike that of Mesopotamia, Early Dynastic society in Egypt did not crystallize into a number of distinct, autonomous city-states, but rather “assumed the form of a single, united, but rural domain of an absolute monarch” (Frankfort 1948: 50; cf. Baines and Yoffee 1998: 208–209). Royal ceremony centred upon the body of the king, in which an immortal god was incarnated and personified. It consisted primarily in the erection and maintenance of permanent funerary monuments, and in a cycle of more ephemeral, revelatory displays, which celebrated his active role in binding the inhabited land to an ordered image of the cosmos (Frankfort 1948: 45, 79–139; cf. Baines 1995: 129–135, 1997). During the Old Kingdom, elite status was expressed in the idiom of proximity and access to the king’s person, which provided the primary locus of political authority in the land (Helck 1954; cf. Baines 1999), and the transmission of landed property was regulated to a significant extent by participation in mortuary cults. These linked the ritual maintenance of a sensory life for the king and the elite to the dispensation of privileges and resources among their living dependants (Kemp 1983: 85–96; Roth 1991).
Increasing scholarly interest in developing or reviving accounts of Egyptian state formation based upon African models of political development constitutes more than an intellectual engagement with current social agendas. It also represents a frustration with the inability of existing models of social evolution, developed principally in relation to the archaeological record of South West Asia, to account for the distinguishing features of Egyptian political culture outlined above (cf. Fairservis 1989). In the remainder of this chapter, I highlight these shortcomings, and seek to outline the basis of an alternative account of early state formation, placing Egypt’s development within the context of the Nile Valley as a whole, and drawing particularly upon recent archaeological discoveries in Central Sudan. Since it is generally accepted that the adoption of domesticated animals and plants during the neolithic period provided the material foundations for state formation, the focus of my discussion must be upon the particular form of neolithic society that emerged in the Nile Valley during the fifth millennium BC.
David Wengrow in: Ancient Egypt in AfricaPosts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Truthcentric: So the Egyptians began their ascent to civilization while still cattle pastoralists...I've actually known about this for a while, but it's still amazing to ponder nonetheless.
You're reading Wilkinson right now aren't you? Isn't that the crux of his argument?
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Unlike that of Mesopotamia, Early Dynastic society in Egypt did not crystallize into a number of distinct, autonomous city-states, but rather “assumed the form of a single, united, but rural domain of an absolute monarch” (Frankfort 1948: 50; cf. Baines and Yoffee 1998: 208–209). Royal ceremony centred upon the body of the king, in which an immortal god was incarnated and personified. It consisted primarily in the erection and maintenance of permanent funerary monuments, and in a cycle of more ephemeral, revelatory displays, which celebrated his active role in binding the inhabited land to an ordered image of the cosmos (Frankfort 1948: 45, 79–139; cf. Baines 1995: 129–135, 1997). During the Old Kingdom, elite status was expressed in the idiom of proximity and access to the king’s person, which provided the primary locus of political authority in the land (Helck 1954; cf. Baines 1999), and the transmission of landed property was regulated to a significant extent by participation in mortuary cults. These linked the ritual maintenance of a sensory life for the king and the elite to the dispensation of privileges and resources among their living dependants (Kemp 1983: 85–96; Roth 1991).
Excellent reference Kalonji, particularly his model of settlements based on proximity to the divine king, rather than a city state. Also there are several "intermediate" levels between pastoralism and agriculture, so the difference may not be all that clear cut in Africa. Numerous Bantu for example were primarily cattle herders, but they farmed part-time as well, and could move whole settlements if needed. So why not part-time herders and farmers in the mix? The mobile Dinka, and their return to rededicate their ritual mounds and divine kingship of the Shilluk points to the African roots, roots that needed no "Middle Eastern" inspiration to develop the dynastic civilization.
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^ Of course. By the way, for the past few decades now there were various Egyptologists who were bold enough to study this African model of Egyptian cultural development as they knew it made the most sense-- Egyptologists like Barbara S. Lesko.
Here is an excerpt from her book
Out of Africa
There is much evidence from ancient Egypt contradicting the opinion commonly held by historians that all women of all earlier cultures were relegated to the private sphere. In pharaonic times Egyptian women were regularly called up to do national service, as were men. In religious life women were active participants in the cult, serving in many ranks of the clerical hierarchy, and certainly did not require a male to mediate between them and a deity. Similarly, Egyptian women were independent legal persons and did not need a male cosignatory or legal guardian. They were free to earn wages and make purchases in the marketplace. Ancient Egyptian women owned and had complete control over both movable and immovable property such as real estate. This right could not be claimed by women in some parts of the United States as late as the 1960s. The independence and leadership roles of ancient Egyptian women may be part of an African cultural pattern that began millennia ago and continued into recent times. In the 1860s the famous Dr. David Livingstone wrote of meeting female chiefs in the Congo, and in most of the monarchical systems of tradtional Africa there were either one or two women of the highest rank who occupied a position on a par with that of the king or complementary to it. Anthropologist who have studied tribes and records of early travelers and missionaries tell us that "everywhere in Africa that one scrapes the surface one finds ethno-historical data on the authority once shared by women." Recent work with traditional African societies has revealed that both men and women were recognized as having important roles in the public sphere. Thus it is not too surprising to find that in Egypt in several excavated cemeteries from the early cultural periods the richest tombs were those of women. In another grave at Badari (grave no. 3740) a woman was buried with a weapon that was commonly used in sacrifice, a "knobbed mace-head of pink limestone," as well as a slate cosmetic palette. These were valuable objects and indicated high status as well as wealth. If prominent roles for females were the norm for many African societies and for this reason show up already in ancient Egypt, perhaps there are other indications of an African cultural heritage pertinent to our study. Early Egyptologists, such as E.A. Wallis Budge and Flinders Petrie, seemed to be reluctant to credit much cultural development to the indigenous inhabitants of the Nile Valley and were quick to attribute the arrival of agriculture and important deities to the incursion of western Asiatics into the region. However, the most recent research indicates that Egyptian agriculture was started in the western oases centuries before the agriculturalists migrated east toward the Nile Valley. Such a bias against the creativity of an African culture is reflected even by more recent writers and scholars such as E.O. James who did not consider Africa pertinent for his study of the pancultural cult of the mother goddess. He claimed that even the sun god of the Egyptians, Re, was and import from the cloud-covered eastern Mediterranean, a claim unsubstantiated by any evidence (James provides none) and illogical for the sun-drenched land of Egypt. It might be argued that the sun's heat was a destructive force and the sun would be more appreciated in a cooler and damper climate, but the harmful aspect of the sun was seldom acknowledged later in Egypt and its benign aspect more emphasized. The sun's disk is frequently encountered in Egyptian religious iconography, and the sun god Re was the supreme deity in the pantheon during much of pharaonic history. Recently the archaeologist Barry J. Kemp has considered some of these early claims for the importance of cultural importations and argues for an Upper Egyptian origin for Horus, the falcon god of the sky, which had been proposed by others as an Asiatic import. Kemp also realistically points to the "unlimited agricultural potential" of the Egyptian landscape in which the sustenance of a settled life by the growing of crops found nothing bu encouragement and could have developed naturally. It is most helpful to search among surviving Nilotic tribes, such as the Dinka of the White Nile, to gain insight into the material and spiritual life of the early predynastic Egyptians. The Dinka, who were studied intensively by anthropologists during the first half of the twentieth century, were a herding society that did some farming an a little hunting. Their value system and social life revolved, to a large extent, around their cattle, which provided them with food, drink, and clothing as well as inspiration in song and dance. While there were rich pasture-lands along the riverbanks, during floods the herds had to be moved to the unsettled savanna at a higher elevation. Human settlements were on outcroppings that kept villagers dry. Although the Dinka tribespeople interviewed by the anthropologist Godfrey Lienhardt professed a belief in a supreme divinity, they also had clan divinities, which often took the emblem of a particular animal. As the Dinka explained it, if a clan took a giraffe or an elephant as its clan divinity, it did not mean that divinity was present in all such animals, but it did require that such animals be treated with respect. The divinity represented by the animal is one and apart: so if by some great tragedy all the giraffes were to be exterminated, the spirit of ancestral Giraffe would endure and would help to protect the clan. Thus it was not the individual animal member but the concept Giraffe that belonged to a wider class of powers. "It seems that the Dinka themselves often think of them as acquired by chance-- a chance association, though an important one, between the founding ancestor of a clan and the species, which then becomes the clan divinity of all his descendants. Because the surviving emblems from predynastic Egypt show falcons, cows, hippopotamuses, and gazelles, and among the names of the first kings of the historic period are Catfish and Scorpion, and later deities appear as crocodiles, lionesses, vultures, and ibises, it is tempting to see here the vestiges of early clan divinities. The prehistoric schematic clay figurines of human shape (and of both sexes) with arms gracefully raised and bent inward, usually above the head but sometimes positioned more forward, bear a striking resemblance to the Dinka photographed by Leinhardt. In these photographs the Dinka dance with just such curved, raised arms. According to Lienhardt, the Dinka are portraying the sweeping horns of a "display ox." So important and central to their society are the cattle they keep, that Dinka youths are reported, when sitting by themselves alone with their herd, as holding their arms extended and curved in just this position. This could explain why the few predynastic figurines that appear to be seated still exhibit this formation of the arms.
