Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt
Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt
Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt
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Plate 25. <strong>The</strong> temple <strong>of</strong> Hathor at Dendera<br />
When Rosita Forbes traveled to the oasis <strong>of</strong> Kufra with Ahmed Hassanein in 1921, she became the first European<br />
woman to encounter the Tebu—some two hundred <strong>of</strong> them still living in the Kufra region. Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston,<br />
the great British explorer and diplomat who wrote the introduction to Forbes’s book, comments on that region and the<br />
Tebu people.<br />
It is one <strong>of</strong> the vestiges <strong>of</strong> a formerly well-watered country ten, twenty or more thousand years ago. To it [Kufra]<br />
came, long ago, when the intervening desert was much more traversable, clans <strong>of</strong> Tu, Tebu or Tibu people,<br />
nowadays the dominant population <strong>of</strong> Fazan and Tibesti. . . . <strong>The</strong>y are seemingly <strong>of</strong> considerable antiquity, the<br />
Garamantes <strong>of</strong> Herodotus and the Romans, the Tedamansii <strong>of</strong> Claudius Ptolemeaus, the Alexandrian geographer <strong>of</strong><br />
the second century. <strong>The</strong>y represent one <strong>of</strong> the numerous races between the White man and the Negro, but in their<br />
purer and more northern extension they are a people with a preponderance <strong>of</strong> White man stock. <strong>The</strong> skin is darktinted<br />
and the hair has a kink, a curl about it. . . . <strong>The</strong>y do not differ very much, facially, from the Hamitic people <strong>of</strong><br />
Northeast Africa . . . 48<br />
It was a small contingency <strong>of</strong> Tebu people that Ahmed Hassanein had in fact encountered at Jebel Uwainat in 1923<br />
(see chapter 2). He called them Goran, which is another name for these ancient people. <strong>The</strong>re were one hundred fifty <strong>of</strong><br />
them, ruled by a king called Herri. In Hassanein’s words, here is what happened when he woke up one morning in Wadi<br />
Karkur Talh at Uwainat:<br />
As I opened my eyes a figure stood near me that seemed to be part <strong>of</strong> a pleasant dream. She was a beautiful girl <strong>of</strong><br />
the Goran, the slim graceful lines <strong>of</strong> whose body were not spoiled by the primitive garments she wore. She carried a<br />
bowl <strong>of</strong> milk, which she <strong>of</strong>fered with shy dignity. I could only accept it and drink gratefully. . . . A Tebu appeared<br />
with a parcel <strong>of</strong> meat <strong>of</strong> the waddan or wild sheep. I gave him macaroni and rice and he went away happy. After we<br />
had eaten I went to see some relics <strong>of</strong> the presence <strong>of</strong> men in earlier times. . . . I had got talking with one <strong>of</strong> the<br />
Gorans, and having satisfied myself about the present inhabitants <strong>of</strong> Ouenat, I asked him whether he knew anything<br />
about any former inhabitants <strong>of</strong> the oasis. He gave me a startling answer. “Many different people have lived round<br />
these wells, as far back as anyone can remember. Even djinns have dwelt in that place in olden days.” “Djinns!” I<br />
exclaimed. “How do you know that?” “Have they not left their drawings on the rocks?” he answered. With<br />
suppressed excitement I asked him where. He replied that in the valley <strong>of</strong> Ouenat there were many drawings upon the<br />
rocks, but I could not induce him to describe them further than saying that there were “writings and drawings <strong>of</strong> all<br />
the animals living and nobody knows what sort <strong>of</strong> pens they used, for they wrote very deeply on the stones and Time<br />
has not been able to efface the writings.” Doing my best not to show anything like excitement, I inquired whether he<br />
could tell me just where the drawings were. . . . I gathered that Ouenat was the pied-a-terre <strong>of</strong> Tebus and Goran. . . .<br />
With these drawings in mind, then, I took Malkenni who had joined the caravan at Arkenu, and towards sunset he led<br />
me straight to them. <strong>The</strong>y were in the valley at the part where it drew in, curving slightly with a suggestion <strong>of</strong> the