Post by zarahan on Apr 10, 2014 23:38:04 GMT -5
CREDITS: Amun-Ra The Ultimate, Troll Patrol,, Tukler, zeiss
The Origins of pharaonic stone carving: Nabta Playa (western desert): earliest known
monumental sculpture from Egypt
About Nabta Playa from Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt (excerpt):
From The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson (2010)
In text form:The purpose of the standing stones and the “calendar circle” seems to have been to predict the arrival of the all-important rains that fell shortly after the summer solstice. When the rains arrived, the community celebrated by slaughtering some of their precious cattle as a sacrifice of thanks, and burying the animals in graves marked on the ground with large, flat stones. Under one such mound, archaeologists found not a cattle burial but a huge sandstone monolith that had been carefully shaped and dressed to resemble a cow. Dated, like the calendar circle, to the early fifth millennium B.C., it is the earliest known monumental sculpture from Egypt. Here are to be found the origins of pharaonic stone carving—in the prehistoric Western Desert, among wandering cattle herders, a millennium and more before the beginning of the First Dynasty. Archaeologists have been forced to rethink their theories of Egypt’s origins.
From The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson (2010)
Five megalithic alignments at Nabta radiate outwards from a central collection of megalithic structures.
Stone slabs three meters high were dragged over a kilometer to create the site. The small stone circle contains four sets of upright slabs, two of the sets being aligned in a north-south direction while the second pair of slabs provides a line of sight towards the summer solstice horizon. An east-west alignment is also present between one megalithic structure and two stone megaliths, which stand about a mile distant. Furthermore there are two other geometric lines involving about a dozen additional stone monuments that lead both north-east and south-east from the same megalith.
The site consists of a stone circle, a series of flat, stone structures and five lines of standing and toppled megaliths.
The Stone circle at Nabata Playa in southern Egypt is the
earliest astronomically aligned site ever discoveed. It is between 6000 and 6500
years old.
a large smoothly carved Cow megalith was uncovered under over 7 meters of sand. The bedrock beneath was also shaped, and the megaliths circles placed on top of the buried structures. No one knows how exactly the people of Nabta Playa knew of the stones' existence underneath the sand to build right on top of them. Some symbolic meaning may be implied with the burial of cow skeletons in carefully lain graves throughout the site. [/qb][/QUOTE] www.crystalinks.com/nabtaplayastonecircle.html [/QB][/QUOTE]
Here's a map depicting the distribution of Wavy-Line pottery across Africa (the green Sahara belt). We can see Nabta Playa toward the north-eastern part of the map. All those sites are related since their inhabitants all produced wavy-line pottery.
![]()
i1274.photobucket.com/albums/y421/amunratheultimate2/Misc/WavylineanddottedwavylinesitesintheNileValleyandtheSahara-SahelBelt01_zps621800dd.jpg
The Origins of pharaonic stone carving: Nabta Playa (western desert): earliest known
monumental sculpture from Egypt
About Nabta Playa from Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt (excerpt):
From The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson (2010)
In text form:The purpose of the standing stones and the “calendar circle” seems to have been to predict the arrival of the all-important rains that fell shortly after the summer solstice. When the rains arrived, the community celebrated by slaughtering some of their precious cattle as a sacrifice of thanks, and burying the animals in graves marked on the ground with large, flat stones. Under one such mound, archaeologists found not a cattle burial but a huge sandstone monolith that had been carefully shaped and dressed to resemble a cow. Dated, like the calendar circle, to the early fifth millennium B.C., it is the earliest known monumental sculpture from Egypt. Here are to be found the origins of pharaonic stone carving—in the prehistoric Western Desert, among wandering cattle herders, a millennium and more before the beginning of the First Dynasty. Archaeologists have been forced to rethink their theories of Egypt’s origins.
From The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson (2010)
Five megalithic alignments at Nabta radiate outwards from a central collection of megalithic structures.Stone slabs three meters high were dragged over a kilometer to create the site. The small stone circle contains four sets of upright slabs, two of the sets being aligned in a north-south direction while the second pair of slabs provides a line of sight towards the summer solstice horizon. An east-west alignment is also present between one megalithic structure and two stone megaliths, which stand about a mile distant. Furthermore there are two other geometric lines involving about a dozen additional stone monuments that lead both north-east and south-east from the same megalith.
The site consists of a stone circle, a series of flat, stone structures and five lines of standing and toppled megaliths.
