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Post by zarahan on Feb 17, 2014 22:55:48 GMT -5
Afrocentric critic Mary Lefkowitz says the Egypt was peopled by people from sub-Saharan Africa, not Europeans or Middle Easterners."Recent work on skeletons and DNA suggests that the people who settled in the Nile valley, like all of humankind, came from somewhere south of the Sahara; they were not (as some nineteenth-century scholars had supposed) invaders from the North. See Bruce G. Trigger, "The Rise of Civilization in Egypt," Cambridge History of Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), vol I, pp 489-90; S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54." (Mary Lefkotitz (1997). Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. Basic Books. pg 242) In Black Athena Revisited, Lefkowitz finds similarity between Egyptians and Sudanics and recommends the work of conservative anthropologist Nancy Lovell for more research on the subject. Quote: "not surprisingly, the Egyptian skulls were not very distant from the Jebel Moya (a Neolithic site in the southern Sudan) skulls, but were much more distance from all others, including those from West Africa. Such a study suggests a closer genetic affinity between peoples in Egypt and the northern Sudan, which were close geographically and are known to have had considerable cultural contact throughout prehistory and pharaonic history... Clearly more analyses of the physical remains of ancient Egyptians need to be done using current techniques, such as those of Nancy Lovell at the University of Alberta is using in her work.." (- Mary Lefkowitz, "Black Athena Revisted. pp. 105-106) Lefkowitz cites Keita 1993 in Not Out of Africa. Here is Keita on the Jebel Moya studies:"Overall, when the Egyptian crania are evaluated in a Near Eastern (Lachish) versus African (Kerma, Jebel Moya, Ashanti) context) the affinity is with the Africans. The Sudan and Palestine are the most appropriate comparative regions which would have 'donated' people, along with the Sahara and Maghreb. Archaeology validates looking to these regions for population flow (see Hassan 1988)... Egyptian groups showed less overall affinity to Palestinian and Byzantine remains than to other African series, especially Sudanese." S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54 Here is the work of the anthropologist so strongly recommended by Lefkowitz, Nancy Lovell:"There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate 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.. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas." (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) and "must be placed in the context of hypotheses informed by archaeological, linguistic, geographic and other data. In such contexts, the physical anthropological evidence indicates that early Nile Valley populations can be identified as part of an African lineage, but exhibiting local variation. This variation represents the short and long term effects of evolutionary forces, such as gene flow, genetic drift, and natural selection, influenced by culture and geography." ("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) The same Nancy Lovell recommended by Lefkowitz studied dental traits among some high status persons of the key Egyptian Naqada group and found that they resembled the peoples of Nubia."A biological affinities study based on frequencies of cranial nonmetric traits in skeletal samples from three cemeteries at Predynastic Naqada, Egypt, confirms the results of a recent nonmetric dental morphological analysis. Both cranial and dental traits analyses indicate that the individuals buried in a cemetery characterized archaeologically as high status are significantly different from individuals buried in two other, apparently non-elite cemeteries and that the non-elite samples are not significantly different from each other. A comparison with neighboring Nile Valley skeletal samples suggests that the high status cemetery represents an endogamous ruling or elite segment of the local population at Naqada, which is more closely related to populations in northern Nubia than to neighboring populations in southern Egypt." (T. Prowse, and N. Lovell "Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt". American journal of physical anthropology. 1996, vol. 101, no2, pp. 237-246 (2 p.1/4)
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Post by zarahan on Mar 4, 2019 8:50:24 GMT -5
Cultural links recap.. "A large number of gods go back to prehistoric times. The images of a cow and star goddess (Hathor), the falcon (Horus), and the human-shaped figures of the fertility god (Min) can be traced back to that period. Some rites, such as the "running of the Apil-bull," the "hoeing of the ground," and other fertility and hunting rites (e.g., the hippopotamus hunt) presumably date from early times.. Connections with the religions in southwest Asia cannot be traced with certainty." "It is doubtful whether Osiris can be regarded as equal to Tammuz or Adonis, or whether Hathor is related to the "Great Mother." There are closer relations with northeast African religions. The numerous animal cults (especially bovine cults and panther gods) and details of ritual dresses (animal tails, masks, grass aprons, etc) probably are of African origin. The kinship in particular shows some African elements, such as the king as the head ritualist (i.e., medicine man), the limitations and renewal of the reign (jubilees, regicide), and the position of the king's mother (a matriarchal element). Some of them can be found among the Ethiopians in Napata and Meroe, others among the Prenilotic tribes (Shilluk)." (Encyclopedia Britannica 1984 ed. Macropedia Article, Vol 6: "Egyptian Religion" , pg 506-508) ".. but his [Frankfort's] frequent citations from African ethnography- over 60 are listed in the index- demonstrate that there is a powerful resonance between recent African concepts and practice on one hand, and ancient Egyptian kingship and religion on the other.."
Rowlands (Chapter 4) provides much additional evidence suggesting that 'sub-Saharan Africa and Ancient Egypt share certain commonalities in substantive images and ideas, yet whose cultural forms display differences consistent with perhaps millennia of historical divergence and institutionalization'.
"First, kingship in Egypt was 'the channel through which the powers of nature flowed into the body politic to bring human endeavour to fruition' and thus was closely analogous to the widespread African belief that 'chieftains entertain closer relationship with the powers in nature than other men' (Frankfort 1948: 33, ch. 2). Second, the Egyptian king's metaphorical identification as an all powerful bull who tramples his enemeis and inseminates his cow-mother to achieve regeneration was derived from Egyptian ideas and beliefs abut cattle for which best parallels can be found in some, but not all, recent African societies.."
