Cush-Meroe,
Kemet-Egypt, Punt, Other Berberia, Azania & the Orientalization of the
Roman Empire: Common Origin, Migrations, Ancestral Culture & Lands of Oromos,
Sudanese & Other Cushites
Contents
A. My speech in 5th
Annual International Conference of the Network of Oromo Studies
B. Historical Diagram
of the Cushitic Presence in Eastern Africa
I. A-Group Culture
II. The Kingdom of
Kerma
III. C-Group Culture
IV. Kemetian (Egyptian)
Invasion of Cush (Sudan: Ethiopia)
V. Deep
Spiritual-Religious Divisions among both, Kemetians (Egyptians) and Cushites
(Sudanese: Ethiopians)
VI. C-Group Culture
Natives' Migration to the Red Sea Coast Lands
VII. The Cushitic
Blehu/Brehem - Blemmyes - Bejas
VIII. Red Sea Coast
Cushites: the Kingdom of Punt
IX. Queen Hatshepsut of
Kemet (Egypt) and the 'Expedition to Punt'
X. Cush-Meroe:
Ancestral Land of Oromos - Sidamas & Punt: Fatherland of Afars -
Somalis
XI. Afars-Somalis,
Roman Egypt, China, the Trade between East and West, and the 'Periplus of the
Red Sea'
XII. Afars-Somalis,
'Berberia', the 'Other Berberia', and the 'Periplus of the Red Sea'
XIII. Axumite
Abyssinians: Semitic Yemenite Fugitives in Africa
XIV. Punt is
Opone (Ras Hafun, Somalia): Impossible to locate it elsewhere
XV. The Cushites of the
Horn (Punt - Opone) were never controlled by the impotent king Zoscales of
Axumite Abyssinia
XVI. Ancient Afars
& Somalis: 'Other Berberia', Azania, and the Yemenites Sabaeans (Sheba) and
Himyarites in the Horn
XVII. Meroe's Relations
with Kemet/Egypt under the Ptolemies (305-30 BCE)
XVIII. The War between
Meroe and Rome (25-23 BCE)
XIX. The Meroe Head:
Bronze Head of Octavian Augustus Unearthed in the Capital of Cush
XX. Jebel Qeili, Qore
('King') Shorkaror, and the Meroitic Victory over the Axumite Abyssinians
XXI. Meroitic-Roman
Relations (30 BCE-4th c. CE) and their Impact on Explorations and Sciences
XXII. Universalization
of the Mediterranean World: Meroe, Rome, Armenia, and Mithraism - Meroitic
Ethiopian Gladiators in front of Emperor Nero and King Tiridates I
XXIII. Orientalization
of the Roman Empire: Meroe, Rome, and Isidism - when Egyptians, Meroitic
Ethiopians & Berbers taught their Greek and Roman Pupils the Supreme
Spiritual Wisdom
XXIV. The Mysteries of
Isis and Plutarch: when the Highest Priest of Greece became a devotee and an
enthusiast of the Kemetian-Egyptian and Cushitic-Ethiopian Spirituality
XXV. Silk Roads and the
Prevalence of Oriental Civilization in Greece, Rome and Europe: Aramaean,
Anatolian, Phoenician Spirituality, Gnostics, and the Manichaeans of Alexandria
XXVI. Heliodorus,
Aethiopica, and the Sublime Idealization of Meroe in Greco-Roman Literature
XXVII. Blemmyes,
Nubians, Axumites and the End of Meroe
XXVIII. The End of Meroe
and the Rise of Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia: Terminus-post-quem and
Terminus-ante-quem for the Early Migratory Wave
XXIX. Nobatia, Makuria,
Axum, and the Christianization of Alodia (Alwa)
XXX. Jebel Moya, the
First and the Second Migratory Waves, and the Transformation of the Migrant
Meroites and Alodians into Oromos
A.
My speech in 5th Annual International Conference of the Network of Oromo
Studies
Honored to be invited,
I participated in the 5th Annual International Conference of the Network of Oromo
Studies (NOS: http://networkoromostudies.com/); the event was held
electronically due to the present conditions last Saturday (27 February 2021).
