Relationship between Saharans and Nile Valley

[Charlie Bass]

There were probable influences between Saharan people and ancient Egypt. For example, engravings assigned to the Bubaline Period representing rams with spheres on their heads might be linked to the symbol of the god Amun of the Nile Valley(Gillon 1984:55), which appeared in much later times around 3000 B.C. Similarities between tailed garments portrayed in the rock art and that of Egyptian Kings suggest that the ancient Nile Valley population included immigrants from the Sahara as it began to become a desert.

Saharan Rock Art
Mohamed Sanouni
Assistant Professor, Institute of Archaeology
University of Algiers, Algeria

[Charlie Bass]

archaeological-artifacts.suite101.com/article.cfm/prehistoric_saharan_rock_art



Prehistoric Saharan Rock Art
Signs of Changing Climate and Early Egyptian Religion in the Sahara


Prehistoric Saharan Rock Art: Signs of Changing Climate and Early Egyptian Religion in the Sahara



Five Periods of Rock Art in the Sahara
The rock art in the Sahara can be categorized into five general periods:

•Bubalus petroglyphs: large wild animals such as Buffalo, Elephants, Rhinoceros; 9,000 to 6,000 B.C. During the period from 10,000 to 6000 B.C. the Nile Valley was uninhabitable with tremendous flooding from glacier runoff into the Blue and White Niles from Ethiopia. From about 10,000 B.C., any settlements in the Nile Valley were wiped out with the inundations. As the meltdown began to slow, people from the Sahara moved back into the Nile Valley.
•Roundhead people petroglyphs: approximately 6000 to 4000 B.C.; humans are depicted with rounded heads and have a rather alien look about them.

•Cattle herding petroglyphs: 4,500 to 2,500 B.C.

•Horse and horses with chariots rock art: from 1200 B.C.
•Camel petroglyphs: from 500 B.C., sometimes accompanied by the tifnar script of the Tuaregs
The Sahara, with its evolving climate, is seen through rock paintings to have been home to many cultures from Neolithic times onwards. Wallis Budge, Wilkinson, McKenna and Lhote who studied the paintings of Tassili n’Ajjer and other regions in North Africa all came to similar conclusions that the people who created the Prehistoric rock paintings in the Sahara, southern Egypt and along the Red Sea all came from the same semi-nomadic peoples who may have had their origins in Ethiopia. These people spread their shamanic religion (displayed in rock art motifs) to the Predynastic Egyptian people (prior to 3100 B.C.). Some similar scenes and motifs (solar disc between horns of cattle, men with animal masks or headdresses, and hunter-god) found in Algerian and Libyan rock art are later seen on temples and monuments in Egypt.

[zarahan]

Good info- the rock art is one of the key cultural-material indicators of the debt the Nile Valley owes the Sahara. Throw in the Nabta constructions and the cattle religion and the connections become even stronger.

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The Sahara and adjacent deserts in Nile Valley peopling

The Nabata Playa and climate-driven migration into the Nile Valley. The once fertile Sahara stretches in a belt from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. As noted above, fluctuating climate cycles acted as a "pump", pushing people from the south up towards the wetter, more fertile Nile Valley, or down, to zones of similar likeness. The Nabta Playa (lake) Basin is on the edge of the Western Desert of Egypt is also another source of Nile Valley peopling. Nabta Playa os located some 62 miles from Abu Simbel and some 60 miles west of the Nile, near the Sudanese border. with The basin shows evidence of a culture marked by growing sophiscation, including deep wells for water access, and "the emergence of a regional ceremonial center with megalithic alignments, stone circles, cattle burials, and other large-scale constructions."[112] Such constructions included carved megaliths tied to religious motifs around 5000 BC. Climate change made the area arid again and some scholars hold that this forced peoples of the region to migrate to the wetter Nile Valley, with subsequent effects on the development of Egyptian civilization.[113]

According to archaeologist F. Wendorf, who excavated the region, the legacy of the ancient peoples "is seen in the "prominence of cattle in the religious belief system of Pre-dynastic Egypt continuing into the Old Kingdom." Wendorf argues that the presence of domesticated cattle is likely an indigenous development based on mtDNA analysis of wild stocks, and that the excavation of indigenous grains- sorghums and millets, along with other plants, along with the absence of Southwest Asian domesticates, indicates a measure of indigenous development in place. The climate driven move into Egypt by these ancient desert dwellers, it is held, may have been:

"a critical factor in the rise of social complexity and the subsequent emergence of the Egyptian state in Upper Egypt (Hoffman 1979; Hassan 1988). If so, Egypt owes a major debt to those early pastoral groups in the Sahara; they may have provided Egypt with many of those features that still distinguish it from its neighbors to the east."

