IMDb: Another Eurocentric Safe Haven Masquerading as a Resourceful platform

Introduction:

Perhaps the basic evolutionary trajectory of human lifestyle is variably understood in the following manner: a so-called "stone-age", and in some cases, "nomadic" or "hunter-gatherer" sustenance, gives way to "sedentary", "agriculture" and/or "animal husbandry", and then to "community-building" or "urbanization", thereby possibly paving way for "social stratification" and "nation-building", which in turn may well have served as a basic ingredient for the flourishing of "cottage industry" and "trade", to be succeeded by "industrialization" and "commerce" (larger-scale trade). In that vein, it is commonly understood that "industrialization" has been followed by the "information/technology age", as another stage in human development. As it concerns this "information age", particularly with the coming of age of the internet, many "social" platforms of various stripes and self-professed functions have popped over the years.

As the "information age" matures, so does the plethora of "social media" grow in number. This, like any other undertaking by humans, comes with the good and the bad.

The Coming of Age of the Olympic Games

Introduction: 

It's hard to resist the temptation of having something to say about the Olympics, now that the summer Olympic Games are here again. Greece holds a special nostalgic place in the circles of the Olympic Games, that have been by tradition, held every four years for both summer and winter, respectively; the reason being, that these games are said to have been inspired by ancient Greek Olympic games. In the midst of accompanying jubilation around these games, Greece is often touted as the "birth place of sports", as particularly exemplified by media talk on those occasions when Greece took on the role as the host nation for the games, like the recent events that took place in Athens eight years ago. Such glorification rarely pay mind to history of organized sports events going even further back in time, as exemplified by those in say, ancient Egypt.

Getting to Know Ancient Egyptian Art - Continued

Here, we carry-over an ongoing topic on "Getting to Know Ancient Egyptian Art". This section will deal with certain codes which artists appear to have adhered to. These are recurring themes that appear to have then been timeless, in that they spanned several Dynasties despite new artistic styles sanctioned by succeeding rulers.

Akhenaten's Face!

When we hear the name "Akhenaten", more than likely for many of us, the first image of the pharaoh that comes to mind is one similar to those displayed on the statues below:

The consistency with which each of the sculptures above portray the Pharaoh's face, like for example, the way the statues display a personality with a rather long slender face, obviously plays a role in image stamped into folks' minds about the pharaoh. The images are consistent in the way the Pharaoh's cheek bones manifest, the aforementioned long and slender face, the eye-shapes, the nose and lips. Such artistic consistency has even enticed anthropologists to link the Pharaoh to skeletal remains that they feel conforms to the long facial profile seen the New Kingdom statues. Such consistency may even suggest that the images are capturing the pharaoh when he was alive, and in light of such matters, it may be seen as a dismissive one but the question is: Is this what the living Pharaoh would have really looked like?

The So-called Tehenu Palette

The palette itself appears to have an alternative name given to it by contemporary researchers, perhaps underlying the uncertainty surrounding the basis on which the palette has been associated with the Tehenu and/or else "Libyans", along with other speculative explanation based on such. For instance, on one website, the following was offered as an explanation:

The Tehenu palette (or Towns palette) in Cairo (C.G. 14238) is named after a sign on its verso: this shows three registers with domestic animals files and a fourth lower one with plants (trees) and the hieroglyph of the throwing stick on an oval (which means 'region', 'place', 'island'), thus a toponym of Libya or Western Delta (THnw, Tjehenw). The recto of the palette is of great importance, showing the feet of some persons and, below the register line, two rows of four and three groups respectively; each group is constituted by an animal grasping the Mer-hoe on the crenellated wall of a town; the name of each town is written within the wall [see my Corpus of Late Predynastic Decorated Palettes]. - Courtesy xoomer.virgilio.it

...that alternative name, as provided above, is "Towns" palette. Given the air of uncertainty around preexisting rationales that associate the palette scenery with "Libyan" or "Tehenu booty", the relative neutral, if not ambiguous, moniker of "Towns palette" is not unreasonable. Coincidentally, the extract reaffirms what the present author had bumped into while researching the question of the actual underlying connections made between the "Tehenu Palette" and socio-ethnic entity known to us by primary Kemetic texts, i.e. prior to the above coming to immediate attention. This has to do with the said hieroglyphic sign of the "throwing stick". Accordingly, the present author put forth the following in a discussion elsewhere:

Managed to come across reference to Alexandre Moret's and Margaret Murray's interpretation of that "throw strick"/stick sign to the right of the plants-i.e. on the side of the "Tjehenu Palette" bearing the animals and plants--as "Thn", and therefore read it as "Tehenu" or "Libyans". But as far as I know, the "stick" is generally an ideogram for something "foreign" or a "foreigner", and not relegated to any one specific ethnicity or locality. On the other hand, Jean Capart put forth the case that the said plants are "Libyan", reportedly from having made comparisons to "a bas-relief depicting Libyan spoils in Sahure's temple".

Indeed, the "throwing stick" alone does not implicate nor is relegated to just one specific foreign socio-ethnic entity or foreign locality, unless, accompanied by other particulars or specificities that point to a specific foreign ethnic entity or locality. There is nothing there about the ovular-looking heiroglyphic sign [in the lowermost register on the "verso" side of the palette] accompanying the "throwing stick" in question either, that supposedly speaks to singular and specific foreign ethnicity or locality, which in the present case, is identified as either "Tehenu" or "Libyan". Therefore, one has to look for a more compelling explanation than the one suggested by either Moret or Murray, and pin it down to a specific ethnic entity and/or state. For instance, one can start by narrowing down the possible territorial confines in which the palette scenery is implicated. As an example, perhaps if there is any indication that the side of the so-called "Tehenu Palette" bearing registers of animals and plants describes a locality, then perhaps the donkey or ass figures therein could suggest that it is on the African continent, especially if one were to put faith in the age estimations given to the palette, the specifics of which we will shortly visit, which would make the domestication and widespread use of donkeys outside of Africa a relatively rare sight at the time in question. Jean Capart, as mentioned above, appears to have taken this latter route of correlating certain "spoils" [which presumably, happened to be made largely up of fauna] implicated in the endeavors of exotic personalities [vis-a-vis the Kemetian], as it relates to their dealings with Kemetic personalities in artistic scenery, with geography. To see how Capart may have made the "Libyan" connection to the so-called Tehenu palette, one might want to examine what is displayed in the Sahure temple wall renditions that he was presumably referring to; to this end, the following images come to mind:

 Click on the image for greater resolution

Indeed, here we see accompanying fauna and flora that are not that different from those seen on the so-called Tehenu palette. Visible are sheep-like figures, cattle and asses/donkeys, which are also featured on the so-called Tehenu palette. The only fauna shown here, not visible on the "Tehenu" palette fragment, is the goat or goat-like figures. Nor are flora featured in the particular rendering at hand; whereas, at the very bottom register of the "verso" side of the "Tehenu" palette, flora are featured. The wall relief above features human personalities just above and below the registers featuring fauna; The "verso" side of the "Tehenu"/"Libyan" palette on the other hand, displays no human figures, to the extent of what is visible there. There are human figures featured on the "recto" side of the palette though, but even these are not sufficiently visible, so as to make a logical statement about possible patterns of attire on not just a single figure, but several involved.

 Click on the image for greater resolution

Another standout, is the personalities accompanying the "spoils" [if these are indeed the spoils Capart was referring to] or else fauna; while they too are partially uncovered, where attire is concerned, the patterns invoked in their attire is markedly distinct from those featured in another palette wherein "Libyans" or else "Tehenu" have been implicated by some observers—the Narmer palette. What significance does the Narmer palette hold here? For one, it is supposed to be the temporally closer item to that of the "Tehenu" palette than the Sahure temple wall relief in question. Thus, if one is to have any faith on claims that "Tehenu" are featured on either the "Tehenu" or Narmer palettes, then it is only fitting to examine any connections between the attires featured on the human figures. For this purpose, the Narmer palette renditions are provided below:

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The bearded fellows under captivity, who are supposed to be "Tehenu" or else "Libyans" according to some observers, do not feature the same attire as the figures in the Sahure temple wall relief. If the figures on the Sahure wall mural are considered to be "Tehenu", then taking that into account thereof and making a comparison to the "Libyan" or "Tehenu" figures on the Narmer palette does not immediately make apparent, the prospect of the latter "Libyan" figures of the Narmer palette being "Tehenu" as well, solely based on attire. The strapped-gear around the trunk of the human figures of the wall mural are visibly absent on the bearded-figures featured on the Narmer palette. It can be pointed out that the figures on the Sahure temple wall mural generally comprise of juvenile and feminine personalities, as opposed to adult male personalities. A close inspection of the 'verso' side of the Narmer palette, as shown above, also features what appears to be a juvenile personality to the left hand side of the authoritative figure [generally deemed to be Narmer, in this case], and here too, one cannot help but notice a strapped-gear around the trunk, with the straps crossing one another at the chest level—not unlike the manner in which the "strapped-gears" of the Sahure wall mural "Tehenu" figures feature. This figure though, sports some yet-to-make-out item on the chest area, where the straps are supposed to cross one another; this feature is absent in the Sahure wall mural counterparts. Furthermore, this same figure appears to be wearing a loincloth that is not too deviant from that of the aforementioned head figure (Narmer). This stands in contrast to the juvenile "Tehenu" figures of the Sahure wall mural, whom aside from the said "strapped-gear", wore nothing underneath, i.e. below the waist. On the other hand, the "Tehenu" figures in general, feature some sort of neck gear or ornament, which is visibly absent in the Narmer "juvenile" figure in question. Not to be left out in the midst of these observations, is that this Narmer palette "juvenile" personality does not appear to be an accomplice of the supposed "Libyan" figures, as he doesn't appear to be under any form of suppression as the said "Libyan" figures, nor do they share attire forms.

Visible on at least one of the "Libyan" figures, is a semi-exposing attire below the waist, only featuring a "penis sheath". The adult "Tehenu" figures of the Sahure wall mural also appear to be wearing similar line of clothing, although these are generally accompanied by some rope-like or semi-looped tool, weapon or device on the sides of the figures, which is visibly absent on the Narmer palette figures in question. At the top registers of the Sahure wall mural, there are some characters that might remotely be deemed to be those of male figures, but because of the tearing and wearing, and especially if one is faced with dealing with repros, cannot conclusively be reported as such. However, repro of a "Tehenu" figure, floating around the web, displays an adult male figure featuring attire not too different from the Sahure wall mural personalities:

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This male figure above on the other hand, has gear that is visibly distinct from the personalities mentioned on the Narmer palette. Even the head-hair arrangement is distinct from those of the "Libyan" personalities of the Narmer palette. So, if these items are to serve as the parameters by which a connection between the Sahure wall mural figures and those of the "Tehenu" and the Narmer palettes are made, then such connection is not made apparent here. This in of itself doesn't disprove, or prove, that the figures on either the "Tehenu" or "Narmer" palette are of folks associated with territory now identified with Libya, but it does put a question mark on whether the figures of the palettes in question are in fact those of "Tehenu", i.e. if the Sahure wall-murals are determined to be those of "Tehenu". Nor does it get any clearer, when the recto side of the Narmer palette is considered:

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Can it therefore be reckoned, that the attire of the Tehenu may have changed through the time frames in which the discussed art renditions belong? It is not impossible, but evidence for such is wanting.

