Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17, 97–123 (1998)
Article no. AA980319
Nabta Playa and Its Role in Northeastern African Prehistory

"One of the interesting aspects of the Nabta center is its possible role as a contact point between the early Nilotic Neolithic groups with their agricultural economy and the cattle pastoralists in tue Egyptian Sahara. The functional Separation of these two different economies may have played a significant part in the emergence of complexity among both groups. The evidence for Nilotic Egyptian influence on Saharan pastoralists is not extensive
and is presently limited to Late Neolithic ceramic technology, occasional Shells of Nile species, and rare stones from tue Nile gravels. Another way of exploring this is by examining those aspects of political and ceremonial life in the Predynastic and Old Kingdom that might reflect impact from the Saharan cattle pastoralists. In this we have been preceeded by Frankfort (1978: 3–12) who, in his major study of Egyptian and Mesopotamian religions and political systems, argued that the Egyptian belief system arose from an East African substratum and was not introduced from Mesopotamia. To support his position Frankfort pointed to the similarities in religious beliefs the early Egyptians shared with Nilotic cattle pastoralists. During the Old Kingdom, cattle were a central focus of their belief system. They
were deified and regarded as earthly representatives of the gods. A cow was also seen as the mother of the sun, who is sometimes referred to as the ‘‘Bull of Heaven.’’ The Egyptian pharaoh was a god (similar to the Shillok king, and not an intermediary to the gods as in Mesopotamia). He was the embodiment of two gods, Horus, for Upper Egypt, and Seth, for Lower Egypt, but he was primarily Horus, son of Hathor, who was a cow. Horus is often depicted as a strong bull, and images of cattle are prominent in Predynastic and Old Kingdom art; in some instances the images of bulls occur with depictions of stars, a concept that goes back to the Predynastic (Frankfort 1978: 172). Dead pharaohs were sometimes described as the Bull in Heaven. Another important Old Kingdom concept was Min, the god of rain, who is associated with a white bull, and to whom the annual harvest festival was dedicated. It is interesting to note that the emphasis on cattle in the belief system of the Old Kingdom is not reflected in the economy. While cattle were known and were tue major measure of wealth, the economy was based primarily on agriculture and small livestock—sheep and goats. Frankfort saw this emphasis on cattle as an indication that the Old Kingdom beliefs were part of an older stratum of East African concepts. It seems likely, however, that had Frankfort known that cattle pastoralists were in the adjacent Sahara several thousands years before the Predynastic, he would have seen the Western Desert cattle pastoralists as the more likely source for the Old Kingdom religious beliefs than the East African pastoralists. Moreover, that cattle were not important among the preceding Neolithic in the Nile Valley suggests that the Old Kingdom belief system was imposed from outside, perhaps in the traditional fashion, a conquest by pastoralists who periodically come in from their ‘‘lands of insolence’’ to conquer farmers (Coon 1958:295–323; Khazanov 1994). It is tempting to suggest that the impressive cattle burials at the A-Group site of Qustul (Williams 1986), in Egypt south of Abu Simbel, may relate to just such an event."