Nubia and Egypt

From Ancient Nubia

Contents 1 Older research on cultural linkages between Nubia, the Sudan and Egypt 2 Newer research on cultural linkages between Nubia, the Sudan and Egypt 3 Nubia and the Early Egyptian Dynasties 4 Nubian-Egyptian warfare: political not 'racial' 5 References

[edit] Older research on cultural linkages between Nubia, the Sudan and Egypt

There has been much research on Nubia over the past 70 years that puts it in broader perspective. Anthropologist and DNA researcher S. Keita sums up much of the older evidence showing the linkages between Egypt and 'black' Africa, noting that contrary to discredited white civilizer theories and their variants, many of the cultural elements associated with Egypt originated in the Sudanic-Saharan areas of what is now called 'black' Africa. Much of this evidence appears in older scholarship, long before Afrocentrism became popular or widely controversial, and is confirmed in modern re-analyses. The data are summarized below:^[1]:

• Specific central African tool designs found at the well known Naqada, Badari and Fayum archaeological sites in Egypt (de Heinzelin 1962, Arkell and Ucko, 1956 et al). Shaw (1976) states that "the early cultures of Merimde, the Fayum, Badari Naqada I and II are essentially African and early African social customs and religious beliefs were the root and foundation of the ancient Egyptian way of life."
• Pottery evidence first seen in the Saharan Highlands then spreading to the Nile Valley (Flight 1973).
• Art motifs of Saharan rock paintings showing similarities to those in pharaonic art. A number of scholars suggest that these earlier artistic styles influenced later pharaonic art via Saharans leaving drier areas and moving into the Nile Valley taking their art styles with them (Mori 1964, Blanc 1964, et al)
• Earlier pioneering mummification outside Egypt. The oldest mummy in Africa is of a black Saharan child (Donadoni 1964, Blanc 1964) Frankfort (1956) suggests that it is thus possible to understand the pharaonic worldview by reference to the religious beliefs of these earlier African precursors. Attempts to suggest the root of such practices are due to Caucasoid civilizers from elsewhere are thus contradicted by the data on the ground.
• Several cultural practices of Egypt show strong similarities to an African totemic clan base. Childe (1969, 1978), Aldred (1978) and Strouhal (1971) demonstrate linkages with several African practices such as divine kingship and the king as divine rainmaker.
• Physical similarities of the early Nile valley populations with that of tropical Africans. Such connections are demonstrated in the work of numerous scholars such as Thompson and Randall Mclver 1905, Falkenburger 1947, and Strouhal 1971. The distance diagrams of Mukherjee, Rao and Trevor (1955) place the ancient Badarians genetically near 'black' tribes such as the Ashanti and the Taita. See also the "Issues of lumping under Mediterranean clusters" section above for similar older analyses.
• Serological (blood) evidence of genetic linkages. Paoli 1972 for example found a significant resemblance between ABO frequencies of dynastic Egyptians and the black northern Haratin who are held to be the probable descendants of the original Saharans (Hiernaux, 1975).
• Language similarities which include several hundred roots ascribable to African elements (UNESCO 1974)
• Ancient Egyptian origin stories ascribing origins of the gods and their ancestors to African locations to the south and west of Egypt (Davidson 1959)
• Advanced state building and political unity in Nubia, including writing, administrative apparatus and insignia some 300 years before dynastic Egypt, and the long demonstrated interchange between Nubia and Egypt (Williams 1980)

[edit] Newer research on cultural linkages between Nubia, the Sudan and Egypt

Newer studies (Wendorf 2001, Wilkinson 1999, et al.) confirm these older analyses. Excavations from Nabta Playa, located about 100km west of Abu Simbel for example, suggest that the Neolithic inhabitants of the region were migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, based on cultural similarities and social complexity which is thought to be reflective of Egypt's Old Kingdom.^[2] Other scholars (Wilkinson 1999) present similar material and cultural evidence- including similarities between predynastic Egypt and traditional African cattle-culture, typical of Southern Sudanese and East African pastoralists of today, and various cultural and artistic data such as iconography on rock art found in both Egypt and in the Sudan.^[3]

