Tag Archives: Nilo-Saharan

A Special Military Alliance with China is Egypt’s Only Chance for Survival – V

In the four earlier texts of this series, I described the bilateral needs that Egypt and China have to urgently address, therefore entering in an advantageous, multileveled and grand alliance, which will not only consolidate Egypt’s national security and boost China’s expansion in Africa, but also help drastically transform, pacify and unify the Black Continent’s northeastern corner, notably Sudan and Libya. All previous parts (titles, contents and links to the publications) are to be found at the end of the present article.

In the present, last article of the series, I will focus on the final targets that the Egyptian-Chinese alliance should set in view of Africa’s complete decolonization, de-Westernization, and rehabilitation. These issues are relevant to educational, cultural and political-military affairs; to eliminate the curse that fell on the Black Continent, Africans should

a) remove English and French as foreign languages,

b) interrupt the educational, academic and scientific links that almost all the African countries have been forced (through means of colonial interference) to maintain with England, France, Belgium, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the US,

c) terminate the economic subordination of almost all the major African private companies, corporations and state institutions or organizations to the above mentioned countries and to the international schemes that the Western countries have established (IMF, World Bank), and

d) minimize if not obliterate the presence of Western diplomats, military or tourists on Africa.

And China must help the Black Continent do exactly this. Africa was never part of the Western World, and no African needs to be part of this corrupt and ailing part of the Mankind.

Contents

Introduction

I. Chinese as the First Foreign Language in Egypt

II. Systematic Dissociation and Separation from Western Europe and North America

III. The Egypt – Sudan – Libya Confederation

IV. How the Chinese-Egyptian Alliance will reshape Africa into Five Mega-States

Introduction

For China to achieve an irrevocable breakthrough in Africa, it is essential that the Chinese statesmen, diplomats, administrators, military advisers, academics and businessmen envision their presence and activities on the African soil in a long term perspective.

Any short term perspective vision of China’s presence in Africa will fail exactly as it happened with the USSR. For some time, several African countries became the allies of Soviet Union; later, in different moments and for variant reasons, they broke their relations with the USSR or Russia and started unfortunately being again dependent on their former colonial masters, namely France and England, and/or America, which has ceaselessly tried to substitute itself for the traditional colonial powers. I presented this topic in brief, in an attempt to identify the reasons; my article was first published in 2008 and then republished recently here:

https://www.academia.edu/26278889/Why_Russia_always_failed_in_the_Middle_East_by_Prof_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis

The article was translated into Russian by the Russian News Agency INOSMI, and it was widely read, quoted, discussed, mentioned in the bibliography of Ph.D. dissertations, and republished;

https://inosmi.ru/20080203/239339.html

https://iv-g.livejournal.com/1390092.html

https://yury108.blogspot.com/2015/09/obsrvr.html

https://obsrvr.livejournal.com/1604305.html

https://vahegaro.livejournal.com/7111.html

https://www.dissercat.com/content/otnoshenie-sssrrossii-k-palestino-izrailskomu-konfliktu-v-kontse-1940-kh-nachale-2000-kh-god (note 143)

https://www.academia.edu/23504786/Мухаммед_Шамсаддин_Мегаломатис_Почему_Россия_всегда_терпела_неудачи_на_Ближнем_Востоке

In that article, I explained why other superpowers or great powers will always fail when expanding influence on earlier colonized lands. The reason is simple; Western colonization involved the establishment of an enormous infrastructure at the mental, educational, academic, scientific, intellectual, religious, spiritual, socio-behavioral and cultural levels. As this extensive infrastructure has been dictatorially imposed, intensively propagated, incessantly reasserted, highly documented and greatly deep, it generates a new ‘world’ for the misfortunate, colonized individual, clan, tribe and/or nation. This is apparently an alien, undeserved and execrable ‘world’ -or a prison if you prefer- and consequently it does not / cannot subside with a simple regime change, military coup or superficial economic infiltration. Even more so, since it also appears to be advantageously rewarding with the colonial slave’s promotion, namely the perspective of being a rubbish collector or a sexual tool in the colonial metropolis!

The complete failure of the USSR in Africa: Western rationalism and materialism in Africa help only perpetuate the Anglo-Saxon and French colonialism.

The colonized nations were thus turned to altered beings, automatons or subaltern populations; they were made to think, reflect and act according to patterns invented by the colonial powers as per their own interests. Africa’s colonized nations were not properly westernized; their colonial masters did not want them to be like them. They wanted them to become functional tools of the Western supremacy, and this is what most of the Africans have become without even understanding it and irrespective of religion, ethnic background, and origin. Certainly, several anti-colonial intellectual forces were formed and socio-political reactions expressed in Africa; all the same, they mostly formulated their rejection of the colonial powers in colonial languages and terms. As it can be easily understood, this situation has highly jeopardized their chances to bring forth tangible results.

Consequently, one could safely conclude that only a long term vision of the Chinese-African partnership can be possibly beneficial to both, Chinese and Africans. Egypt’s position, background, identity and colonial experience are extremely helpful in this regard. That’s why Kemet (or Masr) is by definition China’s gateway to Africa.

I. Chinese as the First Foreign Language in Egypt

Inaugurated before 20 years (in 2004), during the early period of the first tenure of President Hu Jintao, the Confucius Institutes are non-profit educational institutions affiliated with the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China; more specifically, they are operated by Hanban (namely the Office of Chinese Language Council International, which became known as Center for Language Education and Cooperation in 2020). They are established jointly in a great number of countries and they always operate in cooperation with local partners. As of 2019, there were more than 500 Confucius Institutes all over the world. The stated aims are the promotion of Chinese language and culture, the support of local Chinese teaching, and the facilitation of bilateral cultural exchanges.

Basically, there are two Confucius Institutes in Egypt; the first is associated with Cairo University and the second with Suez Canal University. More recently, in 2015, an agreement was signed between Pharos University in Alexandria and Confucius Institute – Cairo University, thus creating the first Confucius unit to teach Chinese in Alexandria. As it happens in numerous other cases, professors from the largest Chinese universities teach in the Alexandria-based Confucius unit. Background:

https://ci.cn/

https://ci.cn/en/gywm/pp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute

Quite interestingly, NATO StratCom (Strategic Communication Center of Excellence) considered it necessary to meticulously spy on Confucius Institutes and to publish the following document, thus demonstrating their deep and awful fears that the days of the Western hegemony are numbered. https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/confucius_institutes.pdf

Although the aforementioned beginning was quite successful and well-done, by now it is not anymore sufficient. Focusing on the bright future of the Chinese-Egyptian cooperation, the administration of Confucius Institutes should set up a committee to study the ways needed to intensify the process of Chinese language penetration and to suggest a plan as to how Chinese will replace English as first foreign language in Egypt – in a mid-term perspective.

China has to deploy all the necessary resources in order to systematically, resolutely and comprehensively terminate the 2-century long, colonial period of predominance of French and English languages at all costs. In this great endeavor, Beijing should bring its influential allies into the game; Russia, India, Brazil, Iran and Turkey must also develop their Africa-de-Westernization policies, opening cultural institutes, establishing partnerships, promoting their languages, and founding bilingual universities. Chinese, Hindi/Urdu, Russian, Portuguese, Farsi and Turkish are far more useful for Africans than English and French.

One thing must be made clearly understood to all Africans: the ‘easiness’ of the ‘already known’ (namely English and French) is the curse that plunged Africa into darkness, slavery, corruption and evilness, while also enabling the colonial gangsters to develop plans providing for Africa’s depopulation. It is as simple as that:

– Learn English and French, so that the Western colonial gangsters kill you all and repopulate the Black Continent with White supremacists!

Chinese language penetration in Egypt will then serve as a model and as a success story to implement in other African countries; while developing stronger bilateral relations with every state in the Black Continent, Beijing should dedicate special interest to help increase sound bilateral relationships among all African lands and nations. There are many speaking about ‘peace in Africa’, but there will never be peace in the Black Continent, as long as between an Sudanese and a Somali stands English as a means of communication, while a Malian and an Algerian converse in French.

When Nigerians and Egyptians communicate in English or Algerians and Malagasy speak to one another in French, problems appear always. In my proposals for the establishment of the first Afrocentric University in Africa, I made it clear that the proper end of the colonial period will never take place before 20 major African languages are regularly taught, each in a separate department of university, in at least all the major states of the Black Continent. See (notably Unit 4):

https://www.academia.edu/22843510/AFRICAN_RENAISSANCE_UNIVERSITY_A_VISION

Western languages are parasitic plants in Africa. Mande, Fulani, Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Tuareg, Oromo, Somali, Berber, Malagasy, Zulu, Shona, Sidama, Afar, Arabic and several other languages should become the official languages of a truly non-colonial African Union with duly de-Westernized member states. Consequently, by supporting African languages’ international status upgrade, China will demonstrate Beijing’s good will and readiness to contribute to Africa’s de-Westernization. At any given moment, China should not become and should not look like a colonial or neocolonial power. This will be the ultimate success of Confucius Institutes in Africa.

II. Systematic Dissociation and Separation from Western Europe and North America

China’s role in Africa will never be effective and fruitful without a complete de-Westernization at all levels; the Chinese-African partnership depends on extensive exchange of experience, study of colonial examples common and repugnant to both partners, quest for national heritage, re-affirmation of cultural identity, and defense of moral integrity. In striking opposition to the racist, colonial practices, Chinese and Africans should reciprocally identify the exact correspondence between the moral-behavioral values of their respective cultures and civilizations and examine how every single of their values is differently contextualized in China and in Africa. The ensuing cultural interexchange and mutual understanding of the ‘other’ will then help form the foundations of the Chinese Africology and the African Sinology.  

Chinese and African academics, intellectuals, and scholars should then undertake the common, bilateral rejection and refutation of the Western model and the Eurocentric pseudo-historical dogma at a worldwide stage, also involving their partners in India, Russia, Iran, Turkey and many other Asiatic and Latin American countries. World History should therefore be written in an unbiased, trustful, and honest manner for the first time in the History of Mankind.

This is what anti-Western Chinese and African scholars, academics, intellectuals, scholars and explorers should understand deeply and up to the point of making it the foundation of their common description of the deeds, the thoughts, and the faiths of the humans: to be perfectly anti-Western and to constitute the full refutation of the racist Eurocentric model of historiography, one does not need to be either Sinocentric or Afrocentric; on the contrary, he must be humanocentric.  

Afrocentric approaches and substantive criticism of the colonial academics, although positive and necessary, have not yet helped people grasp even a tiny portion of the Ancient Oriental Spirituality, Science, Moral, Wisdom, Universality, and Divinity. The Assyrian-Babylonian (Mesopotamian) and the Egyptian heritage has only been profaned within the barbaric, ignorant and dark periphery of the so-called Hebrews, Greeks and Romans. The Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Quran have only a reminiscence of the Sacred as revealed in the Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian-Babylonian, Egyptian, and Iranian scriptures.

Not even one king among the Ancient Hebrews, Greeks, Macedonians and Romans managed to attain the sacredness and the spiritual force of Thutmose III.

Within the context of the fallacious Eurocentric model of historiography, which was based on the aberration of ‘Judeo-Christian civilization’ and the absurdity of ‘Greco-Roman civilization’ (that the colonials imposed worldwide), Africa occupies a truly marginal, subordinate position, as if the entire Black Continent depended on the developments that took place in South Balkans and in Rome. This racist construct consists in total distortion of the History of Mankind; it was established as a mere reflection of the 19th c. colonial invaders’ disdain of the African nations that they colonized at the time. They narrated as ‘History’ what they viewed as their own African subjects whom the Europeans never bothered to truly and deeply study as per the local African, standards and measures, thus erroneously, unjustly and undeservedly evaluating them after the worthless, malignant and utterly racist European criteria.