The Primeval Cow Goddess
Although Baumgartel believed the Badarian conical-bottomed figurines with raised arms were images of humans, not deities, she saw the image of a bovine fertility goddess in some of the pottery of the succeeding Upper Egyptian cultural phase (ca. 4000 B.C.), the Amratian/Naqada I culture. There is a vase dating from the end of Naqada I "on the exterior of which are represented in relief a human head flanked by two cow's horns and a pair of arms holding the breasts which descend from the rim of the vase behind the head." Other vases from the period are known which also show arms holding breasts. Such artifacts have been used to argue for a maternal or fertility goddess in the prehistoric period. In my opinion, this concept would also fit in with the flora- and fauna-engraved female figurines described above. There are still those (not only some Egyptologists) who charge that the idea of a prehistoric and widely venerated mother goddess (suggested by the hundreds of so-called Venus figurines found across Europe) is merely a fantasy. It is obvious, however, that the female role not only of giver of birth (life) but also of sustainer of early life would naturally have had a profound impact on the earliest humans. Of course, their world was populated by all sorts of forces, many life threatening, which needed to be recognized and propitiated, and this calls into doubt the concept of a lone goddess or even a supreme mother goddess dominating all other divinities. The more explicit evidence from Asia Minor and southern Europe and other Neolithic cultures suggests that a similar very early African or Egyptian earth mother or mother goddess is surely possible even if it is not substantiated by physical evidence in Egypt and even if she was not venerated alone. Archaeological and anthropological data from the ancient Near East and Africa suggests that when and where the female principle was venerated, it often assumed aspects of the cow. The cow is a domesticated animal; it can stand anywhere at anytime in history as the very image of the homestead, of settled agricultural life--- an image evoking warmth and security. The cow is surely the embodiment of nurturing motherhood. Gentle with her young and sharing her milk with humans as well, the cow is venerated even today in herding societies throughout the world. In Sri Lanka, for instance, a milk-overflowing ceremony invokes the goddess who stands for matrilineal kinship, mother's blood, bodily health, an integration of community. The earliest clear representation of a cow goddess is found on a slate palette of the Gerzean Period that bears a relief of a cow's head facing forward and five stars just above the tips of the horns. Hornung suggests she is to be equated with Bat, the cow icon of Upper Egypt. Baumgartel thought this was the first representation of the sky as a deity, and surely the stars do suggest a celestial goddess. Meret-Weret, known from the historic period's literature but often appearing as a precursor to the sky goddess Nut, is another possible identity for this starry head. The curved cow horns are reminiscent of the lunar crescent, but there was no moon goddess in pharaonic Egypt. However, the crescent moon, as I have seen it in Luxor, hanging low over the western hills with points turned upward, certainly evokes a celestial bovine's horns. Thus we may have in this early rendition of a sacred cow one of the few hints of a moon goddess who might have flourished as far back as the Neolithic or early Chalcolithic but who disappeared, or was suppressed during the early historic period. From the archaeological evidence it is clear that not one but several religious cults were established long before the Two Lands were unified and a documented Egyptian history began. In about 3100 B.C., when the Upper Egyptians celebrated what may have been their final victory over the delta and united Egypt into a strong kingdom of the Two Lands, they placed the cow (or possibly water buffalo) goddess of Upper Egypt, Bat, prominently at the top of both sides of a large commemorative shield-shaped slate. This palette with its relief scenes commemorating the victory of King Narmer and the Upper Egyptians---known today as the Narmer Palette---is an important historic and artistic monument. Given her dominant position on both sides, it seems that the goddess, who promoted the birth of humans, now presided over the birth of a nation. With the absence of texts from Egypt's prehistoric period we cannot understand all the nuances of the early goddess's meaning for her people, but in the literature of Egypt's historical period, as we shall see presently, the image of the cow goddess is prominent and she has many important roles to play. James suggested that not until animal husbandry was practiced and the role of the male found to be essential in breeding was a male divine role imagined. This, if true, would give primacy to the cow clan divinity but would not explain the presence of other animal divinities unless they were predated by only one (female animal) divinity from a time too early to have provided any artifactual evidence. Clearly goddesses did not have exclusive command of humanity's loyalty or fear, however. The same rich female's grave that contained the slim male figure also contained an ivory carving of an animal, later identified with the god Seth, and in the next cultural phase, the Gerzean period, pot paintings indicate that a multitude of cults flourishing before 3200 B.C The buff pottery of the Gerzean age with its red line paintings gives us the best insights into the culture of the late predynastic period. Various deities known from later times are suggested by the totems portrayed. Among the divine symbols are the harpoonlike spear of phallic symbol of the fertility god Min, the falcon of Horus, who was later known as a sky god, and the crossed arrows of the goddess Neith. While large female figures are found on a number of Gerzean pots, a large male ithyphallic figure is depicted, adjacent to the totem for Min, on at least one pot known to me (found in a grave at Ballas). Thus the male role in fertility was probably recognized in Egypt contemporaneously with the female. The Egyptologist Jaroslav Cerny believed that anthropomorphism in the portrayal of deities developed when intellectual rather than purely physical qualities became most valued by people. This he connected with the flowering of civilization; "Gods, to whom a high degree of power and intelligence was attributed, were, therefore, bound to assume human form. Humans, both men and women, are portrayed on Gerzean pot paintings. Among the portrayals of brides, landmasses, and huts or shrines, many Gerzean pots have a female figure, usually with arms raised as in the pottery figurines, who is portrayed on a larger scale than other closely associated female and male figures. Baumgartel interpreted the major female figure as the great mother goddess, and others are equally convinced. However, because there is often more than one female figure and a number of smaller figures portrayed, the concept of a goddess and her lover/son that is found in other cultures (and suggested by Baumgartel and, more recently, by Hassan) does not quite fit. Again, the presence of a lone ithyphallic male figure on other pots argues persuasively for both male and female deities concerned with fertility and not a single dominant female deity. It is just as legitimate---if one wanted to build on this very tenuous evidence---to suggest that the larger female in the vase paintings is a human, perhaps a politically important person. Indeed, in historic period art, the more important figure, whether in a family or a national scene, whether human or divine, is portrayed on a larger scale. The frequent prominence of a female figure in the Gerzean paintings could indicate a goddess, a priestess, or a chieftainess; nothing more can be said with certainty. There is no absolute evidence for a prehistoric monotheism, whether based on a female or male principle. Indeed, Hassan believes strongly in the "complementarity of the male and female principles" in the mythic thought of predynastic Egyptians. The recognizable totems of that age give ample evidence of both male and female deities. As in historic times, the earliest inhabitants of the Nile valley seemed to have preferred a multiplicity of choices. Also it should be recalled, but seldom is, that deities themselves (as opposed to their standards or totems) were very rarely portrayed by Egyptian artists until much later, not at first in tombs, not very extensively in sculpture, only in royal contexts, and not until the Middle Kingdom in representational art associated with commoners. Egyptologists who have not even considered the possibility of political importance, or temporal power (such as clan leaders or priestesses for such female figures), perhaps have been biased by the patriarchal societies in which they themselves live. They also reveal a lack of familiarity with African political history, as known from later periods. Numerous regions in sub-Saharan Africa have experienced generations of rule by females, and Egypt's southern neighbor, the kingdom of Meroe, exhibited this at its height in the last millennium B.C. Female leadership in society or in cults certainly does not rule out female deities; just the opposite would be expected. It will be seen that the queens of the First Dynasty had close ties to the goddess Neith, whose presence is documented by representations of her totem in the late prehistoric period. They incorporated her name in theirs and oversaw her cult. No doubt at her original cult center, the town later known as Sais, this goddess was supreme, and some might have claimed "alone." It was when the many petty city-states became consolidated into one nation that the multitude of cults had to be sorted out. What happened when civilization and Egyptian state developed in about 3100 B.C.? Hassan suggests the following interpretation of events. The predynastic myths and rituals, concerned with birth, death, and resurrection, had been associated with goddesses. Now these goddesses' sacred powers were absorbed by the male leaders of the consolidated state of the First Dynasty. The early state "was most likely not the result of a single battle, but the culmination of wars and alliances, as well as fragmentation and re-unification over a period of at least 250 years." The few major kingdoms that emerged between 3400 and 3200 B.C. included, among others, Naqada and Hierakonpolis in Upper Egypt and Sais in the delta. Each locale had its own principle diety (Seth at Naqada, Horus at Hierakonpolis, and Neith in Sais in these cases). But as a unified state was created from local or "tribal" (to use Hassan's term) societies, so too a shift in emphasis from local deities to national cosmic gods was necessitated. Early women had found their power in kinship-based relations, but their roles were now undermined by the emergence of a non-kinship organization, composed of male-dominated political groups related to defense and economic activities "beyond the traditional (territorial) domain of females." Now too occurred a "transition from a focus on female-linked vegetation and regeneration cults to male-linked myths and rituals of legitimation." The king took on, as a reflection of his cosmic role, the "guaranteeing of prosperity, the orderly transition of the seasons, and plentiful harvests." There was no more need for a goddess of the herds or a mother goddess of the earth who assured bountiful crops. The king himself would uphold Maat, the divine order of the universe, and assure that all was well in Egypt. Divine kingship became the cornerstone of the Egyptian state, and the king was given a divine genealogy by the priests of Heliopolis, the chief cult center of the sun god, Re. The king found himself equated with Horus, the great god of the sky, revered for centuries by the town whose leaders took credit for the unification of the Two Lands. Myths now provided "a cosmic rationale for the rule of a male king and hereditary succession." The old goddesses could not be ignored, however. That would have been dangerous, since it was necessary for them to legitimize the king. He is affiliated with the Two Ladies, the vulture goddess Nekhbet of El-Kab in Upper Egypt an the cobra goddess Wadjet of Buto in the delta or Lower Egypt. They would protect him as divine mothers or serve him as nurses, just as would the bovine goddess Gat, who appeared on the top of the Narmer Palette. Later Isis, the throne, an Hathor, the divine genealogy of the king personified, would nurture and protect and even revive the king when dead. Hassan suggests that the god Osiris gained the "funerary role of the goddess" when he became god-king of the dead. Nut the sky goddess developed out of the earlier Mehet-Weret, as will be seen shortly. Over the centuries the goddesses found themselves with new roles but with staying power as well, because the theologians of the sun god and the priests of the king were not the only worshipers in the land.
