quote:It's about the flawed concept of Nubian dynasty, which I don't think you are defending, and which is, after all...the title of the thread.
Indeed, I think I understand what you're saying. The separation of Ancient Egyptians and Nubians is more of a Eurocentric ruse than actual truth. We can see the Badarians match up with Mesolithic Nubians, and many Egyptian profiles could easily be considered "Nubian". As we can see from the X-Ray Atlas of The Royal Mummies.
James Harris and Edward Wente:
In summation, the New Kingdom Pharaohs and Queens whose mummies have been recovered bear strong similarity to either contemporary Nubians, as with the XVII and XVIII dynasties, or with Mesolithic-Holocene Nubians, as with the XVIV and XX dynasties. The former dynasties seem to have a strong southern affinity , while the latter possessed evidence of mixing with modern Mediterranean types and also, possibly, with remnants of the old Tasian and Natufian populations. From the few sample available from the XXI Dynasty, there may have been a new infusion from the south at this period.
while the latter possessed evidence of mixing with modern Mediterranean types
^^^Since many Crania are falsely considered "Mediterranean" I am pretty skeptical about the notion of them mixing with "Mediterranean". Could basically just be another group of Indigenous Africans.
Yea i agree wit chu..to show a little more anthropological material from James Harris and Weeks: " His entire lower facial complex, in fact, is so different from other pharaohs that he could be fitted more easily into the series of Nubian and Old Kingdom Giza skulls than into that of later Egyptian kings. " So they're saying that egyptians from the old kingdom looked more like nubians than later egyptian kings? hmmm..questionable.
Posts: 447 | From: Somewhere son... | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
It's not my place to force you to accept my evidence. One can reject any evidence one choses to and base that rejection on whatever one pleases (i.e. I don't like your source). Nonetheless my evidence remains standing.
Also standing tall is my stance that the entire Lower Nile Valley was a unified cultural complex up until the time monarchies developed when the peoples of TaSeti.x3st and TaWy both themselves demarcated their separation.
Please direct me to your research analyses and synthesis of your studies on the question.
Now, either the 12 Dynasty full of Senwosrets was founded by Amenemhet I or not. Yes or no?
Either Neferti's Prophecy
quote: nswt pw r iyt n rsy imny mAa xrw rn.f sA Hmt pw n tA sty ms pw n Xn nxn iw.f r Ssp HDt iw.f r wTs dSrt iw.f smA sxmty iw.f r sHtp nbwy m mrt.sn pXr iHy m xfa wsr m nwd
was used by Amenemhet or not. Yes or no?
Either Neferti's Prophecy says Amenemhet's mother was from TaSeti or not. Yes or no?
Either Neferti's Prophecy says Amenemhet came from the south or not. Yes or no?
Either Senwosret is a name from the Uahka family or not. Yes or no?
Either Amenemhet is a name that honors Amen whose cultus centers were Gebel Barkal or not. Yes or no?
Either the Uahka family can be traced from the Old Kingdom to the New Kingdom or not. Yes or no?
Either the Uahka family architected tombs in Egypt of a type unknown there or not. Yes or no?
Either the Uahka architected temples at 6th dynasty Qua are of a design unknown to Egypt or not. Yes or no?
Either the Amen sanctuary in Thebes is of architectural style unknown in Egypt or not. Yes or no?
Either Amenemhet's sphinx and the misappropriated "Hyksos sphinxes" have a Galla facial morphology or not. Yes or no?
Either the Uahka family name is the same as the Galla deity Waka or not. Yes or no?
In the face of the above with Neferti's Prophecy direct assessment I conclude the 12 Dynasty was founded by a family of NHHSW origin who were in Egypt since the 6th Dynasty and never forgot their origins as exampled by their family name, their architecture forms in both temples and tombs, their deity Amen who before their ascendency was a minor neter in TaWy. And is the case with deified ancestors, this very important family's name became the name of a deity of others of their morphology later in time.
That's what my studies lead me to posit whoever else may agree or disagree.
quote:Originally posted by Obelisk_18:
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Since very few rulers of Egypt were anything other than black and I show a small subset of them to be family-named, physically, architecturally, and religiously of a type today called Galla,
where do you you find me writing that black rulers of Egypt HAD to be Sudanese? Have we suddenly forgotten the words of Neferti's Prophecy on the founder of this specific dynasty?
quote:Originally posted by rasol:
quote:So in other words, by saying that the black egyptian rulers HAD to come from Nubia, you're subconsciously denying that Egypt itself was African! Deprogram yourself of the eurocentric nonsense!
One of the most hypocritical examples of aparthied ideology being applied by 'non racial' historians is found in the way they draw and ideological line - which procribes -> NEVER can one be Black and Ancient Egyptian.
Anyone from the ancient Nile Valley civilisation whose Blackness cannot be questioned MUST be placed in the catagory of Nubian, not Egyptian.
It's quite psychotic, and it's important to understand why the non-racial school must maintain this savagely racist premise.
Once they admit to ANY Black ancient Egyptians....they are on a slippery slope, and there is no end to it.
And i ask the question again, wheres your credible EVIDENCE (besides outdated Petrie) that the 12th dynasty was related to the Galla!
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:It's about the flawed concept of Nubian dynasty, which I don't think you are defending, and which is, after all...the title of the thread.
Indeed, I think I understand what you're saying. The separation of Ancient Egyptians and Nubians is more of a Eurocentric ruse than actual truth. We can see the Badarians match up with Mesolithic Nubians, and many Egyptian profiles could easily be considered "Nubian". As we can see from the X-Ray Atlas of The Royal Mummies.
James Harris and Edward Wente:
In summation, the New Kingdom Pharaohs and Queens whose mummies have been recovered bear strong similarity to either contemporary Nubians, as with the XVII and XVIII dynasties, or with Mesolithic-Holocene Nubians, as with the XVIV and XX dynasties. The former dynasties seem to have a strong southern affinity , while the latter possessed evidence of mixing with modern Mediterranean types and also, possibly, with remnants of the old Tasian and Natufian populations. From the few sample available from the XXI Dynasty, there may have been a new infusion from the south at this period.
while the latter possessed evidence of mixing with modern Mediterranean types
^^^Since many Crania are falsely considered "Mediterranean" I am pretty skeptical about the notion of them mixing with "Mediterranean". Could basically just be another group of Indigenous Africans.
First off, I unequivocally agree time and again, about the fallacy of the "Mediterranean type"; can't be emphasized enough. Having said that, I would question whether the reference to "Mediterranean types" was actually Jim Harris or Ed Wente's own words to begin with, as it appears to me that this may have been the interpretation of the owner of the site which referenced their work, whom I believe goes by the name of Paul Manansala. He seems like a bright fellow, from what I gather thus far from his compilations and analysis of several bio-anthropological publications. At any rate, it appears the extract in question was scantly assuming the said admixtures, based on the following:
— "orthognathous"
— the Ramessides were of northern extraction, this could represent miscegenation with modern Mediterraneans of Levantine type.
— The projecting zygomatic arches of Seti I suggest remnants of the old Natufian/Tasian types of the Holocene period.
Now, why the invocation of the supposed "Mediterranean types"; well, to reiterate from above: 1)"Since the Ramessides were of northern extraction", which undoubtedly is quite as scanty a rationaliztion as they come...but perhaps what essentially drove this scanty assumption, was 2)the "orthognathous" tendency within the 19th Dynasty specimens...whose 3)sloping frontal bones are reminiscent of those of Mesolithic "Nubian" crania. Obviously, the "orthognathous" trait is not the least foreign to autochthonous African morphological patterns. However, the particular example of Mesolithic "Nubian" cranium referenced here, happened to be one with "pronounced facial prognathism, but moderate dental protrusion". Still, what may be particular of one specimen, may not necessarily be duplicated in every aspect in another specimen from the same inbreeding population. To adjudge any prevalent trends, sufficiently large sample sizes for examination are naturally needed. So, I suspect that this distinction may have in part driven the scanty assumption about "mixing with orthogonous groups", likely the supposed "Mediterranean types" of the north, where the Rameside paternal line supposedly came from. This loose assumption may have also been further driven by the noticeable trend of 'prognathism' in referenced specimens from the other Dynasties.
Here is what the author used as his guidance, with the said objective:
The purpose of this study is to refute the argument that the Pharaohs did not conform to the "Negroid" phenotype, but not to support any biological basis of the concept of race.
Some standards that we will use in describing the x-ray diagrams (lateral view) of the royal mummies are now given:
WM Krogman (The Human Skeleton in Forensic Medicine)
RA Drummond ("A determination of cephalometric norms for the Negro race"); TL Alexander and HP Hitchcock ("Cephalometric standards for American Negro children"); RJ Fonseca, WD Klein ("A cephalometric evaluation of American Negro women"); CJ Kowalski, CE Nasjlet, GF Walker (Differential diagnosis of adult make black and white populations); A Jacobson ("The craniofacial skeletal pattern of the South African Negro")
Persons of African descent are distinguished by steep mandibular plane; sharp, vertical chin; protrusion of the incisors; prognathism; greater lower facial height but with less mid-facial height; upper mouth is more projecting than lower mouth (higher ANB angle).
Y'edyank and Iscan ("Craniofacial Growth and Evolution")
Mesolithic Nubians had low, sloping foreheads and robust features evolving into a globular cranium with high vault...
^...with the so-called "Africoid" traits apparently comprising of features that are generally emphasized by those invoking the idealized/stereotyped "Negro" archetype.
And as for the possible Tasian/Natufian element in the mix, well — to recite the author,...
— The projecting zygomatic arches of Seti I suggest remnants of the old Natufian/Tasian types of the Holocene period.
Btw, the possible "Natufian" connection, along with the above mentioned, may have played a role in the author's invocation of...
this could represent miscegenation with modern Mediterraneans of Levantine typePosts: 7516 | From: Somewhere on Earth | Registered: Jan 2008
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quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: Since very few rulers of Egypt were anything other than black and I show a small subset of them to be family-named, physically, architecturally, and religiously of a type today called Galla,
where do you you find me writing that black rulers of Egypt HAD to be Sudanese? Have we suddenly forgotten the words of Neferti's Prophecy on the founder of this specific dynasty?
quote:Originally posted by rasol:
quote:So in other words, by saying that the black egyptian rulers HAD to come from Nubia, you're subconsciously denying that Egypt itself was African! Deprogram yourself of the eurocentric nonsense!
One of the most hypocritical examples of aparthied ideology being applied by 'non racial' historians is found in the way they draw and ideological line - which procribes -> NEVER can one be Black and Ancient Egyptian.