Recent data from other research suggests numerous trade contacts between the Nile Valley peoples from early times. The excavations of German archaeologist Gunter Dreyer (1999) at Predynastic Abydos for example unearthed obsidian bows, a material traced to the nearby Sudan or Ethiopia. Excavations at Hierakonpolis by archaelogist Renee Friedman (1998) also demonstrates ritual masks similar to those used further south of Egypt, and significant amounts of obsidian, also traced to Ethiopian quarry sites.^[4]. As regards population types and origins, one contemporary review of older evidence acknowledges that "the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa."^[5]

[edit] Nubia and the Early Egyptian Dynasties

Nubia also figures in the archealogical research of scholar Bruce Williams, who along with other writers, suggest a Nubian influence underlying the establishment of the Egyptian state.^[6] Most scholars see limited evidence of Nubian statebuilding in the further north (Lower Egypt),^[7] but Williams focuses on the south, based on the initial predominant influence of the south, closest to Nubia, and various cultural linkages with the south such as discovery of the Qustul incense burner and of a city at Kerma dating back to 4,500 BCE.^[8]

A number of scholars demonstrate that the ancient Egyptians were closely related to Nilo/Sudanic peoples like Nubians, sharing substantial genetic admixture, and cultural elements such as the pharonic structure (Keita 1992, Krings et al. 1999, Williams 1999, Yurco, 1989).^[9] Some research links these relationships as extending not simply to ordinary farmers, pastorialists or hunter-gathers but to elite stations as well. One such study for example shows the presence of individual rulers buried in high-status Egyptian sites at Naqada, and that these persons were more related morphologically to populations in Northern Nubia, than those in Southern Egypt.^[10] The recent excavations of Swiss archealogist Charles Bonnet also confirm the linkages between Nubia and Egypt via excavations at Kerma (Charles Bonnet and Dominique Valbelle, The Nubian Pharaohs).^[11]

A number of writers dispute any claim that the Nubian kings were responsible for the genesis of the Egyptian monarchies that followed.^[12] Williams however notes that his research advanced no claim of a Nubian origin or genesis for the pharonic monarchy. Instead he holds that the archaeological data shows Nubian linkages and influence in helping to "fashion pharaonic civilization." Such data includes detailed excavations of the burial place of the Nubian rulers with date stamps well before the historical First Dynasty of Egypt. The size and wealth of the tombs were also vastly greater than that of the well-known Abydos tombs in Egypt.^[13]

[edit] Nubian-Egyptian warfare: political not 'racial'

Mainstream Egyptologists such as F. Yurco note that among foreign peoples, the Nubians were closest ethnically to the Egyptians, shared the same culture in the predynastic period, and used the same pharaonic political structure. ^[14] This is confirmed by a wealth of data on hand as noted above, making problematic various attempts to portray Nubia and its peoples as primarily foreign migrants, or to portray Nubia as an isolated backwater of Egypt useful primarily as an area of conquest.^[15] The relationship between Nubia and Egypt was complex, involving military raids, expeditions and conquest by the Egyptians, subjugation in turn of Egypt by Nubia based kings, pharaohs of Nubian origin, trade interactions and cultural influence both ways from the earliest times and down through the centuries. According to Williams, attempts to downplay data from the Nubian excavations "arbitrarily dismiss important bodies of evidence, [and] belong to an age when broad assumptions of 'cultural retardation' went unchallenged."^[16]