^ Here yet again is an example of an Egyptologist who looks to the Dinka as model of Egyptian cultural development.
Posts: 26280 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by zarahan: ^^Good answers..
I have been doing some research on the Khartoum Mesolithic and apparently archaeologists believe the peoples of that area were more sedentary than those of Egypt.
^Djehuti, do you have any references/text on this?
Yes. Two books in mind would be People, Water, and Grain: The Beginnings of Domestication in the Sahara and the Nile Valley by Barbara E. Barich and Chronology of the Khartoum ‘Mesolithic’ and ‘Neolithic’ and Related Sites in the Sudan: Statistical Analysis and Comparisons with Egypt by Fekri Hassan.
quote:Originally posted by Truthcentric: I swear, there's a trend in African history for local governors to have substantial influence over the king at court. The Mali Empire had a council of clan leaders who assisted the Mansa in government, and elder councils were also influential in some Yoruba govermments. It seems that Africans have traditionally favored oligarchy over total dictatorship.
The influence of the nomarch's is important since only they new what was best for their respective localities. Again this is similar to say senators in the U.S. Congress. They provided the pharaoh and his administration information about their localities. Also I don't think this was totally an oligarchy since many of these nomarchs were elected by people and were in turned advised by the chieftains or governors of the various villages in their sepat (nome).
quote:However, wasn't the position of nomarch eventually abolished in Egypt by the New Kingdom, with the Pharaoh taking control of the administration of the whole nation?
I don't know. Do you have any further information on this?
Posts: 26280 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by zarahan: Unlike that of Mesopotamia, Early Dynastic society in Egypt did not crystallize into a number of distinct, autonomous city-states, but rather “assumed the form of a single, united, but rural domain of an absolute monarch” (Frankfort 1948: 50; cf. Baines and Yoffee 1998: 208–209). Royal ceremony centred upon the body of the king, in which an immortal god was incarnated and personified. It consisted primarily in the erection and maintenance of permanent funerary monuments, and in a cycle of more ephemeral, revelatory displays, which celebrated his active role in binding the inhabited land to an ordered image of the cosmos (Frankfort 1948: 45, 79–139; cf. Baines 1995: 129–135, 1997). During the Old Kingdom, elite status was expressed in the idiom of proximity and access to the king’s person, which provided the primary locus of political authority in the land (Helck 1954; cf. Baines 1999), and the transmission of landed property was regulated to a significant extent by participation in mortuary cults. These linked the ritual maintenance of a sensory life for the king and the elite to the dispensation of privileges and resources among their living dependants (Kemp 1983: 85–96; Roth 1991).
Excellent reference Kalonji, particularly his model of settlements based on proximity to the divine king, rather than a city state. Also there are several "intermediate" levels between pastoralism and agriculture, so the difference may not be all that clear cut in Africa. Numerous Bantu for example were primarily cattle herders, but they farmed part-time as well, and could move whole settlements if needed. So why not part-time herders and farmers in the mix? The mobile Dinka, and their return to rededicate their ritual mounds and divine kingship of the Shilluk points to the African roots, roots that needed no "Middle Eastern" inspiration to develop the dynastic civilization.
Exactly. The spiritual and political connection of Ancient Egyptians to their king, rather than a type of static and immobile royal house, observable in Eurasian civi's, is what ties the two concepts of both semi-sedentary livelihoods and highly sophisticated cultural features, in absence of equally sophisticated sedentary indicators in the archaeological record, together
This early aspect of Ancient Egyptian civilization, which is pastoral and independent of a particular region, obliterates the oft-cited sentiment, which appears Herodotus' writings as well, that Ancient Egypt was ''the gift of the Nile'', implying that the Nile and it's many derived beneficial products is what made AE great, rather than its leaders, citizens and extremely peculiar, yet African, ways of conceptualizing the world around them.
Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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All These links to other Africans and the Trolls are to scared to even set foot in this thread.
No Lioness, Spiralman, or Simple. Just shows how weak there argument is.
Keep putting the Hurting on them trolls.
Peace
Who is simple? Would that be me?
Go ahead King and show us the cultural affinities that link the sub-saharans to the proto-Egyptians directly preceding dynasty 1 through funerary practices and funerary objects. Unlike you I'm openly receptive to your evidence and opinions.
Posts: 676 | From: the Alpha and the Omega | Registered: Nov 2010
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ Of course. By the way, for the past few decades now there were various Egyptologists who were bold enough to study this African model of Egyptian cultural development as they knew it made the most sense-- Egyptologists like Barbara S. Lesko.
Here is an excerpt from her book
Out of Africa
There is much evidence from ancient Egypt contradicting the opinion commonly held by historians that all women of all earlier cultures were relegated to the private sphere. In pharaonic times Egyptian women were regularly called up to do national service, as were men. In religious life women were active participants in the cult, serving in many ranks of the clerical hierarchy, and certainly did not require a male to mediate between them and a deity. Similarly, Egyptian women were independent legal persons and did not need a male cosignatory or legal guardian. They were free to earn wages and make purchases in the marketplace. Ancient Egyptian women owned and had complete control over both movable and immovable property such as real estate. This right could not be claimed by women in some parts of the United States as late as the 1960s. The independence and leadership roles of ancient Egyptian women may be part of an African cultural pattern that began millennia ago and continued into recent times. In the 1860s the famous Dr. David Livingstone wrote of meeting female chiefs in the Congo, and in most of the monarchical systems of tradtional Africa there were either one or two women of the highest rank who occupied a position on a par with that of the king or complementary to it. Anthropologist who have studied tribes and records of early travelers and missionaries tell us that "everywhere in Africa that one scrapes the surface one finds ethno-historical data on the authority once shared by women." Recent work with traditional African societies has revealed that both men and women were recognized as having important roles in the public sphere. Thus it is not too surprising to find that in Egypt in several excavated cemeteries from the early cultural periods the richest tombs were those of women. In another grave at Badari (grave no. 3740) a woman was buried with a weapon that was commonly used in sacrifice, a "knobbed mace-head of pink limestone," as well as a slate cosmetic palette. These were valuable objects and indicated high status as well as wealth. If prominent roles for females were the norm for many African societies and for this reason show up already in ancient Egypt, perhaps there are other indications of an African cultural heritage pertinent to our study. Early Egyptologists, such as E.A. Wallis Budge and Flinders Petrie, seemed to be reluctant to credit much cultural development to the indigenous inhabitants of the Nile Valley and were quick to attribute the arrival of agriculture and important deities to the incursion of western Asiatics into the region. However, the most recent research indicates that Egyptian agriculture was started in the western oases centuries before the agriculturalists migrated east toward the Nile Valley. Such a bias against the creativity of an African culture is reflected even by more recent writers and scholars such as E.O. James who did not consider Africa pertinent for his study of the pancultural cult of the mother goddess. He claimed that even the sun god of the Egyptians, Re, was and import from the cloud-covered eastern Mediterranean, a claim unsubstantiated by any evidence (James provides none) and illogical for the sun-drenched land of Egypt. It might be argued that the sun's heat was a destructive force and the sun would be more appreciated in a cooler and damper climate, but the harmful aspect of the sun was seldom acknowledged later in Egypt and its benign aspect more emphasized. The sun's disk is frequently encountered in Egyptian religious iconography, and the sun god Re was the supreme deity in the pantheon during much of pharaonic history. Recently the archaeologist Barry J. Kemp has considered some of these early claims for the importance of cultural importations and argues for an Upper Egyptian origin for Horus, the falcon god of the sky, which had been proposed by others as an Asiatic import. Kemp also realistically points to the "unlimited agricultural potential" of the Egyptian landscape in which the sustenance of a settled life by the growing of crops found nothing bu encouragement and could have developed naturally. It is most helpful to search among surviving Nilotic tribes, such as the Dinka of the White Nile, to gain insight into the material and spiritual life of the early predynastic Egyptians. The Dinka, who were studied intensively by anthropologists during the first half of the twentieth century, were a herding society that did some farming an a little hunting. Their value system and social life revolved, to a large extent, around their cattle, which provided them with food, drink, and clothing as well as inspiration in song and dance. While there were rich pasture-lands along the riverbanks, during floods the herds had to be moved to the unsettled savanna at a higher elevation. Human settlements were on outcroppings that kept villagers dry. Although the Dinka tribespeople interviewed by the anthropologist Godfrey Lienhardt professed a belief in a supreme divinity, they also had clan divinities, which often took the emblem of a particular animal. As the Dinka explained it, if a clan took a giraffe or an elephant as its clan divinity, it did not mean that divinity was present in all such animals, but it did require that such animals be treated with respect. The divinity represented by the animal is one and apart: so if by some great tragedy all the giraffes were to be exterminated, the spirit of ancestral Giraffe would endure and would help to protect the clan. Thus it was not the individual animal member but the concept Giraffe that belonged to a wider class of powers. "It seems that the Dinka themselves often think of them as acquired by chance-- a chance association, though an important one, between the founding ancestor of a clan and the species, which then becomes the clan divinity of all his descendants. Because the surviving emblems from predynastic Egypt show falcons, cows, hippopotamuses, and gazelles, and among the names of the first kings of the historic period are Catfish and Scorpion, and later deities appear as crocodiles, lionesses, vultures, and ibises, it is tempting to see here the vestiges of early clan divinities. The prehistoric schematic clay figurines of human shape (and of both sexes) with arms gracefully raised and bent inward, usually above the head but sometimes positioned more forward, bear a striking resemblance to the Dinka photographed by Leinhardt. In these photographs the Dinka dance with just such curved, raised arms. According to Lienhardt, the Dinka are portraying the sweeping horns of a "display ox." So important and central to their society are the cattle they keep, that Dinka youths are reported, when sitting by themselves alone with their herd, as holding their arms extended and curved in just this position. This could explain why the few predynastic figurines that appear to be seated still exhibit this formation of the arms.