Anyone from the ancient Nile Valley civilisation whose Blackness cannot be questioned MUST be placed in the catagory of Nubian, not Egyptian.
It's quite psychotic, and it's important to understand why the non-racial school must maintain this savagely racist premise.
Once they admit to ANY Black ancient Egyptians....they are on a slippery slope, and there is no end to it.
I would like to add an observation. Not sure where this fits in but in Oromo cultural religion they have an aspect regarding the worship OF or a worship that involves Trees. One big tree in particular . I dont know the specifics of it. Also I am not sure if this is why their Oromo Flag has the big tree on it. Another thing i found interesting is in Amharic, many countries are spoken similar their English counter part. Two that stood out were India spoken as "Hind" I guess for Hindu and Egypt - Pronounced "GBT". GBT or GeBeT sounds ALOT like KMT - KEMET. Any thoughts.
Posts: 2463 | From: New Jersey USA | Registered: Dec 2007
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How do you spell "uahka" in Hieroglyphs? Are you sure of it being a native nHsj word to be compared with Oromo "Waka", rather than an Egyptian word?
Posts: 181 | Registered: Aug 2007
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Uahka as Waka is not my original proposition. What I proposed is the possibility of the modern phoneme deriving from the ancient phoneme. Admittedly a long shot.
The Uahka were big shots beyond a doubt. If they were in fact of the same stock as that ancestral to certain Galla that pride of their status in T3Wy may have been an impetus for kinsmen to deify the name or transfer the name to an existing deity.
The spelling matters little. It just records the sound or best approximated sound of the spoken word.
Example: the German personal pronoun is spelled ich. But by the look of the word an English speaker would pronounc it itch. However the sound of ch in German is not the sound of ch in English.
So if the mdw ntjr doesn't precisely sound a w or a k it'd still be the best representation for those sounds from a foreign and even extra-phyla lect.
Also, though there is a language called Egyptian there is no language called Nehesi. Nor can there be any such language because Nehesi is a designation for any and all the peoples upriver from Egypt. There are too many different languages, some of which bear slim or no relation to each other, to lump them together as a distinct lect Nehesi.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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The spelling matters little. It just records the sound or best approximated sound of the spoken word.
Example: the German personal pronoun is spelled ich. But by the look of the word an English speaker would pronounc it itch. However the sound of ch in German is not the sound of ch in English.
So if the mdw ntjr doesn't precisely sound a w or a k it'd still be the best representation for those sounds from a foreign and even extra-phyla lect.
No it does not matter little, since depending of the spelling, the conventional "h" can correspond to several graphemes/phonemes and thus be interpreted as a different meaning if a native Egyptian word (if the patronym rendered would be an Egyptian translation of the indigenous name as suggested by some for Heqa Nefer), or as different corresponding graphemes, whose misquotation could be very misleading in regard of the identification of linguistic affinities of languages transcribed by the Egyptian scribes.
quote: Also, though there is a language called Egyptian there is no language called Nehesi. Nor can there be any such language because Nehesi is a designation for any and all the peoples upriver from Egypt. There are too many different languages, some of which bear slim or no relation to each other, to lump them together as a distinct lect Nehesi.
I was referring to nHsj as a geographical entity here.
On another note, I personally have no problem with students of Ancient Africa referring in some instances to lesser known areas south of Ancient Egypt as a single unit as conceptualized by AE themselves, thus using an Egyptocentric approach for a later better understanding of Ancient African past.
Posts: 181 | Registered: Aug 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Obelisk_18: Alright alright lemme resurrect this mofo.....been a long time for this thread to be in the grave babes and imma take up Djehuti on his bump request
Sorry guys, it's been a while but I was busy. This is one of those old but really great threads that shouldn't stay buried. Thanks Obelisk for bumping it up (although I recall this was in the Egyptology section). Anyway to answer your questions...
quote:Anyways..as far as I know..the only dynasty that can effectively be called Nubian (meaning whose founders/conquerors were either Nubian or had at least partial nubian ancestry) is the 25th..and about the 12th dynasty founder Amenehmat I having a nubian mother, it said (the self serving "prophecy of neferti") she was from ta-seti which was also the name of the first nome of egypt, so Amenemhat's roots were probably from around Aswan/Elphantine
'Nubia' was the name the Romans gave to the region south of Kemet (ancient Egypt). Kemet stretched from the Delta to modern day Aswan, whereas 'Nubia' stretched from past Aswan to the rest of modern southern Egypt all the way to central Sudan. Ta-Seti was a predynastic kingdom located not around Aswan but south of it and is thus classified as 'Nubian', but you are correct that it was considered as Kemet's first sepat (nome) and thus essentially a part of Kemet. This is what many modern Egyptologists and other Eurocentrics don't want you to know. That not only was 'Nubia' an exonym not used by Nile Valley natives not even Egyptians, and it merely described a region inhabited by various groups of peoples, but most importantly some of these peoples are closely related to the Egyptians if not genetically then definitely culturally. The kingdom of Ta-Seti preceeded that of dynastic Kemet and it has been discovered some years ago by archaeologists like Bruce Williams that some roots of dynastic Kemet lie in Ta Seti such as many pharaonic icons if not the pharaohship itself as well as other significant finds like proto-hieroglyphs. Ta Seti is virtually the foundation of dynastic Egypt which is exactly why the pharaohs named it as the first nome, yet it lies to the south of Aswan making it what many Western scholars call "Nubian"! This is one of the many devastating blows to Eurocentric scholarship, and especially to the great historical fallacy perpetuated by many Egyptologists-- The Egypt vs. Nubia dichotomy which doesn't really exist because simply there really was no 'Nubia'!! There was Kemet, and then there were various other kingdoms or polities that lay to the south of them some of whom had close ties to Egypt since predynastic times. Even before Kemet was united into a nation it consisted of several kingdoms which stretched from the Delta up the Nile to the south and apparently Ta-Seti was one of those kingdoms even though it lay beyond the first cataract.
Here is what one of the studies we commonly cite say about the remains found in a predynastic complex burial site:
"A comparison with neighbouring Nile Valley skeletal samples suggests that the high status cemetery represents an endogamous ruling or elite segment of the local population at Naqada, which is more closely related to populations in northern Nubia than to neighbouring populations in southern Egypt."
Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt Tracy L. Prowse, Nancy C. Lovell Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta
Such findings further support the Egyptians' own claims their early rulers of predynastic Upper Egypt came from farther south, likely Ta-Seti.
This is the reason why the Egyptians also called Ta-Seti or in general the lands to their south Ta-Khent-- "Land of Beginning", or Eau-- "Old place", and its peoples Khentu Hon Nefer-- Founders of the Great Order.
It is also the reason why the 'Prophecy of Neferti' was a self-fulfilling one of propaganda that having a mother from the south of Egypt further legitimized one's position as Pharaoh.
quote:And why does Amun necessarily have to be a nubian god? couldnt he have just been a little known local theban god who rose to prominence due to that city being the capital of egypt during the Middle Kingdom? And unless theres proof that "Amun" is a loan word from nubian languages, I really dont see how Amun could be anything but local .
It is hard to pin-point exactly where Amun's origins lie. His name is referenced in the Pyramid Texts and I think even the Book of the Dead so he was obviously an ancient deity even to the ancient Egyptians. Takruri brought up an interesting point in another thread that his cult was apparently known in Siwa oasis of the Western Desert at least by the time Alexander conquered Egypt. So whether he was a deity native to the Libyans also, or merely introduced to them by the Egyptians remains a question. What is known for certain is that he was definitely known locally in Upper Egypt, especially in Waset (Thebes) where he known as one of the primordial gods. However, it must be remembered that many dynasties of Waset are themselves of 'Nubian' descent so there is a possiblity that Amun originated in 'Nubia' specifically Ta Seti, or it could be deity known to both Setjau and Upper Kemetians. The cult of Amun is just so old we don't have any conclusive evidence one way or another. By "Nubian languages", I take it you mean the languages spoken by modern day 'Nubian' peoples who are descended from the Meroites and peoples of Kush and are linguistically Nilo-Saharan speakers instead of Afrasian speakers like the Egyptians(?) If so, the Kushite god 'Aman' probably had a different etymology from the Egyptian 'Amun' which meant 'hidden' or 'concealed'. The Setjau peoples of Ta Seti likely spoke an Afrasian not much different from Upper Egyptians as evidenced from the proto-hieroglyphs. And this was probably the case with various other 'Nubian' peoples who did not speak Nilo-Saharan languages.
quote:And to you djehuti, about queen mothers being a "nubian" cultural practice..well..do we have any info on nubian/kushite kingship before the area was egyptianized in the New kingdom? And do you know that queens taking power for themselves and being regents goes back all the way to the first dynasty (Merneith)? I say you're taking shots in the dark with all this gueeswork my man
I didn't say queen mothers in general was a Nubian custom, but that their rise to position of pre-eminence could be. If you notice, I also stated that this was a theory or really hypothesis made by some Egyptologists and not totally my own. Queen mothers in general were always important in Egyptian culture. To be a pharaoh one needed to be son or at least husband of a royal woman first and foremost. Such a tradition is seen in many other societies not only in Africa but some other parts of the world. I recall how Wally, a past forum member here would call this a matriarchy or matrilineage. It is not a case of the former for the fact that actual rulership and weilding of power is usually vested in the man and not the woman with certain exceptions such as the death of the king and the prince being too young, then the woman would act as ruling regent as was the case with Merineith. It is not the case of the latter since true matrilineage is where clan or familial descent is reckoned through the female line only. We know the Egyptians traced their families or clans through their fathers with many Pharaohs being named after their fathers, however the tradition may ultimately be derived from such and it is definitely an old mother-right tradition for the women to be the original proprietors of the land or territory in which a people lived and were thus associated with seat of power of that place, not to mention symbolizing the very heart of a people and thus associated with nativism. Diop also explained this in his Origins book. Thus to have the power of kingship you must inherit the seat of power or really the throne which is bore by royal women. This can even be seen with the goddess Aset (Isis) whose name literally means 'throne'. And this is also the reason why only native Nile Valley women can be chief wife and a man can only be pharaoh if he marries a Nile Valley royal woman. And this is also the reason why having a mother from the south not only legitimized one as pharaoh but the connection to the first pharaohs.
