quote:The world's earliest figurative tattoos have been discovered on 5,000-year-old Egyptian mummies at the British Museum, rewriting the history of inking.
The tattoos are of a wild bull and a Barbary sheep on the upper-arm of a male mummy, and S-shaped motifs on the upper-arm and shoulder of a female.
The find dates tattoos containing imagery rather than geometric patterns to 1,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Researchers say the discovery 'transforms' our understanding of how people lived during this period.
I remember reading claims that tattooing in ancient Egypt was a custom adopted from Sudanese peoples (i.e. the so-called "Nubians"), but it seems from this new discovery that the Egyptians were doing it much earlier. In which case, its practice in both ancient Egypt and Sudan could be evidence of a shared Northeast African (Afrasan?) cultural heritage.
Elite Diasporan Member # 22000
posted
Pretty cool!
Tukuler Member # 19944
posted
don't forget the ancient libyans
Ish Gebor Member # 18264
posted
This was discussed many many years ago. I think about 7 years already. How is it new?
Tyrannohotep Member # 3735
posted
Tattooing seems to be a big thing in countries from the Horn of Africa.
I wonder if this practice, which has been recorded for societies throughout North and Northeast Africa, has a common origin inherited from ancestral Afroasiatic speakers? It seems to be their equivalent of the scarification you see among Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo-speaking societies.
EDIT:Another paper mentions two or possibly three Egyptian women from the 11th dynasty having scarification in addition to tattoos on their lower abdomen, although its focus is on ancient "Nubian" (i.e. Sudanese) practices.
posted 