posted
I would like to congratulate all of the scholarly minds here who have contributed much to the discussion of 'Nubia'. Of its Eurocentric fallacy and its relationship with Egyptian civilization and history, from its inception to its death!
I have learned a lot from these past several threads on the issue, and since it was a lot of material you guys posted I haven't been able to read them all yet.
I thank Kenndo, al Takruri, Rasol, Supercar, heck even Clyde put in some good work for a change etc. etc.
I still have a few questions left that I hope any of you will be able to answer which I will post in due time.
But in the meantime keep up the goodwork.
(btw, I bet folks like Hore who cannot yet accept a black African Egypt must feel real puzzled when they read those threads) Posts: 26243 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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What is the difference between Ta Seti.x3st and Ta Seti.nwt again, I forgot?
Why were Ta Meri (Upper Egypt) and Ta Shemu (Lower Egypt) united but Ta Seti left out to become an enemy?
And if the newly unified Egyptians considered Ta Seti to be an enemy, why then did they concieve the Prophecy of Neferti which states that a son of a woman from Ta Seti is the legitimate ruler of Egypt?
What about Upper Nubia, where were they in all of these affairs back during the predynastic?
Posts: 26243 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Okay here are my questions:
What is the difference between Ta Seti.x3st and Ta Seti.nwt again, I forgot?
x3st means foreign/alien. nwt means nation/native.
quote: Why were Ta Meri (Upper Egypt) and Ta Shemu (Lower Egypt) united but Ta Seti left out to become an enemy?
And if the newly unified Egyptians considered Ta Seti to be an enemy, why then did they concieve the Prophecy of Neferti which states that a son of a woman from Ta Seti is the legitimate ruler of Egypt?
The aforementioned duality of Ta Seti as khast and niwt [foreign and native] explains this very well.
The Km.t.rm.t are of Ta Seti [land of the bow], yet they are not situ -> [bowman - a discription of native nilotics of the upper nile who were renowned for their proficiency with the bow and arrow]
The Km.t.rm.t are related to the Khentu. [founders] of Ta Khent. Ta Khent is the [1st nome] of Km.t. Ta Khent is also Ta Seti.
In summation:
Ta Seti is khast [foriegn] - land of Situ and Nehesu [southerners].
Ta Seti is also niwt [native/national] - ancient homeland of km.t.rm.t and khentu.
Ta seti is not just one thing - it is both of those things, and more.
The mdw ntr reflects 'reality'.
After all the Upper Nile valley is the home of the Km.t, the Kushites, the Medijay, and possibly the Tehenu and many other people. Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Okay here are my questions:
What is the difference between Ta Seti.x3st and Ta Seti.nwt again, I forgot?
Why were Ta Meri (Upper Egypt) and Ta Shemu (Lower Egypt) united but Ta Seti left out to become an enemy?
To understand the differences in terms here, one has to understand how far Egyptian polity of "unified" Egypt extended into the south in the Old Kingdom or earliest known dynasties. A portion of Ta-seti was likely part of southern Egypt by the Old Kingdom. We've already gone through some early inscriptions in the region, painting a picture of conflicts between in Ta-Seti and folks to their North (still in Upper Egypt). The terms "Ta Seti.nwt" and "Ta Seti.x3st" were used likely to delineate the portion considered a district of the Egyptian polity from that of another polity [which wasn't considered Egyptian]. The reason for the name similarity in such a case, i.e., a district of Egypt and a non-Egyptian southerly polity, could stem from the possibility that the region, called "Ta-Seti.nwt" was autonomous region/polity from Upper Egyptian polities prior to eventually being incorported to the Egyptian state. One would have to carefully examine the dates each of these terms were traced back to, so as to get a coherent view of their usages.
quote:Djehuti:
And if the newly unified Egyptians considered Ta Seti to be an enemy, why then did they concieve the Prophecy of Neferti which states that a son of a woman from Ta Seti is the legitimate ruler of Egypt?
Again, portions of Ta-Seti, at least the lower portion, were quite likely incorporated into the then young Egytian nation, very early on. Egyptians had extended their borders further over time, and were at times, pushed back due to pressure from the more southerly polities, such as the independent Kushites. Ancient Egyptians were quite aware that their origins could be traced back to regions south of Egypt, and hence, their strong feelings of ties towards regions to their south, even as far south as "Punt", whereby in some cases, these lands have been identified as the "lands of God" or some sort of sacred symbolism. It could also be the case, as put forth that, the "ruling" elites or "members" of the ruling elites of Egypt from quite early on, were immigrants ultimately from these regions of the Nile Valley, i.e., "Ta-Seti".
quote:Djehuti:
What about Upper Nubia, where were they in all of these affairs back during the predynastic?