Now usually the chief wife of a pharaoh or great royal wife presided as mistress of the palace managing palace affairs and can advise or counsel the pharaoh as well as conducting official temple rites and duties as priestess. But the theory of 'Nubian' queen mothers having pre-eminent position is not only seen with the Meroitic Kentake (Candaces) who acted as co-rulers or even sole rulers in their own right as well as war generals, but the fact that every time a dynasty rules in Egypt with supposed 'Nubian' ancestry, the women position of the women in that family tends to be much greater than usual royal wives of usual Egyptian dynasties. For example, in the early days of the Old Kingdom whose pharaohs descend from the rulers of the south like Menes or Scorpion, in the royal list of progenitors only the mothers are written and not the fathers. The royal women have monuments built in their honor including their own pyramids etc. In the New Kingdom, at its inception women have been prominent with Ahhotep I of the 17th dynasty actively participating in military campaigns against the Hyksos along with her husband and brother Sekenenra Tao II. Their war against the Hyksos is continued by their children both Ahmose I and his sister/wife, Ahmose Nefertari. Both Ahmose Nefertari after expelling the Hyksos is elevated to divine status with her depictions in black. The other women of the 18th dynasty take on other duties than besides manager of the palace but actually take part in the administration of the state or even act as co-regent actively ruling alongside their husbands as seen with Nefertiti and Hatshepsut who takes the actual title of pharaoh. You even have royal women acting as high-priestesses and oracles known as the 'Wives of Amun' where they claim to have actual intercourse with the god himself! This is later revived by the 25th dynasty etc. Basically such pre-eminent roles are enacted again and again by royal women of dynasties with 'Nubian' women as founders.
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Knowledgeiskey718: Petrie, W.M.F., The Making of Egypt, London. New York, Sheldon Press; Macmillan, 1939
Page 155:
"The Nubian Mixture: The later Hyksos were obviously decadent, and at last an invasion from the south threw them back northward and established a black queen as the divine ancestress of the 18th dynasty. Thus again a southern people reanimated Egypt, like the Sudani 3rd dynasty and the Galla 12th dynasty."
"The black queen Ahmos-Nefertari had an aquiline nose, long and thin, and was a type not in the least prognathous. Nefertari must have married a Libyan, as she was mother of Amenhetep I, who was a fair Libyan style. This black strain seems to have come through the Tao I and II ancestry; but the whole tangle of the 12th dynasty is complex, and very difficult to bring into a definite scheme, owing to the tombs having all been robbed, and the contents mixed by Arabs more than a century ago. In any case the main sources of the 18th dynasty were Nubian and Libyan, depicted black and yellow, but not red of the Egyptians."
--------- Petrie mentions Nefertari to have no prognathism, and Amenhotep I, to be a fair Lybian lol? But as we can see from James Harris and Edward Wente who conducted an x-ray analysis of the New Kingdom royal mummies with the results published in their book X-ray Atlas of the Royal Mummies (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980). Included in the work were cephalograms of Pharaohs of the XVII-XX Dynasties and their queens. That this is a flat out lie. Not sure to take Petrie too seriously on that one, being that he was an Egyptologist, which is just like Zahi Hawass making anthropological evaluations, when he can't.
Of course, when dealing with Petrie you have to remember what the popular thought was during this time. That first of all dynastic civilization was brought to the Nile Valley from Asia. Second, the "Abyssinian type" he constantly mentions is of the "caucasoid" race and so in his mind not 'truly' African. And lastly, that Libyans were white or at least very light-skinned. We now know all of this to be B.S. All that aside he was correct in ONE thing-- that Egypt from time to time was taken over by peoples from the south. This part is definitely clear and is proven to this day.
As for everything else, it was already discussed in a couple of other threads especially the Kushite invasion!
quote:Originally posted by Obelisk_18: oh and about the article about the kushite invasion of egypt right before the 18th dynasty, good job . We're just beginning to discover how big of a threat, and a superpower, Kush (Kerma) was becoming during the Second Intermediate Period, and if my sources serve me correct, wasnt Kerma bigger in territory than egypt during this time?
The story of the discovery of the Kushite invasion was posted a couple of threads before with the first one by Ausar. Too bad we don't have a search engine to find it. We discussed this issue a great deal.
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Apocalypse: Doug M Wrote:
quote:I believe that the 11th and 12th dynasties were part of a campaign of civil strife in Egypt that kings to be assassinated and thrones usurped, with MANY of the USURPERS coming from the South
Perhaps this can shed light on the massive fortifications built in "Nubia" during the 12th dynasty.
Also the Tale of Sinuhe which details an assasination attempt on the life of a Pharoah occurs in the 12ht dynasty.
Oh my God, I forgot about that part of the Tale! This more and more seems to make sense and support Doug's theory! And I wonder, have Egyptologists even thought of theories like this?! I doubt it! Especially if they still deny the most basic and fundamental FACT of Egypt's African identity, and the whole 'Egypt vs. Nubia' nonsense that gets pitched to this day by folks like National Geographic! Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: ...Zanakht of the 3rd dynasty has strong Nhsw facial features. His line apparently died out...
The late Nakada series preceding the formation of Dynastic Egypt was closest to the Nubian series at Kerma. Starting with the first dynasty, a trend toward hybridization of southern and northern types began, but with occasional anomalies. For example, the Third Dynasty and the Old Kingdom Giza remains are primarily of "Southern" affinity(Keita, 1992, 1993).
Yes, I remember Keita mentioning this as well as anthropologists before him, heck even Petrie admitted that the early Giza dynasties were "Sudanic".
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
^Petrie actually thought they were Sudanese, hence Keita's interjection that it is more likely that they were simply Southern Egyptian, which conforms to the historical record left behind by the Egyptians themselves. I believe Harris and Weeks' are the ones he cited who implied that 3rd Dynasty Egyptian Giza remains had southern affinities.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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quote:The Nubian Mixture: The later Hyksos were obviously decadent, and at last an invasion from the south threw them back northward and established a black queen as the divine ancestress of the 18th dynasty
^ Wally is most missed here.
He would point out that all Kemetic legitimacy comes from the south, and devine Black Queen is almost a redundancy for the Km.t
The Ancient Egyptians state that they were Blacks.
They state they came from the 'south' ie - inner Africa.
Anthopology and genetics, melanin tests, limb ratio tests....all confirm this reality.
^ Eurocentrists, including the obfuscators of National Geographic do visit this site. They don't come out and debate openly because that leads to sure defeat.
From the days of Diop and Obenga at the UNESCO conference, Eurocentrism has lost every historical debate over the ethnic identity of the KM.t., and as information grows, their predicament only worsens.
Posts: 15202 | Registered: Jun 2004
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What? Are you kidding me? The mdw ntjr records hundreds of precise southern ethnies.
Designating a compass direction is a far cry from making an amorphous mass out of the myriad poeples found as one travels in that direction.
The Egyptians distinguished each of the southern peoples. Because they were all to the south did not cause the Egyptians to lose sight of these peoples particulars.
No, the AEs had no such concept related to the current model that says "forget their distinct national/ethnic identities they're all just negroes."
The AEs knew full well a southerner from TaSeti.x3st was not interchangeable with a southerner from Kesh. Nor was a southerner from either TaSeti.x3st or Kesh interchangeable for a southerner from Pwanit.
quote:Originally posted by Egblemaku: On another note, I personally have no problem with students of Ancient Africa referring in some instances to lesser known areas south of Ancient Egypt as a single unit as conceptualized by AE themselves, thus using an Egyptocentric approach for a later better understanding of Ancient African past.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by rasol: Wally is most missed here.
He would point out that all Kemetic legitimacy comes from the south, and devine Black Queen is almost a redundancy for the Km.t
The Ancient Egyptians state that they were Blacks.
They state they came from the 'south' ie - inner Africa.
Anthopology and genetics, melanin tests, limb ratio tests....all confirm this reality.
^ Eurocentrists, including the obfuscators of National Geographic do visit this site. They don't come out and debate openly because that leads to sure defeat.
From the days of Diop and Obenga at the UNESCO conference, Eurocentrism has lost every historical debate over the ethnic identity of the KM.t., and as information grows, their predicament only worsens.
^ Indeed, which is why I wonder why such folks even bother to perpetuate such lies in the first place. Perhaps they suffer from the same pyschosis as our friend Evil-Euro aka 'Debunked'. It's just a shame that the general public at large remains unaware of this fact and still believe the old racist misconceptions as to the ancient Egyptians ethnic identity. Also Rasol, out of curiosity what makes you so sure the actual folks from National Geographic visit this site??
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: Petrie actually thought they were Sudanese, hence Keita's interjection that it is more likely that they were simply Southern Egyptian, which conforms to the historical record left behind by the Egyptians themselves. I believe Harris and Weeks' are the ones he cited who implied that 3rd Dynasty Egyptian Giza remains had southern affinities.
Actually what Harris and Weeks as well as Ketia point out is that the elite Giza remains do not conform to typical southern Egyptian features but to peoples further south in 'Nubia'. In fact, their point was that some of the Giza skulls bear more affinity to the Kerma series and 25th dynasty series than other Egyptian series. Hence, this points to population influence from 'Nubia' proper. Even studies of predynastic remains from Naqada period sites such as Nekhen reveal that the ruling elite differed from the local populace and this elite segment also bore affinities to populations further south.
I find this fact very fascinating and the question as to why and how these Sudanese people established power in Upper Egypt in the first place. It could very well be due to the fact that their kingdom Ta Seti was the first fully established kingdom in the Nile Valley and thus they had the advantage to consolidate power further north in Upper Egypt and from there Lower Egypt.
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: What? Are you kidding me? The mdw ntjr records hundreds of precise southern ethnies.
Designating a compass direction is a far cry from making an amorphous mass out of the myriad peoples found as one travels in that direction.
The Egyptians distinguished each of the southern peoples. Because they were all to the south did not cause the Egyptians to lose sight of these peoples particulars.
No, the AEs had no such concept related to the current model that says "forget their distinct national/ethnic identities they're all just negroes."
The AEs knew full well a southerner from TaSeti.x3st was not interchangeable with a southerner from Kesh. Nor was a southerner from either TaSeti.x3st or Kesh interchangeable for a southerner from Pwanit.
Indeed. The blatant grouping of peoples to the south of Egypt into one only started with the Romans and their designation of 'Nubia', which is ironically the only region they give a name to which they were never able to conquer or take control of.
That said, with all the various peoples that lived to the south I have questions regarding the Kushites and their predecessors.
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:That said, with all the various peoples that lived to the south I have questions regarding the Kushites and their predecessors.
Like what?
