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The Garamantes were not Berber speakers
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Clyde Winters: [QB] What we know about the Garamante comes from the Greeco-Roman writers. These scholars maintain that the Garamante usually sailed to the Islands in the Aegean and the surrounding coast where they established prosperous trading communities. There is frequent mention of the Garamantes of the Fezzan, in Classical literature of Greece and Rome. The Garamantes were recognized as a Black tribe. They were known to the Greeks and Romans as dark skinned. In Ptolemy (I.8.5.,p.31) a Garamante slave was described as having a body the color of pitch or wholly black. The Garamantes or Carians originally lived in the Fezzan. These Garamante were described by the Latin classical writers as black or dark skinned: perusti (Lucan 4.679), furvi (Arnoloius, Adversus Nationes , 6.5) and nigri (Anthologia Latina, 155,no.183). Graves (1980) and Leo Frobenius linked the Garamante to the ancient empire of Ghana (c.300 BC to A.D. 1100). Graves (1980) claims that the term Garamante is the Greek plural for Garama or Garamas. He said that the present Jarama or Jarma are the descendants of the Garamante; and that the Jarama live near the Niger river. The Olympian creation myth, as recorded by Pindar in Fragment , and Apollonius Rhodius, makes it clear that the Garamantes early colonized Greece. Their descendants were called Carians. The Carians practiced apiculture. As in Africa the Carians practiced matrilineal descent. According to Herodotus , even up until his time the Carians took the name of their mother. Many of the Greek myths are historical text which discuss the transition of Greece from an matriarchal society to a patriarchal Aryan society. The term Amazon was often used by the Aryans to denote matriarchal societies living on the Black Sea. The battle between Thesus and the Amazons, led by Queen Melanippe, records the conflicts between the ancient Aryan-Greeks and the Libyco-Nubians settled around the Black Sea. The classical Carians and Egyptians were very close. Having originated in the Fertile African Crescent they had similar gods and cultural traditions dating back to the Proto-Saharan period. The Garamantes founded Attica, where they worked the mines at Laureium. Demeter, the goddess of agriculture and fruitfulness, came from the Fezzan (Libya) by way of Crete. It was Demeter who took poppy seeds and figs to Europe. The Greco-Roman literature provides us with the following facts: 1. The Garamante originated in the Fezzan; 2. The Garamante founded civilization in Minoan-Crete This leads to the inference that if the Eteo-cretans were Garamante they spoke the Garamante lanuage.The hypothesis resulting from the earlier hyp[othesis is that if we compare the language spoken by the Garamante in Crete, to a language spoken in Africa today we may be able to find the identity of the Garamante. We can test this hypothesis because the ancient Egyptians recorded the language spoken by the eteo-cretans, who they called in their language Keftiu. The Egyptians called the Cretans Keftiu. There is agreement between the Keftiu names recorded by Egyptian scribes and Manding names. These Garamante names come from T.E. Peet, "The Egyptian writing board BM5647 bearing Keftiu names". In: Essays in Aegean Archaeology , (ed.) by S Casson (Oxford, 1927, 90-99). Keftiu The root kef-, in Keftiu, probably is Ke'be, the name of a Manding clan , plus the locative suffix {i-} used to give the affirmative sense, plus the plural suffix for names {u-}, and the {-te} suffixial element used to denote place names, nationalities and to form words. On the Egyptian writing board there are eight Keftiu names. These names agree with Manding names: Keftiu....... Manding sh h.r........ Sye Nsy ..........Nsye 'ksh .........Nkyi Pnrt Pe,..... Beni (name for twins) 'dm ..........Demba Rs............. Rsa This analogy between Keftiu and Manding names is startling. In conclusion, the evidence of similarity between Keftiu names and names from the Manding languages appear to support Graves view that the Eteocretans, who early settled Crete may have spoken a language similar to the Mande people who live near the Niger. It also supports the idea that Garamante was a tribal name resulting from the Mande origin of this population--not that they were named after their capital city. The name Garamante, illustrates affinity to Mande morphology and grammar. The Mande language is a member of the Niger-Congo group of languages. The name for the Manding tribe called "Mande", means Ma 'mother, and nde 'children', can be interpreted as "Children of Ma", or "Mothers children " (descent among this group is matrilineal) . The word Garamante,can be broken down into Malinke-Bambara into the following monosyllabic words Ga 'hearth', arid, hot'; Mante/Mande , the name of the Mande speaking tribes. This means that the term: Garamante, can be interpreted as "Mande of the Arid lands" or "Arid lands of the children of Ma". This last term is quite interesting because by the time the Greeks and Romans learned about the Garamante, the Fezzan was becoming increasingly arid. ' [/QB][/QUOTE]
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