Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

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