Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

The memory of the ancient lands must have lasted for a long time, and was perhaps progressively mythified,
following a process that has been well documented in ethnology in many other places in Africa. Perhaps the rituals
even demanded a periodic return to ancient cult places . . . like the great shelter of the Wadi Sura. In this way the
memory of the ancient vision of the land of the dead, as well as the land of origins, would have been preserved. 58
The recent finding of Bergmann and Borda fully support this hypothesis, and to which we also agree.
Central to the cave ceiling was a domestic scene, with bags or gourds probably filled with milk or grain, hanging
from the roof of a house. There were three types of cows: black and white, all white, and white and brown with black
spots. These were drawn in very realistic postures—walking, grazing, or being herded to a watering hole. We took
photographs from every angle in order to have a detailed record for our own files. Oddly, outside the cave there were no
visible signs of human presence as far as we could make out. *42
Figure 5.5. Cattle and people at Uwainat cave
It is likely that any such evidence lay buried under the sand that had filled the floor of the cave, drifting in and out
over the millennia. Our imaginations ran wild: we conjured images of the hardy people who must have lived here
thousands of years ago and who, perhaps, hailed originally from the Tibesti Mountains. The rock art they left behind
made it easy for us to visualize their women milking cows or grinding seeds and cereals while their men went hunting or
chipped stones to make knives and arrow or spear heads and the elderly sat outside at night, pondering the stars. The most
thrilling part of this experience was finally to see with our own eyes those mysterious black-skinned ancestors that once
navigated the desert, learned the art of husbandry, followed basic agriculture, practiced the rudiments of astronomy and
timekeeping, and then finally moved eastward toward the Nile, toward Egypt, carrying their precious cargo: knowledge,
which was to spawn a great civilization.
We resumed our journey, skirting the eastern flank of Uwainat Mountain, reaching the Sudanese border early in the
afternoon. On our way south we steered clear of a small sign fixed on a metal pole (we examined the sign and saw that it
said, in Arabic, misr [Egypt] on one side and sudan on the other, and our handheld GPS indicated it was a few kilometers
off the actual border). Continuing south, we drove across the border and around the mountain and found ourselves on the
south flank of Uwainat late in the afternoon. Here, the remoteness and utter mystery of this strange place took hold of us.
The landscape was otherworldly, and we felt as though we were astronauts landing on an alien planet for the first time. It
was very tempting to start exploring, but night was falling fast, so we decided to camp in a sandy bowl set against a rocky
mound some 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the mountain.
We hardly slept that night; the excitement was too great. We refrained from lighting a fire in order not to attract SLA
rebels that may have been roaming the region. Just a few weeks before, a group of foreign tourists had been kidnapped in
this area, and our unarmed military escort was extremely nervous about being here on the Sudanese side of the border. In
the morning, at the first break of light, we quickly lifted camp, packed our gear, and set off toward the massif of Uwainat.
We headed for the twin peaks that dominated the ridge and toward the place where Marai and Borda had seen the
pharaonic inscriptions a few months before. As we drove there, one of the drivers suddenly let out a shout. He had
apparently spotted part of a human skeleton sticking out of the sand. We stopped and rushed to examine the shallow
burial. It was not prehistoric but was much younger, probably less than a century old. Likely the skeleton belonged to a
Tebu nomad or Bedouin. Our drivers could tell he was a Muslim from the way the body was laid. As Muslims