On a passing note, the long-necked feline creatures on the recto side of Narmer palette are hard to ignore. Some observers have dubbed them as "serpopards". Some have interpret  them as supposed "imports" from the so-called "Near East", predicated on the flimsy standpoint that similar creature is featured in Uruk artifact dated to more or less contemporary time frame as the Narmer palette, like the Uruk seal below, reportedly dated to c. 3000 BC:

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Notwithstanding such claims, the Nile Valley example is actually dated earlier than the "Near Eastern" examples. Anytime there are some parallel cultural/artistic expressions in the Nile Valley and the so-called Near East, these same characters tend to give priority to the so-called "Near East" as the most likely source, as if to tacitly say that the Nile Valley can never be conceived as the source (it is virtually impossible) and therefore, must always be the recipient of cultural diffusion. Note that the Uruk  serpopards have much longer tails than the Narmer palette rendition, with their tails almost as long as their necks.The mythic creatures themselves may well serve as "guardians" against enemies or adversarial elements, just as that served by other mythic creatures like the Sphinx. Now that the issue of dates has been brought up, we now visit the issue of the dating attributed to the palettes discussed here. On the basis of serekhs and iconography associated with successive designated rulers spanning the predynastic time frame, attempts had been made to place the age of the so-called Tehenu palette amongst several other palettes. For instance, G. Dreyer  [Umm el-Qaab I, Mainz 1998] sought to do this very thing, i.e. reading through a series of signs/serekhs on a single palette, check to see which pharaoh figures' signs, names or serekhs have been implicated and whose has been left out thereof, and extrapolate from there, the likely temporal place of the palette in question in the midst of several other palettes. Going by a website earlier cited above, we are informed how Dreyer and others went about doing this, in reference to the themes of the Coptos Colossi statues:

The colossal limestone statues of Min were found by Petrie in the temple of Koptos in 1894; they had been fashioned with hammering technique (no chiselling) and represented the god standing with erected phallus; only the torso and part of the legs was preserved and the head of one of the statues in Oxford, although almost entirely effaced; some signs in relief were noted on the statues showing animals, plants, shells and standards.

In an article published in 1988 [JARCE 25, 35-60], B. Williams suggested the presence of a fragmentary trace of the name of Narmer on the Cairo statue; this gave an important clue about the long disputed question of the date of the statues (which in the past had ranged from Predynastic to 1st Intermediate Period according to the opinions of different Egyptologists). [For reconstructions of the colossi and temple see this page in the Petrie Museum website: Digital Egypt].

In 1995 Dreyer (loc. cit. above) proposed that the graffiti on the statues were the names of older rulers, and Narmer had been the last one to make his name be carved on those statues; therefore the colossi probably dated well before his reign, down to Naqada IIIa, and the signs carved onto them would be perhaps something similar to a king list. I must notice that the Nar-fish and the Mer-chisel are very fragmentary -only the left end preserved- and, as suggested by Kemp, the upper sign is rather the tail of a bird than that of the Nar cat-fish, thus suggesting a falcon on a perch or on a standard [cf. B.J. Kemp, CAJ 10.2, 2000, 211-242, fig. 10; H. Goedicke, MDAIK 58, 2002, 253].

Basing on the reciprocal placement and superimposition of the signs on the colossi, Dreyer seems to have found a possible sequence of the stages in which the graffiti were incised (cf. table): Animal-head standard, Shell, Elephant, Bull, Stork, Canid, Min-standard, Plant, Lion and Narmer. - Courtesy xoomer.virgilio.it

A similar approach was taken by Dreyer in narrowing down the chronological order of the so-called "Tehenu" palette amongst several other predynastic era palettes. In the case of the "Tehenu" palette, the signs implicated are those that belong to the following figures: Falcon, possibly but not certain—Falcon II, Lion, Double Falcon, and Scorpion II. Other figures or names had been left out from what was available to read on the palette, but from extrapolation, it may be safe to say that the palette belongs to a chronological order that proceeds those of unlisted figures that predate the ones named or implicated, while preceding those unlisted counterparts that are considered to post-date King Scorpion II. Reading on, from the above mentioned website, and in a passing, the author gives us his personal opinion about the chronological placement of the Tehenu palette...

Dreyer has postulated that, given the mentioned late-Dynasty 0 manufacture of the Tehenu palette (which in my opinion is in fact later than the Battlefield and Bull palettes but earlier than the Plover and Narmer palettes, it could never neither celebrate nor narrate the foundation of the towns by those kings : the town of the Heron (Djebawty), probably Buto, which is currently being excavated by T. Von der Way, was founded much earlier than Naqada IIIA. Therefore the action performed by the royal entities on the palette could eventually be the foundation of fortresses in the respective centers (cf. the example from Elephantine), or more probably it was the (symbolic ?) destruction of the centers after their defeat by the Southern Kings; this progressive military expansionism and submission of the Delta by the Thinite sovereigns, which is echoed in the scenes of battle and of their aftermath represented on Naqada III palettes and ivories, was probably a relatively common scenario until the country unification (cf. M. Campagno 2002). As quoted above, and always with the due cautions, it can be supposed that a parallel warfare-pattern should have been followed by the Dynasty 00-0 kings in respect of the Nubian antagonists; perhaps also in the Delta the Maadi-Buto decline hadn't happened (Naqada IIC-D) without some conflict; the EB I Canaan colonization is instead a different matter (although some scholars hypothesized, in the past, massive military interventions of the Egyptians there): the difference between Egypt and Canaan at that time was too large to favour the assumption of any possible competition between them; Egyptians must have found no resistance in their infiltration into those territories, contributing to their evolution towards the EB II Urbanization [cf. the interesting and still valid synthesis 'The relations between Early Bronze I age Canaanites and Upper Egyptians' by Branislav Andelkovic, 1995].- Courtesy xoomer.virgilio.it

Indeed, there seems to be little agreement on, nor are any conclusive material backing available out there that sufficiently lean towards one interpretation or the other, what the signs for localities or towns specifically point out. Two common themes that the various interpretations seem to oscillate to and fro, is one either of "foundation" commemorative symbolism [acquiring territory] or "victory" commemorative symbolism [display of spoils of victory in conflict or war]. The issue of whether the  "Tehenu"/"Libyan" palette is justifiably named so has been explored over the course of this post, particularly as it pertains to the "Tehenu" socio-ethnic entity; but what about a relatively more generalized prospect of the palette featuring groups from "Libyan" territory? Well, again, some level of evidential specificity has to be first established that narrows the possible territorial candidacy down to a fairly restricted geographical confine, which in this case would be the area where modern Libya now lies, as opposed to evidence that might narrow the likely geographical location down to a sub-continental level or a wide regional level. Some of that has been looked at in terms of certain fauna, but that sort of evidence can only go so far in pinning down a specific restricted locality, since such fauna were likely found in multiple locals in the same general time frame. And even if one were to narrow the likely territory down to "Libya", that stills tells us little about the specific ethnicity or nationality involved, which in this case, some observers are inclined to implicate the "Tehenu". We've covered how J. Capart sort to make such connection via what is referenced as "spoils", between that seen in the Sahure wall mural—claimed to be associated with the Tehenu—and that seen in the "Libyan"/"Tehenu" palette; he does make some interesting comparisons around the fauna, but even then, as discussed above, questions continue to linger around human figures, what they feature in terms of gear and attire, and accompanying hieroglyphs of the scenery. The damages on the "Tehenu" palette for instance, make it difficult to ascertain any trends about the human figures on the recto side the palette; the Narmer palette on the other hand, provides a better opportunity to make a comparative analysis between the human figures and themes on that palette and say, those on the Sahure wall mural. The usefulness of the Narmer palette in our case study lies in its implication in featuring themes around "Libyan" or possibly "Tehenu" foe. Pressing issues around this implication have also been briefly covered here.

As further information comes to mind, this post will be correspondingly be modified.
_____________________________________________________________
*References:

— Sources as already cited.

— Retrieval of personal notes from elsewhere.

More Analysis on Body Proportions; A review of:

Body proportions of circumpolar peoples as evidenced from skeletal data: Ipiutak and Tigara (Point Hope) versus Kodiak Island Inuit.

Holliday TW, Hilton CE.

Am J Phys Anthropol. 2009 Nov 19.

ABSTRACT

Given the well-documented fact that human body proportions covary with climate (presumably due to the action of selection), one would expect that the Ipiutak and Tigara Inuit samples from Point Hope, Alaska, would be characterized by an extremely cold adapted body shape. Comparison of the Point Hope Inuit samples to a large (n > 900) sample of European and European- derived, African and African-derived, and Native American skeletons (including Koniag Inuit from Kodiak Island, Alaska) confirms that the Point Hope Inuit evince a cold-adapted body form, but analyses also reveal some unexpected results. For example, one might suspect that the Point Hope samples would show a more cold-adapted body form than the Koniag, given their more extreme environment, but this is not the case. Additionally, univariate analyses seldom show the Inuit samples to be more cold-adapted in body shape than Europeans, and multivariate analyses that include a myriad of body shape variables such as femoral head diameter, biiliac breadth, and limb segment lengths fail to effectively separate the Inuit samples from Europeans. In fact, in terms of body shape, the European and the Inuit samples tend to be cold-adapted and tend to be separated in multivariate space from the more tropically adapted Africans, especially those groups from south of the Sahara. - abstract ends

One excerpt from the study states:

There is strong evidence for such selection operating in the millennia following the initial appearance of modern humans in Europe, i.e., among Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic Europeans (Holliday, 1999).

Specifically, the earliest modern humans in Europe for whom we have body proportion data tend to show more African-like body proportions (Holliday, 1997a), while later European modern humans show foreshortened limbs in spite of archeological data indicative of improved cultural buffering. This suggests selection for shorter limbs in Late Pleistocene Europe, although we also cannot as of yet rule out the possibility that late Pleistocene gene flow from Neandertals to early modern Europeans played some role in establishing more ‘‘cold-adapted’’ limb proportions for this latter population (Holliday, 1997a, 2006b).

Several issues stand out here: Fair enough, the earliest modern human evidence in Europe show "tropical African-like" body stature; however, here, we are told that evidence of "cold adaptation" starts to appear in the late Upper Paleolithic. Is it then safe to say, that while "tropical limb-proportions" has more than likely always been coexistent with considerable skin pigmentation, short index limb-proportions—as seen in Europe—are not as good as indicators of change in soft body phenotype, such as skin tone? If one goes by published journals from several skin tone analysts, it is hypothesized that the change in skin tone appeared to be marked by an episode of a selective sweep, likely some time close to the middle of the Neolithic (or early Neolithic in Europe) era [and the present author takes it that the suggested dates mainly correspond to contemporaneous European archeological status quo, as the dates may vary from region to region according to state of then existing economy type]. Now remember, it is hard to determine the ages of skin tone alleles under selective pressure with any degree of certainty. One has to therefore infer that skin tone analysts turn to secondary disciplines, outside of genetics, to come up with their age estimations; such disciplinary candidate is archaeology [like those associated with Neolithic farming traditions] and possibly, its paleontology sub-discipline. Only here, human paleontology appears to be disconcordant with examples of such age estimations that come to attention.

