It may be stated now that there are many indications confirming the close relationship between the inhabitants of the Western Desert and the Nile valley as represented by mythological and symbolical representations in the Cave of the Beasts. These depictions shed a completely new light on several cornerstones of ancient Egyptian concepts of the world and their state.59 They clarify and create a proper context of the Nabta Playa evidence and also help us understand the sudden complexity of predynastic Upper Egyptian cultures. The scenes of the Cave of the Beasts prove that there was a significant social complexity comprised in a community that produced its artistic decorations (e.g., the chieftain and subjugated enemies). At the same time, this community had significant intellectual capability to comprehend their surrounding environment with the help of complex mythological compositions that later on became a characteristic part of ancient Egyptian culture and religion (fig. 42).
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quote:Originally posted by Punos_Rey: Really excited to read this thanks for the post!
You're welcome. This is a great text. An essential read for anybody interested into the origin of the Ancient Egyptian civilizations and pre-dynastic Ancient Egypt.
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posted
Map of pre-dynastic settlements in the region - Back and forth movements of people between the Nile and surrounding deserts due to changes in climate:
Textual form (extract):
In their article in Science 2006, Rudolph Kuper and Stefan Kröpelin published what is so far the best summary of the climatic variations observed in the Sahara during the Holocene.15 According to their research, during the Early Holocene occupation phase (8500–7000 B.C.) the number of rapid monsoon rains increased, the Sahara turned into a savanna-like environment suitable for occupation [Green Sahara] and became resettled by a population from what was at that time an inhospitable Nile valley and from the south (today’s Sudan) . These newcomers were hunter-gatherers practicing limited husbandry. The sites in the Regenfeld area indicate that these populations were moving quickly from place to place over long distances. During this period most of the Nile valley was not occupied probably due to harsh and unpredictable Nile fluctuations.
All of those things, and those not cited, were part of the Green Sahara era (wavy line pottery culture) and were fundamental in the development of the Ancient Egyptian Kingdom and Culture.
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One of the most important scenes in the Cave of the Beasts features a large figure of a composite body painted white. It is a mixture of a beast’s legs (resembling a panther) and a female torso with a clearly visible breast. Moreover, it is again a unique scene without parallel and thus even more elusive. The head of the figure is missing and one can recognise only the neck (fig. 18). The figure is leaning against the ground in a way similar to later depictions of the goddess Nut in ancient Egypt. Her unique white colour even allows for the possibility that at this early stage she was already considered to be an anthropomorphic form of the Milky Way, which in ancient Egypt was associated with the legend of the birth of the sun god Ra.22 As for the Earth, it is rendered as a red figure of a male, which seems to support her body, reclining on his right elbow and with his left arm touching/supporting her breast. His legs are unnaturally long and nine men are depicted walking on them from the right side. In their hands they carry large, elongated items resembling joints of meat brought by later offering-bearers as attested in Egyptian tombs from the Old Kingdom (figs. 19 and 20).23 Yet, there is one more option as far as possible interpretations are concerned. The assumed offering bearers may refer to ancient inhabitants of the desert who were ascending from the desert plateau to the cave which was considered a place of transition. In the cave were meeting the profane world with the netherworld. And thus the cave was the place of their interference as was the goddess Nut. Last but not least, it was the place of interaction of men with the sacred.
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We are certainly not far from the truth when we say that these ancient populations were capable of creating sacred spaces and “meetings points” where the profane world ended and the sacred and eternal one just began. In a certain sense, they may be considered the first temples of the ancient Egyptians.
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posted
Nice thread Amun, though this topic was discussed before albeit in the reloaded site here. And I will just have a few cents to give to this topic.
First I find it odd if not somewhat inaccurate to say attribute this one spot (Cave of Swimmers) to the entire origin of Egypt. Especially when there are other neolithic sites in the desert that used to be lakes much closer to the Nile Valley.