Wendorf holds that a Saharan origin must be balanced with other data such as cattle rearing, since there are a number of the unique elements which did not carryover to the Nile Valley, including extensive megaliths. Nevertheless he maintains, "One of the fascinating aspects of the evidence for the working of large stones is that it seems to anticipate later Egyptian developments." [114]

Evidence of early cultural practices in the Saharan zone. The Libyan desert area, particularly around the Fezzan, also shows a range of physical types. Of note is the mummified form of a Negro child, dated to around 3000 B.C, discovered at the Uan Muhuggiag rock shelter by a team of Italian archaeologists. What makes this skeleton interesting is that it is so well preserved that it challenges the notion that the Egyptians were the original pioneers of mummification. The Italian excavation suggests that many practices associated with Egypt, may have already been established on an indigenous basis in the areas adjoining the Nile Valley, prior to the rise of the Egyptian dynasties. [115] This finding is consistent with the general pattern noted above- the appearance of long-standing cultural and skeletal elements from a variety of indigenous peoples, in the areas close to Egypt. It is also consistent with a movement of peoples, up from the Saharan Zone into the Nile Valley, as noted by Afrocentric critic Mary Leftkowitz. The presence of numerous artistic motifs from Saharan rock art, found in later Egyptian iconography and use, (Wilkinson 1999) also lends support to the long-standing cultural sharing and linkages between Egypt and the surrounding Saharan cultures.[116]

Genetic linkages of Egyptians to other ancient Saharan populations. A number of studies link the ancient Egyptians to the ancient Saharans. According to Keita (1990) and Livingstone (1967), the Haratin are among the major descendants of the original Saharans. Close similarity in ABO serology between modern Haratin populations and those of ancient Egyptians was also shown by G. Paoli, ("ABO Typing of Ancient Egyptians" IN _Population biology of ancient Egyptians_, edited by D.R. Brothwell and B.A. Chiarelli, London, New York, 1973, p. 464.) Frequencies on some "q" gene elements by both peoples were almost twice those in typically European populations. (Montagu, A. _Introduction to Physical Anthropology_ 1960, p. 334). The Haratin are considered to be "Negroid" in physical type (Livingstone, 1967). Other serological tests have shown close affinity of certain Berber-speaking groups with tropical Africans in the high rates of cDe, P and V, and low Fy^a antigens(Keita 1990, Mourant et al., 1976, Chamla, 1980). They also group close with West Africans in the high incidence of HbC, HbS and the sickle cell condition (Livingstone, 1967). S.O.Y. KEITA, "Studies of Ancient Crania From Northern Africa", AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 83:35-48 (1990)[10]


REFS:



#112 ^ Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 17, 97-123 (1998), "Nabta Playa and Its Role in Northeastern African Prehistory," Fred Wendorf and Romuald Schild.

#113 ^ Wendorf, op. cit. See also-- G. Paoli, in "ABO Typing of Ancient Egyptians" IN _Population biology of ancient Egyptians_, edited by D.R. Brothwell and B.A. Chiarelli, London, New York, 1973, p. 464; Montagu, A. _Introduction to Physical Anthropology_ 1960, p. 334).

#114 ^ Wendorf, op. cit

# 115^ Holocene Settlement of the Egyptian Sahara. Volume 1: The Archaeology of Nabta Playa.By Fred Wendorf, Romauld Schild, and Associates. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York (ISBN 0-306-46612-0 2001) 2001

# 116 ^ Toby A. H. Wilkinson, Early Dynastic Egypt, Routledge, 1999, pp. 45-182; see also Tassie,G and Van Wetering, J. (2003) "Early Cemeteries of the Eastern Delta In Egyptology at the Dawn of the Twenty First Century," Ed. Hawass, Z.)

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