The correct, Chinese view over, and version of, the Silk Road

The false, Eurocentric view of the Silk Road

Within the context of the fallacious Eurocentric model of historiography, which was based on the aberration of ‘Judeo-Christian civilization’ and the absurdity of ‘Greco-Roman civilization’ (that the colonials imposed worldwide), China occupies a really peripheral position ‘at the very end of the world’, somewhere in the East. The History of the Silk Road is not the same for Western and for Chinese academics, scholars and explorers – let alone diplomats, politicians and statesmen. Within the Western bogus-narrative, China has always been depicted as if it has been a faraway country only periodically, slightly and occasionally connected with the Mediterranean World, which was erroneously presented as the supposed center of the world or the axis around which the History of Mankind revolved.

China, Egypt and all the other African countries should work systematically to totally dismantle and obliterate the Eurocentric Western fallacy. There will never be decolonization without complete de-Westernization, and this apparently demands a major effort of full de-Mediterraneanization of the World History, which is a racist, false and poisonous product made in the West. Over the last six millennia, all the humans lived in a great variety of locations and lands, often developing different cultures and civilizations, but contact has always been maintained; so, the criminal conquistadors of the barbarian and pseudo-Christian Pope of Rome never ‘discovered’ anything.

More importantly, the axis of World History revolved always around the arc that links Egypt -through Mesopotamia, Iran and Central Asia- with China, involving also concavities and convexities that end in the African Atlas, in the Horn of Africa, in Yemen, in India, in Anatolia and the Balkans, in the Caucasus region, and in Siberia. On these basic lines took place all the major events of World History.

That is why it is essential that China, India and Egypt launch together a major anti-colonial project named ‘歷史 – इतिहास- تاريخ’ (Lishi Itihaas Tarih/’History’ in Chinese, Hindi and Arabic respectively) and involve in it their numerous Asiatic and African partners in order to genuinely compose -for the first time in World History- a truly unbiased, multilateral and comprehensive History of the Mankind, plainly reveal the importance of the major lands of History (as stated in the previous paragraph), and irrevocably reduce the role of European peoples to their true proportions, secondary dimensions and negative impact. This collective work should then be translated to all the Asiatic, African and Latin American languages and subsequently serve as the fundamental documentation which all the school manuals and the textbooks will reproduce, thus eliminating the hitherto prevailing false, colonial Eurocentric historiography. About the three terms:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/歷史

https://hi.wiktionary.org/wiki/इतिहास

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/تاريخ

Even the notion of ‘Europe’ must be deleted; actually, it does not truly exist. It never did – for the overwhelming majority of the world population. The lands located west of the plains of Russia, of the Black Sea, and of the Anatolian plateau are also parts of Asia. As a matter of fact, what Westerners called ‘Europe’ is the most western and the most troublesome peninsula of Asia. The undeniable fact that Ancient Greek and Latin texts make this distinction does not concern Africans, Caucasians, Turkic nations, Iranians, Arabic-speaking people, Indians, Siberians, Chinese and other Asiatic nations, because those sources are alien, unknown, unimportant, indifferent and useless to them. Europe does not have the status of a continent by any means.

Working together at the academic, scientific, intellectual, and cultural levels, China and Egypt will thus put an end to the colonial links that have been imposed on Asia and Africa over the past 250 years. The campaign motto for China, Egypt, and their partners should be: “No Oriental student in Occidental universities”.

III. The Egypt – Sudan – Libya Confederation

After re-establishing the national unity and sovereignty of Sudan and Libya due to full scale military intervention and political pacification processes, China and Egypt should work hard with local authorities in Khartoum and Tripoli as to how to best interconnect and bind all three nations. In the third article of the series (see below; units IV and V), I offered few examples in this regard, stressing particularly the sector of Transport. High-speed railways will certainly bring closer the three capitals, the three elites, and the three nations. With ca. 175 million people and an area of about 4.6 million km2, the three lands make the 7th state of the world in terms of surface and the 8th largest country by population.

As it can be surmised, the desire for a concerted unification of Egypt, Sudan and Libya does not reflect a delusional target like going higher in the list or just looking bigger; it addresses the common need of all the local societies and governments to acquire greater economic depth and have a faster rhythm of development. With the help of China, mega-projects similar to those I proposed in the fourth article of the series (see below: units I-V) have to be launched also in Sudan and Libya. With interconnected systems of canals and associated irrigation plans that carry water from the Nile, parts of the Butana desert in the eastern part of Sudan can become cultivated lands, thus exponentially increasing the agricultural production of the country. About: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butana

The three countries will always have three seats in the UN General Assembly, also maintaining independent governments and separate parliaments; however, they can launch a one-year long rotating presidency and engage in several unification projects at the political, military, economic and educational levels. With full respect for all the existing ethnic groups, their languages, traditions and cultures, with concertation and synergy among the respective private sectors, with a unitary vision as regards their common vast territory and past, and with the strong support of China, the three countries can engage in the path of reunification on a purely secular basis. This will finally be the beginning of the end of the colonial era in Africa.

As it is well known, borders anywhere in Africa do not reflect ethnic territories and national realities, as they should have, but remind us of aspects of the colonial past. They are all false, and that’s why the criminal colonial gangsters, namely the English, the French and the Americans, want still to preserve the present, impermissible and untenable, borders in Africa. The reason for this vicious, insidious and inhuman policy is simple; practically speaking, there are no proper borders among nations throughout the Black Continent. There are only limits between the graves into which all the African nations have been buried by the guilty White Man.

Because the colonial powers want to preserve these illegal borders, these lines of sin, shame and hatred must be abolished. China should not have any illusion in this regard; the very existence of the colonial borders, the terrible absence of substantive infrastructure, and the imposed historical distortion, which is taught in the schools as an undisputed dogma, constitute the three major hindrances to Africa’s liberation and to Beijing’s perspectives in Africa. Of course, it will not be an easy thing to abolish the colonial borders in the Black Continent.

The effort should start with the formation of regional alliances and small unions of few states in several zones. Thus, the establishment of a confederation among Egypt, Sudan and Libya will mark a critical step in this regard. It is important for Beijing to methodically conceive and gradually carry out this project, because a successful union of three major African states will certainly stimulate many others to undertake similar efforts in other parts of Africa.

For this project, China should dedicate dozens of thousands of specialists, explorers, scholars and advisers; first, Beijing should create them. It is essential for the Chinese leadership to understand that, despite their good will and all the hitherto deployed efforts, China still does not truly know Africa; at least, not up to the level the colonial powers do. That is why China will urgently need 20000 Africanists, departments of African Studies in at least 50 Chinese universities, a plethora of linguists specializing in all the African languages, and researchers in Ethnography. A true Chinese army of explorers must disembark in Africa.

Similarly, in striking opposition to the highly ideologized, extremely biased, and utterly insidious Western academic policy against the Northern African Hamites and the Eastern African Cushites, China should become the worldwide center of Hamitic, Berber, Tuareg, Hausa, Cushitic, Oromo and Somali Studies.

Last but not least, China will certainly need 2000 Egyptologists and Coptologists with parallel background in Phoenician-Carthaginian, Latin and Ancient Greek in order to help present and future Egyptian and African scholars overwhelmingly refute the Eurocentric bogus-historical dogma, which prevails in the propagandist pseudo-universities of Western Europe and North America. They will have to plainly demonstrate to the world academic community the fact that the African Genius of the Hamitic Kemetians (Egyptians), Berbers and Cushites-Meroites and the Asiatic-Semitic Intelligence of the Carthaginians brought civilization to the islands of the Mediterranean Sea and to the southern extremities of the Balkan, the Italian and the Iberian peninsulas.

The topic is certainly interrelated with the urgent need of the Chinese academia to undertake a real overhaul of the Western disciplines of Orientalism, but this topic demands a new series of articles about the development of the Chinese disciplines of Assyriology, Hittitology, Iranology, etc. on entirely anticolonial and anti-racist basis. Establishing parallels between the Chinese Hundred Schools of Thought and Ancient Oriental (Assyrian-Babylonian, Egyptian, Iranian, Aramaean, Phoenician) schools of wisdom, universalism, spirituality and science or the Gnostic systems of Northern Africa or Western Asia would help all the people better perceive and fully assess the enduring interconnectedness of Asiatic and African cultures and civilizations. About: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Schools_of_Thought

IV. How the Chinese-Egyptian Alliance will reshape Africa into Five Mega-States

It may be a long process, but an early vision and a correct approach always matter. In order to totally change Africa, effectively block the presence or the return of the colonial powers, and instinctively trigger pro-Chinese feelings among all Africans, thus permanently consolidating Beijing’s leading role in the Black Continent, China must totally undo everything that the Western colonials did in Africa.

Taking into consideration the ethnic identity, the cultural integrity, the historical heritage of all the African and non-African nations that currently live in Africa, and taking into account the demanded conditions of socioeconomic development and international life, one can come to the conclusion that Africa should be re-organized in five great confederate states:

1- Kemet/Egypt, Cush/Sudan, and Rebu-Libu/Libya

This confederate state will be made out of the three ancient lands of civilization and modern countries, as briefly described in the present article. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cush_(Bible)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemetism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kmt_(magazine)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Km_(hieroglyph)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kush

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cush_(Bible)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napata

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mero%C3%AB

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Libya

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libu

https://www.academia.edu/34407589/Egypt_Ethiopia_Sudan_Abyssinia_the_Freemasonic_Orientalist_Fallacy_of_Ethiopianism_and_Nubia

https://www.academia.edu/34398553/Fake_Sudan_Real_Ethiopia_and_Fake_Ethiopia_Real_Abyssinia_what_is_at_stake

https://www.academia.edu/34406896/Sudan_Real_Ethiopia_Abyssinia_Fake_Ethiopia_Evil_Progeny_of_Pan_Arabism_and_Ethiopianism

https://www.academia.edu/34407589/Egypt_Ethiopia_Sudan_Abyssinia_the_Freemasonic_Orientalist_Fallacy_of_Ethiopianism_and_Nubia

https://www.academia.edu/35045597/The_Secret_Reasons_of_the_Darfur_Genocide_fake_Arabic_imposed_on_Non_Arabs_2006_

https://www.academia.edu/24440061/Arab_Nation_Hoax_Geared_to_Falsify_Islamic_History_Ruin_Varied_Nations_disfiguratively_Named_Arab_by_Prof_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis

https://www.academia.edu/44995994/Contrary_to_Oromos_and_Somalis_the_Masriyin_Christian_or_Muslim_Egyptians_as_subjects_of_the_Mamluks_and_the_French_have_had_no_National_Identity_Part_V

2- Cush/Ethiopia, Punt/Somalia, and Eastern Africa (with a small enclave for Amhara-Tigray Abyssinia)

This confederate state will be established out of lands, which are currently parts of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia (Somaliland being not a state but a local MI6 office), Kenya, and most of the Swahili-speaking Muslim inhabitants of the coast of Tanzania. Apparently, the Cushitic nations of the Oromos and the Somalis will be the largest entities within the confederacy, which will comprise Cushitic, Nilotic and Bantu people.