My speech ("Fake Nubia: a Colonial Forgery to deprive Cushitic Nations
from National Independence, Historical Identity and Cultural Heritage")
concerned the possible ramifications of the systematic but absolutely erroneous
attribution of Ancient Kemetic (Egyptian) and Ancient Cushitic (Sudanese)
monuments, antiquities, archaeological sites and historical heritage to
Nubians, who -although present in both, Ancient Kemet (Egypt) and Ancient Cush
(Sudan, i.e. the true, historical Ethiopia)- did not constitute the driving
force of the two great Ancient African civilizations and never ruled either
states. I described this dishonest and disreputable attitude, attempt and
endeavor as "Nubianization" of Northeast Africa.
In fact, undertaken by
Western colonial academics, Orientalists, explorers and historians,
Nubianization is a distortive academic effort that involves
a) an enormous deal of
confiscation of Cushitic monuments,
b) an unprecedented
usurpation of ca. 5000 years of Cushitic History,
c) a systematic
expropriation of historical past from today's Cushitic nations, and
d) a disastrous
national division among the descendants of the Ancient Hamitic-Cushitic nations
of
i) Kemet (Masr-Egypt),
and
ii) Cush
(Arabic-speaking Sudanese and Oromos, Somalis, Afars, Sidama, Kaffa, etc).
The text of my speech
and the associated notes and bibliography will soon be published in one of my
blogs, whereas the Network of Oromo Studies announced that it will publish all
the speeches of the distinguished contributors in a volume. During the
electronic event, which took place on the platform of Zoom, several participants
asked about various points or commented on the groundbreaking speeches, thus
contributing to several debates; as it was expected, all the speakers interacted
with one another, exchanging messages, opinions and viewpoints.
One of the participants
sent me the following message, which includes mainly two questions:
I am very
interested in the Cushitic civilization. Do we have historical evidence and
dates when the Eastern Cushitic people moved to highland regions of the present
Oromia, Somalia and Northern Ethiopia and Kenya and Tanzania? Do we know when
these groups of languages differed from one another, e.g. Somali and Afaan
Oromo? Thank you!
What follows is my
brief response, which was sent with a delay of few days. The text is not written
as a concise historical manual, but as a mere diagram with several highlighted
points. Links to Wikipedia entries are included only to offer access to
bibliography and further research – not for the contents.
B. Historical
Diagram of the Cushitic Presence in Eastern Africa
The earliest Cushitic
presence in today's Egypt's South and Sudan's North goes back to the 4th
millennium BCE; there are evident links between the early cultures that George
A. Reisner defined as A-Group culture and B-Group culture, the latter being now
viewed as the period of decay of the former. Covering almost the entire 4th
millennium BCE (3800-3100 BCE), this early Hamitic-Cushitic culture is attested
in monuments unearthed in Kubaniyya, Aswan, Sayala, Toshka, Qustul, Buhen, and
other sites mainly between the first and the second cataracts of the Nile.
I.
A-Group Culture
The rise of the First
Dynasty of Kemet (Egypt) seems to bring an end to the local Cushitic rulers of
A-Group culture; this is not only deduced from the material record and the archaeological
data but also described in Ancient Kemetian (Egyptian) texts and legends
pertaining to the rise of a unified (Upper and Lower) Hamitic Kemet. Quite
interestingly in this regard, the relief of Jebel Sheikh Suleiman testifies to
an early Kemetian expansion at the detriment of the A-Group culture Cushites,
being therefore one of the world's earlier representations of historical events.
https://oi.uchicago.edu/museum-exhibits/nubia/ancient-nubia-group-3800%E2%80%933100-bc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-Group_culture
The hypothesis of a
"war between the Egyptians and the A-Group Nubian people" is purely
colonial French propaganda as there is not one single proof to possibly
identify the material record of A-Group culture as "Nubians". This is
a lie. A-Group culture people were Cushites, i.e. Hamites, and this means that
they were totally different from the Nilo-Saharan Nubians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief_of_Gebel_Sheikh_Suleiman
https://www.academia.edu/15325978/Gebel_Sheikh_Suleiman_a_First_Dynasty_Relief_after_all_
II.