Note that the authors indirectly insinuate that a scenario of descendance into poor dietary and life style, relative to the preceding epochs—which is lacking here, does not seem to be a factor in such change in body stature; see:

Specifically, the earliest modern humans in Europe for whom we have body proportion data tend to show more African-like body proportion (Holliday, 1997a), while later European modern humans show foreshortened limbs in spite of archeological data indicative of improved cultural buffering.

Could it then be inferred that change in skin tone very likely accommodated change in body stature, but that such change was gradual in its spread and not in the extreme states that we now see in European populations? And as follows, that the spread of Neolithic farming subsistence factored into a subsequent selective sweep, given Europe's latitudinal positioning? If so, then only here, without extraordinary visible distinctions between "would-be intermediary Europeans" [in terms of skin tone developments] and the more extreme cases of contemporary Europeans, in terms of human remains record, one is hard-pressed to discern between such changes in soft body parts like skin tone.

A look back at older publication from the same author implicated above—Holliday (1999)—suggests that very possibility, the transitory scenario mentioned in the winding comment of the last paragraph (above); here is a copy of the abstract:

Among recent humans brachial and crural indices are positively correlated with mean annual temperature, such that high indices are found in tropical groups. However, despite inhabiting glacial Europe, the Upper Paleolithic Europeans possessed high indices, prompting Trinkaus (1981) to argue for gene flow from warmer regions associated with modern human emergence in Europe. In contrast, Frayer et al. (1993) point out that Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic Europeans should not exhibit tropically-adapted limb proportions, since, even assuming replacement, their ancestors had experienced cold stress in glacial Europe for at least 12 millennia. This study investigates three questions tied to the brachial and crural indices among Late Pleistocene and recent humans. First, which limb segments (either proximal or distal) are primarily responsible for variation in brachial and crural indices? Second, are these indices reflective of overall limb elongation? And finally, do the Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic Europeans retain relatively and/or absolutely long limbs?

Results indicate that in the lower limb, the distal limb segment contributes most of the variability to intra-limb proportions, while in the upper limb the proximal and distal limb segments appear to be equally variable. Additionally, brachial and crural indices do not appear to be a good measure of overall limb length, and thus, while the Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic humans have significantly higher (i.e., tropically-adapted) brachial and crural indices than do recent Europeans, they also have shorter (i.e., cold-adapted) limbs. The somewhat paradoxical retention of "tropical" indices in the context of more "cold-adapted" limb length is best explained as evidence for Replacement in the European Late Pleistocene, followed by gradual cold adaptation in glacial Europe. - TW Holliday, Brachial and crural indices of European late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic humans, 1999.

In other words, the concluding portion of that abstract suggests that while the brachial and crural indices of the limb components reported relatively high scores—generally characteristic of those seen in populations inhabiting the tropics, the overall actual lengths of the limbs of the Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic European specimens tend to be shorter in comparison to contemporary European examples. This means that recent Europeans would generally be considered taller in comparison to their said earlier European counterparts, notwithstanding the higher limb proportion indices characterizing the latter; in simple terms, one may interpret this seeming contrasting manifestations of limb proportions vis-a-vis overall limb length as suggestive of being part of a transitory phase towards gradual cold adaptation, as noted above. As to the question of the most probable state of soft tissue phenotype such as that of skin tone, one which would have been contemporaneous with the said Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic physical states, one can only surmise some form of relaxation in epidermal melanin, without knowing the precise level; for instance, one might guess that it could have been along the lines of the Inuit, but then again, the Inuit are considered fully cold-adapted. So the question of skin tone is not clear here, and not nearly as neat as the correlation that can be made between tropically adapted body plan and the intense UV radiation levels of tropical latitudes.

And from the remaining segment of the first excerpt,...

This suggests selection for shorter limbs in Late Pleistocene Europe, although we also cannot as of yet rule out the possibility that late Pleistocene gene flow from Neandertals to early modern Europeans played some role in establishing more ‘‘cold-adapted’’ limb proportions for this latter population (Holliday, 1997a, 2006b).

If such event took place, i.e. gene flow between Neanderthals and early modern Europeans, then it appears that genetic drift had effectively sifted it out of modern human gene pool, almost akin to saying that the offspring emanating from such activity died out. On the other hand, molecular genetics presently rules out such undertaking, on the account of which, the analysts/authors here seem to be kept in the dark of.

Moving onto a second extract...

It has two main branches—a long and linear body build branch that includes the Egyptians, Sub-Saharan Africans (except for the Pygmies), and African-Americans and a second, less linear body form branch that includes the Inuit, Europeans, Euro-Americans, Puebloans, Nubians, and Pygmies. Note that the Nubians used in this study are thought by some to represent an immigrant population from Europe or Western Asia [see Holliday (1995)].

Well, it is not surprising to see ancient Egyptian specimens consistently group with sub-Saharan Africans, and not with Europeans, notwithstanding whatever supposed "caucasoid" archetype tendencies are said to be implicated in cranio-morphometric estimations according to some publications of the past, which are prone to inconsistency across different authors, because of variations in sampling selections to the discretion of the samplers. Several published journals have made note of this post-cranial feature of Nile Valley specimens, and they have been covered elsewhere on this blog.

However, the pygmies notably standout here in terms of body "linearity", given their traditional habitat in the African tropics of "sub-Saharan" Africa. Could it have anything to do with discordance between crural-brachial indices and "body build" brought about by their characteristic short height (in correlation to short limbs)? It certainly warrants further examination into the authors' findings and the premise thereof. Likewise the "Nubians", but explanation is offered here for the seeming anomaly. Funny thing about the latter, is the less likely inclination of fringe Eurocentric sects to seize on such isolated finding and use it to suggest that "Nubians" were primarily drawn from the "Nordic" or "caucasoid" stock.

On a winding note, there appears to be disconcordance between the post-cranial report from Holliday & co. (2009) and cranial report from Katerina Harvati (2009). As seen above, Holliday and co. deduced selection for shorter limbs in their late Upper Paleolithic European sample [as opposed to the earlier Upper Paleolithic European specimens], which is interpreted as a sign of "cold adaptation" to the temperate environment of Europe; whereas, Harvati's report shows closer positioning of both early Upper Paleolithic and late Paleolithic European specimens to modern examples from sub-Saharan Africa [Kenyan and South African, Zulu in particular] than they are to modern west European and north Levantine [Syria] counterparts. Now of course, we are looking at post-cranial analysis on the one hand, and a cranial one on the other; hence, precisely what sort of body proportions Harvati's late Paleolithic European specimens exhibited, is anyone's guess, unless data for such is made available. This disconcordance noted here though, as Holliday's 1999 study shows, is not total; after all, retention of "tropically-adapted" phenotype in the limb proportion indices is observed in the Late Upper Paleolithic to Mesolithic European specimens. That said, as a preliminary consideration, could the said contrast in reports from two different sections of human skeleton have something to do with that "gradual change" mentioned in the question put forth above? Perhaps the same question may be asked of the Zhoukoudian Upper Cave [in China] specimens, who are claimed to have close cranial affinities with the late Paleolithic European counterparts.

Naturally, this question makes sense, only if the said Harvati's late Paleolithic European specimens [the Zhoukoudian Upper Cave specimens as well] showed up body proportions consistent with observations made by Holliday et co. in their post-cranial analysis. However, it should be noted that the precise nature of the interplay of several different underlying factors behind cranial morphology is less clear than that underlying post-cranial skeleton, and while cranial morphology exhibits perhaps the most visibly diverse manifestations of hard human physical form, it is also more prone to overlapping [through happenstance in some cases, and gene flow in others] between a wide range of populations from across different latitudinal environments than the case is for post-cranial phenotype; for instance, specimens bearing tropical body-proportions in an unquestionably sub-tropical refugium serves as a fairly good indicator of  a peopling event, shortly after emigration from a tropical environment. If Europeans' earliest ancestors came from a sub-tropical refuge center of a generally cool geographical clime of say, central Asia, then one would expect less inclination towards the display of tropical body proportions, having undergone some level of adaptation or another to the sub-tropical environment. On the other hand, certain crania from populations in the tropics have been inflicted with pseudo-scientific labels such as "caucasoid", even as the body proportions prevalent in those populations turned out to be markedly distinct from so-called "caucasoids" of temperate latitudes.

*Keep an eye on possible future updates.
_______________________________________________________________
*References:

—as already cited.
— the rest is based on personal notes posted elsewhere.

Nehesu: What does It Mean?

For those who have ever been part of a Nile Valley discussion, the word "Nehesu" is a familiar one. However, this word seems to be shrouded in a bit of mystery, as far as its precise meaning is concerned. One thing is certain about it, in that it was generally referenced towards groups beyond Kmtnwt's (Dynastic Egypt) southern boarder, particularly beyond where lower Ta Seti lay. Several guesswork have taken place over the years, about its most purportedly-plausible meanings; however, these appear to be just that — guesswork. This includes the reported Budge translation of the term to "Negroes" , and other translation efforts which place the word as a term supposedly commonly associated with "slaves", "Negro" slaves. See for example, the following pieces:

Click on the images for hi resolution.

Speaking of which, some personal notes of the present author [of the blog] were made on discussion boards a few years back, mid-2005 to be precise:

Nhsw
Various folks connect it with "race", in particular "black" or "negro". On that note, it appears that there were/are proponents out there, however very few, who have tried to associate the term with some sort of a "hamitic" race, or what is supposedly "non-Negroid" black folks. As such, the word "nuhas", which denotes "copper", has been used to hypothesize that, the Nehesu were likely named after their “copper toned skin”, and in the terms of these advocates, this would mean "copper skin caucasoids"; not much different from how some folks here refer to “brown”, as a way to runaway from having to say ‘black’.

To my understanding, this word has been documented in the Old Kingdom, and it appeared that early Egyptian artwork used it in connection with "southerners", who were painted in the same brown skin tones as Kemetians. But then, in the Middle, Second Intermediate and New Kingdoms, it was applied to "southerners", who were depicted in varying colors from reddish brown to pitch black, including various dress styles, hair styles or wigs, and varying facial features. Aside from the “southerners”, I am not aware of the application of “Nhsw” to any other people.

Again, turning to languages still spoken in the region, like the Beja, various words have been utilized in hypothesizing possible origins of words, and their meanings. As an example, a Beja word “nehas”, which is understood as ‘being pure”, has been used in this manner. There is at least one perspective of connecting the word with a possible Kemetian viewpoint of their southern roots, i.e., their “pure” ancestors [pure, as in less foreign admixture], whereby this was looked at in relative terms, not absolute.

At the time these notes were presented, one opinion on the matter went like this, by a third party observer:

bonjour,

I think Nhsy's were a tribe or group of people linked together by rituals different from other parts of "deeper" Africa, who derived ntrws to animalism, totetism, etc….. whereas the Nhsy were praising a lot and praying, could be circumcising their children, because of the hieroglyphic spelling of the name, if you decorticate, you will have in prayer, n-Hst, hsi to praise,n-hsy or the ones in praising just my take on this.

If you look at the glyphs, you will see why i feel that way, the rope the walking stick, (moving tribes materials) and the rebel sign, the man with his hands behind his back, no! if i make any connection to Moses i will be fired.
but then i may be complètement à côté de la plaque.

sw

Of course then, the feedback offered by the present author was to the effect of:

I've heard this one too, along the lines of, 'being praised by God or a god', or 'the chosen people'...by God. This is supposed to be what the 'hsy' or 'hsw' in 'Nhsw' signifies, from this viewpoint.