Taking into consideration the fact that the Semitic Amhara and Tigray tribes (: the Abyssinians) have had a most tumultuous and very negative relationship with the regional Cushitic majority, repeatedly made war upon them, and persistently persecuted them, it will be wise to envision an Abyssinian enclave within the confederacy; this will be formed out of lands belonging to the Eritrean North and to the Tigray and Amhara regions of today’s untenable Ethiopia. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oromo_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amhara_Region

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigray_Region

https://www.academia.edu/45605780/Cush_Meroe_Kemet_Egypt_Punt_Other_Berberia_Azania_and_the_Orientalization_of_the_Roman_Empire_Common_Origin_Migrations_Ancestral_Culture_and_Lands_of_Oromos_Sudanese_and_Other_Cushites

https://www.academia.edu/43443326/Ethiopia_a_Panacea_for_Tyrants_a_Stiletto_in_Colonial_Hands_2007

https://www.academia.edu/48806338/The_West_s_Ethiopian_Aberration_the_kingdom_of_Prester_John_between_Myth_and_Reality

https://www.academia.edu/43445873/40_Centuries_and_20_Years_of_Inexorable_Infinite_Punt_Somalia_East_Africas_Most_Radiant_Nation_Part_I_2011_

https://www.academia.edu/43453731/40_Centuries_and_20_Years_of_Inexorable_Infinite_Punt_Somalia_East_Africa_s_Most_Radiant_Nation_Part_II_2011_

https://www.academia.edu/34472471/Meroitic_Oromo_Ethiopian_Continuity_Call_for_a_Research_Project https://www.academia.edu/50299787/Links_to_my_articles_about_Egypt_Kemet_Sudan_Kush_Ethiopia_Abyssinia_Fake_Ethiopia_and_todays_Nubians

https://www.academia.edu/43645563/Links_to_my_articles_about_Official_Czarist_Russian_Envoy_Alexander_Bulatovichs_books_on_1890s_Abyssinia_and_his_expedition

https://www.academia.edu/106272084/Gadaa_Waaqeffannaa_Occupied_Oromia_Africa_the_Western_World_and_its_Racist_Malignant_Universities

https://www.academia.edu/44797482/Oromo_History_and_African_Christianity_Nobatia_Makuria_and_Alodia_the_Cushitic_Christian_Kingdoms_of_Ethiopia_in_Sudan_Axum_Agaw_and_Pseudo_Solomonic_Abyssinia

https://www.academia.edu/43433032/Sudan_Ethiopia_Abyssinia_Egypt_Somalia_Yemen_and_the_Anti_African_Plans_of_the_Colonial_Orientalists_and_of_their_local_stooges

Somalis

Map of Oromo dialects

Cushitic-Ethiopian Oromo flag

3- Carthage-Tunisia/Algeria, Berber Atlas, and Hamitic Sahara

This confederate state will be formed out of several NW African states that draw on the Carthaginian, Berber, Tuareg, Hausa and Saharan Muslim heritage and tradition of the wider region, i.e. Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and the northern half of Nigeria. An ominous and excessive colonial project of linguistic Arabization and extremist Islamization (based on disastrous, pseudo-Muslim and Anti-Islamic theologies) has been carried out in this region for long in order to totally transform the identity of the indigenous nations, eliminate the originality of their heritage, destroy their cultural integrity, divide the local societies, trigger divisions, split the families, and produce useless bloodshed only for the benefit of the colonial powers of the West.

The paramount target achieved due to the Western (mainly French) colonization concerned the establishment of a fake dilemma that was imposed on all the local societies (since the 19th c.), namely to

– either imitate the French and get intoxicated with Western lies and pseudo-science

– or become an extremist and die for a fake Islam that did not reflect the well-known historical civilization, culture and religion.

It is within this abominable divide that the traditional popular religion, wisdom, and culture have been sidestepped by the fanaticism of the ferociously anti-African and deeply anti-Islamic Hanbali, Ibn Taimiyyah, and Wahhabi theologies and forgeries.

By bringing to surface and reviving old traditions, forgotten identities, and moral integrity, and by interconnecting them with modern Afrocentric trends, China will be able to help permanently uproot extremism and obliterate French, English and American presence from the vast region which can certainly unite in a powerful, wealthy and progressive African confederacy.

Carthage, 218 BCE

For Chinese scholars and diplomats to see the hidden reality of the African Atlas and the wider Sahara region, four major academic fallacies have to be totally disregarded, refuted and dismantled by them first, notably

a- the false construct of ‘Afro-Asiatic languages’ (a fabrication that enables Western scholars to occasionally change their earlier conclusions as per the political needs of their criminal governments);

b- the colonial promotion of Arabic, which was never an identitarian element or a national language in Africa (it was basically a lingua franca for Muslims, and it was promoted by the French in order to deliberately destroy the Berber identity of the vast region);

c- the systematized effort to discredit the ethno-linguistic Hamitic group (by calling it ‘Hamitic hypothesis’), which is due to Western colonial biases against the Hamitic-Cushitic ethnic-linguistic-cultural unity that can help bring together the northern half of Africa (namely parts 1, 2 and 3 of the present unit) in just one state; and

d- the vicious attempt of the racist French colonials to uproot the national Berber identity of all the North African populations that have been deceitfully categorized by the colonial gangsters into Berber speaking people, bilinguals and Arabs. There were never Arabs in North Africa; today’s Arabic-speaking populations from Sudan to Morocco are Cushites and Hamites who have been gradually Arabized because they accepted Islam as religion. However, they remained culturally and ethnically African (Hamitic and Cushitic); consequently, in the Atlas region, there are only Arabic speaking Berbers, bilinguals, and Berbers who do not speak Arabic at all. We have therefore to conclude that Arabic can have only status of religious language throughout Northwestern Africa. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuareg_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausa_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroasiatic_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Africa

https //en.wikipedia org/wiki/File:Map_of_African_language_families.svg

https://www.academia.edu/97110465/Nubianization_of_the_Cushites_Linguistic_Denigration_of_Berbers_Denial_of_Hamitic_Identity_the_Next_Genocide_in_Africa

https://www.academia.edu/46024986/Fake_Nubia_a_Colonial_Forgery_to_deprive_Cushitic_Nations_from_National_Independence_Historical_Identity_and_Cultural_Heritage

https://www.academia.edu/97224639/Distortion_of_Cushitic_and_Hamitic_Berber_History_by_Western_Forgers_Africas_Endless_Enslavement

https://www.academia.edu/23218437/Anc%C3%AAtre_des_guerres_et_de_la_tyrannie_le_mensonge_Pan_Arabe_Par_Prof_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis

https://www.academia.edu/49634034/The_Only_Way_for_China_to_destroy_the_West_is_to_outfox_and_dismantle_the_Fallacious_Colonial_Model_of_History_first

Berber flag – https://www.yaden-africa.com/the-culture/african-tribes/berber

https://www.temehu.com/tuareg-confederacies.htm

Hausa people flag

4- Manding, Atlantic Congo, Volta-Congo and Central Africa

This confederate state will consist of numerous ethnic groups and coastal nations of Western Africa that speak Manding, Atlantic Congo, Volta Congo and Central African languages, notably Wolof, Mende, Bambara, Dogon, Dyula, Yoruba, Igbo, Gbaya, Zande, etc. Including states like Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, the southern half of Nigeria, parts of Cameroon, and the Central African Republic, this confederation will also incorporate the Fula (Peul) people, who live in the southern part of their lands and have not therefore been comprised within the borders of the confederate state no 3 (see above). About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolof_language

https //en.wikipedia org/wiki/Manding_languages#/media/File:Map_of_the_Manding_language_continuum png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manding_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mande_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bambara_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogon_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogon_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoruba_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoruba_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorubaland

https //upload.wikimedia org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Map_of_the_Niger%E2%80%93Congo_languages svg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger%E2%80%93Congo_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fula_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fula_language

West Africa 1875

5- Bantu Central & South Africa

This confederation will constitute the southernmost of Africa’s five mega-states. It will comprise Bantu people from coast to coast, therefore uniting all African lands south of a hypothetical line going from Equatorial Guinea to Uganda and thence to Tanzania and Mozambique. A Khoisan enclave should be instituted in order to gather together these ethnic-linguistic groups. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_peoples

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khoisan_languages

By helping set up five mega-states in Africa, Beijing will not only bring unity, concord and cooperation to the Black Continent, but it will also make it sure that peace is no further endangered due to the interests of the Western White Man, his heinous mentality, and his anti-Black stance. The absence of the divisive and merciless American, English and French colonial gangsters, racist missionaries, and plotting diplomats from Africa will certainly enable African nations to establish major states the size of Brazil or Russia and thus acquire the main prerequisite to socioeconomic development, namely economic depth. Empowered by China, India and Russia, the aforementioned five African mega-states will then be able to throw the barbarians of England, France and America into the dustbin of World History.

This will certainly constitute China’s greatest revenge for the Opium Wars.  

Bantu languages

——————————————  

Previous articles of the series (titles, contents, and links to the publications):

A Special Military Alliance with China is Egypt’s Only Chance for Survival – I

I. Western Hatred against Egypt and Plans against Mankind

II. The End of Egypt may be very close

III. Egypt and the Pulverization of Sudan and Libya

IV. The Renaissance Dam in the light of the Abyssinian ‘Prophecy’ against Egypt and Sudan

A Special Military Alliance with China is Egypt’s Only Chance for Survival – II

I. The War in Gaza and the Destabilization of the Red Sea Region

II. The Rise of China as a World Super-power

III. The Irrevocable Prerequisites of China’s Worldwide Predominance

A Special Military Alliance with China is Egypt’s Only Chance for Survival – III

I. Grave Threats for Egypt’s Existence and Serious Danger for China’s Expansion

II. Perspectives of the Strategic Alliance between Egypt & China

III. Two Chinese Military Bases in Egypt: One Million Chinese Military on African Soil

IV. Joint Chinese-Egyptian Military Operations in Sudan and the Perspectives of a Chinese-Egyptian-Sudanese Alliance

V. Joint Chinese-Egyptian Military Operations in Libya and the Perspectives of a Chinese-Egyptian-Libyan Alliance

A Special Military Alliance with China is Egypt’s Only Chance for Survival – IV

Introduction

I. Toshka or New Valley Project

II. Water Desalination Plants

III. Relocation of a Sizeable Part of Egypt’s Population

IV. The Rafah-Taba Canal 

V. Twenty (20) Chinese Universities to operate in Egypt

Groups of Bantu languages

Khoisan languages

Islamic schools of Jurisprudence in Africa

======================================= 

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Download the article (with pictures and legends) in PDF:

The Meroitic Ethiopian Origins of the Modern Oromo Nation

The Meroitic Ethiopian Origins of the Modern Oromo Nation

By Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis  

First published in: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articl … leID=21760  

Subsequently published in: Oromo Studies Association, 2005 Conference Proceedings, Washington D.C., 2005, 10p

Online mention: http://oromostudies.org/Proceedings/OSA.Proceeding.2005.pdf

The present text has been slightly edited.

 

This paper deals, among others, with the development of Meroitic studies, the Meroitic civilization, the destruction of the city of Meroe, the dispersal of the Meroitic people after the collapse of their state, the Christianization of the post Meroitic states in Ethiopia (i.e. Northern Sudan / it is to be reminded that the modern state of Abyssinia is fallaciously, illegally and criminally rebaptized ‘Ethioipia’), the migration of the remnants of the Meroitic people in the direction of the Blue Nile, and their possible relation of ancestry with the modern Cushitic language speaking Oromo nation. It must be stated clearly at the outset that the issue of Meroitic ancestry of the Oromo nation has not yet been considered, much less published in an academic journal or scholarly books. The paper was first presented in an academic conference organized by the Oromo Studies Association. Footnotes have been added in view of the aforementioned publication (see Pdf). 

