Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

of Setu and Irtet after having explored this land. You will find no other Sole Companion, Chief of interpreters who
has reached [so far] into the land of Yam before.
His Majesty sent me for a third time to the land of Yam. I went there from the Nome of Thinis by the oasis road
and I observed that the chief of the land of Yam had left for the land of the Timhiu to chastise them, as far as the
western corner of the sky. I followed his trail to the land of the Timhiu and I pacified him until he adored all the
gods for the sake of the royal Sovereign. [I shall make haste . . . with a man from the land of Yam] . . . so that His
Majesty Merenre, my royal Lord, shall know [that I went to the land of Timhiu] following the chief of the land of
Yam. After having given satisfaction to this celebrated chief . . . I returned with three hundred donkeys burdened
with incense, ebony, hekenu perfume, grain, panther skins, elephant tusks, many boomerangs, and all kinds of
beautiful and good presents. When the chief of Irtet-Setu-Wa-Wat saw how strong and numerous were the troops of
the land of Yam returning with me towards the residence [marching] in the company of the army which had been
sent with me, he handed over, to be given to me, bulls and goats and guided me through the ways of the hills of Irtet
—because of the skill and the vigilance which I had shown, more than any other Companion, Chief of interpreters,
former envoy to the land of Yam. Then, this servant followed the course of the river as far as the Residence; and it
was arranged that the prince, Sole Companion, Steward of the two halls of libation [?] came to meet me with ships
loaded with date wine, cakes, bread and beer.
THE PRINCE, TREASURER TO THE KING OF LOWER EGYPT, SOLE COMPANION, LECTOR-PRIEST, TREASURER
OF THE GOD, SECRET COUNSELOR FOR THE DECREES, THE IMAKU, HARKHUF 15
In this inscription, Harkhuf claims that he “carried out this mission in seven months,” and another in eight months.
The Egyptologist James H. Breasted translated Harkhuf ’s statement thus: “I did it in only seven months!” Clearly this
shows that Harkhuf was proud of his accomplishment of the time it took him to go to Yam and return, otherwise he
would not have boasted about it. 16 We know too that Harkhuf used donkeys for these journeys (the camel was not
known in Egypt until much later). Any experienced desert traveler knows that a donkey laden with a typical load of 60
kilograms (about 130 pounds) can travel only 15 kilometers (about 9 miles) a day average (allowing for rest breaks) and
even fewer kilometers if the terrain is rough and craggy.
In the ancient Egyptian calendar, seven months amounted to 210 days. Therefore, we can estimate the distance of
Hakhuf’s travel to Yam and back as 3,150 kilometers (1,957 miles). Yet the distance from the Nile Valley to Kharga and
back is only 400 kilometers (249 miles); and to Dakhla and back, the distance is 540 kilometers (336 miles) and would
take only thirty-six days at the most. If either Kharga or Dakhla were Harkhuf’s destination, as some Egyptologists have
claimed, then surely Harkhuf would not have boasted to the pharaoh that he “did it in only seven months.” The
conclusion must be that Yam is much farther than either Kharga or Dakhla. Our estimate shows that it must have been at
least some 1,500 kilometers (about 932 miles) from the Nile Valley at Aswan, most certainly in a southwestward
direction. Most Egyptologists, however, have insisted that Harkhuf traveled south, albeit probably first going west to the
Kharga oasis, but then turning south along the Darb El Arbaeen (the so-called Forty-Days Trail) parallel to the Nile to
reach a place between the second and third cataracts in the Sudan, where, some say, Yam could also have been located. 17
Other than the fact that the distance to this location and back would be only 1,000 kilometers (about 621 miles), and thus
2,150 kilometers (1,336 miles) short of our estimate, we must also wonder why Harkhuf chose to travel in the desert
parallel to the Nile to reach the second cataract when he could have much more easily sailed by boat on the Nile itself. To
explain this, Egyptologists have speculated that perhaps the region on the Nile south of Aswan was in the hands of hostile
tribes, and Harkhuf may have wanted to bypass them by traveling inland in the desert. In his inscriptions, however,
Harkhuf makes it clear that Yam was somewhere very far. He started in Upper Egypt and traveled along the “oases road”
and then westward “to the western corner of the sky”—and not, as Egyptologists claim, south toward the Sudan: “I went
there from the Nome of Thinis [Upper Egypt] by the oasis road and I observed that the chief of the land of Yam had left
for the land of the Timhiu to chastise them, as far as the western corner of the sky. I followed his trail to the land of the
Timhiu.” The Timhiu or Temehou are often said by Egyptologists to be the ancient dwellers of the Sahara in southern
Libya. This belief prompted the American Egyptologist Hans Geodicke of Johns Hopkins University to ask, “Where did
the chief of Yam go in ‘the land of the Libyans’ ‘to beat the Libyans’”? The intention attributed to the chief of Yam “to
beat the Libyans to the Western corner of heaven” makes it clear that the chief of Yam had gone in a westerly direction. 18
Yet Hans Goedicke, like all Egyptologists before him, held firm that the ancient Egyptians could not travel into the