But getting back to the glyphs presented above, at least one translation given to a variant of "Nehesu" was "peasant" — that Mdu Ntr term in particular, was "Nehi"; see the glyphs again:

Click for hi resolution

Along those lines, an effort was made by a third party advocate to tie "Nehesu" with a string of distinct nouns generally of a 'pejorative' connotation...

Click for hi resolution

The above was for instance, described and translated in the following manner:

...and this was a name of a 13th Dynasty Pharaoh .

Note that his Nsu Biti title contains the determinative for "Barbarian" - his SaRe title merely lists him as "Nahasi" - which I interpret as "The Barbarian" - a synonym in Mtau Ntr for "Peasant, supplicant, worthless ..."

The Greeks would later borrow this ideological terminolgy: Barbarian, for any people who were not Greeks...

The translation no doubt raises a red flag instantly, if for nothing else than the odds of a King, a figure who is generally quite protective of or guarded and sensitive about his image both during life and after death, allowing himself to be identified by anything that is synonymous with "worthless", unless of course, it was a case of some sort of "commemorative" gesture of ridicule bestowed upon him by a successor who despised him and sought to have history remember him in a soiled or less-than-flattering image?

While these various above-mentioned translations — bearing either pejorative connotations to them or else less-than-flattering air to them — were being offered, another set of meanings was being simultaneously offered for "Nehesu (Nehesw)" by the said third party, hence presenting sets of lexicons at odds with one another, at least in so far as conventional thinking goes; see for example, allegedly based off material cited from a Budge authored dictionary:

Nhsj (Nahasi)- a Sudanese man
Nhsj.t (Nahasit) - a Sudanese woman
Nhsjw (Nahasou)- Sudanese; southerners in general
Nhsjw (Nahasou)- The Sudanese tribes in the Tuat, the results of the masturbation of Ra.

The way it's written

Most words in the Mdw Ntr that began with the letter "n" were written with the hieroglyph of a water ripple; the word "Nhsjw" was written using the 'Guinea-fowl' glyph with the pronunciation being "Nh;Neh;Nah" - very few words began with this 'letter.'

...

In Budge's dictionary, alongside the word "Nehsi" there are additional hieroglyphics showing the different ways of writing the "Nehsi" in the plural. What interests us here is the following example:

Hieroglyphic:
(throw stick)+ s + (sedge plant) + "ou"

--The "throw stick" can be either a determinative; an ideogram; or a phonogram "rs" or "Aa"; at the beginning of a sentence it's a phonogram (and probably also an ideogram which indicates "foreign".)

--The "sedge" hieroglyph ("(n)su; sut") indicates the south; ie;Upper Egypt, Sudan...
So we have "rs"+ "s" + "su" or "Resou" which means "southerners" with the use of the "throw stick" to indicate "foreign southerners"; the same as it is used in the word "Aamu" to indicate "(foreigners)Asiatics"...

:essentially all non-Egyptian peoples in the south; "strangers"

......................

There's one Pharaoh that I came across while reading "Egyptian Language: Easy Lessons in Egyptian Hieroglyphics by EWB". If I recall correctly, the example text was from the "Stelae of Pa-Nahesi" (25th Dynasty?).

I personally think that the title "Pa Nahasi" was a self-deprecating play on words that would imply something like the Pharaoh calling himself "The Barbarian!" or "The Stranger!" - literally it means "The Sudani man". (not "The Nubian")

At the very least, these highly divergent translations of the term underlie the highly speculative nature of the translation efforts that have approached the term over the years.

Click for hi resolution

Furthermore, in reference to the cartouche [reposted immediately above] allegedly bearing a pharoah's name, which has "Nahasi" in it, it is simplistic to take "Nehesw" as "stranger", for if that were the case, there would be no need for a determinative/ideogram suggestive of "foreigner" in say, the first cartouche. That determinative is there, precisely to modify the meaning of the noun in question.

And as noted a few notes ago, one of the reasons for reposting extracts from an old internet boardroom discussion, "Nehesw" seemed particularly reserved for groups from beyond Kemet's (Dynastic Egypt) southern border; it wasn't applied to those in Kmtnwt's east, north or west, as far as recollection allows. Thus 'Nehesw' has got to be more than a synonym for "stranger", or its Greek equivalent of "barbarian" which is not reserved for any one group or territory, as the former appears to be. The precise meaning of the term continues to be uncertain, but what is clear in the meantime, is that neither "negro", "worthless", "peasant", "stranger", "Nubian" which is a Roman corruption of a Nile Valley term that was used in markedly different context from that of the Romans and their 'contemporary' European imitators of the word, nor "Sudan" — which is a fairly modern construct, cut it, as far as logical interpretation goes for reasons gone over. As such, this leaves a space here that calls for watching-out for future developments, in both the not-so-distant and distant future!

Rm.t.n.Km.t Calendar Systems, King Lists et al. that aid us in Dating the Ancient Nile Valley Events and Others' thereof

Many cultural complexes of antiquity encompass time lines showcasing early beginnings in the shape of pre-"centralized" social units, usually as clusters of cities or urban areas (centers) concentrated in one particular sub-region, which may not even be loosely connected via a central governing authority [pending convincing evidence to such end], to reasonably verifiable centralized-state formation; as an instance, those in the so-called Mesopotamian sub-region [which are indiscriminately treated with a "blanket" reference in some ideological circles as simply "Mesopotamia"] comes into mind, but it appears that cultural developments of the Nile Valley area is given a rather different treatment. It is generally well known that the ancient Egyptian cultural complex doesn't begin with the centralized dynastic state, but despite this, a common practice in certain ideological circles seems to be that of starting its time line from the unified/centralized ancient Egyptian state or Dynastic Egypt. If we take into consideration the Badarian and Naqadan periods, together going as far back as approx. 5500 B.C., then in that context, the complex Nile Valley culture may well even predate so-called Mesopotamian counterpart. The precursors to these complexes are yet also found in the Sahara. What purpose does it serve to dismiss the earlier complex cultural developments along the Nile? Well, in some ideological circles, it serves to date ancient Egyptian cultural complex later than say, the so-called "Mesopotamian" counterpart—the preferred subject of their fanfare.

Dating techniques:

The reconstruction of chronology of Dynastic Egypt as aided by the Kemetian literature, is in fact not a simple matter in Egyptology; it has been done primarily on the basis of inscriptional archeological evidence, which provide information on certain dating mediums like, Sothic dates.

Available inscriptions that help in this process include Egyptian King Lists:

• The Table of Abydos.
  
  
• The Table of Sakkara.
  
  
• The Table of Karnak.
  
  
• The Palermo Stone.
  
  
• The Turin Papyrus (Turin Canon)
  
  
• Manetho Lists.
  
  
• Other useful references include, Genesis chronologies from Masoretic version, Septuagint version, and Samaritan version.
  
  
• References to Mesopotamian King lists also become handy,...
  
  
• ...as well as the Egyptian Solar, lunar and Sothic calendar, which contrasts with the Mesopotamian calendar and lunar cycles. (Sothic calendars and dating comprises works of Egyptologists like Alan Gardiner, Theodore Oppolzer, Edward Meyer, Edward Wente and Charles Van Siclen, W.G. Waddell, and others)
  

Cultures of antiquity like Kemet and Mesopotamia, had characters/kings listed which proceeded from a mythological to a historical period, with the succession of true kings accurately recorded. The earliest kings belonged to a mythological period, often having extraordinary life spans of thousands of years. Historians were able to separate the lists into mythological and historical portions.

Dating techniques described earlier, could also be used to construct other history, like the possible roots of Isrealites in Kemet. Here, both Biblical and archeological references would be utilized to recontruct the possible chronology of events. In order to understand correlation of Genesis chronology to that of Dynastic Egypt, the Egyptian dating system had to be understood from the Egyptian perspective, and then interpreted into the standard solar calendar. This would be essential to putting the time frame of Isrealite departure from Kemet in its proper historical and political context.

Israelites, heavily dependent on Biblical interpretation of history, claim a history that takes us back to a time when notable great civilizations (like Kemet) were thriving. So in essence they are claiming a separate tradition, which one would expect to be in tune with its contemporaries, in terms of record keeping. There is no reason to deny so, after all, we have clear portraits of long-lived ancestors. Like what was said earlier of Kemetian Kings/divine characters earlier, i.e., proceeding from a mythical phase to the historical phase, so is the case with Biblical chronology. Biblical chronology (which again early Israelite history is dependent on) also begins in the mythological period, with its characters also enjoying extraordinary life spans, and it continues well into the historical era, late into 2nd millennium B.C. What is perculiar about the Biblical chronology, is this: even at this historical stage, people named in this later time, still seem to occupy a mythological status, living extraordinary life spans, often hundreds of years than any believable human life span. Add to this, the fact that none of the people named have turned up in any records as actual rulers among the Hebrews or any other Semitic-speaking nation. The apparent reason for this peculiarity of Biblical chronology in comparison to its contemporaries in the likes of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, is that actual Isrealite history as a separate entity is relatively much recent, and does not reach as far back as the aforementioned cultures. It came from another culture, and concrete evidence available points to Kemet, but this is a topic for another day in its own right, to be explored in more detail on this site in the foreseeable future.

Indeed, Egyptian dating system has been used (as reference points) in assisting scholars to determine chronologies in other cultures within the "Mediterranean" regions and so-called "near East".

Sothic Cycles

Ancient Egyptians had an innovative calendar system, the 365-day solar calendar, which was different from its contemporaries (Mesopotamia used a lunar calendar of 354 days, and 360-day calendar) and setting the example that modern calendars follow. The Egyptians had a lunar calendar too, which made use of a 25 year cycle.

As noted earlier here, Egyptologists have used the various kings lists, but they've also taken into account some discrepancies between them, in terms of the chronologies provided. So the additional tool of approximating the chronologies, comes from the Egyptian sothic year, using Sothic cycles as reference points.

The shortcoming of the Egyptian 365-day civil calendar was that, it didn't have the extra-quarter day, that is exemplified by the quadrennial leap year of the modern solar calendar. As a result, the Egyptian civilian calendar fell short of another quarter day of the true solar year, which meant that it couldn't tell farmers when seasons began and when the annual inundation of Nile flood would begin. But of course, the Egyptians had a way around this: they figured out the correlation between the heliacal rising of Sothis and the beginning of the Nile flood. To make sure that the New year on the civilian calendar, which fell short of one quarter of day ever year, coincides with the rise of Sothis, the Egyptians came to the realization that it should take 1,460 solar years for the civil calendar to lose 365 days. Thus, with 1,460 solar years equaling 1,461 Egyptian civil years, the Nile flood and the solar cycle were harmonized. As such, the 1,460 year Sothic cycle, known as the Sothic year, had a full day every four years and a full month every 120 years, imitated the civil calendar. This Sothic year proved instrumental in guiding Egyptologists in reconstructing the chronology with respect to the true solar year, as is used today. Indeed, the Egyptian calendar system has also been useful in constructing chronology of other contemporaneous cultures, like those of Mesopotamia.

That said,...

