Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

Recommendations

Info

THE EGYPTIAN TEACHER AND THE MALTESE BUSINESSMAN Mahmoud Marai is an Egyptian chemistry lecturer who, like Carlo Bergmann, dropped his career in the classroom for a more adventurous career in the desert. He set up a tour-operating business, taking tourists and adventurers into the deep desert, eventually specializing in trips dedicated to exploration. Mahmoud’s infatuation with the desert began when he was stationed at the oasis of Siwa during his military service. There, roaming the golden dunes at the edge of the Great Sand Sea, he was hit by the explorer’s bug, and his experience with the desert was love at first sight. Mahmoud just had to become involved with its barren beauty, its haunting and alluring isolation, and, of course, its many mysteries. Like others before him, he dreamed of finding the legendary lost oasis of Zarzora and going to places that were still unexplored. This strange pull that the desert has on some people is not uncommon. There is an inexplicable attraction to being alone in its vast emptiness where earth and sky seem to meet and become one. Somehow, the isolation from human habitation brings us closer to the essence of our humanity. There is an old Arab saying that God lives in the desert. To put it slightly differently, it feels as if it is not us but our soul that is alive when we roam the open desert, for it provokes a strange and very strong sensation that God is standing near us when we are alone in its vastness. At any rate, Marai’s enthusiasm for daring and challenging desert trips attracted the attention of many explorers. In the winter of 2007 a Maltese businessman, Mark Borda, hired Mahmoud Marai for a desert trek 39 to Uwainat. The permits for this expedition were issued via Mahmoud Marai as a registered tour operator by the Ministry of Interior and the Egyptian military authorities, who are responsible for the safety of travelers and tours in the Western Desert. Borda and Marai had met the previous year through the intermediary of Carlo Bergmann. Borda’s objective was to search unexplored areas for anything that might be of scientific interest to scholars of geology, botany, archaeology, and anthropology. By carefully studying satellite imagery before the trip, Borda had drawn up an extensive list of targets. Upon his arrival at Jebel Uwainat, Borda immediately set about the task of surveying these targets systematically, very often with Marai accompanying him on his treks. They combed many areas in the lower slopes, wadis, and plateaus mainly southeast of the Uwainat massif. Each day they trekked about 15 to 20 kilometers (9 to 12 miles), checking every nook, crack, and cave they encountered. This method paid off, and they found the locations of dozens of unreported prehistoric works of art. PHARAONIC INSCRIPTIONS! A CARTOUCHE OF A KING! By November 27, Marai and Borda had already been walking and searching for nine days. On that day, just as they were about to arrive back at camp for lunch, Borda scanned with his powerful binoculars the last remaining section of boulders that lay strewn on a slope. They were in a region at the southern rim of Jebel Uwainat—which is some 50 kilometers (about 31 miles) into Sudanese territory—an area into which it is dangerous to venture. (In September 2008 a group of Italian tourists was kidnapped at Jebel Uwainat by rebels, and they endured a two-week ordeal before they were freed after a gunfight between the rebels and the Egyptian military.) As Borda panned with his binoculars, he suddenly saw an unmistakable shape on the surface of one of the larger boulders some 100 meters (about 328 feet) from where he stood. It was a shape that he had seen many times before—but only hundreds of kilometers from Jebel Uwainat. He exclaimed to Marai in disbelief, “There is a pharaonic cartouche on that boulder!” As he moved closer, focusing his eyepiece with growing excitement, he began to see hieroglyphic inscriptions inside and outside the cartouche (see plate 3). The two men could barely contain their excitement, for there it was, after decades of speculation, incontestable evidence that the ancient Egyptians managed to reach this remote place after all! The whole geography of ancient Egypt suddenly changed before their eyes. They immediately took dozens of digital photographs and carefully recorded the coordinates of the location with GPS. After leaving Jebel Uwainat, Borda also decided to check various prominent hills and rocky outcrops and managed to discover a magnificent cave with exquisite prehistoric art in a region previously considered void of such work. The images were not engraved but painted in bright colors. There were scenes showing slender Black men and women tending cattle, performing daily chores, and dancing and acting out rituals. The details and colors were so vivid that it was difficult to accept that they were thousands of years old. These works and the pharaonic inscriptions were by far more than Marai and Borda had dreamed of finding. Now they could return to Cairo with this historical trophy and an amazing story to tell. Upon their return, Mark Borda immediately flew to London to get a quick translation of the Uwainat Inscriptions, as they are now known. At the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, Borda showed the photographs to Maltese Egyptologist Aloisia de Trafford and British ancient languages specialist Joe Clayton of Birkbeck College. We