A 1999 DNA study on gene flow^[17] as noted above, confirms the genetic linkages between Egypt and Nubia, and affirms Yurco's observation as to the ethnic closeness and political rather than racial differentiation between Egyptians and Nubians. These data and historical background call into question assertions by some classicist historians (Snowden, Vermeule, et al) that suggest 'racial' wars between Nubians and Egyptians or high degrees of 'racial' differences between them.^[18]Ironically noting that war between ethnically related neighboring European nations like France and Germany is not considered 'racial' war, one mainstream anthropologist confirms Yurco, stating: "the antagonisms between Kush and Egypt were political and not racial."^[19] The DNA analysis also confirms the observation that the peoples of the Nile Valley were one population continuity,^[20] sharing not only culture but genes that flowed up and down the Nile. This contradicts the Aryan model's attempts to dice up the two ancient peoples into neatly assigned racial categories or zones such as 'Caucasoid,' 'Mediterranean Race,' 'Negroid' or 'Hamite.'^[21]

[edit] References

1. S.O.Y Keita, 'Royal incest and Diffusion in Africa," American Ethnologist > Vol. 8, No. 2 (May, 1981), pp. 392-393
2. Fred Wendorf and Romuald Schild, Holocene Settlement of the Egyptian Sahara: Volume 1: The Archaeology of Nabta Playa, (Springer: 2001)
3. Toby A. H. Wilkinson, Early Dynastic Egypt, Routledge, 1999, pp. 45-182
4. John Gledhill, Barbara Bender, Mogens Trolle Larsen, (eds), State and Society: The Emergence and Development of Social Hierarchy and political centralization, (London: Taylor and Francis Group: 1998), pp. 192-214; see also Vivian Davies and Renee Friedman, Egypt Uncovered, (Stewart Tabori & Chang: 1998), pp. 5-87
5. Nancy C. Lovell, “ Egyptians, physical anthropology of,” in Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, ed. Kathryn A. Bard and Steven Blake Shubert, ( London and New York: Routledge, 1999) pp 328-332
6. Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa: Their Interaction - Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa, by Joseph O. Vogel, AltaMira Press, (1997), pp. 465-472;
7. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, Ian Shaw, ed. (Oxford University Press, 2000)p. 42-64
8. Bruce Williams, 'The lost pharaohs of Nubia', in Ivan van Sertima (ed.), Egypt Revisited (New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction, 1993).
9. Frank l'engle Williams, Robert L. Belcher, and George J . Armelagos, "Forensic Misclassification of Ancient Nubian Crania: Implications for Assumptions about Human Variation," Current Anthropology, volume 46 (2005), pages 340–346
10. Tracy L. Prowse, Nancy C. Lovell. Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Vol. 101, Issue 2, October 1996, Pages: 237-246
11. Charles Bonnet and Dominique Valbelle, The Nubian Pharaohs: Black Kings on the Nile, (AUC Press: 2007), pp. 34-183
12. Bruce Williams "The Lost Pharoahs of Nubia," Archaelogy 33, no 5 (September-October 1980): 14-21; See also W.Y. Adams, "Doubts About the Lost Pharoahs," JNES 44 (1985)
13. Bruce Williams, "Forbears of Menes in Nubia: Myth or Reality," Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Jan., 1987), pp. 15-26
14. F. J. Yurco, 'Were the ancient Egyptians black or white?', Biblical Archeology Review (Vol 15, no. 5, 1989), pp. 24-9, 58.
15. Sanders, op. cit
16. Williams, op. cit
17. Krings, et al, op. cit
18. Aaron Kamugisha, "Finally in Africa? Egypt, from Diop to Celenko," (Race & Class, Vol. 45, No. 1, 31-60 (2003)- http://wysinger.homestead.com/finally.html
19. Kamugisha, op. cit., quoted by S.O.Y Keita
20. Yurco, 'An Egyptological Review" 1986.. op. cit
21. Edith R. Sanders, 'The Hamitic hypothesis: its origin and functions in time perspective', Journal of African History (Vol. 10, no. 4, 1969), pp. 521-32
22.  :Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508

See Also

• Issues in research methodology on Nubian and Nile Valley peoples