1. The Development of the Meroitic Studies, the History of Kush and Meroe, and the Efforts to Decipher the Meroitic Writing  

Interest in what was Ethiopia for the Ancient Greeks and Romans, i.e. the Northern territory of present day Sudan from Khartoum to the Egyptian border *1, led to the gradual development of the modern discipline of the Humanities that long stood in the shadow of Egyptology: the Meroitic Studies.  

Considerable advances had been made in academic research and knowledge as the result of the exploratory trips of the Prussian pioneering Egyptologist Richard Lepsius *2 (1842 – 1844) that bestowed upon modern scholarship the voluminous ‘Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien’ (Monuments from Egypt and Ethiopia), and as the direct consequence of the series of excavations undertaken by E. A. Wallis Budge *3 and John Garstang *4 at Meroe (modern Bagrawiyah) in the first years of the twentieth century, by Francis Llewellyn Griffith *5 at Kawa (ancient Gematon, near modern Dongola, 1929 – 1931), by Fritz Hintze *6 at Musawwarat es Sufra, by Jean Leclant *7 at Sulb (Soleb), Sadinga (Sedeinga), and Djebel Barkal (ancient Napata, modern Karima) in the 1950s and the 1960s, by D. Wildung *8 at Naqah, and by Charles Bonnet at Kerma. The pertinent explorations and contributions of scholars like A. J. Arkell *9, P. L. Shinnie *10, and Laszlo Torok *11 that cover a span of 80 years reconstituted a large part of the greatness and splendor of this four millennia long African civilization.  

Yet, due to the lack of direct access to original sources and genuine understanding of the ancient history of Sudan, the legendary and historical Ethiopia of the Greeks and Romans, which corresponds to what was ‘Kush’ for the Hebrews (mentioned many times in the Bible) and ultimately ‘Kas’ for the ancient Egyptians *12 (mentioned in thousands of hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic texts), we face a serious problem of terminology when it comes to Ancient Sudan’s earlier historical periods.  

We are confined to such terms as Period (or Group) A (3100 – 2700 BCE), *13 Period B *14 (2700 – 2300 BCE that starts with Pharaoh Snefru’s expedition, *15 which marks indeed the beginning of the time-honored and multi-faceted relationship between Kemet-Egypt and Kush), and Period C *16 (2300 – 2100 BCE), for one millennium of Ancient Sudanese (Ethiopian or Kushitic) History. For the said period, thanks to Ancient Egyptian texts, we have a plethora of ethnic names and state names referring to populations living in North Sudan’s territory (notably Wawat, Irtet, Setjiu,Yam, Zetjau, and Medjay *17); but we fail to correctly establish to whom these names exactly refer as ethno-linguistic groups (Kushitic? Nilo-Saharan? Western Hamitic?).

Subsequent periods of Ancient Sudanese History are also denoted in conventional manner, as this is highlighted by the term Period of Kerma *18 (2100 – 1500 BCE); this period is named after the modern city and archeological site, 500 km in the south of the present Sudanese – Egyptian border.  

What we know for sure is that, when the first Pharaohs of the New Empire invaded and colonized the entire area down to Kurgus *19 (more than 1000 km alongside the Nile, south of the present Sudanese – Egyptian border), they established two top Egyptian administrative positions, namely “Viceroy of Wawat” and “Viceroy of Kush/Kas”. Wawat is the area between Aswan and Abu Simbel or properly speaking, the area between the first and the second cataracts, whereas Kas is all the land that lies beyond. With the collapse of the Kerma culture, comes to end a first high-level culture and powerful state in the area of Kush.  

We employ the term ‘Kushitic Period’ *20 to refer to the subsequent periods: 

a) the Egyptian annexation (1500 – 950 BCE), which involved a permanent effort to egyptianize Kush that triggered in turn ceaseless Kushitic revolutions against the Pharaohs,  

b) the Kushitic independence (950 – 800 BCE), when a separate state was formed around Napata *21, present day Karima, 750 km south of the Sudanese – Egyptian border,  

c) the Kushitic expansion and involvement in Egypt (800 – 670 BCE, which corresponds mostly to the XXVth – ‘Ethiopian’ (meaning literally Sudanese) according to Manetho *22 – dynasty of Egypt, when the Theban clergy of Amun made an alliance with the Kushitic ‘Qore’, i.e. the Kings of Napata, who ruled Kush and Upper Egypt based on their two capitals, Napata and Thebes *23, (the alliance was directed against the pact that the Heliopolitan clergy of Ra had made with the Libyan princes who thus strengthened the separate state of Lower Egypt),  

Slide14

d) the Kushitic expulsion from Egypt, following the three successive invasions of Egypt by Emperors Assarhaddon *24 (in 671 BCE) and Assurbanipal *25 (in 669 BCE and 666 BCE) of Assyria, who made an alliance with the Heliopolitan *26 priesthood and the Libyan princes against the Theban clergy and the Kushitic kings, and  

e) the subsequent Kushitic state’s decline – period during which took place the successive invasions led by Psamtik/Psammetichus II of Egypt *27 (in 591 BCE) and by the Achaemenid *28 Persian Shah Kambudjiyah / Cambyses *29 (in 525 BCE).

The entire Kushitic period is considered as terminated with the completion of the transfer of the capital city at a much safer (and more distant from Egypt) location far in the south, namely at Meroe, in the area of present day Bagrawiyah beyond the point whereby Atbarah river unites with the Greater Nile. This event occurred at the end of the reign of Qore (King) Nastasen *30 between 335 and 315 BCE.  

Slide21 

We call ‘Meroitic’ the entire period that covers almost 700 years beginning around 260 BCE with the reign of the successors of Nastasen, notably Arkamaniqo / Ergamenes *31 (the most illustrious among the earliest ones and the first to be buried at Meroe / Bagrawiyah), and ending with the end of Meroe and the destruction of the Meroitic royal cities by the Axumite Abyssinian Negus Ezana *32 (ca. 370 CE). It is easily understood that the ‘Kushitic’ period antedates ‘Meroitic’ period, but both appellations are quite conventional.  

Slide27

 

The ancient people of Kush (or Ethiopia) entered into a period of cultural, intellectual, and scriptorial radiation and authenticity relatively late, around the third century BCE, which means that the development took place when Meroe replaced Napata as capital of the Kushites / Meroites. Before that moment, the ancient people of Kush (or Ethiopia) used Egyptian hieroglyphic writing for all their scriptorial purposes, be they administrative, economic, religious and/or monumental – royal. The introduction of the Meroitic alphabetic hieroglyphic writing spearheaded the development of a Meroitic cursive alphabetic scripture that was used for less magnificent purposes than palatial and sacred relief inscriptions. The first person to publish copies of Meroitic inscriptions (then unidentified) was the French architect Gau *33, who visited Northern Sudan as early as 1819. Quite unfortunately, almost two centuries after the discovery of the first Meroitic inscriptions, we are left in mysteries with regard to the greatest part of the contents of the epigraphic evidence collected in both scriptural systems.  

The earliest dated Meroitic hieroglyphic inscriptions belong to the reign of the ruling queen Shanakdakheto *34 (about 177-155 BCE), but archaeologists believe that this scripture represents the later phase of a language spoken by Kushites / Meroites at least as far back as 750 BCE and possibly many centuries or even millennia before that (hinting therefore at a Kushitic / Ethiopian continuity from the earliest Kerma days at the end of the 3rd millennium BCE). The earliest examples of Meroitic cursive inscriptions, recently found by Charles Bonnet in Dukki Gel (REM 1377-78) *35, can also be dated in the early 2nd century BCE. The latest text is still probably the famous inscription from Kalabsha (Ancient Egyptian Talmis) mentioning King Kharamadoye (REM 0094) *36, which dates back to the beginning of the fifth century CE, although some funeral texts from Ballana *37 could be contemporary or even posterior.  

Slide19

 

Despite the fact that F. L. Griffith identified the twenty three (23) Meroitic alphabetic writing signs already in 1909, not much progress has been made towards the ultimate decipherment of the Meroitic *38. Scarcity of epigraphic evidence plays a certain role in this regard, since as late as the year 2000 we were not able to accumulate more than 1278 texts in all types of Meroitic writing. If we now add to this fact the lack of lengthy texts, the lack of any bilingual text (not necessarily Egyptian /Meroitic, it could also be Ancient Greek / Meroitic, if we take into consideration that Arkamaniqo / Ergamenes *39 was personally well versed in Greek), and a certain lack of academic vision, we understand why the state of our knowledge about the history of the Ancient Meroites is still so limited.  

Linguistics and parallels from other languages have been repeatedly set in motion in order to help the academic research. Griffith and Haycock *40 tried to read Meroitic, through use of (modern) Nubian – quite unsuccessfully. K.H. Priese *41 tried to read the Meroitic texts, using Eastern Sudanese (Beja *42 or Hadendawa *43) languages – also unsuccessfully. On the other hand, F. Hintze *44, attempted to compare Meroitic with the Ural-Altaic group (Turko-Mongolian languages) to no avail. More recently, Siegbert Hummel *45, compared the “known” Meroitic words to words attested in languages of the Altaic family which he believed was a substrate language of Meroitic; as this hypothesis is totally wrong, no result came out of this effort. At times, scholars (like Clyde Winters *46) were driven to farfetched interpretations, attempting to equate Meroitic with Tokharian, after assuming a possible relationship between the names Kush and Kushan *47, the latter being the appellation of a sizeable Eastern Iranian state of the late Arsacid *48 (250 BCE – 224 CE) and early Sassanid *49 (224 – 651 CE) times. However, one has to conclude that the bulk of the researchers working on the Meroitic language never believed that the language of the Ancient Sudanese (Ethiopians) could ever be a member of the so-called Afro-Asiatic group of languages (the term itself being very wrong and quite fraudulent).  

So far, the only Meroitic words for which a solid translation had been given by Griffith and his successors are the following: man, woman, meat, bread, water, give, big, abundant, good, sister, brother, wife, mother, child, begotten, born, feet. The eventual equivalence between Egyptian and Meroitic texts was a strong motivation for any interpretational approach, recent or not. More recent, but still dubious, suggestions are the following: arohe- ‘protect’, hr- ‘eat’, pwrite ‘life’, yer ‘milk’, ar ‘boy’, are- or dm- ‘take, receive’, dime ‘cow’, hlbi ‘bull’, ns(e) ‘sacrifice’, sdk ‘journey’, tke- ‘love, revere’, we ‘dog’. It is clear that vocalization remains a real problem *50.  

naqa-sudan

 

Through the aforementioned we realize why collective works, like Fontes Historiae Nubiorum. Textual Sources for the History of the Middle Nile Region (vols. I – IV, edited by T. Eide, T. Haegg, R.H. Pierce, and L. Torok, University of Bergen, Bergen 1994, 1996. 1998 and 2000), are still seminal for our – unfortunately indirect, as based on Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Latin and Coptic texts – knowledge of Ancient Meroe. 

2. The End of Meroe  

Amidst numerous unclear points of the Kushitic / Meroitic (Ancient Sudanese / Ethiopian) History, the end of Meroe and the consequences under which it happened still remain a most controversial point among scholars. Quite indicatively, we may mention here the main efforts of historical reconstitution. 

A. Arkell, Sayce and others asserted that Meroe was captured and destroyed, following one military expedition led by Ezana of Axum. 

B. Reisner insisted that, after Ezana’s invasion and victory, Meroe remained a state under another dynasty tributary to Axum. 

C. Monneret de Villard and Hintze affirmed that Meroe was totally destroyed already before Ezana’s invasion, due to another, earlier Axumite Abyssinian raid. 