can imagine how these scholars felt as they read the two lines of hieroglyphs, and their bewilderment and excitement upon seeing the words land of Yam in the ancient text . . . even more because, by a strange coincidence, Clayton had written a thesis on Yam. PHARAOH MENTUHOTEP’S ENVOY TO YAM The final translation of the Uwainat Inscriptions was a joint effort between Joe Clayton and Aloisia de Trafford, and their study and conclusions were published in an article coauthored with Borda in the July 2008 issue of the journal Sahara. 40 They refrained from giving the exact location of the inscriptions for fear of tourist guides taking clients there. The inscriptions are rather faint and cannot be seen from the plains below. Fate would have it that Mark Borda happened to aim his binoculars in that precise direction, a visual lucky turn of the spade (although, as Borda later explained to us, he quite methodically and thoroughly surveyed all likely surfaces in targeted areas, and the inscription is located on a conspicuous boulder that would have been difficult to overlook). The inscriptions form a rough rectangle 0.74 by 0.84 meter (about 29 by 33 inches). The left portion of the rectangle shows a king sitting on a throne under a canopy opposite a large cartouche bearing his name. Above and below the king’s cartouche is written his royal title. The right portion of the rectangle has two lines of hieroglyphs, and beneath each there is a drawing of a man making offerings. Here is the translation by Clayton and de Trafford. (Left side) Son of Re, Mentuhotep [inside the cartouche] King of Upper and Lower Egypt [above cartouche] Horus living Forever [below cartouche] (Right side) Yam bringing incense [upper line] [images: man kneeling, holding a bowl; another man lying face down, holding a bowl?] Tekhebet bringing . . . [lower line] [image: man kneeling, presenting a mountain goat] Clayton and de Trafford dated the inscriptions from the Middle Kingdom ca. 2000 BCE. This is, in any case, confirmed by the name of the king as well as the horizontal orientation of the hieroglyphs. The two proposed that the whole motif means that people from Yam and also from Tekhebet (a place of unknown location and, oddly, not mentioned in any other ancient Egyptian texts) came here to Uwainat to rendezvous with an Egyptian delegation sent by King Mentuhotep, probably Mentuhotep II, to present gifts to the pharaoh and also trade with his envoy. According to Clayton, de Trafford, and Borda: This new find in Uwainat adds another startling piece to this puzzle by revealing evidence for Egypt’s relations with two foreign lands and raises the possibility that these lands may have been located in sub-Saharan Africa, either south or southwest of Jebel Uwainat, possibly hundreds of kilometers further west of the Nile than previously thought. 41 Oddly, Clayton, de Trafford, and Borda do not mention the Tibesti-Ennedi highlands in northern Chad as a possible location of the legendary kingdom of Yam and/or the mysterious kingdom of Tekhebet—although they imply this by suggesting sub-Saharan Africa hundreds of kilometers south or southwest of Uwainat. This can be only either Sudan (south of Uwainat) or the Tibesti-Ennedi highlands in northern Chad (southwest of Uwainat). The latter are perhaps the most likely and most obvious place. Clayton, de Trafford, and Borda also avoided speaking of the Tebu or Goran people who originally came from the Tibesti Mountains, even though they presumably knew that Ahmed Hassanein had encountered a group of them at Jebel Uwainat in 1923. Although no one can tell for sure how long ago these blackskinned people inhabited the Tibesti-Ennedi highlands, these areas have an abundance of rock art similar to Uwainat that suggests a prehistoric origin. Today some three hundred fifty thousand Tebu still inhabit the Tibesti Mountains, although they have now converted to Islam and therefore no longer live by their old ways. It is highly likely that prehistoric rock art of the Tibesti-Ennedi highlands and the art found at Uwainat have a common origin. It is also very likely that the Tibesti- Ennedi highlands were the final destination of the Abu Ballas Trail. Surely, then, an expedition starting from Uwainat and heading to the Tibesti highlands would be the next logical step in the search for the fabled Land of Yam or Tekhebet. We
Page 3 and 4: For my daughter, Candice, and my so
Page 5 and 6: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book was not a
Page 7 and 8: More Mysteries at Nabta Playa The S
Page 9 and 10: INTRODUCTION ANCIENT EGYPT REBORN N
Page 11 and 12: 1 STRANGE STONES In Nabta there are
Page 13 and 14: desert” emerge from the surroundi
Page 15 and 16: stage the CPE anthropologists were
Page 17 and 18: arguments—and especially on the B
Page 19 and 20: This time, some archaeologists took
Page 21 and 22: who’s who of famous men: it inclu
Page 23 and 24: huge rocky massif sprouting out of
Page 25 and 26: Almasy planned an expedition to Gil
Page 27 and 28: of Setu and Irtet after having expl
Page 29 and 30: Sahara, and their bones were brough
Page 31 and 32: Djedefre Water Mountain, as Bergama
Page 33: Figure 2.5. Abu Ballas Pottery Hill
Page 37 and 38: followed by the same determinative
Page 39 and 40: The surface of the now-covered bedr
Page 41 and 42: indeed, one of the main objectives
Page 43 and 44: In addition to tumuli tombs of catt
Page 45 and 46: since fallen. The largest ones were
Page 47 and 48: ALIGNMENTS TOWARD THE STARS: WHEN A
Page 49 and 50: elated not only to the gates of the
Page 51 and 52: dates within thousands of years of
Page 53 and 54: the largest stone. Again, the dista
Page 55 and 56: thus sent in an order to Quickbird
Page 57 and 58: Finally, to our relief, the light f
Page 59 and 60: degrees and azimuth 22.5 degrees an
Page 61 and 62: associated with the heleical rising
Page 63 and 64: ight angle. After that date, Nabta
Page 65 and 66: also note that several megalithic a
Page 67 and 68: ceremonial complex of Nabta Playa.