The Primeval Cow Goddess
Although Baumgartel believed the Badarian conical-bottomed figurines with raised arms were images of humans, not deities, she saw the image of a bovine fertility goddess in some of the pottery of the succeeding Upper Egyptian cultural phase (ca. 4000 B.C.), the Amratian/Naqada I culture. There is a vase dating from the end of Naqada I "on the exterior of which are represented in relief a human head flanked by two cow's horns and a pair of arms holding the breasts which descend from the rim of the vase behind the head." Other vases from the period are known which also show arms holding breasts. Such artifacts have been used to argue for a maternal or fertility goddess in the prehistoric period. In my opinion, this concept would also fit in with the flora- and fauna-engraved female figurines described above. There are still those (not only some Egyptologists) who charge that the idea of a prehistoric and widely venerated mother goddess (suggested by the hundreds of so-called Venus figurines found across Europe) is merely a fantasy. It is obvious, however, that the female role not only of giver of birth (life) but also of sustainer of early life would naturally have had a profound impact on the earliest humans. Of course, their world was populated by all sorts of forces, many life threatening, which needed to be recognized and propitiated, and this calls into doubt the concept of a lone goddess or even a supreme mother goddess dominating all other divinities. The more explicit evidence from Asia Minor and southern Europe and other Neolithic cultures suggests that a similar very early African or Egyptian earth mother or mother goddess is surely possible even if it is not substantiated by physical evidence in Egypt and even if she was not venerated alone. Archaeological and anthropological data from the ancient Near East and Africa suggests that when and where the female principle was venerated, it often assumed aspects of the cow. The cow is a domesticated animal; it can stand anywhere at anytime in history as the very image of the homestead, of settled agricultural life--- an image evoking warmth and security. The cow is surely the embodiment of nurturing motherhood. Gentle with her young and sharing her milk with humans as well, the cow is venerated even today in herding societies throughout the world. In Sri Lanka, for instance, a milk-overflowing ceremony invokes the goddess who stands for matrilineal kinship, mother's blood, bodily health, an integration of community. The earliest clear representation of a cow goddess is found on a slate palette of the Gerzean Period that bears a relief of a cow's head facing forward and five stars just above the tips of the horns. Hornung suggests she is to be equated with Bat, the cow icon of Upper Egypt. Baumgartel thought this was the first representation of the sky as a deity, and surely the stars do suggest a celestial goddess. Meret-Weret, known from the historic period's literature but often appearing as a precursor to the sky goddess Nut, is another possible identity for this starry head. The curved cow horns are reminiscent of the lunar crescent, but there was no moon goddess in pharaonic Egypt. However, the crescent moon, as I have seen it in Luxor, hanging low over the western hills with points turned upward, certainly evokes a celestial bovine's horns. Thus we may have in this early rendition of a sacred cow one of the few hints of a moon goddess who might have flourished as far back as the Neolithic or early Chalcolithic but who disappeared, or was suppressed during the early historic period. From the archaeological evidence it is clear that not one but several religious cults were established long before the Two Lands were unified and a documented Egyptian history began. In about 3100 B.C., when the Upper Egyptians celebrated what may have been their final victory over the delta and united Egypt into a strong kingdom of the Two Lands, they placed the cow (or possibly water buffalo) goddess of Upper Egypt, Bat, prominently at the top of both sides of a large commemorative shield-shaped slate. This palette with its relief scenes commemorating the victory of King Narmer and the Upper Egyptians---known today as the Narmer Palette---is an important historic and artistic monument. Given her dominant position on both sides, it seems that the goddess, who promoted the birth of humans, now presided over the birth of a nation. With the absence of texts from Egypt's prehistoric period we cannot understand all the nuances of the early goddess's meaning for her people, but in the literature of Egypt's historical period, as we shall see presently, the image of the cow goddess is prominent and she has many important roles to play. James suggested that not until animal husbandry was practiced and the role of the male found to be essential in breeding was a male divine role imagined. This, if true, would give primacy to the cow clan divinity but would not explain the presence of other animal divinities unless they were predated by only one (female animal) divinity from a time too early to have provided any artifactual evidence. Clearly goddesses did not have exclusive command of humanity's loyalty or fear, however. The same rich female's grave that contained the slim male figure also contained an ivory carving of an animal, later identified with the god Seth, and in the next cultural phase, the Gerzean period, pot paintings indicate that a multitude of cults flourishing before 3200 B.C The buff pottery of the Gerzean age with its red line paintings gives us the best insights into the culture of the late predynastic period. Various deities known from later times are suggested by the totems portrayed. Among the divine symbols are the harpoonlike spear of phallic symbol of the fertility god Min, the falcon of Horus, who was later known as a sky god, and the crossed arrows of the goddess Neith. While large female figures are found on a number of Gerzean pots, a large male ithyphallic figure is depicted, adjacent to the totem for Min, on at least one pot known to me (found in a grave at Ballas). Thus the male role in fertility was probably recognized in Egypt contemporaneously with the female. The Egyptologist Jaroslav Cerny believed that anthropomorphism in the portrayal of deities developed when intellectual rather than purely physical qualities became most valued by people. This he connected with the flowering of civilization; "Gods, to whom a high degree of power and intelligence was attributed, were, therefore, bound to assume human form. Humans, both men and women, are portrayed on Gerzean pot paintings. Among the portrayals of brides, landmasses, and huts or shrines, many Gerzean pots have a female figure, usually with arms raised as in the pottery figurines, who is portrayed on a larger scale than other closely associated female and male figures. Baumgartel interpreted the major female figure as the great mother goddess, and others are equally convinced. However, because there is often more than one female figure and a number of smaller figures portrayed, the concept of a goddess and her lover/son that is found in other cultures (and suggested by Baumgartel and, more recently, by Hassan) does not quite fit. Again, the presence of a lone ithyphallic male figure on other pots argues persuasively for both male and female deities concerned with fertility and not a single dominant female deity. It is just as legitimate---if one wanted to build on this very tenuous evidence---to suggest that the larger female in the vase paintings is a human, perhaps a politically important person. Indeed, in historic period art, the more important figure, whether in a family or a national scene, whether human or divine, is portrayed on a larger scale. The frequent prominence of a female figure in the Gerzean paintings could indicate a goddess, a priestess, or a chieftainess; nothing more can be said with certainty. There is no absolute evidence for a prehistoric monotheism, whether based on a female or male principle. Indeed, Hassan believes strongly in the "complementarity of the male and female principles" in the mythic thought of predynastic Egyptians. The recognizable totems of that age give ample evidence of both male and female deities. As in historic times, the earliest inhabitants of the Nile valley seemed to have preferred a multiplicity of choices. Also it should be recalled, but seldom is, that deities themselves (as opposed to their standards or totems) were very rarely portrayed by Egyptian artists until much later, not at first in tombs, not very extensively in sculpture, only in royal contexts, and not until the Middle Kingdom in representational art associated with commoners. Egyptologists who have not even considered the possibility of political importance, or temporal power (such as clan leaders or priestesses for such female figures), perhaps have been biased by the patriarchal societies in which they themselves live. They also reveal a lack of familiarity with African political history, as known from later periods. Numerous regions in sub-Saharan Africa have experienced generations of rule by females, and Egypt's southern neighbor, the kingdom of Meroe, exhibited this at its height in the last millennium B.C. Female leadership in society or in cults certainly does not rule out female deities; just the opposite would be expected. It will be seen that the queens of the First Dynasty had close ties to the goddess Neith, whose presence is documented by representations of her totem in the late prehistoric period. They incorporated her name in theirs and oversaw her cult. No doubt at her original cult center, the town later known as Sais, this goddess was supreme, and some might have claimed "alone." It was when the many petty city-states became consolidated into one nation that the multitude of cults had to be sorted out. What happened when civilization and Egyptian state developed in about 3100 B.C.? Hassan suggests the following interpretation of events. The predynastic myths and rituals, concerned with birth, death, and resurrection, had been associated with goddesses. Now these goddesses' sacred powers were absorbed by the male leaders of the consolidated state of the First Dynasty. The early state "was most likely not the result of a single battle, but the culmination of wars and alliances, as well as fragmentation and re-unification over a period of at least 250 years." The few major kingdoms that emerged between 3400 and 3200 B.C. included, among others, Naqada and Hierakonpolis in Upper Egypt and Sais in the delta. Each locale had its own principle diety (Seth at Naqada, Horus at Hierakonpolis, and Neith in Sais in these cases). But as a unified state was created from local or "tribal" (to use Hassan's term) societies, so too a shift in emphasis from local deities to national cosmic gods was necessitated. Early women had found their power in kinship-based relations, but their roles were now undermined by the emergence of a non-kinship organization, composed of male-dominated political groups related to defense and economic activities "beyond the traditional (territorial) domain of females." Now too occurred a "transition from a focus on female-linked vegetation and regeneration cults to male-linked myths and rituals of legitimation." The king took on, as a reflection of his cosmic role, the "guaranteeing of prosperity, the orderly transition of the seasons, and plentiful harvests." There was no more need for a goddess of the herds or a mother goddess of the earth who assured bountiful crops. The king himself would uphold Maat, the divine order of the universe, and assure that all was well in Egypt. Divine kingship became the cornerstone of the Egyptian state, and the king was given a divine genealogy by the priests of Heliopolis, the chief cult center of the sun god, Re. The king found himself equated with Horus, the great god of the sky, revered for centuries by the town whose leaders took credit for the unification of the Two Lands. Myths now provided "a cosmic rationale for the rule of a male king and hereditary succession." The old goddesses could not be ignored, however. That would have been dangerous, since it was necessary for them to legitimize the king. He is affiliated with the Two Ladies, the vulture goddess Nekhbet of El-Kab in Upper Egypt an the cobra goddess Wadjet of Buto in the delta or Lower Egypt. They would protect him as divine mothers or serve him as nurses, just as would the bovine goddess Gat, who appeared on the top of the Narmer Palette. Later Isis, the throne, an Hathor, the divine genealogy of the king personified, would nurture and protect and even revive the king when dead. Hassan suggests that the god Osiris gained the "funerary role of the goddess" when he became god-king of the dead. Nut the sky goddess developed out of the earlier Mehet-Weret, as will be seen shortly. Over the centuries the goddesses found themselves with new roles but with staying power as well, because the theologians of the sun god and the priests of the king were not the only worshipers in the land.