From Manetho's list, Egyptologists relate the 13th and 17th dynasties to the Theban kings, while the 15th and 16th Dynasties are associated with the Hyksos. The 14th dynasty could have been contemporaneous with the 13th dynasty, and could have either belonged to a line of native Kings or Hyksos. This seems to be a rather chaotic period of dynastic Egypt, and it appears to be reflected in available Kings lists. The Hyksos period is therefore not called the 'dark' period for nothing.

The relative uncertainty about 14th dynasty, based in the Xois city of the north, may well be due to the possibility that, around this time, its local line of rulers were probably under some degree of Hyksos influence or authority, like "vassaldom". And as far as the 16th dynasty is concerned, absence of archeological evidence in support of a line of kings belonging to the Hyksos makes its existence rather questionable.

It should be examined how the Hyksos might have come into the country, because it appears that the Egyptians had a fortified eastern border, with troop presence. So any influx into the nation would have been checked. It seems probable that Egyptians themselves allowed some infiltration of Asiatics into the Delta, possibly for trade reasons:

Hyksos rule of Egypt was probably the climax of waves of Asiatic immigration and infiltration into the northeastern Delta of the Nile. This process was perhaps aided by the Egyptians themselves. For example, Amenemhat II records, in unmistakable language, a campaign by sea to the Lebanese coast that resulted in a list of booty comprising 1,554 Asiatics, and considering that Egypt's eastern border was fortified and probably patrolled by soldiers, it is difficult to understand how massive numbers of foreign people could have simply migrated into northern Egypt. These people migrated, or otherwise moved to the region from the 12th Dynasty onward, and by the 13th Dynasty, this migration became widespread...

...One hypothesis is that the basic population of Egyptians allowed, from time to time, a new influx of settlers, first from the region of Lebanon and Syria, and subsequently from Palestine and Cyprus.

The leaders of these people eventually married into the local Egyptian families, a theory that is somewhat supported by preliminary studies of human remains at Tell el-Dab'a. Indeed, parallels for the foreign traits of the Hyksos at Tell el-Dab'a have been found at southern Palestinian sites such as Tell el-Ajjul, at the Syrian site of Ebla and at Byblos in modern Labanon. - TourEgypt.Net

At any rate, it appears that ambitious leaders among these immigrants were aided in their adventure, in part due to new imported military concepts they came with, and on the other hand, the existing political weakness during the late 13th dynasty. They subsequently (in late 18th century B.C.) were able to make their capital at Avaris, and then Memphis, 50 years later or so. It should be noted however, that the expansion of Hyksos rule towards upper Egypt was slow paced, and they were never able to adequately rule upper Egypt.

As a matter of fact, no clear chronological line demarcates the 13th dynasty from the 17th dynasty, both of which appeared to have been running in Upper Egypt, during the Hyksos period. Some Egyptologists have been tempted to further subdivide these two dynasties into a number of dynasties, under the suspicion that some of the kings in these dynasties formed an independent political entity from their immediate predecessor, particularly the last few kings of the 17th dynasty.

It is generally accepted that Kamose, the Theban King, took the initiative of launching a war of liberation to drive out the Hyksos. The subsequent victory was completed under Ahmose's watch, with the re-unification of Egypt, and bringing the Theban authority to the fore again.

Prior to Ahmose's re-unification of Egypt, Nebhepetre's (Menthotpe II) moving of the capital to Thebes upon victory over Herakleopolis, left a lasting impact on the minds of Egyptians. Evidence of this, is a temple inscription, dating to the 19th dynasty, bringing together the names of three kings; Menes, Nebhepetre (Menthotpe II) and Ahmose. According to William C. Hayes, these folks were "obviously" regarded "as the founders of the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms". It appears from this, that in the 19th dynasty, Egyptians viewed national history in terms of these three epochs, each marked by unification of the nation by a Pharaoh, after political upheaval. This probably explains the confusion expressed in the following article:

Archeologists have found the tomb of pharaoh Nubkeperre Inyotef with the aid of a papyrus document that could help find more royal tombs

Cairo, July 01, 2001 (AFP/Agence France Presse) - Archeologists have discovered the tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh with the aid of a papyrus document they now realize could help them find more royal tombs, antiquities officials have said. A German working on the west bank of the Nile near present-day Luxor found the tomb of Nubkeperre Inyotef, who is believed to have started the war of liberation against Hyksos invaders around 3,500 years ago, they said.

"Historically speaking, it is a very exciting find," the secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Gaballah Ali Gaballah, said when asked to comment on a German news report of the find. "It validates the information on the papyrus document," he said.Nubkeperre Inyotef's tomb was mentioned in the so-called Abbot Papyrus, a 20th dynasty document now in the British Museum which detailed royal tombs that were pillaged in a period of anarchy under that dynasty, he said...

Coregencies have caused confusion in the copying of original sources that may have been available, resulting in questionable durations of reign of various Kings.

Another perspective on the impact of King lists on the chronology of dynasties and other event, comes from Gary Greenberg [see Ancient Israelites: Bible Myth], who in turn made reference to the traditional chronology of the Twelfth Dynasty in Gardiner's Egypt of the Pharaohs. According to Greenberg, the King list has two unusual features; "one is the repeated use of the same name by several Kings, four of whom adopted the name Amenemhe and three others who used the name Senwosre", and the other, "is the larege number of coregencies in this dynasty. Five of the eight rulers share a portion of their reigns with their successors."

From Alan Gardiner's Egypt of the Pharaohs, the traditional chronology of the 12th Dynasty:

• Amenemhe I: Duration of rule>1991-1962; Highest Year Mark>30; Length of Coregency with Successor>10.
  
  
• Senwosre I: Duration of rule>1971-1928; Highest Year Mark>44; Length of Coregency with Successor>2.
  
  
• Amenemhe II: Duration of rule>1929-1928; Highest Year Mark>35; Length of Coregency with Successor>3.
  
  
• Senwosre II: Duration of rule>1897-1877; Highest Year Mark>6; Length of Coregency with Successor>2.
  
  
• Senwosre III: Duration of rule>1878-1843; Highest Year Mark>33; Length of Coregency with Successor> NA.
  
  
• Amenemhe III: Duration of rule>1842-1797; Highest Year Mark>45; Length of Coregency with Successor>2.
  
  
• Amenemhe IV: Duration of rule>1798-1790; Highest Year Mark>6; Length of Coregency with Successor>NA.
  
  
• Sobeknofru: Duration of rule>1789-1786; Highest Year Mark>NA; Length of Coregency with Successor>NA.
  

Total Years = 19

The above is "an outline of the coregencies" involved.

Greenberg then does the honor of outlining the coregencies:

• Amenemhe I: Coregency with Predecessor>none; Independent Reign without Coregents>20; Coregency with Successors>10.
  
  
• Senwosre I: Coregency with Predecessor>10; Independent Reign without Coregents>32; Coregency with Successors>2.
  
  
• Amenemhe II: Coregency with Predecessor>2; Independent Reign without Coregents>30; Coregency with Successors>3.
  
  
• Senwosre II: Coregency with Predecessor>3; Independent Reign without Coregents>16; Coregency with Successors>2.
  
  
• Senwosre III: Coregency with Predecessor>2; Independent Reign without Coregents>34; Coregency with Successors>NA.
  
  
• Amenemhe III: Coregency with Predecessor>NA; Independent Reign without Coregents>44; Coregency with Successors>2.
  
  
• Amenemhe IV: Coregency with Predecessor>2; Independent Reign without Coregents>7; Coregency with Successors>NA.
  
  
• Sobeknofru: Coregency with Predecessor>NA; Independent Reign without Coregents>4; Coregency with Successors>NA.
  

Total years of Independent Reign without Coregents = 187

Total years of Coregency with Successors = 19

According to Greenberg, concerning the above outline of coregencies:

Coregencies create something of an anomaly in Egyptian theology. If the sitting pharaoh represented the god Horus, which of the coregents filled that role? Although coregencies were not unknown prior to the Twelfth Dynasty, they appear to have been extremely rare. The sudden appearance of so many coregencies in one dynasty is a radical departure from tradition.This phenomenon, coupled with the repeated use of names, appears to have caused ancient Egyptian chronographers to make some errors in compiling their king lists...

Egyptian king lists provide two chronological histories of the Twelfth Dynasty, one in the Turin Canon and the other in Manetho.

Some interesting reading on erratic element of the following papyri King lists on the dating and the chronological layout of following Dynasties...

Greenberg's notes on The Turin Canon:

For lengths of reigns in the Twelfth Dynasty, the Turin Canon has four complete entries and four damaged entries. The four readable entries are as follows:

Senwosre I: 45 years

Senwosre II: 19 years

Amenemhe IV: 9 years, 3 months, 27 days

Sebeknofru: 3 years, 10 months, 24 days

The Turin Canon also says that the dynasty had a total duration of 213 years, 1 month, and 16 days. This is approximately 7 years longer than the actual total for the 12th Dynasty and indicates some confusion about the treatment of coregencies.

Senwosre I, Senwosre II, and Amenemhe IV each shared portions of their reign with a coregent, but the Turin Canon does not indicate which portions of which reigns were served by coregents. Senwosre I shared ten years with his predecessor and 2 years with his successor. Senwosre II shared 3 years with his predecessor and 2 years with his successor. Amenemhe IV shared 2 years with his predecessor.

While both of Senwosre I's coregencies are included in the length of his reign, only one of the two for Senwosre II is included in his reign. The one coregency of Amenemhe IV appears to be included in his lenght of reign.

This suggests that the Turin Canon author either shortened other reigns to account for some of the additional coregencies, or may have mistakenly recorded the lengths of reign for some of the other kings. Unfortunately, it is these other reigns that have damaged entries, which prevents us from knowing how dating problems were handled.

The following example illustrates the problem. The Turin Canon total for the first king of the dynasty, Amenemhe I, only preserves a "9" - a portion of the total number of years, which indicates that if the entry weren't damaged, it would have read either "19" or "29". If "19" were the original entry, it would mean that the Turin Canon shortened Amenemhe I's reign by ten years to account for the coregency. If the correct entry were "29", then no adjustment would have occurred and the dynasty total would have been off by an additional ten years.

In any event, we see that as early as the 19th Dynasty, Egyptian scribes had trouble accounting for coregencies and recording an accurate dynastic duration.

And now, Greenberg's take on Manetho's king list:

Manetho's 12th Dynasty introduces us to a large number of errors, the detailed examination of which is beyond the scope this work. To begin with, the two versions of Manetho, Africanus and Eusebius, have different information. Although both agree on the chronology of the first five kings, the two lists radically differ with regard to the balance of the dynasty.

Africanus lists two additional kings with a total reign of twelve years, and gives the dynasty a total of 176 years.Eusebiusdescribes an unidentified number of successors ruling for forty-seven years and gives an unusually long dynastic total of 245 years, forty-seven years longer than the sum of all the duration listed and thirty-nine years longer than the actual lenght of the dynasty.

For purposes of our analysis, I want to focus only on Manetho's first five kings. He gives the following sequence and durations"

Ammenemes: 16 years

Sesonchosis: 46 years

Ammanemes: 38 years

Sesostris: 48 years

Lachares: 8 years

The Manetho list presents a few problems. It gives the first king a reign of sixteen years instead of twenty or thirty (depending on whether the coregency is included), and the second king (corresponding to Senwosre I) a reign of forty-six years. The second reign coincides quite well with the forty-five years in the Turin Canon and would appear to include all of the years served as coregent. But the first two reigns added together total sixty-two years, the exact number for the first two reigns if you exclude the coregency at the end of the second reign.