My own question concerns the origins of the Kushites. Based upon how the Egyptians depicted them, they seem to have looked more like southern Sudanese than more elongated peoples like the Beja or AEs. Where they migrants from upriver?
posted
1 - I may have missed something but what really riles me is claiming that they were all just southerners is an egyptocentric approach. This is crazy. Like today at an international party when guests are introduced as "the German, the couple from Lithuania, the woman from Belgium, and over there is the African." Aghh, ghaghagha. Dammit fool, you can fit Belgium, Lithuani, and Germany into Mali and have room left over, less lone Africa where all of Europe will fit like seven times or more.
2 - The last thing Nat'l Geo did on Nubia proves the writer or editor of that piece visited the old AE&E forum because their "pop quiz" zeroed in on specific points we've made here over and over again -- reference the threads on that Nat'l Geo article, I think it was in February? -- .
quote:Originally posted by Tyrann0saurus: Like what?
My own question concerns the origins of the Kushites. Based upon how the Egyptians depicted them, they seem to have looked more like southern Sudanese than more elongated peoples like the Beja or AEs. Where they migrants from upriver?
^ LOL Your question as to Kushite origins is mine exactly! Takruri stated that Kushite-Egyptian relations go back to prehistoric times, yet as I recall the Kushites weren't even mentioned until Middle Kingdom times. Even many Egyptologists believe the Kushites and their kingdom of Kush seem to have arose only in Middle Kingdom times and to have succeeded the kingdom of Yam. So my question is how true is this? Were the Kushites recent comers to the Nile Valley? Did they indeed replace Yam or absorb them into their ranks. Of course physical anthropology shows that peoples of Kushite features have always lived in the Nile Valley since predynastic times but I'm speaking of actual Kushite ethnicity.
Speaking of which I believe Obelisk is confused when Petrie said the 12th dynasty was of the "Galla type", I think meant in physical appearance only and not that the 12th dynasty was of actual Oromo descent. It's the same when he says that the Egyptian populace by and large are of 'Abyssian type' and not to say they were actual Amharan and Tigre of Ethiopia, but of course as Northeast African they possess cultural and genetic relations to Ethiopians.
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: 1 - I may have missed something but what really riles me is claiming that they were all just southerners is an egyptocentric approach. This is crazy. Like today at an international party when guests are introduced as "the German, the couple from Lithuania, the woman from Belgium, and over there is the African." Aghh, ghaghagha. Dammit fool, you can fit Belgium, Lithuani, and Germany into Mali and have room left over, less lone Africa where all of Europe will fit like seven times or more.
I understand your frustration Takruri, I really do. I even have pointed that fact out to Wally in that the Egyptians in their Africaness or even blackness should not be associated with being 'southern'. Since most of the Egyptian populace have been living in the Lower Nile including the Delta since prehistoric times. Heck, what are we to make of the Natufian forbears who made it even farther north into the Levant or in the Mediterranean basin??!
quote:2 - The last thing Nat'l Geo did on Nubia proves the writer or editor of that piece visited the old AE&E forum because their "pop quiz" zeroed in on specific points we've made here over and over again -- reference the threads on that Nat'l Geo article, I think it was in February? -- .
I don't see how considering that their quiz was so ridiculously erroneous and stupid that if it was indeed based on topics we've discussed in this forum they did a hell of a job twisting the information up. I dare say even more so than Evil-Euro, it was so derranged!
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Kesh was a kingdom. There's more than just any one body type in Sudan from the Dal and 3rd cataracts to the 6th cataract. You do have some idea how many miles that covers?
But anyway, the AEs didn't depict everyone from Kesh as having the same general facial features or type of body.
The Medjay/Beja were in the eastern desert hills. Why should more riverain people for hundreds of miles to their south- west resemble them closely?
Not that the region has been static over the millenium but I think there are elongated southern Sudanese and for sure there is AE artwork of elongated types of Kesh.
I don't know how elongated the AE were. They were shorter on average than the AS.
quote:Originally posted by Tyrann0saurus: ...the Kushites. Based upon how the Egyptians depicted them, they seem to have looked more like southern Sudanese than more elongated peoples like the Beja or AEs. Where they migrants from upriver?
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Your question as to Kushite origins is mine exactly! Takruri stated that Kushite-Egyptian relations go back to prehistoric times, yet as I recall the Kushites weren't even mentioned until Middle Kingdom times. Even many Egyptologists believe the Kushites and their kingdom of Kush seem to have arose only in Middle Kingdom times and to have succeeded the kingdom of Yam. So my question is how true is this? Were the Kushites recent comers to the Nile Valley? Did they indeed replace Yam or absorb them into their ranks. Of course physical anthropology shows that peoples of Kushite features have always lived in the Nile Valley since predynastic times but I'm speaking of actual Kushite ethnicity.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
ALL of Nile Valley history starts in the South. Period. That is the whole point. The Khartoum Mesolithic and Early Khartoum is the forebear of the Nile Valley cultural complex. From Early Khartoum comes Pre Kerma and Nabta Playa, from Pre Kerma and Nabta Playa comes the "A Group". From the A-Group comes "Ta Seti" and from Ta Seti, Nabta Playa, the Sahara and the A-Group comes Naqada. From Naqada comes dynastic Egypt. To the south Pre Kerma and Early Khartoum becomes Kerma and from Kerma comes Kush. Of course, the archaeologists and Egyptologists like to play games by giving different names to the various phases of Sudanese and early Egyptian sites in order to make these cultures seem unrelated. But in reality this is a continuous expansion of culture from Sudan into the Sahara and northward along the Nile.
quote: Early Cultures before the End of the Fourth Millennium BC
Early Khartoum
Khartoum is considered the oldest cultural center in the Nile Valley. The people of early Khartoum were the descendants of the San -like people, who came from the south or the southeast. They established their early occupations in Khartoum and gradually they spread northwards along the Nile Valley.
Some of these inhabitants of Khartoum moved early to the present-day Sahara and North Africa. Archeological evidence shows that there were similarities between the inhabitants of these places and the people of Khartoum. The first and the oldest Neolithic settlement in the present day Sahara seems to be that which spread from Khartoum westwards along the shores of great lakes.[5]
The region of Khartoum , before the sixth Millennium BP, enjoyed wet, rainy weather. The annual rainfall was about 800 mm; there were swamps and grassy plains in addition to the Sudd Lake . The flood level of the Blue Nile was about four to ten meters higher than its present flood level.[6]
The early culture of Khartoum developed along the coasts of the Sudd Lake, which extended from southern Sudan until Khartoum, and on the shores of the Blue Nile and the River Nile. Its early human and material cultural influence extended along the Nile, North Africa and the Sahara.
Towards the middle of the Ninth Millennium BP, the first Neolithic culture emerged on the Nile Valley in Khartoum.[7] The Neolithic culture of Khartoum spread westwards along the banks of the great lakes and rivers to Ennedi, Tibesti and Ahaggar (see Map1). It became known as “Neolithic Sudanese Tradition”.[8] Archeological pieces of evidence show that these close contacts led to ethnic and cultural relations between people of early Khartoum, the inhabitants of present day Sahara and the Niger valley.[9]
Similarities between the culture of Khartoum and several centers in West Africa, the Sahara and North Africa could easily be traced. For example the pottery, which was found in a grave at Grassy Valley in the Libyan Desert, resembled the pottery of Khartoum. Amazonian beads , gouges and the incised decorations of pottery of Tibesti are similar to those of the Shaheinab.[10]
It seems that the culture of the Tibesti flourished during the rainy period between the Twelfth and Seventh Millennium BP and its culture began to spread in the surrounding areas. Some scholars suggested that the cultural ideas from Tibesti spread eastwards, firstly to the area of Khartoum , then to Fayum in North Egypt, since the dry weather that started in the region around the Seventh Millennium BP.[11]
The people who founded the Ibero-Maurisian culture around 13 000 BC share some similarities with the inhabitants of early Khartoum. It is suggested that “they may have come from the north of Neolithic Sudan.”[12] It is also suggested that the early black inhabitants of Khartoum moved westwards along the banks of the great lakes. Their culture there was known as “Neolithic Sudanese culture”.[13]
It seems that ethnical and cultural influences of the people of Khartoum spread widely in the region of the present day Sahara. The oldest Neothilic ceramics in eastern and central Sahara was of Sudanese inspiration. The pottery, which dated to about the ninth millennium BC was similar to that of early Khartoum,[14] and that of the seventh millennium BC in the region between Ennedi and Hoggar, which was probably made by “black people related to the Sudanese of early Khartoum”.[15]
The hunter-gatherer communities throughout the territories of the Nile, the western frontiers and the neighboring Sahara (see Map1), gather together around sources of water, they moved in a vast area between the Nile in the east, Hoggar in the west, the Niger in the south and the Mediterranean Sea in the North. These close contacts led to ethnical and cultural similarities throughout the area of their movements.[16]
The Culture of Kerma
Several early cultural sites were discovered to the North of Khartoum. These discoveries revealed the development of early cultures prior to the third millennium BC such as the sites of El Kadada, El Kadero and Kerma.
The site of El Kadada about 160 km north of Khartoum (4 000 - 3 500 BC) contains several thousand graves. Tombs were arranged to reflect the social position of the dead in their communities. Some burial sites suggest family and extended family graves. Burial sites in El Kadero, north of Khartoum, suggest social stratification. Among the grave offerings of El Kadada was amazonite, which was brought from Chad.[17]
It indicates the early contacts and commercial relations with the western frontiers. The site of Kerma, 16 km south of the Third Cataract, is one of the most important ancient sites of the Sudan in which excavation works are still in progress. Kerma was probably the capital of the first Sudanese state.[18]
The oldest part discovered in the site of Kerma which is known as “pre-Kerma settlement” gave a radiocarbon date about 4 800 BC. Discoveries in this site include remains of fifty houses (huts) some of which were small (3x305 m) others were bigger (7x7.5m). Different types of houses indicate social differences among the people.[19]
Another important ancient site in Kerma region is Wadi El Khowi. It was an old bed of the Nile about ten kilometers east of Kerma. Several human settlements around 5 000 BC emerged on its banks.[20] More than thirty cemeteries were identified in the site some of which have over 1000 graves each. Grave offerings show that communities lived a high social hierarchy.[21]
The graves of the people of Kerma indicate that their economy was developed. This development was probably due to their wide activities in trade. The location of Kerma near the mouth of Wadi Howar, the tributary of the Nile that came from the western frontiers, enabled them to be involved actively in trade with central Africa. They played an important role as mediators between the Nile valley and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Cultures the First and Second Cataracts
Cultures of this region, which extended from northern of the first Cataract to the south of the Second Cataract, have exceptional importance in the understanding of the origin and the rise of the first Pharaoh dynasty in Egypt on one hand and the foundation of the Sudanese civilization on the other hand.
