Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

arely kill their cattle for food except on rare occasions, such as important feasts or celebrations. The evidence from
Nabta Playa strongly suggests that the prehistoric people there treated their cattle in very much the same way.
Furthermore, carbon-14 and other dating methods used by Fred Wendorf indicated that the cattle there were domesticated
some ninety-five hundred years ago, making Nabta Playa the earliest known domestication center in the world. In view of
this startling conclusion, let us take a closer look at the mysterious cattle people of Nabta Playa, for clearly they were far
more sophisticated and resourceful than we previously thought.
BONES AND STONES
We can recall that at Nabta Playa, Fred Wendorf and his team discovered a dozen tumuli on the west side of the site,
which contained dismantled bones of cattle and, in one particular case, the complete, articulated skeleton of a young cow.
The heads of the cows were all directed south, implying a religious ritual. In addition, when they excavated the largest of
the so-called complex structures, CSA was found to contain a huge boulder fashioned in the rough shape of a cow, the
so-called cow stone. This stone was removed from its original burial place by anthropologists with a makeshift derrick
and was taken to the city of Aswan, where it was placed in the yard of the Nubian Museum. *43
We also have seen that it was from the cow stone tumuli and CSA that long lines of upright stones emanated like
spokes from a bicycle wheel toward the north and the east—with the former lines directed toward the Big Dipper and the
latter lines toward Sirius and Orion’s belt. It should come as no surprise, therefore, to know that much later these three
stellar asterisms were also targeted by ancient Egyptians and were even given intense cow and bull symbolism. Indeed,
according to most Egyptologists and archaeoastronomers, it is only these three stellar asterisms that can be identified
with any certainty from ancient Egyptian texts and drawings. 1 The pharaohs knew the Big Dipper as Mesekhtyw, the thigh
(of a bull or cow), and Sirius as Spdt, which was linked to the well-known cow goddesses Hathor and Isis. †44
Orion was known as Sah, and this constellation was associated with Osiris and the pharaoh who, in turn, was also
symbolized as a celestial bull and the celebrated Apis Bull of Memphis. Further, all of these clues involving cattle and
megalithic astronomy specifically involving Sirius, Orion, and the Big Dipper strongly suggest a link across the centuries
of religious ideologies between the prehistoric society of the Sahara and that of pharaonic Egypt. We will return to this
and other links between the mysterious cattle/star rituals of Nabta Playa and the various stellar/ cow goddesses and gods
of pharaonic Egypt, but first we must understand why the ancients associated their cattle with the rising of these stars 2
and why this association was so important to the prehistoric black people of Nabta Playa.
NAVIGATING THE SAND SEA
As we saw in chapter 2, when Ahmed Hassanein trekked at night to reach Uwainat, his Tebu guide used the stars to
navigate in the featureless desert landscape, very much as some do on the open sea. When we travel in open desert
conditions without a compass or GPS, especially at night, it is extremely easy to become confused and lost, with no way
of telling direction. In the daytime, traveling is very different: the sun’s shadow can be used to establish the cardinal
direction at noon—but at night, and especially on a moonless night, only the stars can perform this role. As an example,
we recall that on such a moonless night during our journey, we did not light any fires or lamps at our campsite in order
not to advertise our position to SLA rebels or brigands. In such darkness it was nearly impossible for our campsite to be
seen beyond a hundred meters (328 feet) or so. The only way to mark its position, therefore, was to use the stars as the
Bedouins did. In such open, barren spaces, in fact, it soon becomes second nature to use the stars for navigating at night.
Almost certainly the ancient cattle herders of the Sahara did the same. Indeed, these ancient people had all the time in the
world to study the night sky, because they were there in the desert, night after night, from generation to generation, from
century to century, perhaps even from millennium to millennium. They could become fully familiar with all the
observable star cycles, including precession. It is also probable that when they finally became sedentary and settled
permanently at Nabta Playa, the need for navigation became obsolete, and thus their practical knowledge of the stars was
converted into a star religion with rituals and symbolic structures that, in their minds, allowed them to communicate with
the sky gods. The same star religion, but in a much more elaborate form, was later practiced by the ancient Egyptians, or,
as we now are beginning to suspect, was inherited from the star cattle people of the Sahara and was further developed.
The immense importance of the stars, especially Sirius, to the ancient Egyptians is recognized by all Egyptologists.
Sirius, as is well-known, marked New Year’s Day and also served as a cosmic herald of the Nile’s annual flood. More
important, Sirius was directly associated with the rebirth of kings. Dr. Jaromir Malek, director of the Griffith Institute at