This suggests that four years belonging to the first king were mistakenly assigned to the reign of the second. If we reassign those four years, then Manetho's second king ruled only forty-two years, which coincides exactly with the true length of that king's reign prior to the start of his coregency with the third king. This would require that the coregency between Senwosre I and his successor (Amenemhe II) be included in the reign of Amenemhe II, and as we are about to see, that is the case.

According to Manetho, the third king, who should correspond to AmenemheII, had a reign of thirty-eight years. But the true length of that reign, including the coregencies at the beginning and end, should be no more than thirty-five years, leaving ample time for the initial coregency to be included in the total but giveing this pharaoh at least three more years than uld be allowed. Those years appear to have been erroneously transferred from Manetho's fourth king, Sesostris.

Many commentators believe that Manetho's Sesostris incorporates the reigns of both Senwosre II and Senwosre III (the fourth and fifth kings). In support of this conclusion, consider the following: In the traditional chronology, the first five kings to the end of Senwosre III ruled a total of 149 years (1991-1843 B.C.), whereas the first four kings in Manetho reigned a total of 148 years.

This means that the reigns of Manetho's first four Kings have exactly the right length for the first five Egyptian kings in the dynasty. (The one-year difference can be easily accounted for by a rounding error with the last year of reign.) Therefore, if Manetho's third king had a reign that is three years too long, those years must have been transferred from somewhere else. By coincidence, we see that Manethos's fourth reign is three years too short.

Manetho's forth king, combining Senwosre II and Senwosre III, ruled forty-eight years. Senwosre II's independent reign started in 1894 and Senwosre III's ended in 1843, resulting in a tptal reign of fifty-two years. Four years are missing, one of which was due to the rounding error. That leaves three years unaccounted for. Logic suggests they must have been assigned to the fourth king's predecessor, who has three years too many.

This erroneous transfer of three years most probably occurred because of ambiguities in some earlier source document concerning the three-year coregency. A scribe probably wrote that Senwosre II shared three years with Amenemhe II and the later editor may not have realized that the three shared years were already incorporated into the given length of reign for Amenemhe II. Consequently, the editor mistakenly transferred three additional years from Senwosre II's independent reign to Amenemhe II.

This brings us to Manetho's fifth king, Lachares, who served eight years. Lachares ought to correspond to the sixth king, Amenemhe III, who served for forty-five years. The Manetho reign is far too short, and at this point the two Manetho versions break apart. Africanus has two additional kings serving twelve years; Eusebius ntified number of kings serving fourty-two years.

From Manetho, then, we have confusion over coregencies, the combining of reigns, two instances in which years belonging to one reign were mistakenly transferred to another, and a breakdown after Senwosre III.

More links for further reading:

http://www.antiquityofman.com/badarian.html

Were Egyptians the first scribes?

Lastly, much of the content above, albeit with slight modification was originally posted here: Dating in the Nile Valley

*As always, content is subject to updating.

What the Different Styles of Crowns could mean in the developments leading up to Kmt [Nwt] State Formation

Perhaps few give little thought to the matter, given the oft spoken about Crowns of Kmt (Kemet or "ancient Egypt"), particularly the "White" (Hedjet) and "Red" (Deshret) Crowns, but access to these items as tangible relics of the past has thus far been elusive. Pictures of pharaohs seem to indicate that the king's crown was made from a variety of material, from soft-looking ones [e.g. headdresses] to relatively harder ones. There are quite a variety of them, at that; these undoubtedly include those typically associated with the Neteru.

For its part, the so-called "encyclopedic" Wikipedia attributes this to an Egyptologist named Bob Brier…

Egyptologist Bob Brier has noted that despite its widespread depiction in royal portraits, no actual ancient Egyptian crown has been discovered. Tutankhamun's tomb, discovered largely intact, did contain such regal items as his crook and flail, but not a crown. Crowns were assumed to have magical properties, and Brier's speculation is that there were items a dead pharaoh could not take with him which therefore had to be passed along to his living successor.

…presumably based on notes from: Brier, Bob. PhD. History of ancient Egypt (in Audio). The First Nation in History. The Learning Company. 2001.

If this is Mr. Brier's speculation, there is little that can be made from it, since there were a variety of these 'hard-looking', and hence, very likely "durable", Pharaonic crowns, and just not a single or a few in Kmt. Hence, some of these, provided they were made from durable material as they seemed, should have survived along with other regalia.

It had been suggested, as quoted by a website owner Myra Wysinger, that...

The While and Red Crowns

Though no example of these crowns survive (that we know of), scholars have proposed that they were made of fabric or leather, supplemented in the case of the Red Crown by a "wire" ending in a spiral. Both of these crowns are mentioned in the Pyramid Texts, where their luminous color is associated with the light of celestial bodies.

This prospect is questionable in that, what kind of fabric or leather would be easily made into the shape of say, the white crown, without "hard" support—like metal—to act as a "skeleton"? If a metallic/wooden "skeleton" was needed to provide the shape of the leather or fabric "covered" crown, then is it not reasonable that this "skeleton" is expected to be found? Even a scenario of having a single crown of each kind at a time doesn't necessarily excuse the status of no solid-material/hardened crown being found; if a hard-crown is made of durable material, which the likes of the white crown and red crown suggest, then it is reasonable to expect such material to survive for some time, especially given that crowns are supposed to be important symbols of royalty, i.e. the "divine"-appointed ruler of the land.

Archaeologically, we are told by touregypt.net website, that the first sight of the 'red crown' which was presumably associated with "lower Egypt", actually occurs in Upper Egypt [Nagadan complex] rather than in the Delta or Lower Egyptian area:

"The red crown, or deshret, may very well have originated in Upper Egypt, although it eventually became associated as the symbol of Lower Egypt. A sherd from a large vessel dated to late Naqada I, near the town of Nubt, the city of Set, has a representation in relief of the red crown, and on both the Narmer palette (one side) and macehead the king’s figure is shown wearing the red crown. - M. Parsons, touregypt.net

This theme is repeated by several other observers, namely for example,...

In the Wadi Qash, a branch of the Wadi Hammamat, Wilkinson (Genesis, p. 80) cites two rock drawings of men wearing red crowns, which he dates to Naqada I (c. 3600 BC). These drawings place the red crown earliest in Upper Egypt, just where we would expect to find the white crown — only the white crown is nowhere to be seen at this time. From this it appears that the red crown was initially associated with Upper Egypt — or at least the Wadi Hammamat — and that the white crown was a later arrival from somewhere else. - Genesis of the Pharaohs: Genesis of the ‘Ka’ and Crowns?, by Timothy Kendall.

the Double Crown, comprising Red Crown (first attested as a motif on a pot sherd from Naqada in southern Upper Egypt, dating to the Naqada Period) and White Crown - the two crowns seem to be designed to form a unit, the White Crown slotting into the Red Crown and being held in place by its distinctive frontal coil; the first monument on which a king is shown wearing both crowns is the siltstone cosmetic palette of king Narmer (depicted on one side of the palette wearing the White Crown, and on the other side wearing the Red Crown); some deities wear one or other of these crowns, but they are not worn by the human subjects of the king - University College London, digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk

The sherd of pottery that is being alluded to in the above, was pictorially reproduced in Wilkinson's publication [Early Dynastic Egypt] below (fig. 1):

Another Predynastic figure sporting what appears to be the Red Crown, as alluded to by Timothy Kendall above, also from Upper Egypt [Wadi Qash] and dating back to around the Nagada I phase:

Also, from the Palermo stone piece, we come across several king figures of presumably the predynastic era; some observers guess that they must be from the delta, because of the Red Crown, but this premise is questionable on the grounds that no predynastic era-oriented material of either authored Kings' list, tags or tombs filled up with regalia symbols as such [i.e. the Red Crown] have been recovered to verify it, as far as one can come to attention:

This below is an ivory piece that was dedicated to king Djer. In that image, only the Red Crown is visible; no sign of the White crown here.

Many of the pre-dynastic Abydos or Nagadan rulers were often artistically rendered with the familiar cloth "Pharoanic" headdresses, and very rarely seen with the Hedjet ("White" Crown). The Red Crown however, occasionally appeared alone [without double rendition of a king wearing both crowns] on "predynastic" figures, as seen in that example above, of an apparently old rendering in Wadi Qash, and on the alleged pre-dynastic Kings shown on the Palermo stone, also above. Only on figures fairly close to the turn of the predynastic era, like say, exemplified by King Scorpion, do we begin to come across the Hedjet displayed on the of heads of Nagadan or Abydos situated Kings. Speaking of which, below is a sculpture of an unidentified King at Abydos, presumably dating to earliest dynasties (ca. Dynasty 0 or 1st) or the very late predynastic line of kings; he is clearly sporting the Hedjet ("White" Crown) on his head:

Archeological evidence seem to indicate that both the Red Crown and the White crown originate in the Upper Nile Valley region. The reckoning here could be that the reason the Red Crown eventually came to be associated with north regions, is that the Red Crown line of kings progressively [prior to the introduction of the White Crown in the Nagadan strongholds] brought certain territories in that general region under their control to some degree or another before the effective unification of the entire sub-region [both Upper and Lower Egyptian regions] under one centralized polity. The White crown may have been introduced from lower Ta-Seti shortly before said unification. The earliest pictorial attestations of the Hedjet displayed on a king figure appears to come from the Qustul cemetary regalia.

In relation to the last point, concerning Ta-Seti, a possibility here is that Red crown rulers in predynastic upper Egyptian [perhaps Nagadan] complexes made some headway in dominating parts of lower predynastic Egypt before 'newcomer' elites [white crown rulers]—coming further from the south [like from Ta-Seti or perhaps beyond]—became dominant in the Nagadan complex, as a result of political alliances and perhaps conquests. This process would mean that regalia of the Red Crown Upper Egyptian rulers would have been found in lower Egyptian regions under their sphere of influence, before the consolidation of the political authority of the 'white crown' rulers in the greater part of Upper Egypt. Once this consolidation was accomplished in Upper Egypt, there would have been a move to incorporate the holdout 'spheres of influence' of the Red crown kings of Upper Egypt in Lower Egypt into the new consolidated Upper Egyptian polity, to be dominated by the White crown. As a symbol of complete unification, the white crown and red crown were harmonized by 'combining them', as seen in some places. And yes, this would have meant the movement of people from Upper Egypt to the Lower Egyptian regions.

Recounting a discussion, the present author raised "questions" about the "possibility" of a "surrogate" Ta-seti polity in the so-called Nagadan complex, as one of the possible ways, amongst the others out there, by which "White Crown" rulers from further south of Abydos may have sought to consolidate their rule in the greater part of "Egyptian" territory; direct conquest from further south was the other possibility among said possibilities already examined in the preceding passages. Think of a "surrogate polity" as a 'proxy' polity, or a polity that is tied (related) to or pays allegiance to another polity/administration elsewhere. In the context of the predynastic upper Egyptian polities, the question was raised based on archaeological indicators of "concurrently" running polities in Ta-Seti and Nagada...and a study that determined royal remains in the Upper Egyptian regions north of Ta-Seti to have close affinities with those in what is dubbed "Nubia". That said study of royal remains was described as follows:

"A biological affinities study based on frequencies of cranial nonmetric traits in skeletal samples from three cemeteries at predynastic Naqada, Egypt, confirms the results of a recent nonmetric dental morphological analysis. Both cranial and dental traits analyses indicate that theindividuals buried in a cemetery characterized archaeologically as high status are significantly different from individuals buried in two other, apparently nonelite cemeteries and that the nonelite samples are not significantly different from each other.