The Stone circle at Nabata Playa in southern Egypt is the
earliest astronomically aligned site ever discoveed. It is between 6000 and 6500
years old.
a large smoothly carved Cow megalith was uncovered under over 7 meters of sand. The bedrock beneath was also shaped, and the megaliths circles placed on top of the buried structures. No one knows how exactly the people of Nabta Playa knew of the stones' existence underneath the sand to build right on top of them. Some symbolic meaning may be implied with the burial of cow skeletons in carefully lain graves throughout the site. [/qb][/QUOTE] www.crystalinks.com/nabtaplayastonecircle.html [/QB][/QUOTE]
Here's a map depicting the distribution of Wavy-Line pottery across Africa (the green Sahara belt). We can see Nabta Playa toward the north-eastern part of the map. All those sites are related since their inhabitants all produced wavy-line pottery.
Originally posted by Trollkillah # Ish Gebor:
[QB] ^ in addition,
To give a clearer picture on the Nabta Playa:
Naqada, Kerma.
Kobusiewicz 2009 Burial practices ...
Fig. 37. Gebel Ramlah. Sheet of mica shaped as a Tilapia fish.
Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:
---------------------------
In the following posts I will present recent analysis of Nabta Playa and it's fundamental relationship with Ancient Egypt at its formative stage.
The extracts are from the book called Climates, Landscapes, and Civilizations (2013) published by the American Geophysical Union
All from the monograph Geoarchaelogical Perspectives on Holocene Climate Change as a Civilizing Factor in the Egyptian Sahara by Kathleen Nicoll (2013)
The text denote the importance of climate change for ancient African people in the Sahara.
Shared Astronomical knowledge between Nabta Playa and Ancient Egypt:
So the Nabta Playa astronomical center was oriented toward stars and constellations like the Big Dipper (Dubhe), the constellation of Ursa Maroris, Orion and Sirius all which had great importance for Ancient Egyptians.
In textual form: Some interpretations suggest that the arrangements and groupings of megalith structures served as astronomical calendars [Applegate and Zedeno, 2001]. Their locations are along sightlines marking the position of important stars and the solstice along the Tropic of Cancer during the time period -6800-6000 B.P. [Malville et al., 2007, 2008]. The stelae of the longest alignment at Nabta are oriented to point toward the brightest star in the Big Dipper [Malville et al., 2008]. This star (Dubhe) as well as the entire constellation Ursa Majoris was quite important in ancient Egypt and figured in various symbols and myths combining cattle, funeral rituals, kingship, and celestial order. Another alignment near Nabta Playa points to the two brightest stars in the "belt" of Orion, the constellation associated with Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife, the underworld, and the dead. A third alignment indicated the position where Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, returned after a 70 day absence and appeared prominently in the dawn sky just before the summer solstice. The reappearance of this star heralded the onset of the annual flooding of the Nile and had deep symbolic meaning to ancient Egyptians, during the First Dynasty, who ritually celebrated the event as the start of their calendar year [David, 2002].
Shared cosmological and beliefs system between Nabta Playa and Ancient Egypt:
Ancient Egyptian magic and religion, and the material record of the Nabtan culture reflects a regional connectedness of the Saharan people. Ancient Egypt is truly and fundamentally a child of the Sahara. A child of the wet Sahara. A child of the green Sahara. A child of Africa.
In textual form: The ceremonial center at the settlement of Nabta reflected the cosmological underpinnings of belief systems central to ancient Egyptian magic and religion, and the material record of the Nabtan culture reflects a regional connectedness of the Saharan people. It is clear that the Nabtans had affiliations with the incipient Predynastic Egyptian civilization emerging in the Nile Valley [Hoffinan, 1991; Rice, 2003]. Were the desert people at Nabta the original celestial observers, the progenitors of profound ideologies that shaped the later civilization in the dynasties of Egypt? The available chronologies for the Neolithic settlement at Nabta substantiate the deep antiquity of a connection with the skies and derivative symbolic ideologies. Recurrent themes that seem to have been important to these nomadic pastoralists include, water, death, stars, cattle, and the sun, all of which persisted as important motifs in Dynastic Egypt.
Exodus of Nabta Playa inhabitants toward the Nile:
Climate change and the dessication of the green Sahara led to the exodus of Nabta Playa inhabitants toward the Nile.
In text form: The people of Nabta may have been the last dwellers of this marginal environment. As intense drought conditions persisted, water sources dried up, and the grassland disappeared -6000 years B.P.; the area of Nabta was inhospitable after 5300 years ago, which correlates to 3350 B.C.E. (before the Common Era). The "terminal" date for final occupation at Nabta is around 4780 B.P., as hyperaridity prevailed, and the Sahara was fully established. This profound environmental change precipitated migration, an "Exodus event" in which humans left the desert locales for reliable water sources, as evinced by the rising population along the Nile [Midant-Reynes, 1992; Malville et al., 1998]. As the Nabtan people relocated, they inevitably contributed their own culture and beliefs to the birth of ancient Egyptian religion and the Pharonic civilization, which organized its empire around irrigation agriculture within the overpopulated confines of the Nile Valley [Krzyzaniak; 1991; Nicoll, 2004].
