Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

deep desert beyond the oasis of Dakhla. He therefore concluded that Kharga was the land of Yam and that Dakhla was the
land of the Timhiu (Libyans). But this is clearly incorrect, for we have already seen that if this was the case, Harkhuf ’s
boast that it took only seven months to go to Yam and return does not make sense. Yet going farther due west does not
make much sense either, because this direction would have taken Harkhuf directly into the Great Sand Sea, a formidable
barrage of high dunes that even today cannot be crossed without specially equipped four-wheel-drive vehicles.
So which direction did Harkhuf take? The phrase “western corner of the sky” gives us a clue. The ancient Egyptians
saw the sky as being held up by four pillars at each corner. In addition, at the time of Harkhuf, they defined the horizon as
having two parts: east and west. The “western corner of the sky,” therefore, implies the southwest corner—and it leads
toward Gilf Kebir and, beyond it, to the Tibesti highlands in Chad. As we have seen, however, such a journey is not
possible without adequate sources of water along the way, and no such water sources, either on the way or at Gilf Kebir
itself, existed. The first available water is 200 kilometers south of Gilf Kebir, at Jebel Uwainat. Interestingly, though, in a
1965 article by G. W. Murray, the director of the topographical survey of Egypt, Murray explains that he examined the
inscriptions of Harkhuf, and he suggests: “The Land of Temeh [Timhiu/Libyans] was an Egyptian expression for the
inhabited parts of the southern Libyan desert. They were widely scattered . . . [I]n the far south-west, the sandstone massif
of the Gilf Kebir made up, to borrow a phrase from the Chief of Yam, ‘the western corners of heaven. . . .’” 19
Bearing this in mind, we can note another intriguing term found in the letter written to Harkhuf by the young King
Pepi II. In this letter, Pepi II refers to Yam as ta-akhet-iu, which Egyptologists translate as “land of the horizon
dwellers.” In hieroglyphs it is written thus:
“Land of the horizon dwellers” implies that Yam was a very distant place—so distant that its people were deemed to
live in the horizon. The historian A. J. Arkell even suggested that Yam was as far in the southwest as Darfur in the
Sudan. 20 Where exactly was Yam, however, and who or what were the mysterious horizon dwellers?
We know with absolute certainty that, millennia before Harkhuf went to Yam, the southwest corner of the Egyptian
Sahara either was inhabited or visited regularly by a Black people as attested by the rock art found at Gilf Kebir and Jebel
Uwainat. Since 2003 we have known that these Black people were also in the Nabta Playa region, thanks to the CPE’s
discovery of a prehistoric cemetery only 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) from Nabta Playa near a large sand dune called
Jebel Ramlah.
[T]he anthropological and forensic analysis] . . . show that two different populations—Mediterranean and sub-
Saharan—co-existed here [at Gebel Ramlah near Nabta Playa] . . . [T]he people who inhabited the shores of the
Gebel Ramlah lake were not cut off from the rest of the world. Their contacts sometimes stretched very far, as is
evidenced by unearthed objects made of raw materials that were not to be found in the vicinity, and must have been
brought in from outside. The best example of such long-distance imports is a nose plug made of turquoise, the
closest sources of which are located 1000 km. to the north on the Sinai Peninsula. Shells were brought in either
from the Nile, 100 km. away, or from the Red Sea much further to the east. . . . Ivory was brought from the south,
since elephants, which belonged among the Ethiopian fauna, could not survive in such dry savanna. . . . The typical
beliefs of the ancient Egyptians [to preserve the body so that the spirit could rest in peace in the afterworld] may
indeed have originated with the Neolithic peoples inhabiting the ever-drier savannah in what is today the Western
Desert, only centuries prior to the emergence of ancient Egypt. In the basin of the dried-up Nabta Playa lake, located
only 20 km. away, the same people who left behind the graveyards at the foot of Gebel Ramlah, erected gigantic
clusters of stelae, extending over many kilometers. . . . Perhaps it was indeed these [prehistoric] people who
provided the crucial stimulus towards the emergence of state organization in ancient Egypt. 21
Here, at the foot of the dune, the CPE found three burial areas that contained human skeletons of sixty-seven
individuals dated to six thousand years ago. According to Fred Wendorf and Romuald Schild of the CPE, “physical
anthropology of rare skeletal remains . . . suggests racial association of the populations with the Sub-Saharan or Black
groups.” 22 In many burials, the bones of several individuals were placed together, thrown pell-mell, as if they had been
brought to the grave in bags. This suggested to the anthropologists that the individuals may have died elsewhere in the