Page 69 and 70: Figure 4.14. Bagnold Circle in, top
Page 71 and 72: have been placed by humans, possibl
Page 73 and 74: 5 THE BIBLE, THE HAMITES, AND THE B
Page 75 and 76: Even allowing that scholars tend to
Page 77 and 78: May 11, 2001, vol. 292, no. 5519, p
Page 79 and 80: egions: the Nile Valley and the vas
Page 81 and 82: At any rate, suffice it to say that
Page 83 and 84: perspective. We must also acknowled
Page 85 and 86:
Plate 2. Djedefre Water Mountain, c
Page 87 and 88:
Plate 8. Robert Bauval with herder
Page 89 and 90:
Plate 15. Models of cows, Eleventh
Page 91 and 92:
Plate 22. The rock-cut tomb of Hark
Page 93 and 94:
wagging tail. We found them on the
Page 95 and 96:
BCE to 2500 BCE. What she found odd
Page 97 and 98:
eassure us that all is not lost, af
Page 99 and 100:
Figure 5.3. Numerous prehistoric ha
Page 101 and 102:
themselves, our drivers uttered a b
Page 103 and 104:
arely kill their cattle for food ex
Page 105 and 106:
to study the stars, perhaps even na
Page 107 and 108:
pointed star, which represents Siri
Page 109 and 110:
In the first century, some half-cen
Page 111 and 112:
Egyptologists have established that
Page 113 and 114:
Like the Nabta Playa prehistoric st
Page 115 and 116:
y the astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer
Page 117 and 118:
In appendix 1 we look in detail at
Page 119 and 120:
esynchronized every 1,460 years—t
Page 121 and 122:
÷ 10 = 3.9 years for the calendar
Page 123 and 124:
ole, he was known as Hor-Akhti, Hor
Page 125 and 126:
The rounded planisphere that is see
Page 127 and 128:
topped mound whose midpoint and end
Page 129 and 130:
POSTSCRIPT DISCOVERY OF THE KIFAH C
Page 131 and 132:
APPENDIX 1 BACK TO THE FIRST TIME V
Page 133 and 134:
TAKE A WALK AT THE FIRST TIME WITH
Page 135 and 136:
alignment is part of a symbolic sys
Page 137 and 138:
Pyramid at Zawiyet el-Aryan) is ass
Page 139 and 140:
APPENDIX 2 SOTHIC CYCLES AND IMHOTE
Page 142 and 143:
APPENDIX 3 SAVING NABTA PLAYA Will
Page 144 and 145:
Figure A2. Rubbish dumps in the cen
Page 146 and 147:
a huge pumping station (the Mubarak
Page 148 and 149:
In actual practice, though, the dev
Page 150 and 151:
are not now capable of this percept
Page 152 and 153:
*53. Actually, it is 365.242 days,
Page 154 and 155:
Endnotes CHAPTER 1. STRANGE STONES
Page 156 and 157:
Mentioning Yam and Tekhebet,” Sah
Page 158 and 159:
13. J. M. Malville, R. Schild, F. W
Page 160 and 161:
41. Thomas Brophy, The Mechanism De
Page 162 and 163:
34. G. A. Wainwright, “Seshat and
Page 164 and 165:
100. The story is told in the Westc
Page 166 and 167:
Bibliography Abed, Wael T. The Othe
Page 168 and 169:
Genzlinger, Neil. “Chasing Mummie
Page 170 and 171:
Millennium: A Reassessment.” Jour
Page 172 and 173:
About the Authors Egyptian-born Rob
Page 174 and 175:
BOOKS OF RELATED INTEREST Lost Know
Page 176:
Electronic edition produced by ePub
show all

Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?