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I was reading a UNESCO 'General History of Africa' and in it it says that "kmt = the negroes". The understanding I had of the term from this site, is that it simply means 'black people'. Can anyone explain what the term means, and if the books translation is accurate ?
Thanks.
Posts: 61 | From: UK | Registered: Aug 2016
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quote:Originally posted by Karem: I was reading a UNESCO 'General History of Africa' and in it it says that "kmt = the negroes". The understanding I had of the term from this site, is that it simply means 'black people'. Can anyone explain what the term means, and if the books translation is accurate ?
Thanks.
So this issue came up based on the various hieroglyphic dictionaries written over the years and different transliterations of the different ways that "kmt" occurs in ancient texts. The first issue is that most of the dictionaries state clearly that km is a symbol for black. From that most Egyptologists claim that the term kmt means black soil along the banks of the Nile river. And yes, it could be used in that way depending on the other symbols included with the core text. However, the main issue here is that this term is a reference to a polity, meaning a nation and the districts, towns and subdivisions within that nation. As such, it is not necessarily simply a reference to literal soil or pasture even though that usage can occur. What people have debated is the literal transliteration of the term into a simple name for the country. So the name for the United States is simply that "United States of America". And similarly the name of the ancient nation state along the Nile had a similar simple name. Meaning it wasn't a long paragraph or sentence but a few words at most representing the simple name of the country. But there are always variations to this. So in the modern example you have "United States" another variation of the country name. Or you have the Southern states as another variation to a region within the county. Or the Midlantic Region as another. The point being that because hieroglyphs are pictorial, there are multiple layers of meaning associated with them. And we are trying to determine what the best literal semantic transliteration is for the country name based on all the sources available.
So Egyptology settles on the term "Black Land" as the literal transliteration for KMT. While Obenga and Diop suggested it meant "Land of the Blacks". Both of those are very similar and based around the fact that often the hieroglyphs for canals or irrigated land occur in various examples of the name. However, myself personally and maybe some others would see the problem of the expression "land" as a misunderstanding of the semantic context within which various symbols were used. Many times when they wanted to use "land" in the context of a geographic region as a general reference to a group of people they used a different symbols such as in "ta seti" which means "land of the bow". That does not exist in Kmt. I would argue that the most literal way to understand the term is "black country" or "black nation", where country obviously is a geopolitical term. The closest hieroglyph we have to this concept of country or nation is the determinative "niwt" which is listed in the various hieroglyphic dictionaries as "crossroads, built up area" etc. And his is most often the deteminative seen in the ancient texts for the name of the country. Which basically means that it refers to all the towns, people and regions as a single collective entity.
Either way, the ultimate point here is that at no time did the ancient people of the Nile Valley use the hieroglyph for black in reference to any other population in Africa as "black people". So the big reason why this gets a lot of attention is because the Egyptologists want to try and limit the claim that black is a reference in any way to the phenotype of the people in the country. And this is why they often use the concept of "black land" as a way to rule out any other potential application to the people. "Black Nation" also does not refer to the people or soil directly but even that would still be problematic for these folks. At issue here is what is the significance of the term "black" in the name of the country and what were they referring to when they named it.
We have debated this numerous times on this forum and there are many threads on it.
"The Egyptians had only one term to designate themselves: 'hierogylph' = the negroes (literally). This is the strongest term existing in the Pharaonic tongue to indicate blackness; it is accordingly written with the hieroglyph representing a length of wood charred at the end and not crocodile scales."
@Tribes and Doug - thanks for the links. When time allows, Ill have a proper look.
Posts: 61 | From: UK | Registered: Aug 2016
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quote:Originally posted by Karem: @Brandon - it says;
"The Egyptians had only one term to designate themselves: 'hierogylph' = the negroes (literally). This is the strongest term existing in the Pharaonic tongue to indicate blackness; it is accordingly written with the hieroglyph representing a length of wood charred at the end and not crocodile scales."
@Tribes and Doug - thanks for the links. When time allows, Ill have a proper look.
"The Egyptians had only one term to designate themselves: 'hierogylph' = the negroes (literally).[44]
[44] This important discovery was made, on the African side, by Sossou Nsougan, who was to compile this part of the present chapter. ________________________
I can't find any information on Sossou Nsougan, just references in other books repeating the above book quote from:
Ancient Civilizations of Africa II By G. Mokhtar, Muḥammad Jamāl al-Dīn Mukhtār, Unesco. International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa · 1981
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