The Kingdom of Kerma
The next major phase of
the Ancient Cushitic civilization is attested further in the South, around
today's Kerma in North Sudan; the Kerma kingdom (2500-1550 BCE) was the
earliest Cushitic royal structure. Although it is evident that the Cushitic
kingdom of Kerma had commercial relations with Early Dynastic Kemet/Egypt (3150
-2690 BCE), the Old Kingdom of Kemet (2690-2181), and the Middle Kingdom of
Kemet (2055-1650 BCE), it seems that different concepts of spirituality and
religion prevailed in these two realms (Kemet/Egypt and Cush/Sudan), thus
generating rivalry, enmity and animosity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerma_culture
The Wikipedia entry
" List of monarchs of Kerma" is an entire fallacy and its parts are evidently
self-contradictory: although it is initially stated that "the Kingdom of
Kerma existed as an independent state from around 2500 BCE to 1520 BCE", in
the following section, the forged and propagandistic entry includes (in the
"Rulers of Kerma") the fake, ahistorical and nonexistent "Makeda
(queen, c. 1005–950 BCE)", which is the product of the forged, racist and
evil document "Kebra Negast" that is a bogus-historical diatribe
compiled ca. 1200 CE – i.e. more than 2700 years after the Kerma kingdom
collapsed! It is necessary to underscore at this point that the forgers of
Kebra Negast did not have a clue about the Ancient Cushitic kingdom of Kerma. In
fact, the only few names of Cushitic rulers that we have during the period of
Kerma kingdom are due to references in Ancient Kemetian (Egyptian) hieroglyphic
texts. Including the fake queen Makeda in the list is an act of malignant
forgery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monarchs_of_Kerma
III.
C-Group Culture
Opposite to both, Kemet
and Cush (A-Group culture and the Kerma kingdom), the early culture that George
A. Reisner defined as C-Group culture represents a historical phase during
which Hamitic invaders from the Sahara and the Atlas regions of
Northern-Northeastern Africa settled in the region as pastoralists and
intermingled with the local Kemetians and Cushites. They expanded from today's
Egypt's South down to the Dongola Reach in today's Sudan's North, being easily
identified through their distinct pottery. C-Group culture sites bear witness
to a historical continuity between 2400 BCE and 1600 BCE, but the disappearance
of the C-Group culture people, who consisted of both farmers and herders,
remained a mystery for long.
However, the
outstanding diffusion of C-Group culture across lands east of the Nile down to
today's Eritrea's northernmost confines seems to offer a plausible explanation.
Contrarily to the Kerma kingdom's Cushites, who remained in the Nile Valley
after the Kemetian (Egyptian) invasion of Cush under Ahmose I (1549-1524),
Amenhotep I (1525-1504) and Thutmose I (1506-1493), C-Group culture natives
seem to have continued their migration, reaching the Red Sea coastlands of today's
southern Egypt and Sudan, settling there and advancing even further to the Horn
region.
https://oi.uchicago.edu/museum-exhibits/nubia/ancient-nubia-c-group%E2%80%93pan-grave%E2%80%93kerma-2400%E2%80%931550-bc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-Group_culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongola_Reach
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmose_I
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amenhotep_I
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thutmose_I
IV.
Kemetian (Egyptian) Invasion of Cush (Sudan: Ethiopia)
The Kemetian (Egyptian)
invasion of Cush at the end of the 16th c. is a major event in the History of
Eastern Africa from the Mediterranean to the East African coastlands down to
today's Tanzania. This great military exploit and the subsequent annexation of
Cush by Kemet (Egypt) were due to the Kemetian determination to punish the
Kerma Cushites for their cooperation with the Hyksos invaders of Kemet; the
latter were viewed by the Kemetians as the personification of the evil (Seth)
and, after the Hyksos rule was overthrown and the conquerors expelled out of
Kemet to Asia (from where they had arrived), all their names were deleted from
every text and inscription across the country.