D. Torok, Shinnie, Kirwan, Haegg and others concluded that Meroe was defeated by a predecessor of Ezana, and continued existing as a vassal state.  

E. Bechhaus-Gerst specified that Meroe was invaded prior to Ezana’s raid, and that the Axumite invasion did not reach further lands north of Meroe *51.  

With two fragmentary inscriptions from Meroe, one from Axum, two graffitos from Kawa and Meroe, and one coin being all the evidence we have so far, we have little to properly reconstruct the details that led to the collapse of Meroe. One relevant source, the Inscription of Ezana (DAE 11, the ‘monotheistic’ inscription in vocalized Ge’ez), *52 remains a somewhat controversial historical source to be useful in this regard. The legendary Monumentum Adulitanum *53, lost but copied in a confused way by Cosmas Indicopleustes *54, may not shed light at all on this event. One point is sure, however: there was never a generalized massacre of the Meroitic inhabitants of the lands conquered by Ezana. The aforementioned DAE 11 inscription mentions just 758 Meroites killed by the Axumite forces.  

What is even more difficult to comprehend is the reason behind the scarcity of population attested on Meroitic lands in the aftermath of Ezana’s raid. The post-Meroitic and pre-Christian, transitional, phase of Sudan’s history is called X-Group *55 or Period, and also Ballana Period; this atypical appellation underscores the lack to historical insight that happens once more in the History of Ancient Sudan (Ethiopia).  

During the Ballana Period (X-Group) and contrarily to what happened for many centuries of Meroitic History, when the Meroitic South (the area between today’s Shendi *56 and Atbarah *57 in modern Sudan with the entire hinterland of Butana that was called Insula Meroe / Nesos Meroe, i.e. Island Meroe in the Antiquity) was overpopulated comparatively with the Meroitic North {the area between Napata / Karima and Abu Simbel *58 or further in the North, Aswan *59 (the area between Aswan and Abu Simbel was then called Triakontaschoinos *60 and politically, it was divided between Meroe and the Roman Empire)}, the previously under-populated area (i.e. the Meroitic North) gives us the impression of a more densely peopled region, if compared to the previous center of Meroitic power and population density (the Meroitic South). The new situation contradicts therefore the earlier descriptions and narrations by Dio Cassius *61 and Strabo *62.  

Furthermore, the name ‘Ballana period’ is quite indicative in this regard, because Ballana is located on Egyptian soil, whereas not far, south of the present Sudanese – Egyptian border, lies Karanog with its famous tumuli that bear evidence of Nubian (not Kushitic / Meroitic) upper hand in terms of social anthropology. The southernmost counterpart of Karanog culture can be found in Tangassi (nearby Karima, which represented the ‘North’ for what was the center of the earlier Meroitic power). This means that for the period immediately after the destruction of Meroe (ca. 370 CE), the Meroitic North offers the archaeological evidence that serves to name the entire period (Ballana Period), whereas the Meroitic South seems to have been totally uninhabited.  

In addition, in terms of culture, X-Group heralds a total break with the Meroitic tradition, with the Nubians and the Blemmyes/Beja outnumbering the Meroitic remnants and imposing a completely different cultural and socio-anthropological milieu out of which would later emanate the first and single Nubian state in the World History: Nobatia.  

Much confusion characterized modern scholars when referring to Kush or Meroe by using the modern term ‘Nubia’. By now, it is clear that the Nubians lived since times immemorial in both Egypt and the Sudan, being part of the history of these two lands. However, the Nubians are a Nilo-Saharan ethno-linguistic group different from the Hamitic Kushites / Meroites. At the times of X-Group and during the long centuries of Christian Sudan, we have the opportunity to attest the differences and the divergence between the Nubians and the Meroitic remnants.  

Following the collapse of the Meroitic state, the epicenter of the Nubian land, i.e. the area between the first (Aswan) and the third (Kerma) cataracts, rose to independence and prominence first, with capital at Faras, nearby the present day Sudanese – Egyptian border, around 450 CE. Nobatia institutionalized Coptic as religious (Christian) and administrative language, and Nubian language remained an oral only means of communication. The Nobatian control in the areas south of the third cataract was vague, nominal and precarious. Nobatia was linked with the Coptic (‘Monophysitic’) Patriarchate of Alexandria.

This means something very important for the Christian History of Sudan (Ethiopia); Christianization did not come from Abyssinia, and there was no cultural or religious impact exercised by Axum on (Ethiopia) Sudan. As in pre-Christian times, Ethiopia remained the absolute opposite of Abyssinia. In the true, historical Ethiopia (Sudan), Christianization came from the North (Egypt). Abyssinia (which cannot be called ‘Ethiopia’ and which has absolutely no right to the name of Ethiopia) was a marginal and isolated, tiny and mountainous state that basically controlled the land between Axum and Adulis (on the Red Sea shore). And King Ezana’s invasion and destruction of Meroe was an occasional and inconsequential event that did not bring forth any immediate major result.  

The Meroitic remnants underscored their difference from the Nubians / Nobatians, and the depopulated central part of the defunct state of Meroe rose to independence only later, in the first decades of the sixth century. Its name, Makuria, is in this regard a linguistic reminiscence of the name ‘Meroe’, but we cannot know its real origin and meaning. The remnant of the Meroitic populations inhabited the northern circumference of Makuria more densely, and the gravitation center revolved around Old Dongola (580 km south of Wadi Halfa), capital of this Christian Orthodox state that extended from Kerma to Shendi (the area of the sixth cataract), so for more than 1000 km alongside the Nile. But beyond the area of Karima (750 km in the south of Wadi Halfa) and the nearby famous Makurian monastery at Al Ghazali we have very scarce evidence of Christian antiquities. The old African metropolis of Meroe remained at the periphery of both, the Kushitic Ethiopian states of Makuria and Alodia and the Semitic Abyssinian state of Axum.  

Makurians highlighted their ideological – religious divergence from the Nubians, by adopting Greek, not Coptic, as religious language. They even introduced a new scripture for their Makurian language that seems to have been a later phase of Meroitic. Makurian was written in alphabetic Greek signs. Risen at a time of Christological disputes and theological conflicts that brought about a forceful polarization between the Greek Orthodox and the Coptic ‘Monophysitic’ Patriarchates of Alexandria, the state and the Christian church of Makuria sided with the Greek Patriarchate of Alexandria, in striking opposition to the Nobatian state and church that allied themselves with the Coptic Patriarchate of Alexandria.  

Further in the South, Alodia has long been called by modern scholars as the ‘third Christian state’ of Sudan, but recent discoveries in Soba, its capital (15 km at the east of Khartoum), suggest that Alodia rose first to independence (around 500 CE) and later adhered to Christianity (around 580 – 600 CE), following evangelization efforts deployed by missionary Nobatian priests (possibly in a sort of anti-Makurian religious diplomacy). In general, we know little about Alodia (or Aluwah or Alwa), and we actually don’t know whether they used a particular Alodian writing system.  

The later phases of the History of Christian Ethiopia (Sudan) encompass the Nobatian – Makkurian merge (around 1000 CE), which was necessary for the two Christian states to defend themselves against the Islamic pressure coming manly from the North (Egypt), the islamization of Makkuria in 1317, and finally, the late collapse of Christian Alodia in 1505.  

The question remains unanswered until today:  

– What happened to the bulk of the Meroitic population, i.e. the inhabitants of the Insula Meroe, the present day Butana? What occurred to the Meroites living between the fourth and the sixth cataracts after the presumably brief raid of Ezana of Axum, and the subsequent destruction of Meroe, Mussawarat es Sufra, Naqah, Wad ben Naqah, Basa and all the other important cities of the Meroitic heartland? 

3. Reconstruction of the Post-Meroitic History of the Kushitic Oromo Nation  

Certainly, the motives of Ezana’s raid have not yet been properly studied and assessed by modern scholarship. The reasons for the raid may vary from a simple nationalistic usurpation of the name of ‘Ethiopia’ (Kush), which would give a certain Christian eschatological legitimacy to the Axumite Abyssinian kingdom, to the needs of international politics (at the end of 4th c. CE) and the eventuality of an Iranian – Yemenite (Himyaritic) – Meroitic alliance at the times of Shapur II (310 – 379), aimed at outweighing the Eastern Roman – Abyssinian bond.  

Yet, this Iranian – Sudanese political alliance may have been only the later phase of a time-honored Iranian infiltration that could have taken the form of an (easily assessable by both civilizations and nations, the Meroites and the Iranians) heliocentric theology and imperial ideology. No less than 300-350 years before Ezana’s raid and destruction of Meroe, the famous Jebel Qeili reliefs of Shorakaror mark an impressive penetration of Mithraic artistic and religious concepts and forms.  

Slide45

Whatever the reasons of Ezana’s raid may have been, we can be quite sure, when it comes to the destruction of Meroe, about two determinant points that impose a fresh approach and interpretation of the historical development:

a) the absence of any large-scale massacre is evident, and  

b) the impressive scarcity of population in the old, central Meroitic provinces is a fact for the period that follows Ezana’s raid and the destruction of Meroe.

The only plausible explanation is that the scarcity of population in the Meroitic mainland after Meroe’s destruction must be due to a large scale migration to safer areas far from the reach of the king of Axum.  

The only explanation to match the historical facts and the archeological evidence is that, following Ezana’s raid, the Meroites in their outright majority (at least for the inhabitants of Meroe’s southern provinces) fled and migrated to areas where they would stay independent from the Semitic Abyssinian kingdom of Christian Axum. This explanation hinges on the best utilization and interpretation of the already existing historical – archaeological data.  

From archeological evidence, it becomes clear that during X-Group phase and throughout the Makurian period (so for many long centuries) the former heartland of Meroe remained mostly uninhabited. The end of Meroe is definitely very abrupt, and this makes obvious that Meroe’s driving force had gone elsewhere. The correct question would then be ‘where to’?  

There is no evidence of Meroites sailing the Nile downwards to the area of the 4th (Karima) and the 3rd (Kerma) cataracts, which was earlier the northern circumference of Meroe and remained totally untouched by Ezana. There is no textual evidence in Greek, Latin and/or Coptic to testify to such a migratory movement toward the North. Christian Roman Egypt would certainly be an incredible direction, but if this had been the case, the migration would have been recorded in some texts and monuments due to its importance. To the above, we have to add the impossibility of marching to the heartland of Abyssinia, because this must have been for the migrating Meroites the only direction to avoid, and again if it had occurred, it would have been mentioned in some historical sources, Ge’ez, Coptic, Syriac, Greek or Latin.  

Having therefore excluded all the migration alternatives as per above, we can examine the remaining possibilities. The migrating Meroites could therefore have a) gone either to the vast areas of the Eastern and the Western deserts , b) entered the African jungle or c) ultimately searched for a possibly free land that, being arable and good for pasture, would keep them far from the sphere of the Christian Axumites.  

It would be very erroneous and highly unlikely to expect settled people to move to the desert. Such an eventuality would be a unique oxymoron in the History of the Mankind. Nomadic peoples move from the steppes, the savannas and the deserts to other parts of the steppes, the savannas and the deserts or preferably to fertile lands and settle there, at times crossing really long distances. However, settled people, if under pressure, move to other fertile lands that offer them the possibility of cultivation and pasture. When dispersed by the invading Sea Peoples, the Hittites moved from Anatolia to Northwestern Mesopotamia, crossing long distances; they did not cross shorter distance to settle in the small part of Central Anatolia that happened to be desert. The few scholars, who may think that Meroitic continuity can be found among the present day Beja and Hadendawa, are oblivious to the aforementioned reality that was never contravened throughout World History. In addition, the Blemmyes had never been friendly to the Meroites. Every now and then, they had attacked parts of the Nile valley and the Meroites had had to repulse them thence. It would rather be inconceivable for the Meroitic population, after seeing Meroe sacked by Ezana, to move to a land where life would be far more difficult and, in addition, enemies would wait them!  