From about 25 000 BC onwards the environment in the region of the cataracts started a series of changes that led to the present situation. Human activities started very early and continued until the rise of the first Pharaoh dynasty in Upper Egypt.
Several early occupation and settlements were identified in this region. For example the remains of the early settlement of fishermen at Wadi El Kubbaniya, to the north of Aswan, dated to about 18 000 BC.[22] Numerous grinding stone and sickle plates were found in Tushki about 13 000 BC.[23] The inhabitants of the region made use of a geometric microlithic technique, which is considered among the oldest in the world.[24]
Qadan culture, to the north of the Second Cataract until the town of Tushki about 250 km to the south of Aswan, developed in around 12 500 BC. People there might have lived in stable social groups and established territories. They might have also revered cows,[25] the same practice which was noticed in Nabta about 2 000 years before the rise of the Naqada Culture.
The site remains of Arkin, to the west of the Nile near Wadi Halfa, about 8 500 BC was probably seasonal camp, the tools were similar to those of the western frontiers which shows early contacts between the hunters of the western frontiers and the people of the Nile.[26]
The site of Shamarkin, in the same area, shows changes in the way of life of people about 8 000 BC, possibly as a result of pressure from new influences from the western frontiers. The presence of amazonite beads, from the western frontiers in the remains of the Shamarkinians confirmed these contacts.[27] People from the western frontiers began to move between the western frontiers and the Nile during the dry phases of the early Holocene. Shamarkinians from about 5 750 to 3 270 BC lived in comparatively large communities which were “brought about by the introduction of agriculture and animal domestication after 5 500 BC.”[28]
About 4 000 BC Abkan culture emerged in the region of Wadi Halfa. It was a long development of Qadan culture, and was later adopted by A-Group. Abkan graves are very rich with weapons and pottery; their remains occupy both banks of the Nile.[29]
The A-Group culture emerged in the region of the Cataracts. They were given this name by Reisner, the first archeologist who uncovered their remains in 1910 because of “uncertainty concerning their origin and their sudden disappearance after the first dynasty”,[30] and because it was “the earliest culture he had found in lower Nubia”.[31]
The remains of the A-Group were found between the First and the Second Cataracts from the middle of the Fourth Millennium BC. Some scholars made the first phase of the appearance of the A-Group in the beginning of the Fourth Millennium BC in Khur Bahan south of the First Cataract.[32] The second half of the Fourth Millennium BC witnessed a decrease in rainfall in the western frontiers that led to the movements of people from Nabta and neighboring territories to this part of the Nile valley. During this time, A-Group culture developed and extended to the south of the Second Cataract.
A-Group culture, as suggested by Midant-Reynes, developed from Qadan culture. It shared several similarities with other cultures of the Nile valley and western frontiers. Some of the A-Group burial traditions were like those of El-Badari, Nabta and Naqada cultures. Their stone tools and pottery were typical to those of the Amratians.[33] The A-Group were very similar, in their physical characteristics, to the pre-dynastic Egyptians and were influenced by Naqada culture (Internet).[34] Was the A-Group culture a continuation of the Naqada culture or was it a distinguished culture?
Regarding the origin of the A-Group some researchers suggested that they belonged to the original people who lived in the Cataracts region. The inhabitants of Khur Bahan, where the earliest A-Group remains were found, present the prototype of the communities, which spread in the region of the Cataracts.[35] Other researchers looked at A Group people as distinct, politically, linguistically, culturally and perhaps ethnically, from the inhabitant of the northern part of the Nile.[36]
Regarding the question of the origin of the A-Group people and their culture, we have to consider three important points. Firstly: literary archeological evidences, for more than 4 000 years before the rise of the dynasty, show a unique close touch throughout the Nile between Khartoum in the south and Abydos in the north. Funeral customs, pottery, stone and later material instruments were similar if not identical in the whole region.[37] “The common cultural origin must not be overlooked”.[38]
Secondly: early and ancient history of the Nile valley was greatly influenced by the western frontiers, this is just like the role of the Arabian desert in the history of the fertile crescent. Large movements of populations took place from the western frontiers to the Nile valley. It is suggested that the basic population of the Nile came from the western frontiers. There is no evidence that the population of the northern parts of the Nile had been different from those from the southern parts.[39]
Thirdly: the people and cultures of the western frontiers influenced almost all the pre-dynastic cultures on the Nile such as Badari, Naqada, Amra and Gerza. It is accepted that the people who founded the Badari culture were already established Neolithic communities; they came to the Nile from the western frontiers.[40]
Migrants who came from the western territories of the Nile valley and emerged with the indigenous people of the Nile originally founded the Naqada culture.[41] Petrie described the descendants of the late Gerzeans as having “a refined face with long straight nose, recalling the Libyan of the mountain.”[42] Some scholars suggested that the Gerzeans might have come from the western frontiers.[43]
Amratians were identified as immigrants from the western frontiers.[44] They were very similar to the people of Gilf Al-Kabir and Jebel ‘Uweinat. Their Microlithic tools and pottery belonged to the nomad descent culture, which is called the Saharan Culture.[45] Libyan influence was very clear on the Amratian people several hundred years after their settlements on the Nile valley.[46]
Therefore, the A-Group could have originated on the Nile with great cultural and human influences from the western frontiers. Arkell stated that their representatives today “stretch from the ‘Ababda in the north to the Somali in the south.”[47]
According to the findings in A Group tombs at Gustul, Sayala and Afya, some scholars believe that they united lower Nubia under their rule establishing the first kingdom in the region. This kingdom was about two centuries earlier than the first Egyptian kingdom, which united upper and Lower Egypt in the close of the Fourth Millennium BC.
Of course European scholars have problems with the idea that Nile Valley culture came from the south and black Africans, so they come up with all sorts of ways to try and obfuscate and deny this fact:
quote:
ARKAMANI Sudan Electronic Journal of Archaeology and Anthropology
August 2004
FOUR THOUSAND YEARS IN THE BLUE NILE:
Paths to inequality and ways of resistance
Víctor M. Fernández
Departamento de Prehistoria. Universidad Complutense. 28040 Madrid, Spain.
Abstract
1. On the origin and meaning of the Mesolithic cultures.
2. The Mesolithic period in the Blue Nile region.
3. The transition to a Neolithic economy.
4. The gap in the archaeological record: retreat or resistance?
Bibliography
ABSTRACT
As general conclusions of the papers of the Blue Nile Project dossier herein, some ideas are suggested about the prehistoric societies investigated by Spanish archaeologists in Central Sudan during the 1990’s. The project included a survey of the Wadi Soba-El Hasib region east of Khartoum and excavations of two Mesolithic sites and one Neolithic site in the Wadi Soba area. Data from different sources are combined in an attempt to construct a historical narrative. Vestiges of some cultural hiatuses were noticed in the region, namely at the beginning and the end of the Mesolithic period, the latter involving the emergence of social stratification and the decline of women status. The archaeological gap at the end of the Neolithic period is interpreted as being a consequence of hindrance to social division.
Early cultures of resistance and population movements towards the Ethiopian escarpment as a refuge area are proposed as longue duréeprocesses among Nilo-Saharans of the Eastern Sahel.
1. On the origin and meaning of the Mesolithic cultures.
The Mesolithic sites surveyed and excavated in the Blue Nile area by the Spanish archaeological project, whose study results have been presented in this volume (Fernández et al. 2003a, 2003b), belong to a Holocene Saharan-Sahelian “technocomplex” called in several different ways. An “archaeographic” successful denomination has been “Khartoum-Horizon Style” (Hays 1971: 134) which refers to the uniform pottery decoration that was first discovered at the Khartoum site (Arkell 1949a). The idea is that the same pottery style was diffused to many different groups in the Sahara and Sahel, whose previous existence before the pottery diffusion is induced from their different lithic technologies (Hays 1971: 136). Recent archaeological data reveal the existence of a short “Pre-ceramic” or “Epi-palaeolithic” phase in the Sahara, chronologically placed in the interval from the onset of humid conditions and the spread of pottery techniques. Evidence has been collected at northern Mali and Niger (Camps 1974: 214-6), the Egyptian eastern desert (Gabriel 1977), the Eastern Sudan (Marks 1987; Elamin 1987) or the West Lybian Sahara (Cremaschi and Di Lernia 1998; Garcea 2001). In the latter region the cultural phase, called “Early Acacus”, is dated to c. 9800-9000 bp. The lithic industries of the period are characterized by a high frequency of backed bladelets as it is also the case in contemporary industries of the Maghreb (Capsian) (Tixier 1963; Camps 1974) and the Egyptian Nile valley (Qaruniam, Shamarkian) (Wendorf 1968; Wendorf and Schild 1976).
Around 9000 bp, however, human groups all along the Sahara adopted the pottery production with a strikingly analogous decoration style that shows hardly any differences over so a wide region. The same rocker impression technique (RK) was used from the Atlantic areas, e.g. in the Western Sahara (Almagro 1946: 200-1) or Mauritania (Commelin et al. 1992: fig. 3, a-f), to near the Red Sea coast, as in the Saroba phase of the Khashm el Girba area (Fattovich et al. 1984: fig. 3; cf. Arkell 1949a: 116; Garcea 1993: 189). The technique of alternately pivoting double stamp which is a variant of the general rocker impression system, is also found throughout the Sahara and the Nile (Garcea 1998: 93). Dotted wavy line (DWL) was also widely spread over the desert area, but it appeared in the Nile valley at a later date (Ibid.; Caneva 1983; Caneva and Marks 1990; Caneva et al. 1993).
The reasons for this quite rapid process of expansion of one single cultural item over such a vast area (more than 6000 km wide) still await elucidation. Since in most of the known sites the pottery horizon is the first cultural context after the Late Pleistocene demographic hiatus, the problem of pottery origins is actually the problem of the human re-occupation of the Saharan area. Comparable cases of rapid ceramic diffusion, such as the Linear Danubian pottery in Early Neolithic Europe (Whittle 1985) or the Bantu Urewe Ware in the Early Iron Age of Eastern Africa (Phillipson 1977a) have been interpreted as the result of the expansion of human groups throughout a wide geographical area.