"Like the chiefs discussed by Rowlands, the king combines 'life giving forces with the power to kill" (Rowlands, Chapter 4:52). Overall, this Egyptian concept of kingship, so akin to African models, seems very different to that held in the ancient Near East (Frankfort 1948; Postgate 1995)"
"In conclusion, there is a relative abundance of ancient materials relevant to contact and influence, as well as striking correlations between ancient Egyptian civilization and the ethnography of recent and current sub-Saharan communities, chiefdoms and states... Perhaps the fact that commonalities do exist suggests that, because of great time depth and different organization, these commonalities may result from inherently African processes." --David O'Connor, Andrew Reid (2007) ANCIENT EGYPT IN AFRICA. pp 15-22 Other mainstream scholars[QUOTE:] "The evidence also points to linkages to other northeast African peoples, not coincidentally approximating the modern range of languages closely related to Egyptian in the Afro-Asiatic group (formerly called Hamito-Semetic). These linguistic similarities place ancient Egyptian in a close relationship with languages spoken today as far west as Chad, and as far south as Somalia. Archaeological evidence also strongly supports an African origin. A widespread northeastern African cultural assemblage, including distinctive multiple barbed harpoons and pottery decorated with dotted wavy line patterns, appears during the early Neolithic (also known as the Aqualithic, a reference to the mild climate of the Sahara at this time). Saharan and Sudanese rock art from this time resembles early Egyptian iconography. Strong connections between Nubian (Sudanese) and Egyptian material culture continue in later Neolithic Badarian culture of Upper Egypt. Similarities include black-topped wares, vessels with characteristic ripple-burnished surfaces, a special tulip-shaped vessel with incised and white-filled decoration, palettes, and harpoons...
Other ancient Egyptian practices show strong similarities to modern African cultures including divine kingship, the use of headrests, body art, circumcision, and male coming-of-age rituals, all suggesting an African substratum or foundation for Egyptian civilization.."
-- Source: Oxford encyclopedia of ancient Egypt, Volume 3. Oxford University Press. p.28
MORE MODERN SCHOLARS..
"Ancient Egypt belongs to a language group known as 'Afroasiatic' (formerly called Hamito-Semitic) and its closest relatives are other north-east African languages from Somalia to Chad. Egypt's cultural features, both material and ideological and particularly in the earliest phases, show clear connections with that same broad area. In sum, ancient Egypt was an African culture, developed by African peoples, who had wide ranging contacts in north Africa and western Asia." --Morkot, Robert (2005) The Egyptians: An Introduction. p. 10)
"The ancient Egyptians were not 'white' in any European sense, nor were they 'Caucasian'... we can say that the earliest population of ancient Egypt included African people from the upper Nile, African people from the regions of the Sahara and modern Libya, and smaller numbers of people who had come from south-western Asia and perhaps the Arabian penisula." --Robert Morkot (2005). The Egyptians: An Introduction. pp. 12-13
"Over the long run of northeastern African history, what emerges most strongly is the extent to which ancient Egypt's culture grew from sub-Saharan African roots. The earliest foundations of the culture that was to evolve into that of dynastic Egypt were laid, as we have already discovered, by Afrasan immigrants from the general direction of the southern Red Sea hills, who arrived probably well before 10,000 B.C.E. The new inhabitants brought with them a language directly ancestral to ancient Egyptian. They introduced to Egypt the idea of using wild grasses or grains as food. They also introduced a new religion Its central belief, in the efficacy of clan deities, explains the traceability of the ancient Egyptian gods to different particular Egyptians localities: originally they were the deities of the local communities, whose members in still earlier times had belonged to a clan or a group of related clans." --Christopher Ehret. (2002) The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800. p. 93
".. how is it come about that Neolithic Saharan civilizations, ancient Egypt and modern Black African civilizations share cultural features? .. Today however, essentially autochthonous explanations are preferred based on what we call the substratum theory, whereby all the civilizations in question, even in their differences and peculiarities share a common cultural substratum as occurs in the northern world among Indo-European civilizations." --CERVELLÓ AUTUORI, Joseph, Egypt, Africa and the Ancient World, in: Proceedings 7th Int. Congress of Egyptologists, 261-272.
Nubia had close relationships with Egypt in pre-Dynastic and early Dynastic periods via pastoralism and other shared cultural elements. Nubia also a key player in the African pastoral tradition. QUOTE:
"Morphological and genetic research seems to provide further support for the topic. According to Grigson (1991, 2000) Egyptian cattle of the 4th millennium BC were morphologically distinct from Eurasian cattle (Bos taurus) and Zebu (Bos indicus), meaning that African cattle may have been domesticated from the local wild Bos primigenius before the aforementioned date.... The zoological, genetic and linguistic studies thus not only suggest an African origin for cattle domestication, but also provide a precise time frame and geographicallocation which, generally speaking, fits well with that proposed by the CPE (Combined Prehistoric Expedition). A further element which might give support to the matter comes from the archaeological record, namely the pottery."
"To sum up, Nubia is Egypt’s African ancestor. What linked Ancient Egypt to the rest of the North African cultures is this strong tie with the Nubian pastoral nomadic lifestyle, the same pastoral background commonly shared by most of the ancient Saharan and modern sub-Saharan societies. Thus, not only did Nubia have a prominent role in the origin of Ancient Egypt, it was also a key area for the origin of the entire African pastoral tradition." --Gatto M. 2009. The Nubian Pastoral Culture as Link between Egypt and Africa A View from the Archaeological Record. British Archaelogical Reports: Egypt in its African Context: BAR S2204- Archaeopress. 21-29
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