^ Here yet again is an example of an Egyptologist who looks to the Dinka as model of Egyptian cultural development.
This book is interesting How did you stumble upon it and are the quoted portions from the book?
Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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I respect ALL peoples opinion(including yours) and when FACTS are represented I listen and learn from them. What facts have you posted that Links Egypt away from Africa?
Moving on
Well lets start with what we do know, Have you ever heard of the Black Mummy? This is a Taste of what was found before the creation of Ancient Egypt Read This:
CHANNEL 5, FRIDAY MAY 2ND AT 9PM DISCOVERY NETWORK USA, FEB 17 2003
The programme explores the enigmatic central Saharan society which once spanned the entire north African continent. We unravel their tale through the story of the discovery of the black mummy, Uan Muhuggiag. It soon becomes obvious that these people were responsible for an extraordinary array of innovations which later became famous under the Egyptians. Their presence re-writes the history of Egypt and of the entire continent of Africa.
The background: the lost society of the central Sahara and the rise of ancient Egypt The origins of ancient Egypt are archaeology’s greatest unsolved mystery. What prompted this remarkable culture to develop such distinctive rituals as mummification? Where did they get their ideas? As far as we know, Egypt was only preceded by one great civilisation: Mesopotamia. Although Mesopotamia is a far older culture – there is no evidence to suggest that these people had developed any similar funerary practises. But if Egyptian innovations did not come from earlier known civilisations – where did they come from?
The answer has come from an unlikely quarter – the barren Sahara desert. In the last few decades evidence has been mounting that the Egyptian civilisation was not the first advanced society in Africa. At the same time as Mesopotamia rose in the near east, another culture thrived in Africa. Although few people have heard of it – this central Saharan culture is providing evidence for the invention of ritual activity which had previously been attributed to the Egyptians.
The first clue for archaeologists was the abundant rock art found all over the central Sahara from Libya to Egypt to Mali. The rock art depicts animals like crocodiles and rhinos – which do not live in deserts. It also shows scenes of hunting and rituals involving men wearing animal masks. All of this art was a firm clue that this area was once a hive of activity. It spurred archaeologists to dig and over the past fifty years they’ve uncovered an entire unknown society.
The society was nomadic – groups of animal herders wandered all over the region and eventually spread their uniform culture throughout the continent of north Africa. They lived in huts and had time to make art and invent rituals. By the time the culture reached its pinnacle around 6ooo years ago these people had invented rituals which indicate a fairly complex world view. They were communicating with the heavens and using funerary rituals like mummification to treat their dead.
But all of this evidence indicated an Eden-like place – one with trees, grasses and abundant running waters. And yet nothing could be further from this picture than the Sahara today. Although archaeologists had already assembled the clues, the science of climatology solidly confirmed what all had suspected: this area was once a lush savannah landscape. Changes in the tilt of the earth’s axis had caused drought in the Sahara and brought this thriving society to an end. But with the demise of the central Saharan culture, people wandered all over northern Africa in search of greener pastures. The Nile valley was an obvious destination. Around 6000 years ago central Saharan ideas arrived in the Nile valley – adding mummification and other rituals to the potent mix which was to become the Egyptian civilisation. The mummy and archaeology in Libya: An Italian team of archaeologists first explored the Libyan Sahara almost fifty years ago. In 1958 they struck gold. Professor Fabrizio Mori discovered the black mummy at the Uan Muhuggiag rockshelter. The mummy of a young boy, Uan Muhuggiag was destined for controversy. He was older than any comparable Egyptian mummy and his mere existence challenged the very idea that Egyptians were the first in the region to mummify their dead. Although the Italian team from the university of Rome “La Sapienza”, has since discovered other mummified tissue, they have not yet discovered another complete mummy in the region. But Uan Muhuggiag was no one off. The sophistication of his mummification suggested he was the result of a long tradition of mummification. Investigations in the area continue under the direction of Dr Savino di Lernia and Professor Mario Liverani.
Climatology: Professor Mauro Cremaschi of CIRSA (University of Milan and University of Rome “La Sapienza”) heads the Italian Climatology team which focuses on the Acacus area of Libya. Dr Kevin White (Reading University) heads an English team focussing on the nearby Fezzan region. Both teams are using the latest satellite technology to clarify our picture of climate in the central Sahara over the past several hundred thousand years. Another lost Libyan civilisation: The Fezzan project, headed by Professor David Mattingly (University of Leicester) focuses on the Garamantes civilisation which thrived from 1500bc-500ad. The Garamantes were known by the Romans as barbarians but evidence from the Sahara shows a large, sophisticated civilisation. Remains show substantial architecture and a complex society replete with numerous luxuries. Almost 100,000 tombs litter the Fezzan escarpment – to date these bodies are the most concrete testimony to this little-known people. further reading Mummies, Disease and Ancient Cultures by A and E Cockburn & T Reyman l Ancient Egypt: Life, Myth and Art by J Fletcher l Rock Art of the Sahara by H Hugor & M Bruggman l Holocene Settlement of the Egyptian Sahara by F Wendorf l Archaeology of Sub Saharan Africa by J Vogel l Archaeology and Environment in the Libyan Sahara by B Barich l Garamantes of the Fezzan by Charles Daniels
After Reading that, It should make you realize that Many of Egyptian practises was first done by these people in the Sahara. I found this that Breaks up the story about the Black Mummy so you can read along and learn Simple, I found a website that breaksdown the Black mummy but I can't link to it so you are going to have to copy and paste this into your browser put www in front of livedash : livedash.com/transcript/the_history_project-(the_mystery_of_the_black_mummy)/9/KQED/Wednesday_August_25_2010/283438
Now will show you more evidence Read this:
Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology One clue to the ancient Egyptians' cultural roots lies in their language. The ancient Egyptian language is classified under the language phylum Afroasiatic, sometimes called "Afrasian". Analyses of the Afrasian phylum show that it most likely originated in the Horn of Africa (the area encompassing Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea) around 15,000 years ago and spread northward to Egypt three millennia later (Ehert 1996). Other examples of Afrasian languages include Hausa (spoken in Nigeria), Tuareg (spoken in the Sahara), and Oromo (spoken in Ethiopia).
The ancient Egyptian language is not the only thing that came to Egypt from the south. Some aspects of the Egyptian institution of pharaoh also show ties to more southerly Africans. Aldred (1978) says that the Egyptian pharaoh, who was believed to control the flooding of the Nile, may have been descended from a "rainmaker king" similar to the kind prevalent throughout black Africa. The Egyptian practice of sacrificing servants to accompany a dead pharaoh into the afterlife also appears to be of Sudanic origin (Ehert 1996). Even the iconography associated with the pharaoh may have originated in the south, for the oldest evidence of this iconography is found on an incense burner found in Nubia (Williams 1986).
In addition to language and political institutions, other aspects of Egyptian culture show ties to sub-Saharan Africa. Eglash (1995) shows that fractal designs, which are widely used by African cultures, are present in Egyptian architecture and cosmological signs. The Egyptian counting system also has sub-Saharan roots (Eglash 1999). According to the Encyclopedia Britannica (1984), many aspects of Egyptian religion (animal cults, ritual dressings, and the role of the king as head ritualist or medicine man) are closer to northeast African religions that European or Asian ones. Frankfort (1956:39-40) shows that much of the ancient Egyptian worldview has parallels in sub-Saharan cultures. Djehuti (2005a) lists many beliefs and cultural practices (for instance, circumcision rites, divine kingship, ancestor veneration, and totemism) common to both ancient Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa. The same author (2005b) also shows that personal names in both ancient Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa had great spiritual significance. Finally, de Heinzelin (1962) and Arkell and Ucko (1965) report tools of central African design being made by early Egyptians.
Some traits of ancient Egyptian culture also came from the Sahara west of Egypt. This area, now desert, was a grassy savanna until 5,500 years ago, allowing people and animals to live there. The oldest evidence of mummification comes from the Sahara (Donadoni 1964). The oldest evidence of a complex society in Egypt is also found out in the desert. This is the Nabta Playa culture, dating between the 10th and 7th millennia BC, which was characterized by huts built in straight rows, wells, a circle of megaliths similar to England's Stonehenge, and stone-roofed chambers containing cattle bones. These cattle bones most likely represent sacrifices offered to the gods (Wendorf and Schild 1998), a practice that was continued by later Egyptians. After the Sahara dried up, the proto-Egyptians migrated into the Nile Valley, adopted farming, and developed two early civilizations, one in northern (Lower) Egypt and one in southern (Upper) Egypt. Of these two, it was the Upper Egyptians whose culture evolved into what we think of as classical Egyptian civilization. It is in Upper Egypt that we find evidence of social and economic differentiation among people, a differentiation that would evolve into the class system of later Egypt. Ultimately the Upper Egyptian culture would dominate Lower Egypt and conquer it by 3100 BC, making Egypt into a unified country and beginning the Old Kingdom (Bard 1994).