In two widely circulated and classical articles, J.E.G. Sutton (1974, 1977) interpreted the rocker pottery techno-complex as the first migration of Negroid peoples, speaking ancient variants of the current Nilo-Saharan language phylum, outside their homeland in Central Africa (the second would be the Bantu expansion, several millennia later). The expansion was propelled by the onset of newly humid conditions in the Sahara, and the migrant groups consequently adopted an economic orientation based on river and lake resources, hence the name “aqualithic” proposed for the cultural complex. Sutton’s belief that the movement was also pushed by the expansion of tropical forest in Central Africa (Sutton 1977: 27), seems to be confirmed by more recent data. After being confined to a few “sanctuaries” during the maximum glacial conditions at the end of the Pleistocene, the rainforest expanded to reach its highest extension about the mid-Holocene period (Lieth and Werger 1989). According to a well-known yet controversial theory (Bailey and Headland 1991), tropical forest was an inaccessible niche for humans before the establishment of a Neolithic technology. Therefore, foraging groups would have reacted to the forest growth by migrating towards more open areas and in the band immediately north of “Middle Africa” this direction would be northwards.
As for the physical anthropological features, the idea of a fundamentally Negroid stock spreading through the Sahara during the Holocene, which was common when Sutton wrote his articles after data on single skeletal variables from Early Khartoum and other sites, (cf. Derry in Arkell 1949a: 30-3), was later rejected on the basis of multivariate data supporting the presence of northern Mechtoid populations (Petit-Maire and Dutour 1987). Recent investigations based on genetic variables have shown, however, that both in the Nile and the desert areas there is currently an almost continuous gene variation between Negroid features prevailing in the south and Caucasoid in the north (Tay and Saha 1988; Fox 1997). Irrespective of this fact being interpreted as coming from gene flow or local selection, the scenario is one of gradual variation throughout the area. The earliest rock art images of the Central Sahara, the “Round Heads” style roughly contemporaneous to the Mesolithic period, show human figures usually interpreted as “Negroid” (Sansoni 1994; 1998). In the following, Bovidian period dated after the beginning of animal husbandry in the VII millennium bp, the presence is attested of different racial types in the region, Negroid being allegedly earlier than the Europoid figures (Muzzolini 1986; Gallay 1987).
From a linguistic point of view, the relations between the current Nilo-Saharan languages and the Saharan-Sahelian expansion have been but strengthened by several authors in the recent years (Bender 1982; Blench 1993: 136; Ehret 2000: 281-9). Archaeologically, the southern origin seems also reinforced, as the great antiquity of bone harpoons (the other fossil directeur of the complex, besides pottery) and generally of the aquatic economic adaptation has been recently reported for Central Africa, with the early dates for the R.D. Congo sites such as Ishango and Katanda (McBrearty and Brooks 2000: 503-6, 510-13). This greater age appears to match and even supersede the alleged significance of the Nile valley or the Eastern African lakes as other areas of origin for the Saharan Holocene cultural events (Stewart 1989).
There have been quite a number of theories on the causes of pottery invention and its first functions. Most authors have insisted on the new possibility of processing food by boiling and steaming that render meal more digestible and palatable (e.g. Haaland 1992: 48). Among the Mesolithic groups of the Sahara and Nile Valley the meal could have consisted of gathered plants (Ibid.), mostly cereals whose seeds have been found in some archaeological deposits (Barakat and Fahmy 1999) and impressions were recorded on sherds from several excavated Mesolithic and Neolithic sites (Magid 1989, 1995, 1999, 2003; Stemler 1990). Also the fish has been naturally proposed as being processed in the form of stews or soups in the pottery vessels (Sutton 1974; Stewart 1989; Haaland 1992, among others). Plant gathering and domestic pottery making have been usually interpreted as female activities, on the basis of widespread ethnological data (Murdock and Provost 1973: table 1). About fishing, information exists that today is mostly, and thus was probably in the past, a quasi-masculine activity up to 82% of the African study cases (Ibid.: table 3). Men perform most of the current fishing activities in the Sahel and the Lakes areas, though some cases are known of female participation as among the Nuer (Murdock 1967: 188). Nonetheless, in some of the more traditional groups of the Ethio-Sudan border formerly called “pre-nilotes” (see map in Fernández et al. 2003a: fig. 1), such as the Gumuz, Meban or Koma, fishing is a predominantly female task (Grottanelli 1948: 300; Cerulli 1956: 18-9).
The contribution of women to fishing being only probable (Barich 1998: 108), their nearly certain association with pottery and food-plants makes a good case for an important female role in the Mesolithic expansion. A broad system of women exchange marriage has been advanced as a possible explanation for the similarities of Saharan pottery decoration (Caneva 1988b: 369). If decoration and generally stylistic behaviour may be considered as a system for information display, aimed at a target population group that both need and can decode the messages (Wobst 1977), then the symbols embedded in the pots could be “read” from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. One is tempted to imagine one single shared ideology for all that vast area. A distant glimpse of this ideological domain can be caught in the strange scenes of the Round Heads style of rock art from the Central Sahara. Here male figures outnumber women but these appear often playing a prominent role (Sansoni 1994: 208, 1998: 149). Sometimes women are represented next to hemispherical containers with probable seeds, or dancing in “worship” scenes, their bodies richly decorated with motifs (scars?) that remind the ceramic decoration repertoire (Barich 1998: 112-3). Regular association of motifs on pots and on the human body has been reported in Africa, as also the possibility that scarification was one of the primary arts of the continent (Barley 1994: 128-32; Rubin 1988: 15). Moreover, early pottery excavated at Nabta in the Egyptian western desert has been ascribed a social and symbolic function because of its scarcity (Close 1992: 162-3), and the long tradition of Sudanese finely decorated pottery that continues until the Meroitic and even the Christian period, has been also interpreted as evidence of its probable ritual purpose (Edwards 1996: 74-5).
Women and children are clearly over-represented in the meager funerary evidence known from the Mesolithic period. At the Sudanese site of Saggai, four out of five excavated burials belong to women (Coppa and Macchiarelli 1983: 118-22), and the few graves excavated in the Sahara, for instance at Uan Muhuggiag (Lybia) and Amekni (Algeria) belong also to women and children (Barich 1998: 111). At the Egyptian Neolithic site of Merimda Beni Salama, the exclusive internment of women and children has been interpreted as a probable indication of matrilineality (Hassan 1988: 169). In Nubia, women also played an important role in Early Neolithic society, as it is evidenced by the almost exclusive female and children burials in El-Barga cemetery near Kerma (Honegger 2003: 289; pers. comm.) and the prominent location of some female graves in the Kadruka 18 cemetery (Reinold 2000: 80-1, 2001: 6). Sometime later, data from the small Kerma cemetery of Abri in Northern Sudan (Fernández 1982: 289-302), where women graves are more richly furnished than men burials, suggest the probable persistence of female status in the rural areas far from the power centers such as the Kerma capital itself.
2. The Mesolithic period in the Blue Nile region.
The survey has revealed very few data on the Palaeolithic period in the region. The few Middle Palaeolithic remains found suggest that the area was not totally uninhabited, yet they do not add much to what was already known from other few localities, such as Singa or Abu Hugar (Arkell 1949b: 45-7, pl. 27: 5-7). No Upper Palaeolithic sites were recognized, though lithic tools considered as typical of that period are more abundant in the Mesolithic sites of the wadi at east than in the river ones, maybe as a result of cultural influences from Eastern Sudan where Late Palaeolithic industries have been recorded (Elamin 1987; Marks 1987).
Geochemical evidence from the basal levels of El Mahalab (EM) site suggests that climate was wetter before 8000 bp than in the following years (Lario et al. 1997). It seems that the whole research area was almost empty before the eighth millennium, probably because of frequent Blue Nile floods and the formation of swampy areas close to the riverbed and in the wadis (Wickens 1982: fig. 6). Significantly, most dates from other Mesolithic sites in the Khartoum region are also younger than that date, the few earlier ones (from one single site, Sarurab, cf. Khabir 1987) being not very reliable as probably not associated with the cultural remains (Caneva 1999: 33). Six dates from Abu Darbein near Atbara in Eastern Sudan are between 8640 and 8330 bp (Haaland and Magid 1995: 49), this being perhaps another indication of the pre-eminence of eastern influences on the area. Dates from the scarce sites known south of Khartoum hint at an even later date for the Mesolithic adaptation: e.g. 7470-7050 bp at Shabona (Clark 1989: 389). Furthermore, not one single important Mesolithic site was found during our exploration of the Blue Nile area from Wad Medani to Singa (Fernández et al. 2003a: sites nos. 85-6, 92). Several Mesolithic-like sherds were found by the author in a recent excavation in Ethiopia near the Sudanese border (Bel Kurkumu rock shelter in Assosa, Benishangul), in a level dated to c. 5000-4500 bp. A slightly earlier chronology has been proposed for the few wavy line sherds discovered in the Lake Turkana basin (Phillipson 1977a: fig. 16, 10, 1977b: fig. 19, 3). All this evidence, albeit scanty, hint at a Saharan rather than a Central African origin for the Early Khartoum culture, which thus probably begun at a later date than in the Mesolithic core area (cf. Close 1995: table 3.1).
What clearly distinguishes the Khartoum region, when compared with neighboring areas, is the abundance of incised wavy line (WL) over other decoration types, namely rocker impression which is characteristic of other regions. WL is also found in other Nilotic areas, but quite less frequently: 4% at Shabona (Clark 1989: fig. 12), 11% at Abu Darbein (Haaland 1995: 113) and around 16% in the Dongola reach (Shiner 1971: 141). Some of our surveyed and excavated sites, such as Karnus or Sheikh Mustafa (SM), have percentages of WL amounting to more than 60% of the pottery sherds (see Fernández et al. 2003a: table 5). A high frequency has also been recorded at the Early Khartoum site (Mohammed-Ali 1982: 76). Our seriation results further suggest that even earlier sites producing only WL pottery without the rocker variety could exist and be found in the future (Fernández et al. 2003a: fig. 46). That WL technique was invented in this region can be confidently postulated and perhaps it is no coincidence that the undulating lines originated in the best-watered region of all the aqualithic complex extension. Later, the same symbol was used to represent water in the Egyptian hieroglyph script (Wilkinson 1992). The ensuing gradual substitution of RK for WL as the main decoration technique, which is evidenced by seriation and stratigraphical data both in the Blue and the main Nile, may be a reflection of progressive cultural influences from the Saharan area. Also the early arrival of DWL pottery to the Nile, attested at some of our sites, suggests that Saharan connections existed during most of the Mesolithic period. Culturally, the Central Sudanese area ended up by loosing its originality and integrating itself in the larger desert region. A few of the sites discovered in the survey can be associated with a later phase of the Mesolithic period in the region, characterized by the vanishing of WL pottery and the abundance of RK and DWL types (Caneva and Marks 1990: 21-2; Caneva et al. 1993: 247-8).