[QB] ^ in addition,
To give a clearer picture on the Nabta Playa:
Naqada, Kerma.
Kobusiewicz 2009 Burial practices ...
Fig. 37. Gebel Ramlah. Sheet of mica shaped as a Tilapia fish.
Originally posted by Amun-Ra The Ultimate:
---------------------------
In the following posts I will present recent analysis of Nabta Playa and it's fundamental relationship with Ancient Egypt at its formative stage.
The extracts are from the book called Climates, Landscapes, and Civilizations (2013) published by the American Geophysical Union
All from the monograph Geoarchaelogical Perspectives on Holocene Climate Change as a Civilizing Factor in the Egyptian Sahara by Kathleen Nicoll (2013)
The text denote the importance of climate change for ancient African people in the Sahara.
Shared Astronomical knowledge between Nabta Playa and Ancient Egypt:
So the Nabta Playa astronomical center was oriented toward stars and constellations like the Big Dipper (Dubhe), the constellation of Ursa Maroris, Orion and Sirius all which had great importance for Ancient Egyptians.
In textual form: Some interpretations suggest that the arrangements and groupings of megalith structures served as astronomical calendars [Applegate and Zedeno, 2001]. Their locations are along sightlines marking the position of important stars and the solstice along the Tropic of Cancer during the time period -6800-6000 B.P. [Malville et al., 2007, 2008]. The stelae of the longest alignment at Nabta are oriented to point toward the brightest star in the Big Dipper [Malville et al., 2008]. This star (Dubhe) as well as the entire constellation Ursa Majoris was quite important in ancient Egypt and figured in various symbols and myths combining cattle, funeral rituals, kingship, and celestial order. Another alignment near Nabta Playa points to the two brightest stars in the "belt" of Orion, the constellation associated with Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife, the underworld, and the dead. A third alignment indicated the position where Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, returned after a 70 day absence and appeared prominently in the dawn sky just before the summer solstice. The reappearance of this star heralded the onset of the annual flooding of the Nile and had deep symbolic meaning to ancient Egyptians, during the First Dynasty, who ritually celebrated the event as the start of their calendar year [David, 2002].
Shared cosmological and beliefs system between Nabta Playa and Ancient Egypt:
Ancient Egyptian magic and religion, and the material record of the Nabtan culture reflects a regional connectedness of the Saharan people. Ancient Egypt is truly and fundamentally a child of the Sahara. A child of the wet Sahara. A child of the green Sahara. A child of Africa.
In textual form: The ceremonial center at the settlement of Nabta reflected the cosmological underpinnings of belief systems central to ancient Egyptian magic and religion, and the material record of the Nabtan culture reflects a regional connectedness of the Saharan people. It is clear that the Nabtans had affiliations with the incipient Predynastic Egyptian civilization emerging in the Nile Valley [Hoffinan, 1991; Rice, 2003]. Were the desert people at Nabta the original celestial observers, the progenitors of profound ideologies that shaped the later civilization in the dynasties of Egypt? The available chronologies for the Neolithic settlement at Nabta substantiate the deep antiquity of a connection with the skies and derivative symbolic ideologies. Recurrent themes that seem to have been important to these nomadic pastoralists include, water, death, stars, cattle, and the sun, all of which persisted as important motifs in Dynastic Egypt.
Exodus of Nabta Playa inhabitants toward the Nile:
Climate change and the dessication of the green Sahara led to the exodus of Nabta Playa inhabitants toward the Nile.
In text form: The people of Nabta may have been the last dwellers of this marginal environment. As intense drought conditions persisted, water sources dried up, and the grassland disappeared -6000 years B.P.; the area of Nabta was inhospitable after 5300 years ago, which correlates to 3350 B.C.E. (before the Common Era). The "terminal" date for final occupation at Nabta is around 4780 B.P., as hyperaridity prevailed, and the Sahara was fully established. This profound environmental change precipitated migration, an "Exodus event" in which humans left the desert locales for reliable water sources, as evinced by the rising population along the Nile [Midant-Reynes, 1992; Malville et al., 1998]. As the Nabtan people relocated, they inevitably contributed their own culture and beliefs to the birth of ancient Egyptian religion and the Pharonic civilization, which organized its empire around irrigation agriculture within the overpopulated confines of the Nile Valley [Krzyzaniak; 1991; Nicoll, 2004].