This genesis of Egyptian culture in the south and west is inconsistent with any argument that would classify Egypt as a "Near Eastern" or "Mediterranean" civilization. If Egyptians were indeed of Asian or European origin, we would expect the north to dominate and conquer the south, but the reverse is the case. This shows that the ancient Egyptian culture was essentially an indigenous African one.
Now this evidence is not about Proto Egypt but it links mummies with Africans Read and Learn:
Determination of optimal rehydration, fixation and staining methods for histological and immunohistochemical analysis of mummified soft tissues
A-M Mekota1, M Vermehren2
Biotechnic & Histochemistry 2005, 80(1): 7_/13
"Materials and methods In 1997, the German Institute for Archaeology headed an excavation of the tombs of the nobles in Thebes-West, Upper Egypt. At this time, three types of tissues were sampled from different mummies: meniscus (fibrocartilage), skin, and placenta. Archaeological findings suggest that the mummies dated from the New Kingdom (approximately 1550_/1080 BC)..... The basal epithelial cells were packed with melanin as expected for specimens of Negroid origin."
Now can you please post FACTS that Link Egypt away from Africa.
Peace
Posts: 9651 | From: Reace and Love City. | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
It seems to me that, the more I get into it, the idea of permanently inhabited ''Badarian villages'' are myths with absolutely no substantiation, as evidence is even scarce for the (early) Naqadan time period. Are Nabta Playa Nubians unique in this regard, ie, in terms of Neolithic pre-designed/arranged villages? Does anyone have access to textual discriptions of (Mesolithic) Nile Valley settlements of substantial size that predate Early Dynastic times?
Here is some more info on the availability of evidence for sedentary Nile Valley populations from Badari to Early Dynastic times:
quote:The earliest evidence of a Neolithic economy, in which people were cultivating domesticated cereals (emmer wheat and 6-row barley) and herding domesticated animals (sheep/goat and cattle), is found in northern Egypt, at Faiyum A sites, but without permanent houses or villages, and slightly later at Merimde Beni-Salame. .... In the Nile Valley the Neolithic spread from north to south, appearing later in Middle Egypt with the Badarian culture, ca. 4500–4000 bc. In Upper Egypt Neolithic villages were not well established until after ca. 4000 bc, with the rise of the Predynastic Naqada culture. ....
Brunton’s hypothesis was demonstrated to be correct by Gertrude Caton Thompson’s stratigraphic excavations at another el-Badari district site, Hammamiya, where she found rippled Badarian potsherds in the lowest stratum, beneath strata with Predynastic wares. Later investigations of el-Badari district sites were conducted in the 1980s and 1990s by Diane Holmes (Institute of Archaeology, University College London). Holmes obtained radiocarbon dates of ca. 4500–4000 bc, also verifying the early date of the Badarian. Aside from cemeteries, Brunton excavated mainly storage pits and associated artifacts, which were the only remains of Badarian settlements. At one site he found post-holes of some kind of light organic structure, but evidence of permanent houses and sedentism was lacking. Possibly the sites that Brunton excavated were outlying camps, once associated with larger and more permanent villages being sited within the floodplain and now destroyed. .... Ma’adi was excavated by Cairo University archaeologists from 1930 to 1953, and was later re-examined by archaeologists from the University of Rome. Calibrated radiocarbon dates range from ca. 3900 to 3500 bc. The settlement covered a large area about 1.3 kilometers long, but this area was never completely occupied at any one time. The village relied on cereal cultivation and animal husbandry, of cattle, sheep, goats and pigs, with little evidence of hunting. Bone harpoons, indicative of fishing, were found there, as were catfish bones.
…
Evidence of house structures (originally made of wood and matting) at Ma’adi consists of pits in the ground, post-holes, and hearths. Four large subterranean structures, thought to be similar to houses of the contemporaneous Beersheba culture in the Negev Desert, were found in the eastern sector of the site. A large subterranean, stone-lined structure (8.5 m 4 m in area), possibly a store house, was excavated in the western sector in the mid-1980s by Egyptian archaeologist F. A. Badawi. The floor of this structure was 2 meters below the surface. Further investigations in the western sector in 2001 revealed a subterranean cave dwelling, with a stone-lined entrance corridor and vaulted oval room dug into the bedrock.
…
Beginning in 1983, remains of an early settlement at Buto (modern Tell el-Fara’in, i.e., “Mound of the Pharaohs”) were excavated by the German Archaeological Institute, Cairo. Because the prehistoric levels at Buto are below the modern water table, the earliest settlement (in area A) could only be excavated with an expensive water pumping system. Significantly, these excavations have revealed stratified evidence of the transition from the earliest layers (Layers I–II) with local Buto ceramics of the same Lower Egyptian culture as found at Ma’adi, to a “transitional” layer (III) dating to ca. 3300–3200 bc with artifacts of the Naqada culture (Naqada IId phase). Architecture changes from houses of wattle and daub in the earliest layers to the use of mud-brick in Layer III. In Layer V, which is Early Dynastic in date, large mud-brick buildings appear for the first time.
…
The Naqada culture originated in Upper Egypt, with major centers at Abydos, Naqada, and Hierakonpolis. Naqada culture sites are also found in southern Middle Egypt in the el-Badari district, and in Naqada II times in the Faiyum region (Gerza). By Naqada III times, Naqada culture pottery is found in the northern Delta. Unlike the Buto-Ma’adi culture sites, most of the Naqada culture evidence is from cemeteries, and settlements have been poorly preserved or buried under later alluvium or villages.
…
At Naqada (ancient Nubt) Petrie excavated two settlements (North Town and South Town) and three cemeteries (with over 2,200 burials). At nearby Ballas his colleague James Quibell excavated an estimated 1,000 burials. In the settlements, mud-brick architecture was found only at South Town, where Petrie recorded the remains of a thick wall which he thought was some kind of fortification. It has also been suggested that this structure was a temple. South Town may have been much larger than what Petrie recorded, with an eastern part extending into the floodplain.
…
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Naqada settlements were reinvestigated by an American team led by Fekri Hassan (now at University College London) and T. R. Hays. They recorded remains of small villages on the low desert consisting of post-holes for huts of wood and matting or wicker, sometimes covered with mud clumps. Inside the huts were hearths and storage pits. Emmer wheat and barley were cultivated, and cattle, sheep/goats, and pigs were herded. There is also significant evidence of fishing, but much less for hunting.
... South Town was also reinvestigated in the late 1970s by Italian archaeologists, including Rodolfo Fattovich (University of Naples “l’Orientale”), who found evidence of mud sealings, possibly placed on storeroom doors to secure their contents. This suggests more specialized economic activity at [/b]South Town, the largest known settlement in the region,[/b] where goods and/or materials were probably collected and stored for trade or exchange.
... To the south of the Great New Race Cemetery was Cemetery B, probably associated with a small farming village, and to the south of this was Cemetery T, which has been called the burial place of Predynastic chieftains or kings because of its high status burials (see Figure 5.2).
(Note from me: ‘’The great race cemetery’’ is a construct devised by Petrie who assumed they were foreign)
... While the archaeological evidence at Naqada is not sufficient to demonstrate the growth of an urban center which controlled a regional polity, its burials suggest increasing social complexity through time – and the major ideological significance of burial.
... At Hierakonpolis (ancient Nekhen) in the far south settlement evidence is better preserved than at Naqada.[b] Predynastic evidence there was first investigated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by French and English archaeologists, when the well-known Decorated Tomb (Tomb 100) was excavated along with four other large rectangular tombs similar to those in Cemetery T at Naqada.
... Fieldwork has continued there under the direction of Barbara Adams (Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London) and now Renée Friedman (the British Museum). Coring under the Dynastic town of Nekhen revealed earlier Predynastic remains, and [b]evidence of other Predynastic settlements has been located, including the remains of a rectangular semi-subterranean house in a large desert-edge settlement (Locality HK29). With one calibrated radiocarbon date of 3435 121 bc (Naqada II), the house had lower walls of mud-brick.
... Remains of Predynastic settlements were also investigated in the Abydos region in the early 1900s, and in 1982–83 Diana Craig Patch (Metropolitan Museum of Art) conducted a large-scale regional survey on the low desert for both settlements and cemeteries. Patch located the remains of small farming villages, 1–2 kilometers apart. In later Predynastic times, there may have been population nucleation within the larger settlements, and sites in the low desert were abandoned for villages within the floodplain, for which no evidence has been recovered.
... Other Naqada culture cemeteries and less well preserved settlement evidence have been excavated in Upper Egypt at sites such as el-Adaďma, Armant, Hu and Semaina, and Naga el-Deir (see Figure 5.4). None of these sites, however, became a major center. Geography – and access to trade routes and raw materials – may have played a part in the rise of the centers at Hierakonpolis, Naqada, and Abydos. From Abydos there are important desert routes leading into the Western Desert and from there south into Nubia.
... Mainly excavated in the 1960s Nubian archaeological campaign (see 1.4), [b]A-Group habitations consisted of reed huts and rock shelters; only a few sites had houses with stone foundation slabs.
...
But trade with Egypt is definitely attested there by the mid-4th millennium bc, at the site of Khor Daud. No house structures were found at this site, which consisted of almost 600 storage pits with much pottery, two-thirds of which was Egyptian (Naqada II).
...
Later Predynastic “statelets” (a term used by Bruce Trigger) may have existed at Hierakonpolis, Naqada, and Abydos. Barry Kemp (University of Cambridge) has suggested a model of Predynastic settlement development in Upper Egypt, from small egalitarian communities, to agricultural towns, to incipient city-states (based in part on evidence from Naqada’s South Town). According to Kemp, “proto-states” formed in Upper Egypt at Hierakonpolis, Naqada, and Abydos/This, with a hypothetical “proto-kingdom” of all of Upper Egypt followed by unification of the north and south by the 1st Dynasty. Such a model is logical, but there is very little archaeological evidence to demonstrate its validity. In Lower Egypt there is no evidence for a proto-state controlling all of the north, and such a polity is unlikely to have existed.