In the light of the distribution of Mesolithic settlements over the Blue Nile landscape, a model of seasonal movements between the river and wadi areas has been inferred. Probably as the Nuer in recent times (Evans-Pritchard 1940), the groups moved towards the river and split up into small parts at the beginning of the dry season, gradually concentrating on the last available water sources at the end of the season. Small and big archaeological sites recorded in the riverine area could correspond to camps at the beginning and end of that period. More permanent villages seem to have been erected during the rainy season and the river flooding, when people would leave the alluvial plain and move to the wadi area where elevated land made settlements more feasible. Analysis of fish remains (Chaix 2003) and pollen (López and López 2003) indicate the proximity of deep waters at the wadi site (El Mahalab). Also the ceramic seriation and settlement patterns (Fernández et al. 2003a: section 6) agree with the model, which had been already proposed on the basis of ethnographic analogy (Clark 1989: fig. 14).
The copious material inventory found at most of the sites suggests that groups came every year to the same spot, where they probably kept safe part of their material paraphernalia, for example the heavy stone grinders, when they moved to the new camps and villages. Perhaps they also abandoned some of their pots, and that is why we now find so many sherds on the sites. Some 150 sherds per cubic meter of archaeological deposit were recorded at Sheikh Mustafa, and even more, 275 sherds per cubic meter at El Mahalab. The mean size of the sherds at Sheikh Mustafa site is 7.3 cm2, which represents a mere 0.4% of the total area of a hemispherical bowl with 35 cm in mouth diameter (approx. mean value, see Fernández et al. 2003b: table 4). As an average value, then, each pot broke in 250 fragments. Could it have been the result of a deliberate process? As Nigel Barley puts it, “in Africa death involves the breaking of pots while marriage involves making them” and it is the very friability of pots which makes them “a source of ritual power” (Barley 1994: 92, 112).
Besides the aforementioned synchronic differences, historical trends can also be inferred. Multivariate statistical analysis of in-site artifacts distribution has allowed to compensate partly for the deflation processes operating since Prehistoric times, and some of the original stratigraphic array could be reconstructed linking data from the central and peripheral areas of each site (Fernández et al. 2003b: fig. 11, passim). Results of ceramic seriation offer some evidence of a gradual shift of settlements from the wadi to the river towards the end of the Mesolithic period, possibly influenced by the climatic deterioration at the time. Faunal remains also give some clues about a general humidity reduction during the Mesolithic period. Thus, fish bones are more abundant in the lower levels excavated at Sheikh Mustafa, dated to c. 7930 bp, than in its upper levels and in El Mahalab, dated to 7705-6940 bp (Chaix 2003). The tendency is further confirmed Four thousand years in the Blue Nile: Paths to inequality and ways of resistance by a sandy level in the upper levels of El Mahalab site indicating arid conditions sometime between c. 7400 and 6900 bp (Fernández et al. 2003: section 1).
The lithic material analysis in Sheikh Mustafa and El Mahalab also shows a change from many backed points and few lunates to the opposite, many lunates, especially broad types, and few backed points. The trend continued during the Neolithic period when broad lunates are predominant. The change has been interpreted as related to climatic change and consequent game availability. Many of the narrow backed bipointed bladelets from the earliest times, particularly frequent in the lower levels of Sheikh Mustafa, could have served as fishhooks, since bone harpoons have not been found. Both the faunal analysis (Chaix 2003) and the palaeodietary analysis of human bones (Trancho and Robledo 2003) from the same level indicate abundant fish consumption. Some points and narrow lunates were probably used as sharpened arrowheads, especially effective to kill big animals, while broad lunates were more efficient as chisel-ended arrowheads to hunt smaller and faster game (Clark et al. 1974; Nuzhnyi 1989). Faunal data from the three sites show a constant reduction in game size from the earlier to the later Mesolithic sites (SM to EM) and then in the Neolithic site of Sheikh el Amin (SA) (Chaix 2003; Fernández et al. 2003b: fig. 66).
3. The transition to a Neolithic economy.
While it has been commonly held that the Khartoum Neolithic developed out of the Khartoum Mesolithic, there is a paucity of radiocarbon dates and archaeological information from the period of transition that has puzzled researchers for many years (Marks et al. 1985: 262-3). Later inquiry came to fill the gap in a certain way, with a few sites dated to the second half of the seventh millennium bp: El Qala’a and Kabbashi on the main Nile north of Khartoum (6620-6150 bp; Caneva et al. 1993: table 1) or the middle levels of Shaqadud cave in the northern Butana (Caneva and Marks 1990). One of the radiocarbon dates from the Sheikh Mustafa site falls within the referred period (6295 bp), but it contradicts the evidence coming from the rest of the accepted dates and the general earlier appearance of the material culture at the site.
A comparison of the ceramic seriation models proposed for the Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in our survey (Fernández et al. 2003a: figs. 46 & 56) shows that both at the end of the first period and the beginning of the second, the pottery decoration was predominantly based on the same technique, namely rocker impression. Notwithstanding, most of the other variables are different: the Neolithic pots are more finely made, with thinner walls, burnished and often slipped outer surfaces, and new smaller vessel types and decoration types appear just from the beginning, such as incision or black topped. The overall impression about pottery at hand is that of being of a quite different kind. Even the old rocker impression looks now mutated, combining different and finer comb-tools.
A significant shift also occurs in the settlement pattern: not one single important Mesolithic site was inhabited during the following period. Most, if not all, Neolithic settlements were occupied then for the first time. Although Mesolithic sherds have been found in some Neolithic sites (Arkell 1953: 68; Krzyzaniak 1978: 171), they come from small sites that were probably short-term camps such as those we have found during our research (Fernández et al. 2003a, fig. 48). Even if we take into consideration the case of the Sheikh el Amin Neolithic site, where our excavations have revealed a certain amount of Mesolithic DWL sherds all over the site, evidence of local transition between both periods does not seem to be at hand. My general impression is, then, that an important change took place in the region with the arrival of new groups with a different, livestock herding economy.
Climatic changes going on around 6000 bp represent the “great mid-Holocene arid phase” in the Sahara (Muzzolini 1995: fig. 30), which corresponds to the lower sea surface temperatures recorded after 5900 bp (Hassan 2002: 322) and the “Post-Late Neolithic arid phase” of the Nabta Playa record in the South Western desert of Egypt (Schild and Wendorf 2002: 24). This deterioration was perhaps the origin of a contraction of the aquatic economy that had been predominant in Central Sudan throughout the precedent millennia. In fact, only the riverside Neolithic settlements such as Shaheinab or Geili have significant fish remains in their faunal collection (Krzyzaniak 1978: 165; Gautier 1988). In Sheikh el Amin, though a shell fishhook was found during the excavation, fish remains are insignificant (Chaix 2003: table 12). When facing climatic deterioration, Africans are forced to choose “between their homes and their environment” (David 1982: 50), and the possibility that some of the Mesolithic people migrated further south where humidity was still high, cannot be ruled out.
The Lokabulo tradition, named after a rock shelter in Eastern Equatoria some 1000 km south of Khartoum and dated to 3800 bp, even though poorly known because of the research disruption caused by the recent war, presents some characteristics reminiscent of the Central Sudan Mesolithic (David et al. 1981). The pottery is quartz tempered and decorated mostly by rocker impression (though excavators only recognised the spaced zigzag pattern as such), including some DWL sherds (Ibid.: fig. 6, pl. 1). Peter Robertshaw warns against paralleling the same decoration technique (generally, comb impression) from distant areas, arguing that Lokabulo sherds differ from Jebel Moya ones and thus rejecting relations of southern and central Sudanese prehistoric cultures (Robertshaw 1982: 92). Nonetheless, central Sudan Mesolithic rocker pottery is also clearly distinct and earlier to the simple impressed Jebel Moya pots, and Robertshaw’s comparison of Lokabulo and Kenyan Kansyore pottery, from which a part appears to be also made by simple impression, seems neither substantiated (Ibid.: fig. 2). The faunal remains of Lokabulo consisted only of hunted wild fauna and the excavated deposits yielded quite a good number of mollusc shells, though they were devoid of fish remains (David et al. 1981: 11-19; David 1982: 52-3). Yet, linguistic data suggest the presence of a food-producing economy in Southern Sudan since the third millennium bc (Ehret 1982: 28) and thus contradict the scenario resulting from Lokabulo and other sites in the Eastern Equatoria, which implies a Later Stone Age hunting economy well into the first millennium AD (David 1982: 53). The more western site of Jebel Tukyi, with a younger date (2130 bp), produced large domestic cattle (Ibid.: 51) and rocker impressed pottery which Randi Haaland has identified as similar to the Khartoum Neolithic tradition (Haaland 1992: fig. 11, 61-2).
Some unpublished data from the recent Spanish research directed by the author in Benishangul, West Ethiopia, at half way between the Khartoum and Eastern Equatoria regions, are of possible relevance here. Excavations at several rock shelters near Assosa town yielded abundant quartz tempered, Mesolithic-like sherds with WL, DWL and especially RK decoration. As in the Lokabulo site, at the Bel Kurkumu rock shelter pottery appears in the upper part (radiocarbon dated to 4965-4470 bp) of a Late Stone Age level with an un-diagnostic flake and bladelet quartz industry with end scrapers and rare microliths. The same pottery types continue in the upper level, together with a similar industry yet with less formal tools, dated to 2020-875 bp. In another excavated shelter in the nearby, RK and DWL sherds appear together with different pottery types, dated to the beginning of the second millennium AD. The economy of these groups is not yet known since bones were not preserved in the shelters acid soils, neither plant remains were found in the deposits and the pottery sherds. A fragmented “net-sinker” in pottery (Haaland 1992: fig. 3) found in the shelter could indicate some fishing practices. Anyway, the persistence of old pottery types up to the first millennium AD recalls the Eastern Equatoria evidence, as also the archaic features of the “pre-Nilotic” peoples in the border region between Sudan and Ethiopia (Grottanelli 1948). Some of these traits, such as the relevance of plant gathering and fishing, lack of big livestock, matrilineal kinship remnants, incisor teeth extraction (Murdock 1959: 170-80; Bender 1975: 9-19) and even the racial morphological characteristics (Arkell 1949a: 114) remind to some extent of the Khartoum Mesolithic features.
