posted
National Geographic's November 1990 Issue, page 96-125
Thanks Kenndo for turning me on this issue. I found this part about the pennacle very interesting.
Sudan's Kingdom of Kush by Archaeologist Timothy Kendall
Jebel Barkal Pinnacle
The natural pinnacle on the east front of Jebel Barkal. Inscriptions above a niche near the 260-foot summit had been spotted through binoculars. The climb on the top was awarded with a view across millet fields and date groves overlying ancient Napata beside the Nile. The climbers found sockets cut into the rock that could have held logs. Such timbers, hoisted with two shadoofs, probably formed scaffolding to give workman access to the niche, likely repository for a statue.
Timothy Kendall
Lowered to that space, Kendall (above) was probably the first person to visit it since antiquity. The two central panels bore the cartouche of Taharqa, while one to the left bore the cartouche of Nastasen, a Kushite king who had reworked the monument three centuries later to include himself. Weathering had left only the midsection with hopelessly incomplete hieroglyphic texts, although mention of "Asian Bedouin" on the east panel and "Libyan nomads" on the west suggested that Taharqa had proclaimed his military exploits. Nastasen had added small figures carved in relief, which praised his name and that of his glorious ancestors. The surprise came in discovering small, evenly spaced holes all over the smoothed surface, some still containing bronze nails. I knew what this meant from certain temples in Egypt. At one time a sheet of gold, held by nails fixed to the stone, had covered the entire panel and its texts. All traces of the gold had vanished, stripped off perhaps by winds or daring vandals.
Although the texts, carved at the highest, most inaccessible point on the pinnacle, had been written only for the eyes of gods, the kings had intended the gold to be the most conspicuous feature of the mountain, striking awe in mortals below and afar. Facing south-eastward across the river and perfectly positioned at this great height to catch the first rays of the rising sun, this brilliant reflector, for much of the day, would cast a beam of light out into the desert, visible from a great distance. To caravans from the south it would have been a beacon welcoming travelers to the holy city of Napata and the residence of it god, Amun.
Exploring next an alcove carved below the inscribed panel, I examined a square-cut depression in the floor. Based on evidence from other ancient examples, it appeared to be a niche for a statue four to five feet high. At either end of the alcove were remnants of sheltering walls of mortar and rough stone. Large cavities farther down the crumbling face of the pinnacle had also been filled with stone and plaster for reinforcement.
The Pinnacle
The ancients saw the shape of their sacred cobra, crowned with a sun disk, in the pinnacle (top left, overlay), Kendall believes. He found support for the theory in a temple (right) the pinnacle, where ram-headed Amun is shown seated inside the mountain with a rearing cobra outside.
King Piye
Here in the delta, Piye accepts the homage of vanquished princes and a tribute of horses.
High-crowned images of Hathor and Mut, Amun's concort, flank a doorway in the temple of Mut, where royal births were probably celebrated.
In the painting based on this site, columns portraying the god Bes, protector of women in childbirth, gaze on a procession taking an infant to bathe in the Nile.
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Posts: 1549 | From: California, USA | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
Yes definitely an example of one of the better articles on AE from NG. I have been looking for this issue for the longest time, but never could remember which one it was.
However, one of the things I remember most is that the article seems to mention that Kush, Sudan, Ta Seti was the possible birth place of AE culture and that the linkage between the two was very ancient.
posted
So if Nat Geo admits that ancient Egyptian culture originated in Nubia in Ta-Seti, then what happened? Did invading whites take over and usurp the African culture and so give birth to Egyptian civilization?? LOLPosts: 26246 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
BTW has anyone checked the Forum section (aka the reader letters section) in last month's National Geographic? All the letters presented in the section addressed the February issue, the one with the Black Pharaohs article, but none of the ones printed by Nat Geo responded specifically to that article, but to different ones in the same issue. It was as if Nat Geo didn't want to even touch on the "black pharaohs" topic any more, as if they thought it too sensitive. Posts: 7071 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004
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They don't want to directly engage the debate over Kemet as Black civilisation.
As Diop and Obenga, Williams, Henrik Clarke and others have shown, the debate against African Egypt is always lost by Eurocentrists when they directly engage it.
They simply suggest that which is false, and hope to implant falsity in the minds of their readers as if it were a self evident truth.
This *is* the best strategy to employ, when you are servicing a propaganda lie, which they are...
A good example of how this works, is then the article sneers at those who suggest that every Egyptian from "King Tut to Cleopatra was a Black African."
But of course Tut is Egyptian is African and Black, whereas Cleopatra is *not* ethnically Egyptian, and therefore irrelevant to a discussion of Egyptian ethnicity.
Cleopatra is literally offered up as a red herring.
Hopefully we will chase it, and argue over this European and away from a discussion of the following reality:
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.
^ You think the authors of Nat Geo's propaganda lie do not know this? Principal of propaganda-ideologue: Control the nature of the discussion.
Do not broach any fact, nor pursue any avenue of discussion leading to facts, which can contradict the core propaganda.
^ The way you defeat their discouse is shown above. Force the discussion back to the evidence of the African, Melanoderm [Black] basis of Kemet's population. Evidence they are aware of, and will do anything to evade and avoid.
Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
the old team seems to be back in form. sweet.
Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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