A comparison with neighboring Nile Valley skeletal samples suggests that the high status cemetery represents an endogamous ruling or elite segment of the local population at Naqada, which is more closely related to populations in northern Nubia than to neighboring populations in southern Egypt.

Extract from: American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Vol. 101, Issue 2, October 1996, Pages: 237-246.

Going back to that Timothy Kendall excerpt posted earlier, the work it came from said something related to what has just been relayed, but tells us little more beyond that, read:

From Timothy Kendall, Genesis of the Pharaohs: Genesis of the ‘Ka’ and Crowns?, courtesy of aforementioned Myra Wysinger via her site...

"In the Wadi Qash, a branch of the Wadi Hammamat, Wilkinson (Genesis, p. 80) cites two rock drawings of men wearing red crowns, which he dates to Naqada I (c. 3600 BC). These drawings place the red crown earliest in Upper Egypt, just where we would expect to find the white crown — only the white crown is nowhere to be seen at this time. From this it appears that the red crown was initially associated with Upper Egypt — or at least the Wadi Hammamat — and that the white crown was a later arrival from somewhere else. Both the red and white crowns have ungainly shapes, hardly natural as head-wear. The red crown was a low cylindrical hat with a high spike-like pillar at the back, from which a rigid, curling element projected forward. The white crown was very tall and conical, and swelled slightly at the peak to form a knob. Neither form has been satisfactorily explained. What ideas lay behind such crowns? Where and how did they originate, and what did they symbolize? Wilkinson’s book may offer clues. The most distinctive aspect of the red crown is its curled element, which has the same shape as the later coiled ‘rope’ hieroglyph (Gardiner 1969, V 1). One would thus assume that this feature symbolized a rope. This symbol appears again as an element in another hieroglyph, which is the standard of the god Min (Gardiner 1969, O 44). Here the coiled rope appears between a pair of bull horns mounted on the top of an upright post. The combination of motifs — post, bull horns, and rope — seems to evoke the action of tethering a bull, an activity of the Min figure (or his human double) frequently pictured in the rock art (Genesis, figs. 37, 38, 39, 41, 52). The early presence of the red crown in the Wadi Hammamat coupled with its morphological similarity to the Min standard may suggest that the crown, and the kingship it represented, emerged in the Eastern Desert out of the Min cult. Its name (ds&rt: ‘the red one’) may even suggest a relationship with the desert (ds&rt ‘the red land’).

The Min standard with bull horns (also called ‘ka’) usually appears in dynastic art erected in front of a very tall, tubular, phallic-shaped shrine, known as the sh.nt, before which Min stands (Munro 1983, figs.). This structure, described as a ‘primitive tent shrine of the desert’, was either conical or spiked at the top and was usually depicted with a doorway or pylon in its lower half, indicating that it was many times the height of a man. The shrine was supposed to have housed a bull (‘ka’) consecrated to Min, and many scenes from dynastic art depict the raising of such shrines by Nubian men with feathers in their hair (Isler 1991, 158 ff.; Giuliani in press). In some scenes we see that the rope of the Min standard, which coils between the bull horns, is actually attached to the base of the spiked top of the sh.nt just as the curled ‘rope’ element of the red crown emerges from the crown’s spike. In other images, the sh.nt appears with a conical rather than spiked summit, and its peak sometimes terminates in a knob (Isler 1991, 161, fig. 7). In such renderings the sh.nt has an equally strong resemblance to the white crown. This leads us to consider the possibility that both the red and white crowns may have derived from the Min cult but simulated different forms of the sh.nt. (Might the white colour of the ‘white crown’ be related to the white colour of the clothing of Min, as it appears in dynastic art?) Unfortunately, the earliest known depictions of the sh.nt in Egyptian art date from the 6th Dynasty, and nothing like a sh.nt appears in the rock art. It is hard to imagine, however, that such a distinctive shrine would simply be invented in the late Old Kingdom and inserted into a cult already very old. One suspects that the sh.nt may have been there all along but had not been represented.

The origin of the white crown is ambiguous. Its first appearance in Egypt may be a rock drawing in the Wadi Abbad, about 50 km east of Edfu (Genesis, p. 192). Here, a figure wearing a tall crown (without knob) appears seated on a Naqada II-style boat, accompanied by a bull and a figure of Min. The image is apparently two or three centuries later than the earliest images of the red crown. The Wadi Abbad, it should be noted, intersects the Nile near El-Kab and Hierakonpolis. These were the cities of Nekhbet and Horus Nekheny, respectively — the deities of the historic white crown kingship. Oddly, in the famous painted tomb of Hierakonpolis, also Naqada II, there is not one representation of a white crown among the numerous images of the ruler. And on the painted textile from Gebelein the ruler seated in the boat wears only a kind of bowler hat (Genesis, pl. 12).

Ironically, the earliest certain images of the white crown come not from Egypt but from Qustul in Lower Nubia, about 300 km up-river from Hierakonpolis. These images occur on two incense burners of uniquely Nubian type, which depict kings seated in archaic high-prowed boats wearing abnormally tall crowns with knobs, accompanied by bulls and Horus falcons(Williams 1980; 1986, pls. 33, 34). They date to about 3300 BC. The same crown then appears not long afterwards in Egypt: on an unprovenienced ivory knife handle in the Metropolitian Museum and, later still, on the Scorpion mace head and Narmer palette (Wilkinson 1999, 194–5). The evidence can be interpreted several ways:

a) the white crown was exclusively Egyptian, and it is Egyptian kings who are represented on the Qustul incense burners;

b) the white crown was used simultaneously by competing rulers in Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia; or

c) the white crown was first used in Nubia and spread northwards.

It was obviously associated with riverine kingship (kings in boats), bulls (the Min cult) and the god Horus. The white crown is usually assumed to be a homegrown Egyptian symbol—badge of the kings of the emergent Upper Egyptian state. They obviously pushed the red-crown wearers into Lower Egypt before the advent of the dynastic era. We need at least to consider the possibility, however, that the white crown might have had a Nubian origin. Varying forms of the shrine of Min, showing their similarities to the red and white crowns. When Egypt conquered the A-Group rulers of Qustul, they may simply have adopted their crown, just as they adopted the red crown to legitimize their claims to the north. This may explain why Ta-Seti (Lower Nubia), from the beginning of dynastic history, was Egypt’s first nome (Baines & Malek 1986, 15).

It may seem surprising, but there is a strong ancient tradition linking the white crown to Upper Nubia. In the first century BC, Diodorus Siculus (3.2.1–3.6) wrote that at the beginning of time the Egyptians and Nubians (‘Aithiopians’) were one people and that Osiris (i.e. their first king) came from ‘Aithiopia’ and colonized Egypt after it was created by the out-flowing Nile. This, he states, explains why Nubian and Egyptian customs are similar and why the kings of both countries wear ‘tall pointed felt hats ending in a knob’(Eide et al. 1996, 645). This story can be traced back to the early 18th Dynasty, when the Thutmosid pharaohs established their southern cultic frontier at Jebel Barkal, near the Fourth Cataract. This mountain is distinguished by a 75 m high pinnacle, in whose natural shape the Egyptians saw the vague features of a gigantic figure (i.e.Osiris) as well as a rearing uraeus (Nekhbet of el-Kab), both wearing the white crown. Because they also recognized the rock as an erect phallus, they believed they had discovered here the original mound of Creation — a Nubian Heliopolis and Karnak—and the birthplace and residence of the primeval ithyphallic Amun (= Min). Since the mountain lay in the extreme south, they identified its god as the source of the inundation and fertility. Since it was the perceived home of the southern uraeus (a southern el-Kab), they also believed it was the birthplace of the white crown. They thus built here an important coronation complex and Pr-wr (temple of Nekhbet) (Kendall 1997, 168–70; 2002; 2004). They simultaneously built Luxor (‘Southern Sanctuary’) as a Theban manifestation of Jebel Barkal in order to honour the same god and to perform the same coronations locally (Pamminger 1992; Kendall 2004). At the end of the New Kingdom the Amun priesthood at Thebes took away the right of the kings to rule the South. I am presently investigating a hypothesis that this may have been due to the fact that the pharaohs had lost control of Jebel Barkal and had allowed Nubia to become detached from Upper Egypt. The priesthood only willingly restored the white crown to a ruling family in the eighth century BC, when they recognized the Nubian kings of Kush as heirs to the imperial pharaohs by virtue of their renewed control of Jebel Barkal and their ability to reunite it with Karnak. Like the New Kingdom pharaohs, the 25th-Dynasty kings believed that through their control of Jebel Barkal they were heirs to the ‘kingship of Re’. It was this belief that drove the Egyptianizing Meroitic state in the Sudan for the next thousand years. The Jebel Barkal pinnacle is the largest freestanding monolith in the Nile Valley, and to superstitious ancient man its impact on the senses and imagination would have been enormous. When the Egyptians laid eyes on it in the early 18th Dynasty, they thought they had rediscovered the source of the white crown and the home of their first kings. Was this merely contrived history, or was this belief based on some genuine, possibly ancient Nubian tradition?

Surely the Nubians who greeted the Egyptians must have venerated this rock in similar ways, if ethnological parallels can be applied. Many modern animist peoples of the Sudan typically worship large phallic-shaped stones and identify them simultaneously with ancestors and totemic animals and consider them sources of fertility (Bell 1936; Bolton 1936).

Morkot (2000, p. 55) has shown that some Upper and Lower Nubian kings, independent of the pharaohs, were wearing the white crown at the time of the 11th–17th Dynasties. Is it possible that this practice, usually described as ‘emulating the pharaohs’, might actually be a native tradition going back to Qustul? The problem is that we have almost no pre-Egyptian Nubian representational art— or texts. However, a recently discovered Egyptian text from the tomb of Sobeknakht, governor of el-Kab in the late 17th Dynasty, recounts a massive Nubian invasion of Egypt as far north as el-Kab, apparently by the king of Kerma. Might this have been launched to extend that potentate’s ‘white crown’ control over Upper Egypt (Davies 2003)? Is it a coincidence that the territory over which Huy, Viceroy of Kush, later claimed administrative control extended from el-Kab to Jebel Barkal (Davies & Gardiner 1926, 11)?