At this point, we should briefly examine Meroe’s surrounding environment, how it is today, and how it was before 1650 years, at the times of king Ezana’s raid. Modern technologies help historians and archeologists better reconstruct the ancient world; paleo-botanists, geologists, geo-chemists, paleo-entomologists, and other specialized natural scientists are of great help in this regard. It is essential to stress here that the entire environmental milieu of Sudan was very different during the times of the Late Antiquity that we examine in our approach. Butana may look like a wasteland nowadays, and the Pyramids of Bagrawiyah may be sunk in the sand, whereas Mussawarat es Sufra and Naqah truly demand a real effort in crossing the desert. However, in the first centuries of Christian era, the entire landscape was dramatically different.

During the Meroitic and Christian times, the entire Butana region, delineated by the rivers Atbarah in the northeast, United Nile in the north-northwest, and Blue Nile in southwest, was not a desert, but a very fertile and extensively cultivated land. We have actually found remains of reservoirs, aqueducts, various hydraulic installations, irrigation systems, and canals in Meroe and elsewhere. Not far from Mussawarat es Sufra there must have been an enclosure where captive elephants were trained before being transported to Ptolemais Theron (present day Suakin, 50 km south of Port Sudan) and then further on to Alexandria. Desert was in the vicinity, certainly, but not that close.  

We should not imagine that Ezana crossed desert areas, moving from the vicinities of Agordat, Tesseney (both cities being located in Eritrea), and Kessala (in Sudan) to Atbarah and Bagrawiyah, as we would do today. These lands were either forested or cultivated and used as pasturelands. For what the Meroitic Ethiopian state was in the middle – second half of the 4th c. CE, its capital was located quite close to the Abyssinian borders in the mountains beyond the modern Sudanese city of Kessala; the distance between the two capitals, Meroe and Axum, was much smaller than the distance between Meroe and its northern borders with the Christian Eastern Roman Empire.  

In fact, the end of the Meroitic state is a historical irony; it was established with the transfer of capital from Napata to Meroe, ca. 750 years earlier, an act which was due to defense reasons and imposed only after the 6th c. BCE attacks that originated from the North (Egypt). By transferring their capital far to the southeast, the Ancient Kushites / Meroites of Ethiopia (Sudan) made it impregnable from the North; but by so doing, they exposed their capital to an attack from the southeast. However, one has to admit that, at the times of the Ethiopian – Kushitic capital transfer to the southeast (5th – 4th c. BCE), the presence of the Yemenite tribe of Habashat in the African coast land of Eritrea was insignificant and Axum did not exist.  

Further expanding on the natural environment of the Ancient Meroites, we have to add that it would be highly unlikely for anyone to attempt to cross at that time the lands south of present day Khartoum, alongside the White Nile. In ancient times, impenetrable jungle started immediately in the south of Khartoum, and cities like El Obeid, Kosti, Sinnar, and Jabalayn are today located on deforested soil.  

Contrarily to the aforementioned improbabilities (desert, jungle), the southernmost confines of the Meroitic state offered a certain possibility for migration, since pasturelands and arable land could be found alongside the Blue Nile Valley. Reaching that area, they would achieve safety from Axumite Abyssinia due to the greater distance.  

Jungle signified death in the Antiquity, and even armies feared to cross forests and be forced to stay overnight there. We therefore have good reason to believe that, following Ezana’s raid, the Meroites, rejecting the perspective of forced christening, moved first southwestwards up to Khartoum. From there, they proceeded southeastwards alongside the Blue Nile in a direction that would keep them always safe and far from the Axumite Abyssinians whose state did not expand at those days as far in the south as Gondar and Tana Lake. Proceeding in this way and crossing successively areas of modern cities like Wad Madani, Sennar, Damazin, and Asosa, and from there on, they expanded in later times over the various parts of Biyya Oromo.  

We do not imply that the migration was completed in the span of one lifetime; quite contrarily, we have reasons to believe that the establishment of Alodia (or Alwa) is rather due to the progressive waves of Meroitic migrants who settled first in the area of Khartoum that was out of the southwestern confines of the Meroitic state. Only when Christianization became a matter of concern for the evangelizing Nobatians, and the two Christian Sudanese states of Nobatia and Makuria were already strong, the chances of preserving the pre-Christian Meroitic cultural heritage in the area around Soba (capital of Alodia) became truly poor. Then, perhaps more than 100 years after the first migration, another wave of migration took place with the early Alodian Meroites proceeding as far in the southeast as Damazin and Asosa, areas that remained always beyond the southern border of Alodia (presumably between Khartoum and Wad Madani). Like this, the second migratory Meroitic Alodian) wave may have entered around 600 CE in the area where the Oromos, descendents of the migrated Meroites, still live today.  

Slide38

A great number of changes at the cultural – intellectual – behavioral levels are to be expected, when a settled people migrates to faraway lands. The Phoenicians had kings in Tyre, Byblos and their other cities – states in today’s Lebanese and Syrian coast lands, but they introduced a democratic system when they sailed faraway and colonized various parts of the Mediterranean. In their colonies, there were no more kings.  

Ezana’s raid ended up with the extermination of some garrison and the Meroitic royal family. The collapse of the Meroitic royalty was an unprecedented event and a greater shock for the Nile valley. The Christian kingdoms of Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia were all ruled by kings whose power was to great extent conditioned and counterbalanced by that of the Christian clergy.  

With the Meroitic royal family decimated by Ezana, it is quite possible that high priests of Apedemak and Amani (Amun) took much of the administrative responsibility in their hands, inciting people to migrate and establishing a form of collective and representative authority among the Meroitic – Alodian Elders who thus retained the sacerdotal heritage without a royal – palatial contextualization. They may even have preserved the royal title of Qore within completely different socio-anthropological context and thus made it known to the ancestors of today’s Somalis when the next waves of migration brought the two Kushitic nations close to one another; and the Somalis preserved the term a Boqor within their language until our times. 

4. Call for Comparative Meroitic-Oromo Studies  

How can this approach, interpretation, and conclusion be corroborated up to the point of becoming a generally accepted historical reconstitution at the academic level? On what axes should one group of researchers work to collect detailed documentation in support of the Meroitic ancestry of the Oromos?  

Quite strangely, I would not give priority to the linguistic approach. The continuity of a language can prove many things, and at the same time, it can prove nothing. Today’s Bulgarians are of Uralo-Altaic Turco-Mongolian origin, but, after they settled in Eastern Balkans, they were linguistically slavicized. Most of the Greeks are Albanians, Slavs, and Vlachians, who were greecized linguistically. Most of the Turks in Turkey are Greeks and Anatolians, who were turkicized linguistically.  

People can preserve their own language in various degrees and forms. For the case of languages preserved throughout millennia, we notice tremendous changes and differences. Within the context of Ancient Greece, Plato who lived in the 5th – 4th c. BCE could never understand the Achaean Greek dialect which was spoken 800 years earlier at Myceanae and written by means of what we call today ‘Linear B’ (a syllabic, not alphabetic, writing system).  

Egyptian hieroglyphics as a Holy Language (the Ancient Egyptian name of this writing system was ‘medu netsher’ which meant ‘the words of the God’) and as a sacerdotal scripture favored a certain archaism and a constant linguistic purification. However, we can be sure that for later Pharaohs, like Taharqa the Kushite (the most illustrious ruler of the Kushitic – Sudanese / Ethiopian dynasty), Psamtik and Nechao (the rulers of the ‘Libyan’ dynasty), and Ptolemy II and Cleopatra VII (of the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty), a Pyramid text (that antedated them by 1700 to 2300 years) would almost be incomprehensible. 

A. National diachronic continuity is better attested and more markedly noticed in terms of Culture, Religion and Philosophical – Behavioral system. The first circle of comparative research should encompass the world of the Kushitic / Meroitic and Oromo concepts, anything that relates to the Weltanschauung of the two cultural units/groups under study; this should involve a religious-historical comparison between the Ancient Kushitic / Meroitic religion and Waaqeffannaa. A common view of basic themes of life and a common perception of the world, same virtues and values, shared concepts and principles would bring a significant corroboration of the Meroitic ancestry of the Oromos. So, first it is a matter of history of religions, African philosophy, social anthropology, ethnography and culture history. 

B. Archeological research can help tremendously too. At this point, one has to state that the critical area for the reconstruction of the suggested Meroitic migration did not attract the interest of Egyptologists, and of archaeologists specializing in Meroitic and Sudanese Antiquities. The area was indeed marginal to both civilizations, and to some extent it is normal that it did not attract scholars who could easily unearth other monumental sites elsewhere and have more spectacular results. The Blue Nile valley in Sudan and Abyssinia was never the subject of an archeological survey, and the same concerns the Oromo highlands. Certainly modern archeologists prefer something concrete that would lead them fast to a great discovery, being therefore very different from the pioneering 19th c. archeologists. An archeological surface survey would therefore be necessary in the Blue Nile valley and in the Oromo highlands in the years to come.  

C. A linguistic – epigraphic approach may bring forth even more spectacular results. It could eventually end up with a complete decipherment of the Meroitic, and of the Makurian. An effort must be made to read the Meroitic texts, hieroglyphic and cursive, with the help of Oromo language. Meroitic personal names and toponymics must be studied in the light of a potential Oromo interpretation. Comparative linguistics may unveil affinities that will lead to reconsideration of the work done so far in the Meroitic decipherment. 

D. Last but not least, another dimension would be added to the project with the initiation of comparative anthropological studies. Data extracted from findings in the Meroitic cemeteries must be compared with data provided by the anthropological study of present day Oromos. The research must encompass pictorial documentation from the various Meroitic temples’ bas-reliefs.  

To all these I would add a better reassessment of the existing historical sources, but this is not a critical dimension of this research project.  

I believe my call for Comparative Meroitic – Oromo Studies reached the correct audience that can truly evaluate the significance of the ultimate corroboration of the Meroitic Ancestry of the Oromos, as well as the magnificent consequences that such a corroboration would have in view of  

a) the forthcoming Kushitic Palingenesia – or Renaissance if you want – across Africa,  

b) the establishment of a Post -Colonial African Historiography, and – last but not least –

c) the Liberation of Oromia and the Representation of the Ancient Kushitic Nation in the United Nations.  

Notes  

1. To those having the slightest doubt, trying for purely political reasons and evil speculation to include territories of the modern state of Abyssinia into what the Ancient Greeks and Romans called ‘Aethiopia’, the academically authoritative entry Aethiopia in Pauly-Wissowa, Realenzyklopadie der klassischen Altertumwissenschaft consists in the best and irrevocable answer.  

2. http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information … karl.html; http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Richard_Lepsius; parts of the Denkmaeler are already available online: http://edoc3.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/bo … start.html. Also: http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/LEO_LOB/L … 1884_.html. The fact that the farthermost point of ‘Ethiopia’ that he reached was Khartoum is of course quite telling.  

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._A._Wallis_Budge; he wrote among the rest a book on his Meroe excavations’ results, The Egyptian Sudan: its History and Monuments (London, 1907).  