As event with enormous
repercussions, the Kemetian invasion of Cush generated a great schism among the
Cushites, namely between those who cooperated with the Kemetians (Egyptians)
and those who opposed them. This polarization was spiritual, religious,
theological and royal; it had no ethnic character or dimension. Kemetian
Pharaohs, like Amenhotep III and Tutankhamun, venerated Cush and built many
temples there, e.g. the temple of Amun at Kawa (near today's Dongola) which was
built and rebuilt several times. And all the Kemetian followers of Amun (i.e. the
main god of one of the Ancient Kemetian religions) considered Napata as the
holy place of Amun's birth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawa,_Sudan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amun#Theology
http://www.jebelbarkal.org/frames/VisGuide.pdf
V.
Deep Spiritual-Religious Divisions among both, Kemetians (Egyptians) and
Cushites (Sudanese: Ethiopians)
However, the deep
spiritual, religious, and theological division existed already within Kemet
(Egypt) and during the 18th (1549-1292 BCE), 19th (1292-1189 BCE) and 20th (1189-1077)
dynasties, many pharaohs supported and promoted concepts, ideas, faiths and
cults that were diametrically opposed to those of their predecessors or
successors. Two totally opposite tendencies, one monotheistic and aniconic and
another polytheistic and idolatrous, divided both, Kemet and Cush, causing
strives, civil wars, priestly disputes, conflicting practices, and a vast
social discord, as the populations were spiritually-religiously divided and the
followers of the opposite spiritual-religious systems were fanaticized against
one another. The developments reached a culmination point during the reign of
Akhenaten (1351-1334), but the rise and fall of the Ancient Kemetian and
Cushitic Monotheism (presently defined as Atenism, after the name of
Akhenaten's Only and Sole God Aten) predetermined the historical evolution and
the events that took place across the Valley of the Nile for the next 1700
years until the late end of Meroe.
http://www.academia.edu/34439637/In_Ancient_Egypt_at_any_given_moment_there_was_never_one_Egyptian_Religion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atenism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aten
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra
All post-Akhenaten
developments that took later place in Kemet and Cush can be properly
interpreted only after the correct understanding of the initial clash, because
they constitute in reality posterior stages of the same division and the same
clash:
1) the weakening of the
internal front at the times of Ramses II (reign: 1279-1213 BCE),
2) the decadence of
Kemet after the reign of Ramses III (1198-1167 BCE; and despite his victories
over the Sea Peoples),
3) the divisions of
Kemet into two or three kingdoms, starting with the 21st dynasty (1070-945
BCE),
4) the loosening of the
Kemetian control over Cush and the subsequent secession of the Napatan rulers,
5) the rise of the
Kingdom of Cush (ca. 800-315 BCE; with capital at Napata),
6) its involvement in Kemet/Egypt
under the form of the 25th (described by Manetho as Cushitic, i.e. Ethiopian)
dynasty (747-656 BCE),
7) the Assyrian
conquest of Kemet (670-640),
8) the rise of the
Berber princes and allies of Assyria as the 25th (described by Manetho as
Libyan) dynasty (664-525 BCE), and
9) all the later
internal developments in Kemet
a) during the Iranian
occupation (525-332 BCE), as well as
b) under the Ptolemies
(305-30 BCE) and
c) throughout the Roman
period; before and after the Christianization (30 CE – 642 CE).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monarchs_of_Kush
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alara_of_Kush
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashta
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Dynasty_of_Egypt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manetho
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_conquest_of_Egypt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Thebes
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1780&context=honorstheses
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-sixth_Dynasty_of_Egypt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Persian_Egypt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_Kingdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_dynasty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Egypt