Here's something taken from the Nubianet.org site, that might be worth taking note of...
Although no imported Egyptian pottery or other material has yet been found in the Pre-Kerma settlement, there seems little doubt that the ivory and other African products found in contemporary Egyptian sites were procured originally from the people of Upper Nubia. Such goods would also have passed through the hands of the A-Group Nubians.
Rock drawings of very early ships of this period have been found scratched in the boulders of the Second and Third Cataracts, which would seem to prove that between 3500 and 2900 BC there was at least limited direct river traffic between Egypt and the northern Sudan.
So little excavation has been carried out on sites of this period in Sudan that it would be dangerous to assume that the relative simplicity of the Pre-Kerma townsite was an accurate indication of the level of the political and cultural attainments of all of Upper Nubia.
If there was a kingship in Lower Nubia during the mid-fourth millennium BC, it would not be far-fetched to assume that there was one of equal importance here as well.
On Sai Island, about 100 mi (170 km) downstream from Kerma, another huge early town site has been identified by a French team from the University of Lille, under the direction of Dr. Francis Geus.
At Kerma about 2700 B.C. the Nile channel shifted suddenly to the west, and the Pre-Kerma settlement was abandoned. Closer to the river a new town was built, and it was this city that would ultimately become the capital of Upper Nubia.
----
To understand what was going on in Upper Nubia during the early periods of Upper Egypt and Lower "Nubia", one has to examine the finds thus far found in the Kerma and other regions further up the Nile in Sudan. I believe we have threads that are dealing with this issue.
Posts: 5964 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Okay here are my questions:
What is the difference between Ta Seti.x3st and Ta Seti.nwt again, I forgot?
x3st means foreign/alien. nwt means nation/native.
quote: Why were Ta Meri (Upper Egypt) and Ta Shemu (Lower Egypt) united but Ta Seti left out to become an enemy?
And if the newly unified Egyptians considered Ta Seti to be an enemy, why then did they concieve the Prophecy of Neferti which states that a son of a woman from Ta Seti is the legitimate ruler of Egypt?
The aforementioned duality of Ta Seti as khast and niwt [foreign and native] explains this very well.
The Km.t.rm.t are of Ta Seti [land of the bow], yet they are not situ -> [bowman - a discription of native nilotics of the upper nile who were renowned for their proficiency with the bow and arrow]
The Km.t.rm.t are related to the Khentu. [founders] of Ta Khent. Ta Khent is the [1st nome] of Km.t. Ta Khent is also Ta Seti.
In summation:
Ta Seti is khast [foriegn] - land of Situ and Nehesu [southerners].
Ta Seti is also niwt [native/national] - ancient homeland of km.t.rm.t and khentu.
Ta seti is not just one thing - it is both of those things, and more.
The mdw ntr reflects 'reality'.
After all the Upper Nile valley is the home of the Km.t, the Kushites, the Medijay, and possibly the Tehenu and many other people.
posted
supercar quote: ____________________________________________________________ Rock drawings of very early ships of this period have been found scratched in the boulders of the Second and Third Cataracts, which would seem to prove that between 3500 and 2900 BC there was at least limited direct river traffic between Egypt and the northern Sudan.
quote: TaMeri was predominently peopled by influxes in pre and early neolithic times from what we now call the Sahara, the eastern Sudan, and the Horn. There were also a minute measure trickling in from the east Mediterranean i.e., the Levant.
Leading up to dynastic times, the cultures from the Dal cataract and on northward were very similar and there was no central political authority. The A group are the first to implement a state structure with a political head. The end of Naqada II sees the unification of the Two Lands and a southern border -- the 1st cataract/Biga -- marking TaWy from TaSeti. This southernmost nome is also named TaSeti because before the dynastic era the land from Biga northward to Nag el Hasaya was under A group authority.
The lands and peoples immediately south of the 1st nome were not under the Km.t polity. Their polity was Wawat. A cultural demarcation also began to distinguish the two peoples. Kmt embraced writing while TaSeti and Kesh to the south of it did not.
This explains the difference between TaSeti.nwt a nome of Kmt and TaSeti.x3st a foreign country not a part of Kmt. The glyph x3st is the determinative for a foreign country.
quote: OK I will use the less precise term Nubia. The Nubians were the first to form a centralized state with a king. They controlled the area of Nubia and as almost as far north as Edfu. All this region was then TaSeti.x3st.