4. Mythical figure of the British Orientalism, Garstang excavated in England, Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and the Sudan; Albright, William Foxwell: “John Garstang in Memoriam”, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 144. (Dec., 1956), pp. 7-8; Garstang’s major articles on his Meroe excavations are the following: ‘Preliminary Note on an Expedition to Meroe in Ethiopia’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 3 (1911 – a), ‘Second Interim Report on the Excavations at Meroe in Ethiopia, I. Excavations’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 4 (1911 – b), ‘Third Interim Report on the Excavations at Meroe in Ethiopia’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 5 (1912), ‘Forth Interim Report on the Excavations at Meroe in Ethiopia’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 6 (1913), and ‘Fifth Interim Report on the Excavations at Meroe in Ethiopia’, Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 7 (1914). His major contribution was published in the same year under the title ‘Meroe, the City of Ethiopians’ (Oxford). A leading Meroitologist, Laszlo Torok wrote an entire volume on Garstang’s excavations at Meroe: Meroe City, an Ancient African Capital: John Garstang’s Excavations in the Sudan.  

5 Griffith was the epigraphist of Grastand and had already published the epigraphic evidence unearthed at Meroe in the chapter entitled ‘the Inscriptions from Meroe’ in Garstang’s ‘Meroe, the City of Ethiopians’. After many pioneering researches and excavations in various parts of Egypt and Northern Sudan, Faras, Karanog, Napata and Philae to name but a few, Griffith concentrated on Kerma: ‘Excavations at Kawa’, Sudan Notes and Records 14.  

6. Basically: http://www.sag-online.de/pdf/mittsag9.5.pdf; among other contributions: Die Inschriften des Loewentempels von Musawwarat es Sufra, Berlin (1962); Vorbericht ueber die Ausgrabungen des Instituts fuer Aegyptologie der Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin in Musawwarat es Sufra, 1960-1961 (1962); ‘Musawwarat es Sufra – Preliminary Report on the Excavations of the Institute of Egyptology, Humboldt University, Berlin, 1961-1962 (Third Season)’, Kush 11 (1963); ‘Preliminary Note on the Epigraphic Expedition to Sudanese Nubia, 1962’, Kush 11 (1963); ‘Preliminary note on the Epigraphic Expedition to Sudanese Nubia, 1963’, Kush 13 (1965)  

7. As regards my French professor’s publications about his excavations at Sudan: Soleb and Sedeinga in Lexikon der Aegyptologie 5, Wiesbaden 1984 (entries contributed by J. Leclant himself); also J. Leclant, Les reconnaissances archéologiques au Soudan, in: Etudes nubiennes I, 57-60.  

8. His recent volume Sudan: Ancient Kingdoms of the Nile, Paris/New York (1997) contains earlier bibliography.  

9. Some of his most authoritative publications: ‘A History of the Sudan from the Earliest Times to 1821′, 1961 (2nd Ed.), London; ”The Valley of the Nile’, in: The Dawn of African History, R. Oliver (ed.), London. Arkell is mostly renowned for his monumental ‘The Royal Cemeteries of Kush’ in many volumes.  

10. Presentation of his ‘Ancient Nubia’ in: http://www.keganpaul.com/product_info.p … cts_id=33; for a non exhaustive list of Shinnie’s publications: http://www.arkamani.org/bibliography%20 … ia2.htm#S; see also a presentation of a volume on Meroe, edited by Shinnie et alii: http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/mcgi/1163879905{haupt_harrassowitz= http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/acgi/a.cgi?alayout=489&ausgabe=detail&aref=353.  

11. Many of his publications are listed here:   http://www.arkamani.org/bibliography%20 … ia2.htm#S; also here: http://www.arkamani.org/bibliography%20 … ypt4.htm#T. In the Eighth International Conference for Meroitic Studies, L. Torok spoke about ‘The End of Meroe’; the speech will be included in the arkamani online project, here: http://www.arkamani.org/arkamani-librar … -meroe.htm  

12. Useful reading: http://www.culturekiosque.com/art/exhib … souda.htm; also: http://www.nubianet.org/about/about_history4.html; see also the entry ‘Kush’ in Lexikon der Aegyptologie and the Encyclopedia Judaica. More specifically about the Egyptian Hieroglyphic and the Hebrew writings of the name of Kush: http://www.specialtyinterests.net/journey_to_nubia.html. For more recent bibliography: http://blackhistorypages.net/pages/kush.php. Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cush%2C_son_of_Ham.  

13. Basic bibliography in: http://www.arkamani.org/bibliography%20 … y_a_b.htm; http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/PROJ/NUB/NUBX … chure.html.   More particularly on Qustul, and the local Group A Cemetery that was discovered in the 60s by Dr. Keith Seele: http://www.homestead.com/wysinger/qustul.html (by Bruce Beyer Williams). Quite interesting approach by Clyde Winters as regards an eventual use of Egyptian Hieroglyphics in Group A Nubia, 200 years before the system was introduced in Egypt: http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/7051/anwrite.htm.  

14. Brief info: http://www.nubianet.org/about/about_history3_1.html; see also: http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IS/RITNER/Nubia_2005.html; more recently several scholars consider Group B as an extension of Group A (GRATIEN, Brigitte, La Basse Nubie a l’ Ancien Empire: Egyptiens et autochtones, JEA 81 (1995), 43-56).  

15. Readings: http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/geoghist/histories/oldcivilization/Egyptology/Nubia/nubiad1.htm; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneferu; ht … %20Snefrue),%201st%20King%20of%20Egypt’s%204th%20Dynasty.htm (with bibliography); http://www.narmer.pl/dyn/04en.htm; for the Palermo stone inscription where we have the Nubia expedition narrative: http://www.britannica.com/ebi/article-9332360; http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html (click on the Palermo Stone); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palermo_stone (with related bibliography). 

16. Readings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubian_C-Group; (the title being however very wrong because this culture was not Nubian) http://www.numibia.net/nubia/c-group.htm; http://www.gustavianum.uu.se/sje/sjeexh.htm and http://www.hp.uab.edu/image_archive/ta/tae.html (with designs and pictures); http://www.ancientsudan.org/03_burials_02_early.htm (with focus on Group C burials and burial architecture); see also: http://www.ualberta.ca/~nlovell/nubia.htm; http://www.dignubia.org/maps/timeline/bce-2300a.htm  

17. References in the Lexikon der Aegyptologie. See also: http://www.nigli.net/akhenaten/wawat_1.html; one of the related sources: The Story of an Egyptian Politician, published by T. G. Allen, in: American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Oct., 1921), pp. 55-62; Texts relating to Egyptian expeditions in Yam and Irtet: http://www.osirisnet.net/tombes/assouan … rkouf.htm; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medjay; more in ‘Ancient Nubia: Egypt’s Rival in Africa’ (Paperback) by David O’ Connor, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/092417 … 67-0196731.  

18. Brief description: http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/stsmit … erma.html; http://www.spicey.demon.co.uk/Nubianpag … htm#French (with several interesting links); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kerma (brief but with recent bibliography containing some of Bonnet’s publications)  

19. Vivian Davies, ‘La frontiere meridionale de l’ Empire : Les Egyptiens a Kurgus, in: Bulletin de la Societe francaise d’ Egyptologie, 2003, no157, pp. 23-37 (http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=15281726); about the ongoing British excavations: http://www.sudarchrs.org.uk/page17.html; about the inscription of Thutmosis I: http://thutmosis_i.know-library.net; also: http://www.meritneith.de/politik_neuesreich.htm, and http://www.aegyptologie.com/forum/cgi-b … 0514112733.  

20. In brief and with images: http://www.hp.uab.edu/image_archive/um/umj.html; also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kush (with selected recent bibliography) and http://www.mfa.org/collections/search_a … kage=26155 (for art visualization). The period is also called Napatan, out of the Kushitic state capital’s name: http://www.homestead.com/wysinger/kingaspalta.html.

21. To start with: http://www.bartleby.com/67/99.html; http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9054804/Napata; http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology … apata.html (including references); most authoritative presentation by Timothy Kendall ‘Gebel Barkal and Ancient Napata’ in: http://www.arkamani.org/arkamani-librar … nubia.htm; also: ‘the Rise of the Kushitic kingdom’ by Brian Yare, in: http://www.yare.org/essays/kushite%20ki … Napata.htm. For Karima, notice the interesting itinerary: http://lts3.algonquincollege.com/africa … /sudan.htm, and http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karima.  

22. Introductory reading: http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html (click on Manetho); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manetho (with selected bibliography). Among the aforementioned, the entries Manethon (Realenzyklopaedie) and Manetho (Lexikon der Aegyptologie) are essential.  

23. For the Ethiopian dynasty, all the related entries in the Lexikon and the Realenzyklopaedie (Piankhi, Shabaka, Shabataka, Taharqa, Tanutamon) are the basic bibliography to start with; see also: http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/3017.html; the last edition (1996) of Kenneth Kitchen’s ‘The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100 – 650 BC)’, Warminster: Aris & Phillips Ltd, remains the best reassessment of the period and the related sources. Introductory information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabaka; http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabataka; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taharqa; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantamani. Also: http://www.homestead.com/wysinger/mentuemhat.html; critical bibliography for understanding the perplex period is to be found in Jean Leclant’s lectureship thesis (these d’ Etat) ‘Montouemhat, Quatrieme Prophete d’Amon’, (1961)  

24. Basics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assarhaddon; the edition of the Assyrian emperor’s annals by R. Borger (Die Inschriften Assarhaddons, Koenigs von Assyrien, AfO 9, Graz, 1956) remain our basic reference to formal sources. More recently, F. Reynolds shed light on private sources, publishing ‘The Babylonian correspondence of Esarhaddon, and letters to Assurbanipal and Sin-Sarru-Iskun from Northern and Central Babylonia’ (SAA 18, 2004).  

25. For the Greater Emperor of the Oriental Antiquity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashurbanipal; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamash-shum-ukin; http://web.utk.edu/~djones39/Assurbanipal.html; until today we have to rely mostly on the voluminous edition of Assurbanipal’s Annals by Maximilian Streck (Assurbanipal und die letzten assyrischen Koenige bis zum Untergang Niniveh, Leipzig,1916); see also M. W. Waters’ Te’umman in the neo-Assyrian correspondence (Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1999, vol. 119, no3, pp. 473-477)  

26. Heliopolis (Iwnw in Egyptian Hieroglyphic, literally the place of the pillars; On in Hebrew and in Septuagint Greek) was the center of Egyptian monotheism, the holiest religious center throughout Ancient Egypt; it is from Heliopolis that emanated the two foremost Ancient Egyptian theological systems, namely the Isiac ideology and the Atum Ennead. Basic readings: the entry Heliopolis in Realenzyklopaedie and in Lexikon der Aegyptologie; more recently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliopolis_%28ancient%29.  

27. Basic readings: http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/chron … tiki.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psammetichus_I; http://www.phouka.com/pharaoh/pharaoh/d … tik1.html; http://www.specialtyinterests.net/psamtek.html (with pictorial documentation). See also: http://www.nubianet.org/about/about_history6.html.  

28. Hakhamaneshian is the first Persian dynasty; it got momentum when Cyrus II invaded successively Media and Babylon. Readings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achaemenid_dynasty (with selected bibliography); the 2nd volume of the Cambridge History of Iran is dedicated to Achaemenid history (contents: http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/c … 0521200911.  

29. Readings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambyses_II_of_Persia (with bibliography and sources). Cambyses invaded Kush and destroyed Napata at the times of Amani-natake-lebte, but his embattled army was decimated according to the famous narratives of Herodotus that still need to be corroborated. What seems more plausible is that, having reached in an unfriendly milieu of the Saharan desert where they had no earlier experience, the Persians soldiers, at a distance of no less than 4000 km from their capital, faced guerilla undertaken by the Kushitic army remnants and their nomadic allies.  