The same can also be
said about the Ancient History of Cush, after the successive Kemetian (under
the Berber Pharaoh Psamtek II in 591 BCE) and Iranian (under the Achaemenid
Shah Cambyses in 525 BCE) invasions and sacks of Napata, when progressively the
capital was transferred to Meroe ('Medewi' in Ancient Meroitic). At the origin
of all major historical developments, there was a continuous, spiritual,
religious and theological conflict between two opposite priesthoods.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psamtik_II%20
https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ethiopia%20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mero%C3%AB%20
Wainwright, G. A. “The Date of the Rise of Meroë.” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. 38, 1952, pp. 75–77. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3855497
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mero%C3%AB
Similarly, the
development of Waaqeffannaa as a historical religion and its evident
monotheistic nature cannot be fully understood in the absence of a comparative
study and without retracing Waaqeffannaa concepts, principles, considerations
and beliefs to the respective earlier elements of the ancient spiritual systems
and religions of Cush and Kemet. The rejection of 3rd–4th c. Christianity by
Kemetians and Meroitic Cushites was the result of their perception of the new
faith as polytheistic and fanatic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waaqeffanna
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waaq
VI. C-Group Culture
Natives' Migration to the Red Sea Coast Lands
The earliest traces of
Hamitic-Cushitic presence alongside the African Red Sea coast that date in
historical times are related to the early expansion and the later migration of
the C-Group culture natives from the Nile Valley to the Red Sea coastlands around
1600-1550 BCE. This phenomenon led the Hamitic people of the coastlands to
spread further in the South always in search of natural resources and better
climatological conditions and to thus settle in regions located quite far from
the Valley of the Nile. It then created two distinct groups of Hamitic-Cushitic
populations throughout Eastern Africa:
a) the Hamitic-Cushitic
populations of the Nile Valley from the Delta to the junction of the Blue and
White Nile (in today's Khartoum): these were the Kemetians of Egypt (Masr) and
the Cushites of Ethiopia (Sudan), and
b) the Hamitic-Cushitic
populations of the Eastern African coastland.
There is major
distinction between the two groups as regards their ethnic-linguistic
conditions of life; except the Hamitic-Cushitic populations, also early Nilo-Saharan
ethnic groups lived in parts of the Nile Valley, constituting of course a
minority and being in continuous contact with their lands of origin, which were
located in parts of the Eastern and the Western Desert. One of these early Nilo-Saharan
ethnic groups was the Nehesiu, who became later known in the Ancient Greek and
Latin sources as Nobadai, in Islamic sources as Nubiin, and in modern Western
languages as Nubians.
VII.
The Cushitic Blehu/Brehem - Blemmyes - Bejas
However, there were
also Cushitic groups that originated from various parts of the Sahara desert
and were in continuous interaction with the Valley of the Nile; the best known
among them were the Blehu (their name can also be vocalized as Brehem) of the
Ancient Kemetian (Egyptian) hieroglyphic sources, who became known as Blemmyes
among Ancient Greeks and Romans and were the ancestors of today's Beja.
At this point, I must
add that, during the Antiquity down to the Roman times in Egypt, the Cushitic Blehu/Brehem
- Blemmyes - Beja lived west of the Nile and only in the first centuries of the
Christian era, the existing historical sources started reporting them as
dwellers of the Eastern Desert.
It is therefore clear
that the ancestors of the Beja did not reach the region where they have been
dwelling over the past 1500 years in today's Eastern Sudan and the surrounding
regions prior to the collapse of Meroe (ca. 360-370 CE). For several centuries,
the Blemmyes created an explosive situation in the border region between Roman
Egypt and Meroe, also establishing a fully acknowledged kingdom that may have
also contributed to the weakening of the Meroitic royal stature.
VIII.