A prehistoric Sudanese origin for the white crown may sound preposterous, but is it beyond possibility? The most important point made by Wilkinson in Genesis is that the climate in Upper Egypt was much wetter in the early fourth millennium BC. This implies that the farther south one went, the rainfall would have been greater, and the deserts more habitable. Greater rainfall would have meant higher inundations and better seasonal navigation of the Nile. Recent studies indicate that the great wadis of the northern Sudan were all major Nile tributaries at this time (see, for example, Keding in press; Fuller 1998). Communication would have been easier between north and south, which probably accounts for the striking cultural uniformity between Egypt and Nubia at this time (Wilkinson 1999, 176; Wengrow 2003b, 126–35). The similarity of style between the rock drawings of Upper Egypt and northern Sudan implies wide-ranging pastoralist peoples of similar backgrounds (Chittick 1962; Allard-Huard 1993; Paner 2003, 19, pl. 12), who probably all worshipped some form of Min (a god venerated, according to later Egyptian texts, from Upper Egypt to ‘Punt.’). Would it be so difficult to imagine that in the late fifth or early fourth millennium BC local herdsmen venerated the Jebel Barkal pinnacle was worshipped by surrounding herders both as a god’s phallus and as a divine ancestor in stone wearing a strange, very tall pointed headdress? If so, wouldn’t the leaders of these peoples have adopted a similar crown to show their descent from him? If the crown symbolized the god’s phallus, then the wearers of the crown would have been perceived as the bearers of the god’s fertility wherever they went. And if some of them roamed far north from Jebel Barkal—into Lower Nubia — with their herds (see Castiglioni & Castiglioni 2003, pl. XXXI), wouldn’t they have continued to worship the god in his tall sh.nt shrine, which duplicated the form of the mountain’s deified monolith? From there these symbols could have easily passed to the earliest rulers of Egypt.

If it seems improbable that an Egyptian crown would have its prehistoric origins in the Sudan, would it not be just as improbable to find there that an ancient Egyptian royal emblem had survived to modern times as a symbol of high political office? Visiting the Khalifa’s House Museum in Omdurman in January 2004, I saw a glass case containing some of the possessions of the Mahdi’s successor, the Khalifa Abdullahi el-Taishi (died 1899), who would have known nothing of the pharaohs. There, together with his Qur’ans, was his wooden staff: a classic was scepter!"

- Ends -

The idea that the Red Crown must have always been a "delta Nile Valley thing", comes from narratives setup to explain off scenes displayed on the Narmer Palette. This has often been invoked as events surrounding unification of the two lands; the delta region—represented by the Red crown, and upper Egypt—represented by the White crown. However, like Narmer, King Scorpion II—presumed to have preceded Narmer—also sported a Red crown in one scene, and a White one in another. Surely, this too could well be interpreted as relating events surrounding unification of the regions. If so, then this would have implied two major unification events, and thus along with it, weaken the 'Narmer as the first unifier' viewpoint. Some of course, have tried to work around the seemingly contradictory indicators, by suggesting that while the initiative and undertaking of bringing the said regions under a centralized polity may have began under rulers who proceeded Narmer, it culminated into Narmer's unification endeavor. From a personal viewpoint, this just goes to show the hypothetical nature of the narrative about not only Narmer being the absolute first unifier, but also the notion that the Red crown must have been the regalia of a lower Egyptian polity(s), while the White crown was that of the upper Egyptian rulers. The latter particularly seems to be so romanticized and attractive, that it is virtually repeated everywhere as though it were gospel truth, despite the fact of no predynastic Red crown regalia having ever showed up in lower Egypt, let alone predate the upper Egyptian examples of the same item. However, any idea that the Red crown may very well be ultimately upper Egyptian in origin [as preponderance of evidence as it stands, suggests] would require a relatively more complicated storyline than the aforementioned, which one imagines, lessens its appeal in some circles. Personally, not a single large royal tomb associated with any specific delta king assigned to a specific territory comes to mind, let alone an elaborate list of kings, tags implicating them or what have you.

On the question of the last point, a recent article posted by weekly.ahram.org.eg, titled "Not rivals but culturally united", followed by the attention-grabber of "Sensational discoveries by a Polish mission in the Nile Delta have revealed that far from being hostile regions as previously supposed, Upper and Lower Egypt were politically united in predynastic times, says Jill Kamil", noted:

"Now, thanks to the Polish discoveries, it is fairly certain that there were indeed two predynastic capitals of Upper and Lower Egypt."

This elicited the following response in a reader...

I also don't see where there were TWO capitals, as the article claims: "Now, thanks to the Polish discoveries, it is fairly certain that there were indeed two predynastic capitals of Upper and Lower Egypt. Fairly certain? Where? I see a well endowed northern location, flush with many material goods, but how does this make a "capital" or "state" of Lower Egypt? Am I missing something here? Indeed, it seems that several objects found relate to similar things inthe south like the carved dwarfs. And the Hed-Sed festival is very ancient, no doubt found south as well. - by forum discussant going by the moniker of "Zarahan".

 

Indeed, as the present author replied the discussant above, the article itself makes no specific mention of anything in way of tangible evidence, to my knowledge, that directly bespeaks centralized local state authority in the Delta, as we see in the Upper Egyptian areas.

For instance, we don't see record like this, as noted by the authors of said article themselves below, in the Delta areas prior to "unification":

However, archaeologists excavating at Abydos have found historical proof of the order of succession of the earliest kings of Pharaonic Egypt (inscribed on a clay seal), and also, in a predynastic and already heavily excavated cemetery, evidence of a possible 15 kings before Narmer (Menes/Aha), who stands at the beginning of recorded dynastic history.

Yet the mentioning of two supposed "capitals" might misleadingly insinuate that there was some sort of major centralized polity(s) in Lower Egypt which is somehow elicited or implicated by tangible evidence, when no such evidence exists or has been brought to light.


It looks like the notion of "two capitals" here was merely an inference made from an allusion to the "leading urban" centers, which according to said article, were supposedly gleaned from recent archaeological material findings; the author(s) of the article and/or proponents of the said "leading urban" centers figured that these centers must have had local authority respective to each and note, with attention to emphasis:

During the long predynastic era, different settlements (identified with totems) appear to have expanded their boundaries and begun to coalesce. Maybe some tribal groups gravitated towards larger ones and started to trade and barter with them. A process of assimilation took place. They became more dependent on one another, and there was a natural fusion into larger social units. Gradually the affairs of various villagers became **tied to a major settlement, which undoubtedly represented the richest and most powerful of them**. This is especially apparent at Nekhen near the modern town of Edfu, where there are five unusually large graves among the burials, and, as we now know, at Buto in the Delta.

To reiterate, the article provides no specific evidence about Delta Kings, their kings' list and large tombs, as noted, that we see in the case of upper Egypt, to suggest the existence of some major autonomous "capital" of the delta area, which was presumably that of centralized delta polity. The article however, does go onto reiterate some of the issues raised by previous observers, about possible cultural unification processes along the Nile Valley prior to first actual political unification and consolidation of a large area under the first of the Dynasties of the unified state of Egypt. One example of this from the article,...

"Cialowcz points out that before Upper Egyptians
entered the Delta, there were at least two centres that
rivalled them in every field. "Cultural unification
[which is observed in archaeological materials all
over Egypt, from Elephantine to the Mediterranean]
was not equal to political union."

As the present author had noted here, when the article was brought to attention...

What the authors of the present article were presumably driving at in their own way, is that Upper Egyptian and Delta polities competed with one another [as many nations still do—regardless of "socio-economic" and "military" status, i.e. even between the stronger and the weaker states over natural resources and strategic trade routes] over gaining the upper hand in access to not just in situ Nile Valley [including as far as where Kush lay] natural resources and trade, but also strategic corridors to accessing trade and resources in the "Near East", while also gaining the upper hand in political clout. In the process, so reckons the article, there were cultural fusions that culturally unified the regions involved to some extent or another before actual conquest endeavors [primarily from the south] and political unification under a central authority, but that Upper Egyptian polities were more advantaged when it came to the socio-economic situation and political clout.

Even so, it goes onto say,

Cialowcz points out that before Upper Egyptians entered the Delta, there were at least two centres that rivalled them in every field. "Cultural unification [which is observed in archaeological materials all over Egypt, from Elephantine to the Mediterranean] was not equal to political union.

And:

The thrust for expansion, and ultimate unification, came from the south.

...meaning that "the south" was more socio-economically advanced, giving it the upper hand to unite the general territory under a single centralized authority.

Recounting the present author's own postings back in 2005—in a discussion board, the following was raised, featuring different publishers/authors and evidently sporting themes about gradual cultural unification, as a side effect of trade and political relations along the Nile Valley prior to full unification into a single large state:

There is no question within academia, about the creation of a unified Egyptian nation state, the first central nation state, being the initiative of the Upper Egyptian establishment. However, there seem to have been differences in viewpoints as to how this came about. For instance, was it the culmination of military conquest of the Lower Nile Valley polity by the Upper Nile Valley polity...OR, was it a more peaceful and gradual process of Upper Egyptians moving northward, as a result of trade initiatives, resulting in the relations between the regions to grow into a unified state, with the more socio-economically developed Upper Egypt, and hence, its more powerful leadership having the advantage to rule over all lands?

Perhaps interesting questions for one to ponder!

In reply, a respondent wrote:  

It is possible that it was a combination of both, but the war and violence part we definitely have evidence of. 

Even the formation of each of the Two Lands had some sort of violence involved. Look at the glyphs of King Scorpion. There appeared to be conflict between Nekhen and Nakada as well as other city-states.

In response to the respondent, the present author wrote:

Agreed. Here is what Professor Kathryn Bard; Trustees of Boston University and the Journal of Field Archaeology, put together:

...Based on an analysis of archaeological evidence, the earliest writing in Egypt, and later king lists, Kaiser (1964: 118, 105-114) proposes that the Nagada culture expanded north in Nagada IIc-d times to sites in the Fayum region (such as the cemetery at Gerza), and then later to the Cairo area and the Delta. The unification, therefore, was much earlier than the period immediately preceding the beginning of the First Dynasty (Kaiser 1964: 114, 1985: 61-62, 1990: 288-289).

Trigger (1987: 61), however, states that if the unification occurred at an early date there would be archaeological evidence from Nagada III burials of a court-centered high culture. Instead, Trigger proposes that the northward expansion of the Nagada culture during Nagada II-III was the result of refugees emigrating from the developing states in the south, or the presence of Nagada traders involved in commerce with SW Asia. While the unification may have been achieved through conquest in the north, an earlier unification of southern polities (Nagada, Hierakonpolis, and Abydos), may have been achieved by a series of alliances (Trigger 1987: 61).

The eventual replacement of Maadi artifacts in the north by a material culture originating in the south may represent military exploits, while colonization by southerner may have occurred in northern regions where there were less well-developed local polities, as at Gerza or Minshat Abu Omar. Guksch (1991: 41) suggests that the Nagada IId ceramic horizon in Lower Egypt represents expanded Upper Egyptian trade into the NE Delta in late Nagada II times, with a (later) militarily-achieved political unification in Nagada III/dynasty 0 times. Possibly there was first a more or less peaceful (?) movement or migration(s) of Nagada culture peoples from south to north that may have been formalized by a later, or concurrent, military presence. A shift in settlement patterns is seen, and by the First Dynasty the north was much more densely inhabited than the south (Mortensen 1991: 24).

Archaeological evidence suggests a system much too complex for the southern expansion to be explained by military conquest alone, and the northern culture may have made important contributions to the unified polity which emerged (Seeher 1991: 318). One result of this expansion throughout northern Egypt would have been a greatly elaborated (state) administration, and by the beginning of the First Dynasty this was managed in part by the invention of writing, used on seals and tags affixed to state goods.

Source: Link!


*Subject to updating without notice.