30. Nastasen was the last to be buried in Nuri, in the whereabouts of Napata. Contemporary with Alexander the Great, Nastasen fought against an invader originating from Egypt whose name was recorded as Kambasawden. This led many to confuse the invader with Cambyses, who ruled 200 years earlier (!). The small inscription on the Letti stela does not allow great speculation; was it an attempt of Alexander the Great to proceed to the south of which we never heard anything? Impossible to conclude; for photographical documentation: http://www.dignubia.org/bookshelf/ruler … 00017&ord=. Another interpretation: http://www.nubia2006.uw.edu.pl/nubia/ab … 94e6349d8b.  

31. Arkamaniqo was the first to have his pyramid built at Meroe, not at Napata. See: http://www.dignubia.org/bookshelf/ruler … 0018&ord=; http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergamenes. He inaugurated the architectural works at Dakka, the famous ancient Egyptian Pa Serqet, known in Greek literature as Pselkhis (http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/dakka.htm), in veneration of God Thot, an endeavour that brought the Ptolemies and the Meroites in alliance.  

32. For Abyssinia’s conversion to Christianity: http://www.spiritualite2000.com/page.php?idpage=555, and http://www.rjliban.com/Saint-Frumentius.doc. The Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezana_of_Axum) is written by ignorant and chauvinist people, and is full of mistakes, ascribing provocatively and irrelevantly to Ezana’s state the following territories (using modern names): ‘present-day Eritrea, northern Ethiopia, Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, northern Somalia, Djibouti, northern Sudan, and southern Egypt’. This is just rubbish. All this shows how misleading this irrelevant ‘encyclopedia’ can at times be. Neither southern Egypt, nor northern Sudan, nor northern Somalia, nor Djibouti, nor Yemen, nor southern Saudi Arabia ever belonged to Ezana’s small kingdom that extended from Adulis to Axum. It is only after that king’s victory over Meroe that his kingdom included also a tiny portion of modern Sudan’s territories, namely the region between Kessala, Atbara and Bagrawiyah where the site of Ancient Meroe is located. But this was quite precarious and soon the Abyssinian control over that part of Ethiopia (: Sudan) ended.  

33. Richard A. Lobban, ‘The Nubian Dynasty of Kush and Egypt: Continuing Research on Dynasty XXV’: http://209.85.129.104/search?q=cache:4F … clnk&cd=2; these inscriptions were published as early as 1821: E. F. Gau, Nubische Denkmaeler (Stuttgart). Other early publications on Meroitic antiquities: E. Riippell, Reisen in Nubien, Kordofan, & c. (Frankfort a. M., 1829); F. Caillaud, Voyage a Meroe (Paris, 1826); J. L. Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, e5fc. (London, 1819); G. Waddington and B. Hanbury, Journal of a Visit to some parts of Ethiopia (London, 1822); L. Reinisch, Die Nuba-Sprache (Vienna, 1879); Memoirs of the Societe khediviale de Geographic, Cairo. 

34. Readings: http://www.homestead.com/wysinger/candace.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanakdakhete; more analytically: http://www.arkamani.org/arkamani-librar … graphy.htm. The only inscription giving her name comes from Temple F in Naga (REM 0039A-B). The name appears in Meroitic hieroglyphics in the middle of an Egyptian text. See also: Laszlo Torok, in: Fontes Historiae Nubiorum, Vol. II, Bergen 1996, 660-662. The first attempts to render full Meroitic phrases into hieroglyphs (not only personal names, as it was common earlier) can be dated from the turn of the 3rd / 2nd century BCE, but they reflect the earlier stage of the development.  

35. C. Rilly, ‘Les graffiti archaiques de Doukki Gel et l’apparition de l’ ecriture meroitique’. Meroitic Newsletter, 2003, No 30: 41-55, pl. IX-XIII (fig. 41-48).  

36. Michael H. Zach, ‘Aksum and the end of Meroe’, in: http://www.arkamani.org/arkamani-librar … s/Zach.htm. See also: http://www.soas.ac.uk/lingfiles/working … rowan2.pdf. Also: Clyde A. Winters, ‘Meroitic evidence for a Blemmy empire in the Dodekaschoinos’ in: http://www.arkamani.org/arkamani-librar … labsha.htm. Kharamadoye was a Blemmyan / Beja king who lived around the year 330 CE, and his inscription was curved on the Nubian/Blemmyan temple at Kalabsha (ancient Talmis) in the south of Aswan; more: M. S. Megalommatis, ‘Sudan’s Beja / Blemmyes, and their Right to Freedom and Statehood’, in: http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/8-16-2006-105657.asp, and in: http://www.sudaneseonline.com/en/article_929.shtml. More general: http://www.touregypt.net/kalabsha.htm.  

37. For Ballana: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballana; http://www.numibia.net/nubia/sites_salv … p_Numb=13; http://www.dignubia.org/maps/timeline/ce-0400.htm; http://www.hp.uab.edu/image_archive/fne … ndex.html; for the excavations carried out there: Farid Shafiq, ‘Excavations at Ballana, 1958-1959’, Cairo, 1963: http://www.archaeologia.com/details.asp?id=647.  

38. His publications encompass the following: ‘Karanog: the Meroitic Inscriptions of Karanog and Shablul’, (The Eckley B. Coxe Junior Expedition to Nubia VI), Philadelphia, 1911; ‘Meroitic Inscriptions, I, Soba to Dangul, Oxford, 1911; ‘Meroitic Inscriptions part II, Napata to Philae and Miscellaneous’, Egypt Exploration Society, Archaeological Survey of Egypt, Memoirs, London, 1912; ‘Meroitic Studies II’, in: Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. 3 (1916).  

39. Readings: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergamenes; http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arqamani; list of sources concerning Ergamenes II: Laszlo Torok, ‘Fontes Historiae Nubiorum’, vol. II, Bergen 1996, S. 566-567; further: http://www.chs.harvard.edu/publications … tei.xml_1; http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Article/813603; an insightful view: Laszlo Torok, ‘Amasis and Ergamenes’, in: The Intellectual Heritage of Egypt. Studies Presented to Laszlo Kakosy, 555-561. An English translation of Diodorus’ text on Ergamenes (III. 6) is here: http://www.homestead.com/wysinger/diodorus.html.  

40. B. G. Haycock, ‘The Problem of the Meroitic Language’, Occasional Papers in Linguistics and Language Learning, no.5 (1978), p. 50-81; see also: http://www.arkamani.org/arkamani-librar … nology.htm. Another significant contribution: B. G. Haycock, ‘Towards a Data for King Ergamenes’, Kush 13 (1965)

41. See: K. H. Priese, ‘Die Statue des napatanischen Koenigs Aramatelqo (Amtelqa) Berlin, Aegyptisches Museum Inv.-Nr. 2249 in: Festschrift zum 150 jaehrigen Bestehen des Berliner Aegyptischen Museums, Berlin; of the same author, ‘Matrilineare Erbfolge im Reich von Napata’, Zeitschrift fuer Aegyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, 108 (1981).  

42. Readings: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ … /beja.htm; http://bejacongress.com;  

43. Basic reading: Egeimi, Omer Abdalla, ‘From Adaptation to Marginalization: The Political Ecology of Subsistence Crisis among the Hadendawa Pastoralists of Sudan’, in: Managing Scarcity: Human Adaptation in East African Drylands, edited by Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed and Hassan Abdel Ati, 30-49. Proceedings of a regional workshop, Addis Ababa, 24-26 August 1995. Addis Ababa: OSSREA, 1996 (http://www.africa.upenn.edu/ossrea/ossreabiblio.html).  

44. F. Hintze, ‘Some problems of Meroitic philology’, in: Studies in Ancient Languages of the Sudan, pp. 73-78; see discussions: http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/7051/mero.htm and http://www.soas.ac.uk/lingfiles/working … rowan2.pdf

45. In various publications; see indicatively: ‘Die meroitische Sprache und das protoaltaische Sprachsubstrat als Medium zu ihrer Deutung (I): Mit aequivalenten von grammatikalischen Partikeln und Wortgleichungen’, Ulm/Donau (1992).  

46. See: http://www.geocities.com/athens/academy … ersc2.html (with extensive list of publications).  

47. Readings: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/kush/hd_kush.htm (with further bibliography); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kushan_Empire; http://www.kushan.org; (with pictorial documentation) http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/kush/hd_kush.htm; http://www.asianart.com/articles/jaya/index.html (with references)  

48. Readings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsacid_Dynasty; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthia; authoritative presentation in Cambridge History of Iran  

49. Readings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassanid_Empire (with further bibliography); authoritative presentation in Cambridge History of Iran.  

50. See: http://arkamani.org/meroitic_studies/li … oitic.htm; http://arkamani.org/arkamani-library/me … rilly.htm; http://arkamani.org/arkamani-library/me … graphy.htm  

51. http://arkamani.org/arkamani-library/me … s/Zach.htm (with reference to epigraphic sources)  

52. More recently: R.Voigt, The Royal Inscriptions of King Ezana, in the Second International Littmann Conference: Aksum 7-11 January 2006 (see: http://www.oidmg.org/Beirut/downloads/L … Report.pdf); also: http://users.vnet.net/alight/aksum/mhak4.html; http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=37430160. Read also: Manfred Kropp, Die traditionellen Aethiopischen Koenigslisten und ihre Quellen, in: http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/nilus/net-p … listen.pdf (with bibliography).  

53. Readings: http://www.telemaco.unibo.it/epigr/testi05.htm; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monumentum_Adulitanum; http://www.shabait.com/staging/publish/ … 3290.html; http://www.homestead.com/wysinger/aksum.html; http://www.arikah.net/encyclopedia/Adulis; further: Yuzo Shitomi, ‘A New Interpretation of the Monumentum Adulitanum’, in: Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko, 55 (1997). French translation is available online here: http://www.clio.fr/BIBLIOTHEQUE/les_gre … hiopie.asp.  

54. Readings: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04404a.htm; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmas_Indicopleustes; text and translation can be found online: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/awiesner/cosmas.html (with bibliography and earlier text/translation publications; http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/#Cosm … opleustes; and http://www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/more … copleustes Also: http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/EMwebpages/202.html; http://davidburnet.com/EarlyFathers-Oth … eintro.htm.  

55. Readings: http://library.thinkquest.org/22845/kus … oyalty.pdf  

56. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shendi; N. I. Nooter, The Gates of Shendi, Los Angeles, 1999 (http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1565561)  

57. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atbarah; http://www.country-studies.com/sudan/th … ples.html; http://www.sudan.net/tourism/cities.html.  

58. Readings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Simbel; http://www.bibleplaces.com/abusimbel.htm; http://lexicorient.com/e.o/abu_simbel.htm  

59. Syene (Aswan): see the entries of Realenzyklopaedie and Lexikon der Aegyptologie; also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aswan; http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14367a.htm  

60. http://www.numibia.net/nubia/ptolemies.htm; http://rmcisadu.let.uniroma1.it/nubiaco … zymski.doc. Dodekaschoinos was the northern part of Triakontaschoinos; the area was essential for Roman border security: http://poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.ph … al_code=AS. More recently: http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/facultie … f.dijkstra 

61. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dio_Cassius; see details of the early Roman rule over Egypt here: Timo Stickler, ‘Cornelius Gallus and the Beginnings of the Augustan Rule in Egypt’  

62. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strabo (particularly in his 17th book); English translation available here: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/R … 17A1*.htmlSlide70