Red Sea Coast Cushites: the Kingdom of Punt
Contrarily to the
ethno-linguistic conditions of life that prevailed in the Nile Valley and the
surrounding regions, across the Eastern African coastlands from today's Egypt's
Red Sea coast to the wider region around Daresalaam in Tanzania, the Hamitic -
Cushitic presence was overwhelming and unchallenged for at least a millennium;
apparently, the spread of small populations across vast and long coastal lands
generated numerous, impotent local authorities, thus triggering an obvious lack
of important centralized royal power. Certainly, we cannot know how far the early
C-Group culture natives advanced in the South, but we have good reasons to
believe that they settled as far as the area of the Horn and even beyond up to
today's Somali region of Ras Hafun. This was due to the fact that the area
seems to have already been known to the Ancient Kemetians (Egyptians) earlier,
i.e. before the approximate time of the C-Group culture people's arrival
(around 1550-1500).
The Ancient Kemetians had
two particular names to describe that long coastal region of Eastern Africa and/or
a particular part of it: Punt. The first mentions of navigation to and trade
with Punt in Ancient Kemetian (Egyptian) hieroglyphics appear in the early
times of the Middle Kingdom, so around 2000 BCE. Navigation from Kemet's
(Egypt's) Red Sea ports to Punt was frequent, as the marvelous land was
described as extremely rich in resources.
The exact location of
Punt has long been debated among colonial Orientalists and Western
Egyptologists, who permanently seek to minimize the magnificence of the Ancient
Kemetian and Cushitic civilizations in order to maintain in 'validity' their
distorted, fallacious and racist dogma of Euro-centrism and Greco-centrism, by
magnifying the hypothetical 'achievements' of the White Ancient Greeks and
Romans. There have even been Egyptologists, who intentionally and idiotically
tried to 'locate' Punt somewhere around the eastern banks of Nile between the
5th and the 6th cataract (!), so practically speaking in the wider region where
Meroe rose to prominence during the last pre-Christian and the early Christian
centuries.
The entire debate about
the location of Punt may well have occurred in vain, because it is quite
possible that, for the Ancient Kemetians of the end of the 3rd millennium BCE,
Punt was located closer to Kemet (Egypt), i.e. somewhere in today's Eritrea's
coastland, and 500 years later, for the Kemetians of the New Kingdom (1549-1077
BCE), Punt may have been situated around the Horn Region and the Ras Hafun
peninsula in today's Somalia. The reason for the 're-location hypothesis' is
the better familiarization of the C-Group culture migrants with the wider
region of Eastern African coastlands; better exploring lands located further in
the South, they resettled repeatedly, 'taking' their toponym with them.
IX.
Queen Hatshepsut of Kemet (Egypt) and the 'Expedition to Punt'
The most analytical
description of Ancient Punt that we have in Kemetian (Egyptian) hieroglyphics
is the legendary 'Expedition to Punt' by Queen Hatshepsut. This text bears
witness to the good, friendly commercial relations that Kemet had with the
kingdom of Punt. This narrative was inscribed on the southern (short), western
(long) and northern (short) walls of the second colonnade of Queen Hatshepsut's
mortuary temple at Deir el Bahari (Thebes West, in today's Luxor, Upper Egypt).
It was accompanied by numerous
bas reliefs that portrayed the Egyptian fleet Admiral Nehesy, the King Perehu
of Punt, the Queen Eti, their donkey, and a great number of anonymous Puntites
(Somalis) and Kemetian sailors transporting goods and storing them on vessels.
The representation of numerous fish in the depicted sea waters of the bas
reliefs puts beyond any doubt the fact that the Expedition to Punt (ca.
1480-1475 BCE) was not undertaken somewhere in the Nile Valley and close to the
later Cushitic capital Meroe, because the fish have been identified as part of
the well-known Red Sea and Indian Ocean sea-life (pisci-fauna).
The 'Expedition to
Punt' consists in the founding text of Somali History; it is the World
History's first reference to a kingdom located in the tropical, equatorial
zone. Long before Iran, Turan, India and Europe, Somalia was instituted as a
kingdom on parity with Kemet (Egypt). The conversation between Perehu and
Nehesy, as presented within the 'Expedition to Punt' texts and bas reliefs, was
direct and without interpreters. This fact testifies to the common linguistic
background and enables modern scholarship to establish a link between the
original phase of the Somali and Afar languages with the languages of Ancient
Kemet and Cush. The conversation bears also witness to the identical spiritual,
religious, cultural, and royal background that Punt (Somalia) and Kemet (Egypt)
had at the time. The sanctity of Punt for the Ancient Kemetians is also
underscored by the alternative name that they used to denote the location: Ta
Netser (i.e. the Land of Gods).