...
The large number of Early Dynastic burials in the Memphis area is also the best evidence for the emergence of a capital city there, and indirectly for urbanism, as settlement evidence at Memphis from most periods is not well preserved. In 1996 David Jeffreys (University College London) drilled cores in the ground to the east of the North Saqqara cemetery, where the early city would probably have been located. Results suggest that although there may be undisturbed layers of Early Dynastic occupation, they are buried under the water table, requiring expensive excavation techniques
...
As the Early Dynastic state consolidated its control throughout Egypt, administrative centers would have been founded to facilitate state control. At Hierakonpolis, in the ancient town (Kom el-Ahmar), an elaborately niched mud-brick gateway was excavated in 1969 and interpreted as the gateway to an Early Dynastic “palace.” Possibly this was a royal administrative center, and this type of architecture was symbolic of the early state. At Elephantine a fortified wall was built in the 1st Dynasty, while the settlement was later surrounded by a fortified wall. This was an Egyptian town, which by then had become the state’s southern border.
From: Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt - Kathryn A. Bard
Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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quote:Originally posted by Kalonji: The spiritual and political connection of Ancient Egyptians to their king, rather than a type of static and immobile royal house, observable in Eurasian civi's, is what ties the two concepts of both semi-sedentary livelihoods and highly sophisticated cultural features, in absence of equally sophisticated sedentary indicators in the archaeological record, together
I'm convinced that the extension of Wilson’s thesis (that the general lack of settlements in combination sophisticated material culture can be explained because of emphasis on the vicinity of the King rather than city states) from the Early Dynastic, where it can be supported, to Badari contemporaries does not hold up, not only because there is no evidence of kingship symbolism prior to Naqada 1, but also because:
a) Flow of cultural innovations from Naqada I to contemporary Badari was limited:
quote:According to Holmes’ investigations, there is a lack of Naqada I type artifacts at Badari district sites, although later Naqada II artifacts (beginning ca. 3500 bc) are definitely found there.
b) The earliest Northern Egyptian farming villages were semi-sedentary as well:
quote:The earliest evidence of a Neolithic economy, in which people were cultivating domesticated cereals (emmer wheat and 6-row barley) and herding domesticated animals (sheep/goat and cattle), is found in northern Egypt, at Faiyum A sites, but without permanent houses or villages, and slightly later at Merimde Beni-Salame.
(...)
But there is no evidence of houses or permanent villages, and the Faiyum A sites resemble camps of hunter-gatherers with scatters of lithics and potsherds. The only permanent features are a great number of hearths and granaries – ca. 350 hearths at the site of Kom W, and 56 granaries, some lined with baskets, at nearby Kom K. Another 109 granaries were also excavated near Kom W, one of which contained a wooden sickle (for harvesting cereals) with chert blades still hafted to it.
(...)
Unlike Neolithic evidence in the Nile Valley, the Fayium A culture did not become transformed into a society with full-time farming villages. In the 4th millennium bc when social complexity was developing in the Nile Valley, the Faiyum remained a cultural backwater. From around 4000 bc there are the remains of a few fishing/hunting camps in the Faiyum, but the region was probably deserted by farmers who took advantage of the much greater potential of floodplain agriculture in the Nile Valley.
(...)
Beginning in 1977, new excavations were conducted at Merimde by Josef Eiwanger, who identified five strata of occupation. In the earliest stratum (I) there was evidence of postholes for small round houses,
(...)
In the later Merimde strata (III–V) a new and more substantial type of structure appeared that was semi-subterranean, about 1.5–3.0 meters in diameter, with mud walls (pisé) above.
(...)
While Merimde subsistence practices are similar to the Faiyum A Neolithic, the Merimde remains also include the earliest house structures.
(...)
Lower Egyptian culture as found at Ma’adi, to a “transitional” layer (III) dating to ca. 3300–3200 bc with artifacts of the Naqada culture (Naqada IId phase). Architecture changes from houses of wattle and daub in the earliest layers to the use of mud-brick in Layer III. In Layer V, which is Early Dynastic in date, large mud-brick buildings appear for the first time.
c) A continuation of point b; they (Lower Egyptians) were semi-sedentary, and they did not share the ancestral Pharaonic culture, let alone Pharoanic rulers, needed to apply Wengrove’s thesis:
quote:The elaborate process of burial, which would become profoundly important in pharaonic society for 3,000 years, is much more pronounced in the Neolithic Badarian culture of Middle Egypt than in the earlier Saharan Neolithic or the Neolithic in northern Egypt.
(...)
Cultural differences went well beyond pottery types, however: the Naqada burials may symbolize increasing social complexity through time as the graves became more differentiated, in size and numbers of grave goods, whereas at Buto-Ma’adi sites burials are of a fairly simple type and seem to have had much less socio-cultural significance.
Occupation at Ma’adi came to an end in the later 4th millennium bc (equivalent to the Naqada IIc phase), when the site was abandoned. At Buto, the stratigraphic evidence suggests the assimilation of the Lower Egyptian Predynastic Buto-Ma’adi culture in Layer III, and the continuation into Dynastic times of a material culture that had its roots in the Predynastic Naqada culture of Upper Egypt.
Also, the impression I get from early Badarians, is that they were ceremonial, but not necessarily pharaonic culturally, like Naqadans were:
quote:What may be seen at the Badarian sites is the earliest evidence in Egypt of pronounced ceremonialism surrounding burials, which become much more elaborate in the 4thmillennium bc Naqada culture. Brunton excavated about 750 Badarian burials, most of which were contracted ones in shallow oval pits. Most burials were placed on the left side, facing west with the head to the south. This later became the standard orientation of Naqada culture burials. Although the Badarian burials had few grave goods, there was usually one pot in a grave. Some burials also had jewelry, made of beads of seashell, stone, bone, and ivory. A few burials contained stone cosmetic palettes or chert tools.
(...)
Burials such as the Badarian ones represent the material expression of important beliefs and practices in a society concerning the transition from life to death (see Box 5-B). Burial evidence may symbolize roles and social status of the dead and commemoration of this by the living, expressions of grief by the living, and possibly also concepts of an afterlife.
From: Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt - Kathryn A. Bard
The above negates the applicability of Wilson’s thesis to both the Badarians, and Lower Egyptians. Thus, different explanations are needed for late urbanism in Ancient Egypt. Wilson's thesis applies only to Early Dynastic unified Egypt.
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Originally posted by KING: In addition to language and political institutions, other aspects of Egyptian culture show ties to sub-Saharan Africa. Eglash (1995) shows that fractal designs, which are widely used by African cultures, are present in Egyptian architecture and cosmological signs. The Egyptian counting system also has sub-Saharan roots (Eglash 1999). According to the Encyclopedia Britannica (1984), many aspects of Egyptian religion (animal cults, ritual dressings, and the role of the king as head ritualist or medicine man) are closer to northeast African religions that European or Asian ones. Frankfort (1956:39-40) shows that much of the ancient Egyptian worldview has parallels in sub-Saharan cultures. Djehuti (2005a) lists many beliefs and cultural practices (for instance, circumcision rites, divine kingship, ancestor veneration, and totemism) common to both ancient Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa. The same author (2005b) also shows that personal names in both ancient Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa had great spiritual significance. Finally, de Heinzelin (1962) and Arkell and Ucko (1965) report tools of central African design being made by early Egyptians.
Djehuti 2005a,b - is this from an academic term paper of Djehuti or article you are quoting King?
Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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King you do know there are mummies in the southwest desert of Libya that predate the Uan Muhuggiag mummy right? One mummy I know is certainly better preserved and definitely looks to be caucasian. The mummies have been carbon dated to be at least 500 years older than the Uan Muhuggiag mummy.
And what about the rock art especially that of Tassali in southern Algeria that is dated to at least 3000 B.C.? Do these represent your typical black African phenotypes that you lust after? Of course you'll deny all of this as being a eurocentric lie. lol
Posts: 676 | From: the Alpha and the Omega | Registered: Nov 2010
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King and Kalonji Spirial and Simple have had so much info about the African character of the ancient Kemites that their heads should explode but they choose to be willfully ignorant,and the favorite topic of the willfully ignorant is "RACE"and "COLOR" because that is the most i'll defined where one man's black is another man's brown is another man's tan is another man's white..every time you bring up culture they got stomped on so for them that's a no go area.
BTW good thread Kalonji.
Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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If there is mummies that predate the Libyan mummy please post so we can see for ourselves.
As for the Rock art you posted,What is its exact date?
Also Read this from Herodutus about Libya:
Herodotus Book 7
"..the Ethiopians from the east are straight-haired, but the ones from Libya have the woolliest hair of all men"
As for the Tassali Rock Art read this:
Examination of certain rock paintings in the Tassili-N'Ajjer suggests the presence of proto-Fulani cultural traits in the region by at least the fourth millennium B.C. Tassili-N'Ajjer in Algeria is one of the most famous North African sites of rock painting. Scholars specializing in Fulani culture believe that some of the imagery depicts rituals that are still practiced by contemporary Fulani people.
At the Tin Tazarift site, for instance, historian Amadou Hampate Ba recognized a scene of the lotori ceremony, a celebration of the ox's aquatic origin. In a finger motif, Ba detected an allusion to the myth of the hand of the first Fulani herdsman, Kikala. At Tin Felki, Ba recognized a hexagonal carnelian jewel as related to the Agades cross, a fertility charm still used by Fulani women.