Second, at such an early period in time how do they know that these people were ancestral to the ethnic Egyptians proper?? We know that there were various groups living along the Nile river many whom show some connection or relation to dynastic Egyptians. Even Egyptologists like Toby Wilkinson have identified the precursors of Naqada culture to be located in the Eastern desert whereas those cultures in the southwest such as Nabta Playa and especially the so-called 'Cave of Swimmers' which is really far out southwest is far likelier to be ancestral to the Nubian Qustul culture than Egypt, assuming it is directly tied to the Nabta Culture which is definitely ancestral to Qustul! Even the other Western desert cultures further north around the oases are more related to the cultures of the oases peoples who were ethnically not Egyptian than to the Egyptians.
Of course if one simply wants to make the argument that all these cultures represent closely related populations indigenous to northeast Africa and having relations with the rest of Africa then so be it! I for one however, am just weary of Western scholars being so quick and careless to identify any culture either in or a ways off the Nile Valley as all of a sudden "Egyptian" even when such cultures predate the Egyptian ethnicity by thousands of years. There is a double-standard because notice how Western scholars don't make such claims about say ancient Greece when they identify any or all Neolithic sites in the Balkans or Aegean as "Greek" without proper or more accurate cultural context.
Were these desert cultural related to or even ancestral to Egyptian culture? YES But does that make them actual ethnic Egyptians?? Obviously NO.
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posted
It has been long supposed that the roots of ancient Egyptian civilisation were connected with the climatic depredation of the Western Desert which led to the last wave of intensive sedentarisation in the Nile valley. In turn, these “newcomers” to the Nile valley contributed to the formation of ancient Egyptian civilisation. The latest analysis of the rock-art motifs in the area of Gilf Kebir in Egypt’s Western Desert provides evidence for the theory that several concepts traditionally connected with ancient Egypt and its civilisation may had been formulated at least several hundred years before this state came into being (figs. 1 and 2) . It is above all the Cave of the Beasts that shows explicitly that the local prehistoric populations of herders were the authors of several mythological concepts that later became key elements of ancient Egyptian culture and concept of the world. At the same time these ideas represented some of the basic principles of the ancient Egyptian incipient state. It is likely that some segments of Western Desert populations of the sixth and early fifth millennia B.C. that migrated to the Nile valley due to climatic stress may be considered the intellectual precursors of the ancient Egyptians. This may come as a surprise because ancient Egyptians considered the west, the Western Desert, to be places of oblivion, death and destruction. Therefore, it is interesting to see that their intellectual predecessors came from this region to settle down in the Nile valley. The following pages present a collection of their footsteps based both on evidence published thus far and new research that can still be found in the vast areas of the Western Desert.
Re intellectual precursors, maybe in part based on certain things such as religion & iconography. But this is nothing new. People like Wendorf et al have made a similar argument. The Cave, which is towards the southern side axis in Egypt, would be part of the desert-scape mix of cultures and peoples that influenced the dynastic civilization.
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The first known Egyptian pyramids were stepped, right? Do you think a layer of clay/soil etc. was added to smooth them to resemble those mountains?
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It is not surprising that the western desert was considered the place of death, since nomadic herders came from there (following-pushing herds from the mountain pastures eastwards to the Nile, then returning west next growing season), and no doubt been familiar via tribal history witnessing the worsening drought.
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^ The first Egyptian tombs were burial mounds or tumuli that were squarish in shape whom Egyptologists call 'mastabas'. The theory is that over time these mounds grew larger and taller and a few like the tomb of Djoser had a step pattern. I do agree with the theory though that the ultimate model for the pyramids come from the Western desert mountains. Even in the Berber cultures of the Sahara, the triangle is a sacred geometric image. The same seemed to have held true for the Egyptians with the pyramid being a 3-dimensional form of the triangle.
quote:Originally posted by zarahan- aka Enrique Cardova: Re intellectual precursors, maybe in part based on certain things such as religion & iconography. But this is nothing new. People like Wendorf et al have made a similar argument. The Cave, which is towards the southern side axis in Egypt, would be part of the desert-scape mix of cultures and peoples that influenced the dynastic civilization.