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tꜣ-nṯr
https://www.navy.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/IntSP_1_Ancient_EgyptSP.pdf
https://landofpunt.wordpress.com/tag/ta-netjer/
https://hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/plantexpl.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatshepsut
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depiction_of_Hatshepsut%27s_birth_and_coronation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Punt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehsi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_history_of_Somalia
X. Cush-Meroe:
Ancestral Land of Oromos - Sidamas & Punt: Fatherland of Afars - Somalis
So, as you see, the
original stages of the Somali and Oromo languages can be retraced back to the
middle of the 2nd millennium BCE; it is then that these groups of languages
differed from one another for the first time.
In this case, I
categorize Afar (Qafaraf) and Somali (Af-Soomaali) as coastland Cushitic
languages and Oromo (Afaan Oromoo), Sidama (Sidaamu Afoo), and other languages
(Kambaata, Hadiyyisa, etc.) as inland Cushitic languages.
Of course, coastland
Cushites and inland Cushites and Hamites (Kemetians) were in continuous contact
throughout the millennia, which is a situation that involves many ups and downs
in the communication and the relationship between the two groups due to various
historical developments in the inland and the coastland of Eastern Africa.
XI. Afars-Somalis, Roman Egypt, China,
the Trade between East and West, and the 'Periplus of the Red Sea'
Late Antiquity
historical sources testify to the common Cushitic identity that the inhabitants
of today's Sudan's Red Sea coastland and the populations of today's Northern
Somali coasts had; Late Antiquity is the historical period that starts with the
rise of the Achaemenid dynasty of Iran to prominence following the Iranian
conquest of Babylonia (539 BCE) and ends with the preaching of Islam by Prophet
Muhammad (622 CE). In contrast with the Oriental Antiquity (3300-539 BCE),
during the Late Antiquity, for ca. 1200 years, all major paragons of
civilizations and imperial states between the Atlantic and the Pacific
interacted in many levels: commercial, cultural, and spiritual.
Written by an Alexandrian
Egyptian merchant and captain, the Periplus of the Red Sea (also rendered as
'Periplus of the Erythraean Sea') is an Ancient Greek text that dates back to
the second half of the first century CE. It details the navigation processes,
the commercial products exported from and imported in each and every important
harbor, port of call and trade center between Roman Egypt and China alongside
the eastern African coastlands and the Asiatic coasts starting from Arsinoe
(Suez); furthermore, the text offers valuable information about the different
kingdoms and states, the indigenous societies, and the nations that lived at
the time in that part of the world.
To lesser extent, the
author felt obliged to narrate 'recent' historical events (some of which may
have occurred 150 years before his time). In ca. 22 pages of modern text, the
anonymous author of this text describes all that mattered at those days for
Egyptian and other traders and navigators between the Roman Empire and all the
other empires and kingdoms of the world's southern, southeastern and eastern
confines.
Stories of
globalisation: the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf from late prehistory to early
modernity: selected papers of Red Sea Project VII
https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/13651981
XII. Afars-Somalis, 'Berberia', the
'Other Berberia', and the 'Periplus of the Red Sea'
The region of today's
Eastern Sudan is named "Berberia" (or Barbaria) within the text of
the 'Periplus of the Red Sea' (paragraphs 2-3); Ptolemais Theron, an Egyptian
Prolemaic (305-30 BCE) colony was located there, in the area of today's Suakin.