When Egypt unified its kings took control as far south as the 1st cataract. The area between Edfu and the first cataract used to belong to TaSeti.x3st. Now, no longer under Nubian control but in the hands of the Egyptians it became the 1st nome of Egypt and was renamed TaSeti.nwt.
quote: Before the unification of the Two Lands, Wawat ruled up to Nag el Hasaya in what would later be the 2nd nome of Upper Egypt (Heru's Throne) immediately north of the 1st nome TaSeti.nwt.
Ancient Egyptians were quite aware that their origins could be traced back to regions south of Egypt, and hence, their strong feelings of ties towards regions to their south, even as far south as "Punt", whereby in some cases, these lands have been identified as the "lands of God" or some sort of sacred symbolism. It could also be the case, as put forth that, the "ruling" elites or "members" of the ruling elites of Egypt from quite early on, were immigrants ultimately from these regions of the Nile Valley, i.e., "Ta-Seti".
Apparently, there were predyanstic centralized polities in Egypt, where the Upper Nile Valley ones found a means to consolidate political power, prior to expanding their authority to other Nile Valley regions and beyond [in the Levant]. In the process of stretching their authority to the greater part of the Nile Valley, the unified polities of the Upper Nile Valley, engaged in a custom of mating with the nobility of the additional territories that were under their target for expansion of political rule, as a measure to anchor their rule in those locations. Coupled with their belief about their ancestors originating from further up the Nile, i.e., beyond their own Upper Nile Valley habitats or "homelands", such tactics of securing their power in additional territory through unions with the nobility of those regions and synchronizing local religious traditions with their own, the latter was done more so with the more southerly polities in "Nubia" to the extent that it was incorporated into the governing system.
Examples of how the above mentioned tactics were applied to regions further up the Nile, as a way to legitimize the rule of consolidated Upper Egyptian polities:
in Upper Nile Valley regions
"What is interesting is that in military endeavours in other countries, the Egyptians let the conquered peoples maintain their own traditions and modes of worship," Kendall remarked.
"With Kush, there was **much more give and take**, and the Egyptians tried to combine Nubian religious beliefs with their own. They seem to have combined their own state God, Amun, with the Nubian God and promoted the idea that these two Gods were same.
This allowed the pharaohs, who claimed to be the sons of Amun, to be the legitimate rulers of Nubians also," according to Kendall.
When the Egyptians withdrew from Nubia around 1100 B.C. for unknown reasons, a group of powerful local rulers assumed power in the kingdom. These new kings also claimed to be the sons of Amun, and therefore the legitimate king of Egypt. - May 2004 Panafrican News Agency
In Lower Nile Valley regions
“In two areas of Sedment, SW of Harageh (Cemetery J, and between Cemetery K and the floodplain), circular pits were excavated which (rarely) contained some pottery but no burials (Petrie and Brunton 1924: 9). Though different in form from pottery usually found in burials, small Black-topped Red jars were found in Cemetery J. Most of the pottery found in the circular pits, however, was of types typical of Lower Egyptian Predynastic sites (El Omari, Maadi; Williams 1982: 219). Williams (1982: 221) interprets these pits and their contents as storage caches for a nearby (deflated) settlement of Lower Egypt culture before the northern expansion of Upper Egyptian (Nagada) culture into the Fayum region during Nagada II (Gerzean) times.
Some pottery from Harageh Cemetery H, which Engelbach thought was much later (Pan Graves?), resembles Lower Egyptian Predynastic pottery found at Sedment (Kaiser 1987: 121-122; Williams 1982: 220). The presence of pottery of Lower Egyptian origin at a site in this region is also attested at the cemetery of es-Saff on the east bank opposite Gerza (Habachi and Kaiser 1985: 46). From this evidence it seems likely that the Fayum region was where the two Predynastic cultures of Upper and Lower Egypt first came into contact.”
And…
“While the unification may have been achieved through conquest in the north, an earlier unification of southern polities (Nagada, Hierakonpolis, and Abydos), may have been achieved by a series of alliances (Trigger 1987: 61).” - Prof. Kathryn Bard
Keita, on centroid values of cranial series:
Badarian (8) occupies a position closet to the Teita, Gaboon, Nubian, and Nagada series by centroid values and territorial maps. The Nagada and the Kerma series are so similar that they are barely indistinguishable in the territorial maps; they subsume the first dynasty series in Abydos… The Badarian crania have a modal metric phenotype that is clearly “southern”; most classify into the Kerma (Nubian), Gaboon, and Kenyan groups…No Badarian cranium in any analysis classified into the European series, and few grouped with the “E” series…Nutter (1958) found that they [the Nagada] essentially identical to the Badarian series. The classification of crania into specific groups does NOT imply identity with those specific series, only AFFINITIES with broad patterns connoting COMMON ORIGINS...