Exactly what I said. Though to identify such precursors as actual 'Egyptians' is a big stretch. What exactly is the limit? Note how we have noted similarities with other cultures on the other side of the Sahara in Western Africa but I seriously doubt these same Egyptologists will even consider these to have any relation with the Egyptians!
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-------------------- Note: I am not an "Egyptologist" as claimed by some still bitter, defeated, trolls creating fake profiles and posts elsewhere. Hapless losers, you still fail. My output of hard data debunking racist nonsense has actually INCREASED since you began.. Posts: 5905 | From: The Hammer | Registered: Aug 2008
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quote:Originally posted by DD'eDeN: It is not surprising that the western desert was considered the place of death, since nomadic herders came from there (following-pushing herds from the mountain pastures eastwards to the Nile, then returning west next growing season), and no doubt been familiar via tribal history witnessing the worsening drought.
True, it's not just the western desert. All the surrounding deserts (east, west, etc) were considered places of death. Where lawlessness, dangerous nomadic thieves and lack of food/water could kill you. In AEian literature, it was often put in contrast with the Ancient Egyptian state and order.
Ancient Egyptians were themselves migrants from the surrounding deserts and the south who migrated to the Egyptian Nile Valley in search for greener pasture during the desiccation of the then green Sahara. Before that time, between about 8000BC and 5000BC, the Nile Valley (Egyptian side) was inhospitable/uninhabited.
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posted
Good Thread. I will save some of these on ESR.
-------------------- Without data you are just another person with an opinion - Deming Posts: 12143 | From: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable | Registered: Jun 2007
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The extreme left part of the cave features a single small scene that depicts a chieftain with a mace (fig. 12). One fallen enemy, head down, can be seen to the left of the chieftain. With regard to the lack of other comparable evidence, we may state that this is a representation of one of the oldest known chieftains, a prototype of the ancient Egyptian king who used to be traditionally portrayed as a warrior smiting with his mace the heads of enemies of the country (fig. 13).
Below the scene are two ‘registers’ of human figures separated by a rock fissure that most likely intentionally divides the upper and lower row (figs. 13 and 14). The upper row shows ten robust figures with their arms lifted above their heads. The lower row consists of twenty three figures turned upside down, almost half the size of the upper row and slender. Also, their arms are arranged differently: whereas one arm is always along the body, the other is raised above the figure’s head. The difference between the two rows in terms of their robusticity may be ascribed, hypothetically, to different association of the figures. Are these members of two different, large families that met during a confrontation? Based on ancient Egyptian tradition we might also say that the upper row represents members of the victorious chieftain’s band whereas the lower register renders defeated and killed enemies. To render a human figure upside down in ancient Egypt was considered to be a clear designation for a deceased person because death was considered just the opposite of life and therefore, to portray somebody with head downward was most likely the only way how to artistically distinguish death. 18 In the New Kingdom Book of the Dead there are two chapters with spells which are to protect the deceased from going upside down and from eating faeces.19 Also quite important is to observe the mace in the chieftain’s raised arm, as stone axes appear more frequently from the middle-Holocene onwards. Close, if not identical, parallels to this scene are well documented from ancient Egyptian sources where the standard arrangement shows the king (originally a chieftain) with a raised mace above his enemies about to smash their heads. This ideological feature of a victorious king successfully protecting his territory and people from evil forces and enemies permeated the whole of ancient Egyptian civilisation. The first attestations of this motif are dated to the Predynastic Period and can be found in the same form more than three thousand years later on the walls of Ptolemaic temples such as the Philae temple , which contains one of the last hieroglyphic inscriptions known from ancient Egypt.20 One of the earliest examples of this iconographic element can be found in the late Predynastic tomb L 100 at Hierakonpolis belonging to one of the rulers of a local chiefdom (around 3200 B.C.). On the wall of his tomb he is depicted smiting the heads of three bound captives with his war mace (figs. 16 and 17). 21
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