Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt

evidence to date compels us to conclude that the original sub-Saharan Black race that first settled in the Chad highlands
subsequently gave rise to the cattle people of the lower Sahara, who, in turn, spawned the great Egyptian civilization
when they finally migrated into the Nile Valley as the Sahara became superarid. All the evidence seems to point to a
northward spreading of a Black African people from the Chad highlands into the green Sahara during the humid period
that started around 12,000 BCE. These people, it seemed, roamed the vast open spaces in search of water and grazing
grounds as they gradually changed their habits from hunters to pastoralists. This conversion caused them also to change
their appearance and traditions, and it contributed to them acquiring an increasingly complex knowledge of astronomy
and navigation—which were all imposed on them by the changing climate and the gradual drying of the Sahara.
Eventually, around 3500 BCE, they were forced to abandon the waterless desert and seek a new future in the Nile Valley.
By then these very ancient Black people had equipped themselves with a wealth of skills and knowledge that included
domestication of cattle, basic agriculture, art, and, more important, the ability to devise timekeeping systems and to
determine orientations with the stars in order to navigate in the deep, open desert. All these skills led them to develop a
complex social system and perhaps even basic religious ideologies, which were finally taken into the Nile Valley and
injected, like some massive cultural blood transfusion, into the more primitive dwellers there, thus planting the seeds that
sprouted and eventually bloomed into the pharaonic civilization.
Unfortunately, at present the Tibesti-Ennedi highlands are closed to foreign visitors due to political unrest in the
region, but once they are accessible again, we hope to organize an expedition there. Yet the Egyptian part of the Sahara
where we can find Gilf Kebir and Uwainat is still open to foreigners who acquire the necessary permits from the Egyptian
authorities, and it is a very strong possibility that the people who left evidence there were the same as those who had
constructed the ceremonial complex at Nabta Playa and, by extension, were the people who eventually migrated to the
Nile Valley to kick-start the enlightened civilization of ancient Egypt.
DEEP DESERT JOURNEY
In December 2007 an old friend, Mark Borda (see chapter 2), contacted us while we were in Cairo. He lives on the island
of Malta now and told us that he had recently been exploring the Egyptian Sahara with the services of an Egyptian,
Mahmoud Marai. In 2006, Borda had been the main sponsor of Carlo Bergmann’s camel expedition across the south of
the Great Sand Sea in search of the Khufra Trail, which Bergmann believed linked the oases of Dakhla and Kufra in
pharaonic times. For this expedition, Borda, together with other cosponsors, had hired Marai to provide vehicle backup.
The next year, in November 2007, Borda again hired Marai for his own expedition to Uwainat. It was during this
expedition that they had discovered irrefutable proof, in the form of hieroglyphic inscriptions, that the pharaohs had
reached Uwainat in earliest times.
Mark sent us photographs by electronic mail, and we agreed that we would help him get a second translation from
one of the Egyptology institutes in Cairo. Meanwhile Mark sought the help of British Egyptologists in London for
another translation, reasoning that if both translations were the same, then he could be reasonably sure of the meaning of
the hieroglyphs. He also put us in contact with Mahmoud Marai, who lived in Cairo.
We met Marai in January 2008 and immediately made plans for a deep-desert expedition to Gilf Kebir and Jebel
Uwainat. Marai said he and his three Toyota Land Cruisers could be ready within a week. The problem, as usual, was
raising the money to fund our expeditions, which, like other expeditions, could be a costly business. To defray some of
the cost, we decided to invite a few paying guests in addition to putting up part of the money ourselves. By mid-March
we had acquired all the funds necessary and fixed a date for the first week in April. The guests, who included Michele
(Robert Bauval’s wife), Bryan Hokum (a filmmaker from Los Angeles), Lyra Marble (who has a Pumpkin Patch *41
business in Hollywood), and Dustin Donaldson (a performance artist who also manages a website devoted to esoteric
philosopher Manly P. Hall). We arrived in Cairo on April 5, and two days later we met Marai and his crew at the
Bahareya oasis, the starting station for our deep-desert journey. After being delayed two days by local police until our
permits were ready, and until we could be allocated a military escort (who was an unarmed soldier named Muhammad),
we finally were ready to set off. We spent the third night at the Farafra oasis, and then we headed toward Dakhla oasis.
Just before reaching Dakhla, we turned southwest and off the tarmac road to head into the open desert.
There is nothing more thrilling than traveling toward the unknown. Ahead of us was emptiness as far as the eye
could see, and the more we pushed southwest toward the horizon, the more this emptiness engulfed us, reducing us, it
seemed, to the size of ants. It is during moments such as these that we become aware of how vastly unpopulated our
planet still is. If we are concerned about world population, then we ought to take a trek in the desert, where the gods will