Of interest, for future study, is the possibility that the Dynasty I crania from Abydos represent a hybrid between tropical Negroid or Elongated groups and those with the northern coastal pattern; the Abydos series consistently has a centroid value near the middle of the range of values in spite of extensive Nagada/Kerma overlap. This would be consistent with the exogamous mating customs postulated in the Nagada periods by Hassan (1988). It receives further from morphological observations made by Morant (1925), who thought this early dynasty series “to consist of a mixture of races, or better a race with individuals of more or less mixed blood.” Alternatively, the series may represent another local variant. - Keita, Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa
"Keita's use of Multiple Discriminant Functions II & III in his phenograms (Keita, 1988, 1993) help demonstrate that the basic population might have been different than that shown by the highly discriminant Function I. In analyzing the First Dynasty royal tomb remains, unknown analysis is used comparing the crania with other known series. This is one of the best approaches to the problem and supports the theory of Keita, Hassan (1988) and others tha in the early dynastic period, the dominant South had engaged in political marriages with nobility from northern Egypt to consolidate their control of the region." - Source: http://asiapacificuniverse.com/pkm/anthro.htmPosts: 5964 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote: . . . . the building of a fort at Elephantine by the early kings of Egypt's First Dynasty indicates a sharp territorial cut between Egypt and Northern Lower Nubia in an area that, until then, had acted as a buffer zone where the relations between Egyptians and Nubians had been «almost symbiotic» (Seidlmeyer 1996 : 112). Elsewhere, archaeology does not provide clear indications, but site distribution reveals three concentrations that perfectly fit with the territories suggested above. Nordström's map (Nordström forthcoming) suggests for the Terminal stage a large southern territory stretching between Qustul and Saras, a less extensive central one between Gerf Husein and Sayala and a northern one, with no particular power centre, extending north and south of Elephantine.
...Gerf Hussein, which seems to have been controlled by Upper Egyptian merchants, ...
... a famous inscription carved on Jebel Sheikh Suliman, is the first unquestionable mention of Lower Nubia as Ta-Seti, the country of the bow, a name that, in other context, may be misinterpreted since it also designated the southernmost nome of Upper Egypt. If we relate it to the establishment of a fortified frontier site at Elephantine and to the frontier policy that prevailed in Egypt during the First Dynasty, it may also be considered as a marker -the first of its kind inside Nubia- indicating the southern limit of a vast territory that the Egyptian monarchy pretended to control. We unfortunately lack information about the later status of that territory, but it is clear that no Nubians settlers lived there any more. The foundation of an Egyptian establishment at Buhen, close to Jebel Sheikh Suliman, during the Fourth Dynasty and possibly as early as the Second Dynasty (Emery 1963; 1965 : 111-114), shows that, although Elephantine remained the official frontier post, Lower Nubia continued to be a vast uninhabited territory controlled by the Egyptian monarchy and that contacts with Nubians took place in a fortified outpost located just north of the rapids of the Second Cataract.
Francis Geus The Middle Nile Valley from Later Prehistory to the end of the New Kingdom Tenth International Conference of the International Society for Nubian Studies September 9-14, 2002 - Rome, Italy
Basically, since the A-group of Ta Seti was not much different from early Upper Egyptians like Naqada and the Egyptians themselves claim ancestry from the south, then it not wrong to say that they share a common ancestry between them and that some Upper Egyptians may have ancestry directly from A-group.
But there was of course a divergence between Ta Meri and Ta Seti and Ta Meri wanted more dominance over the Nile Valley, but some members of Ta Seti resisted.
Is this correct?
Posts: 26243 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
If one were to read/study the histories of other African civilizations; ie, Kongo, Dahomey, Songhai, ghana, Melle, etc., then the drama which took place within the ancient Nile Valley would not seem so mysterious at all. The inter-African conflicts (Kememu vs. Ethaoshu; etc.) is typical African history, not at all unusual. More in the realm of social studies rather than that of Anthropology...
Posts: 3344 | From: Berkeley | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: then it not wrong to say that they share a common ancestry between them and that some Upper Egyptians may have ancestry directly from A-group.
It is a fact of modern biology that Upper Egyptians and Lower Nubians most closely relate to each other genetically today. It is a fact of history that Ta Shemu and Ta Seti shared a common culture going back to the predynastic, and the earliest evidence of the Kemetian dynastic kingship originates in Ta Seti.
Morever the "AE" state in the primary text over and again that this is so.
Who can dispute it? [rhetorical question of course]
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