The discoveries at Nabta Playa suggest the possibility of a previously unrecognized relationship between the Neolithic people living along the Nile and pastoralists in the adjacent Sahara which may have contributed to the rise of social complexity in ancient Egypt. This complexity, as expressed by different levels of authority within the society, forms the basis for the structure of both the Neolithic society at Nabta and the Old Kingdom of Egypt. It was this authority at Nabta which made possible the planned arrangement of their villages, the excavation of large, deep wells, and the construction of complex stone structures made of large, shaped and unshaped stones. There are other Nabta features which are shared by the two areas, but which appear suddenly and without evident local antecedents in the late Predynastic and early Old Kingdom in the Nile Valley. These include the role of cattle to express differences of wealth, power and authority, the emphasis on cattle in religious beliefs, and the use of astronomical knowledge and devices to predict solar events. Many of these features have a prior and long history of development at Nabta.
quote:Originally posted by Brada-Anansi: King and Kalonji Spirial and Simple have had so much info about the African character of the ancient Kemites that their heads should explode but they choose to be willfully ignorant,and the favorite topic of the willfully ignorant is "RACE"and "COLOR" because that is the most i'll defined where one man's black is another man's brown is another man's tan is another man's white..every time you bring up culture they got stomped on so for them that's a no go area.
BTW good thread Kalonji.
Their obsessive focus on anything but culture, didn't go unnoticed by the more observant posters. They're not in this because of a genuine interested in (African) history, which is exactly why the predominant portion of their posts is anti African and antagonistic.
This is the exact reason why I wanted to get this info out there. I'm about to post more fresh info that doesn't get talked about a lot here on ES, so stay tuned.
Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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quote:Originally posted by KING: Now like I asked you before Simple, Please post the evidence you have that brings AE closer to Eurasians and away from other Africans.
Peace
I urge everyone to, at least on this thread, ignore her and her ilk if she doesn't comply with this very basic, straight forward request.
The only seque besides the topic of sedentary lifestyle of Nile Valley Africans that I allow is the very specific topic of Eurasian material input in the Nile Valley, to give dissenters a forum to counter the portions where I posted material in this thread that argued for an African substratum running thru AE.
The material has to be on par with the sources already provided here. Im not going to let this become another troll haven thread with all sorts of unsourced sentiments and bullsh!t going unchecked and roaming freely.
Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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You have failed to live up to your original claim that one of said mummies was Caucasian, which was, apparently, nothing but your own projection, because your scientific report doesn't makes such ascriptions
You have failed show how these mummies are close to Nile Valley peoples in terms of ceremonial and/or pharaonic burial feats
Even your Tassali rock art debunks your behind, because their poncho-like apparel has no equivalent in the Nile Valley whatsoever.
quote:Originally posted by KING: Now like I asked you before Simple, Please post the evidence you have that brings AE closer to Eurasians and away from other Africans.
quote:Originally posted by Kalonji: ^Thnx for you link, but you're done here.
You have failed to live up to your original claim that one of said mummies was Caucasian, which was, apparently, nothing but your own projection, because your scientific report doesn't makes such ascriptions
You have failed show how these mummies are close to Nile Valley peoples in terms of ceremonial and/or pharaonic burial feats
Even your Tassali rock art debunks your behind, because their poncho-like apparel has no equivalent in the Nile Valley whatsoever.
I never said the one mummy was caucasian. I said it looked to be caucasian. It appears to be very well preserved compared to the pile of bones they call the Uan Muhuggiag mummy and is at least 5 to 6 hundred years older.
Posts: 676 | From: the Alpha and the Omega | Registered: Nov 2010
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Does anyone have any link or evidence of dog-headed rock art in Libya?
Posts: 676 | From: the Alpha and the Omega | Registered: Nov 2010
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Posts: 190 | Registered: Jan 2011
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The only Libyan dog headed rock art I know about is an incision at Tin Lalan in the Fezzan and it's pornographic.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Kalonji: I'm convinced that the extension of Wilson’s thesis (that the general lack of settlements in combination sophisticated material culture can be explained because of emphasis on the vicinity of the King rather than city states) from the Early Dynastic, where it can be supported, to Badari contemporaries does not hold up, not only because there is no evidence of kingship symbolism prior to Naqada 1, but also because:
a) Flow of cultural innovations from Naqada I to contemporary Badari was limited:
(...)
b) The earliest Northern Egyptian farming villages were semi-sedentary as well:
(...)
c) A continuation of point b; they (Lower Egyptians) were semi-sedentary, and they did not share the ancestral Pharaonic culture, let alone Pharoanic rulers, needed to apply Wengrove’s thesis:
(...)
The above negates the applicability of Wilson’s thesis to both the Badarians, and Lower Egyptians. Thus, different explanations are needed for late urbanism in Ancient Egypt. Wilson's thesis applies only to Early Dynastic unified Egypt.
The Neolithic: An agricultural revolution and new way of life
(...)
Studies of modern populations involved in non-mechanised agriculture suggest, however, that relying on domestic crops is a precarious balancing act. Crop yields vary depending on rainfall and other uncontrollable natural conditions, and stored grain is susceptible to fire, water, pests and moulds. Moreover, life in crowded villages is often unsanitary, increasing the risk of infectious disease. To counter these potential hazards, some contemporary agricultural groups like those in Amazonia and New Guinea have adopted a mobile system of agriculture similar to the early Neolithic cultures of the Fayyum. For these groups, domestic crops serve as just one component of a broader food gathering strategy.
The negative effects of a life devoted to farming as opposed to hunting and gathering are further documented by ancient skeletal remains. Human skeletons from Greece and Turkey, for example, show that the average height of hunter-gatherers towards the end of the Ice Age (c.8000 BC) was about 172 cm (67.7 in.) for men and 162 cm (63.8 in.) for women. With the adoption of agriculture, average height plummeted to 157 cm (61.8 in.) and 150 cm (59 in.), respectively. By Classical times, heights were slowly rebounding, but not until modern times did Greeks and Turks regain the average height of their Paleolithic ancestors. An even more graphic example of the effects of switching from a hunter-gatherer diet to a predominantly agricultural one comes from Native American remains in the Illinois and Ohio River valleys. Analyses of approximately 800 skeletons show that, compared with the huntergatherers who preceded them, the agriculturalists had a nearly 50 per cent increase in tooth enamel defects and a fourfold increase in iron deficiency anaemia, signalling malnutrition; a threefold rise in bone lesions, indicative of infectious disease in general; and an increase in degenerative conditions of the spine, probably reflecting a life of hard work.
In Egypt, the physical effects of the shift to agriculture are not well documented, but one study of Predynastic, Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom skeletons shows that Predynastic Egyptians suffered from anaemia and, with the exception of the elite, nearly all Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom Egyptians suffered from the same affliction. Such widespread anaemia has been attributed to poor hygienic conditions, particularly parasitic infestations, which are characteristic of crowded agricultural communities. Similarly, a study of the development of agriculture in Nubia showed nutritional deficiencies manifested by slow bone development, anaemia, micro-defects in dentition and premature osteoporosis in juveniles and young adult females.
From: Ancient Egypt: Foundations of a Civilization - Douglas J. Brewer
Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009
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The Neolithic: An agricultural revolution and new way of life
(...)
Studies suggest that an opportunistic and mobile desert lifestyle, like that practised by the Epi-paleolithic and early Neolithic inhabitants of the Fayyum, may have been a key factor in the adoption of domestic plants and animals. In general, both Fayyum groups maintained a mobile hunting and gathering way of life, but during the Neolithic domesticated animals and plants were added to an already broad and diversified hunting and gathering lifestyle. The new agricultural resources served as additional insurance against an increasingly unpredictable food supply brought on by the more arid conditions that prevailed after 6000 BC. A complete reliance on domestic plants and animals was not practical because of the increasingly arid climate and unpredictable yields, but, by simply adding new agricultural products to the wild species already used, Neolithic Egyptians attained an even broader overall survival strategy. Put simply, domesticated plants and animals added new alternative food resources to an already diverse group of wild foods, thereby adding an additional line of insurance against famine.
A mixed strategy such as this would also have worked well in the Western Desert in areas such as the Nabta Playa. Groups here were not sedentary but practised seasonal migration to take advantage of different food resources as they became available. Initially, cattle, and later sheep and goat, were probably herded by the migrating people. By planting a few crops in well-watered areas along the way, they added an additional
food resource. Also, as in modern nomadic groups, the entire population did not necessarily move each season. Cultivated plants might have been abandoned until harvest, or they may have been tended for part or all of the growing season. Some groups may have even been semi-permanently settled, like those in the late Neolithic Fayyum, where it is thought some members lived at one site year-round.
Initially, people living along the Nile had little use for domesticated plants and animals because the area was rich in wild resources. Fish and fowl were plentiful and predictable, and large animals could be taken on the grasslands near the river. However, as the areas west and east of the Nile became increasingly more arid, groups living in these regions migrated to the Nile and to Egypt’s major oases, such as Kharga and Dakhla, which served as refuges, and this new wave of people brought domestic plants and animals. As populations grew and congregated, the most easily cultivated areas became scarce and the diversified hunting–gathering lifestyle eventually gave way to more intensive food production. Agriculture, because it offered greater productivity for a given tract of land, became a more viable option for maintaining a stable source of food for a growing population. Shifting to an agricultural economy was not, however, without pitfalls. Depending on fewer food species increased the risk of famine, should crops fail. But in a typical year, crop yields were large enough not only to feed the growing population but to offer a storable surplus as well.
With agriculture now established, villages appeared and grew in size, and local leaders emerged in response to the need for administrative decisions such as how much surplus food should be stored for times of need or for how to arrange labour for community projects like irrigation improvements. In short, a new era in Egyptian prehistory had begun: the Predynastic.
From: Ancient Egypt: Foundations of a Civilization - Douglas J. Brewer
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