The site of Sheikh el Amin shows important differences when compared with other known Neolithic sites in the region. First of all it is located in the Butana plain far from the Nile, and this means a savanna economic orientation with very little fish exploitation. Livestock also appears to have been of reduced relevance to its inhabitants, since faunal remains are mostly of hunted wild fauna (Chaix 2003: table 12). After the aforementioned crisis at the beginning of the Neolithic period, the climate became humid again as the faunal (e.g. Phacochoerus) and the vegetal remains (e.g. Carex, Celtis and Sorghum, see Magid 2003: table 1) suggest. Food plants exploitation seems to have been intensive in this site, where 30 plant impressions on pottery have been recorded. The proportion of sherds with plant impressions, nonetheless, is not higher but lower than in the Mesolithic sites, with respect to the total number of recovered and examined sherds (0.071% in SM, 0.085% in EM, 0.053% in SA). If the greater variation in plant species at SA is not an effect of the bigger pottery sample analysed (56761 sherds, as contrasted with 7001 in SM and 4680 in EM), or of any other factor concerning pottery making and plant impression processes, it would indicate a stronger orientation to gathering activities during the Neolithic times in the Butana plain. The large quantity of stone grinders excavated at the site, one of the biggest figures for the entire region, also hints at the same explanation. Their lower number at the later parts of the site possibly indicates the decreasing importance of plant exploitation when climate changed towards the current arid conditions in the Late Neolithic period. As regards the much debated issue of early plant cultivation during the Mesolithic and Neolithic (see recent arguments in Haaland 1996, 1999; Magid and Caneva 1998), the wide variation in species of our data, with 10 different plants identified in 39 pottery impressions, suggest a broad-spectrum exploitation of the environment, oriented to seeds and fruits, rather than a concentrated strategy on a particular cereal plant, even if sorghum is the most represented species as it also happens in other Sudanese sites (Magid 1989, 2003; Magid and Caneva 1998).
CONTINUE The gap in the archaeological record: retreat or resistance?
Oldest representation of a Nile Boat (from central Sudan):
quote: Included in this assemblage was a granite pebble which preserved, on one face, a black painted sketch, recognisable as part of a boat (Figure 3a-b). The painted lines and traces are a little bit raising from the pebble surface and easy to be recognised on the original object. Other black or dark grey marks on the pebble’s surface are due to dark grains of the granite stone. The picture represents the back half of the boat, including part of the hull, a steering system and what seems to be a cabin placed more or less at the centre of the upper hull. The steering system seems to be of a composite type: a tiller, placed at more than 45° with a long pole ending in a ovoid blade, all fixed to the top of a vertical pole. Unfortunately the pebble is broken and the loss prevents us from a complete knowledge of the cabin and prow shape. There was no trace of black paint on the fracture, so that the image must have continued on the missing part. In spite of this gap, the similarity of this representation with later examples dating to the fourth millennium BC, like the Badarian boats painted on dwelling walls and pottery jars, is striking (Aksamit 1981).
The 16-D-5 boat can also be compared with boats represented on well known rock engravings from different places in Sudanese Nubia (Resch 1967; Červiček 1974; 1986; Hellström 1970) and Egypt (Huyge 1984; 2002; Almagro Basch & Almagro Gorbea 1968; Aksamit 1981; Winkler 1938). Some of these are currently dated to the Predynastic period (Huyge 2002) through comparison with boats portrayed on Gerzean and Naqadian pottery vessels, wall paintings and art objects (Aksamit 1981). In particular the image of a steering gear fixed to a vertical pole inserted in the stern upper hull can be found on rock engravings from the Abka region in Sudanese Nubia (Hellström 1970: Corpus V63 359:30; V65 359:26; V21 169j20) and from Akkad, south of the third Cataract on the left bank of the Nile in the Northern Dongola Reach (Smith 2003: Figure 7). The blade strongly resembled those of the boat of El Khab (Huyge 2002). This kind of composite helm was still in use on Egyptian ships of the New Empire. The dome-like cabin on the upper hull is also a well known feature on boat representations dating to the Gerzean and Predynastic periods in Egypt and Nubia (Hellström 1970; Červičcek 1974; Aksamit 1981). We ruled out the hypothesis of a frond because the frond is generally oriented toward the stern and usually placed at prow in later (mainly Naqada IIb) representations.
The discovery of a boat representation on a pebble dating to the early seventh millennium BC, according to the associated pottery and the contextual radiometric determinations, is worth some comment. This chronological attribution may re-open the discussion about the dating of some rock engravings found along the Nile and generically attributed to a period before or around 4000 BC, and on the use of developed boat types for navigation and fishing along the Nile. This discovery anticipates the accepted beginning of navigation along the Nile by about 3000 years. Moreover, it provides a strong confirmation of the hypothesis for the Mesolithic use of boats advanced by W. Van Neer (1989: 54; 1994: 20-1) and Peters (1991: 38-9; 1993: 417), on the basis of the study of the ichthyo-faunal remains from Mesolithic sites in Central Sudan and the lower Atbara . Peters, indeed, is explicit in suggesting the use of boats in fishing for the large adult specimens of Synodontis, Bagrus and Lates, all 'open waters species', well represented in the faunal samples of Mesolithic sites of the area, while ruling out the possibility of their having been caught in seasonal flood pools.
The painted pebble from 16-D-5 site offers, at the moment, the oldest evidence for Nile boats possibly used in fishing activities in open waters and, considering the well developed type of vessel portrayed, also for more extensive navigation purposes along the river.
Of course, it shouldn't be a shock that the patterns of culture and human settlement would get OLDER as one goes SOUTH into Africa. Yet Europeans have been trying for so long to take Africa out of the history of human developments in culture and civilization that it is almost shocking that evidence for things like pottery, settlements, fishing, pastoralism, tool making, boat making and so forth, would be OLDER the farther you go SOUTH. But humans have been in Africa LONGER than ANY OTHER PLACE ON EARTH, so OF COURSE the evidence is going to get older.
Posts: 8889 | Registered: May 2005
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I have never mentioned any ethnic or "racial" lumping of Southerners by Kemetians. Please read my posts again. And outside of that numerous Southern ethnonyms I'm definitely well aware of, I'm indeed pretty sure that Kemetians, at some point of their history used the toponym and ethnonym nHsj to describe their diverse Southern neighbours to the exclusion of themselves, ascribe them some common attributes despite of their internal diversity; or identified a small part of them only via the use of nHsj.
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: What? Are you kidding me? The mdw ntjr records hundreds of precise southern ethnies.
Designating a compass direction is a far cry from making an amorphous mass out of the myriad poeples found as one travels in that direction.
The Egyptians distinguished each of the southern peoples. Because they were all to the south did not cause the Egyptians to lose sight of these peoples particulars.
No, the AEs had no such concept related to the current model that says "forget their distinct national/ethnic identities they're all just negroes."
The AEs knew full well a southerner from TaSeti.x3st was not interchangeable with a southerner from Kesh. Nor was a southerner from either TaSeti.x3st or Kesh interchangeable for a southerner from Pwanit.
quote:Originally posted by Egblemaku: On another note, I personally have no problem with students of Ancient Africa referring in some instances to lesser known areas south of Ancient Egypt as a single unit as conceptualized by AE themselves, thus using an Egyptocentric approach for a later better understanding of Ancient African past.
posted
The only black Nubian dynasty was the 25th. In fact an excellent book on that dynasty came out last recently. Nubians did serve in the army and were used as police for centuries but made up only about 5% of the population of upper egypt.
Posts: 2069 | From: Texas | Registered: Sep 2008
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quote:Originally posted by TheAmericanPatriot: The only black Nubian dynasty was the 25th. In fact an excellent book on that dynasty came out last recently. Nubians did serve in the army and were used as police for centuries but made up only about 5% of the population of upper egypt.
Key word here is Nubian, since these Ancient Egyptians were in fact indigenous Africans that would be called black in America where the terms black and white, became prevalent.
Posts: 6572 | From: N.Y.C....Capital of the World | Registered: Jun 2008
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Doug M: ALL of Nile history starts in the South. Period. That is the whole point. The Khartoum Mesolithic and Early Khartoum is the forebear of the Nile Valley cultural complex. From Early Khartoum comes Pre Kerma and Nabta Playa, from Pre Kerma and Nabta Playa comes the "A Group". From the A-Group comes "Ta Seti" and from Ta Seti, Nabta Playa, the Sahara and the A-Group comes Naqada. From Naqada comes dynastic Egypt. To the south Pre Kerma and Early Khartoum becomes Kerma and from Kerma comes Kush.
Nicely put. Do you mind if I borrow this?
Posts: 2463 | From: New Jersey USA | Registered: Dec 2007
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quote:Originally posted by TheAmericanPatriot: Nubians were black africans, true. Egyptians were north African caucasians.
Can you show us an example of a "North African Caucasian?"
Genetically who are these North African Caucasians and where do they come from?
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^ Yes, nice pics of those mahogany to chocolate dark caucasians. Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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I'll never see NHHSW (southerners) as an ethnonym rather than a designation for any ethny (people) who live directly south of the reference group.
quote:Originally posted by Please call me MIDOGBE: I have never mentioned any ethnic or "racial" lumping of Southerners by Kemetians. Please read my posts again. And outside of that numerous Southern ethnonyms I'm definitely well aware of, I'm indeed pretty sure that Kemetians, at some point of their history used the toponym and ethnonym nHsj to describe their diverse Southern neighbours to the exclusion of themselves, ascribe them some common attributes despite of their internal diversity; or identified a small part of them only via the use of nHsj.
quote:Originally posted by alTakruri: What? Are you kidding me? The mdw ntjr records hundreds of precise southern ethnies.
Designating a compass direction is a far cry from making an amorphous mass out of the myriad poeples found as one travels in that direction.
The Egyptians distinguished each of the southern peoples. Because they were all to the south did not cause the Egyptians to lose sight of these peoples particulars.
No, the AEs had no such concept related to the current model that says "forget their distinct national/ethnic identities they're all just negroes."
The AEs knew full well a southerner from TaSeti.x3st was not interchangeable with a southerner from Kesh. Nor was a southerner from either TaSeti.x3st or Kesh interchangeable for a southerner from Pwanit.
quote:Originally posted by Egblemaku: On another note, I personally have no problem with students of Ancient Africa referring in some instances to lesser known areas south of Ancient Egypt as a single unit as conceptualized by AE themselves, thus using an Egyptocentric approach for a later better understanding of Ancient African past.
Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006
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I think that's what Midogbe meant-- that Nhsw was just a general designation for peoples to their south in general regardless of specific ethny.
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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