Meroe is also mentioned, as the great capital ('metropolis') of the inland
kingdom.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Periplus_of_the_Erythraean_Sea#Periplus
https://el.wikisource.org/wiki/Περίπλους_της_Ερυθράς_Θαλάσσης
The region of today's
Eritrea is mentioned as part of the Semitic Axum kingdom of Abyssinia
(paragraphs 4-6); Adulis (near today's Massawa) was the sole Abyssinian harbor
in the African Red Sea coast. Beyond that region, the coastline of today's
Djibouti and Northern Somalia is called as the "Other Berberia" in
the Periplus of the Red Sea (paragraphs 7-12); this means that the entire coastal
land up to the Horn of Africa (Ras Asir; Somali: Raas Caseyr; Italian: Capo
Guardafui) is described as the continuation of the realm of the Berbers who
inhabited the shore of today's Eastern Sudan ("Berberia"), i.e. south
of Berenice (Roman Egypt's southernmost port of call, which is located near
today's Ras Banas in Masr/Egypt) and north of Adulis.
This description lets
us understand that, following the migration of the Ancient Yemenite tribe of Abashat
(Abyssinians) from Yemen to Eastern Africa some time in the first half of the
first millennium BCE, the territorial continuity of the Eastern African coastland
Cushitic populations was interrupted and Semitic Yemenite populations, expelled
or chased from Ancient Yemen (and most probably originating from the Kingdom of
the Sabaeans or Sheba), settled first in the region around Massawa (in Adulis),
and later expanded in the mountainous inland up to Yeha and Axum, which became
their capital.
XIII.
Axumite Abyssinians: Semitic Yemenite Fugitives in Africa
The Abashat tribesmen (already
mentioned in Pre-Christian Sabaean inscriptions from Yemen) are the ancestors
of the modern (Tigrinya-speaking, Tigre-speaking and Amharic-speaking)
Abyssinians. Their language and writing (Ge'ez) originate from the
Pre-Christian languages and writings of Ancient Yemen (Sabaean, Awsani,
Qatabani, Himyarite, and Hadhrami), which are all Semitic, but greatly differ
from Arabic. The fact that, although having emigrated from Yemen and focalized their
trade activities around Adulis, the early Abyssinians preferred to definitely settle
and erect their capital at a safe distance from their harbor in the mountainous
inland (Axum and all other major Abyssinian sites except Adulis) demonstrates
clearly that they were chased from and kicked out of Yemen, and that, after
they settled in the coastal land, they had the foresight to secure themselves
behind the mountains that offered them the chance to best prepare their
defense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aksum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qohaito
(possibly 'Koloe' as
per the Periplus of the Red Sra)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matara,_Eritrea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawulti-Melazo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeha
It was well known to
these early Yemenite-Abyssinians that the Eastern African coastland Cushitic
populations had advanced further to the South and they had not founded a major
city, port or trade center in the region of today's Massawa. It was also clear
to them that the Nile Valley Cushites (either of Napata or Meroe) had never
expanded up to the mountainous region north of today's Lake Tana; this has in
fact been corroborated by Modern Archaeology, since no Cushitic or Meroitic
antiquities have ever been excavated in the region of mountains located beyond
today's Sudan's eastern borderlines.
This is very important for
us to take into consideration, because those peripheries never belonged to any
Cushitic/Meroitic royal authority and never ever during the Antiquity did Meroitic
and Axumite territories overlapped prior to the Axumite Abyssinian king Ezana's
invasion and destruction of Meroe (ca. 360-370 CE). This fact fully cancels the
ahistorical and absurd propaganda of today's criminal Abyssinian ruling class
about the (distortedly popularized as 'Abyssinian') Ethiopian (i.e. Ancient
Sudanese, Cushitic) occupation of Ancient Kemet (Egypt), which is said with
reference to the 25th Cushitic ('Ethiopian' as per Manetho) dynasty. As a
matter of fact, no ancestor of today's Amhara or Tigray Abyssinians ruled Kemet
(Egypt); ancestors of today's Oromos, Sidamas and Arabic-speaking Sudanese did,
because they are the offspring of the Ancient Cush (Ethiopia) in today's Sudan.
Egyptologists and Sudan
archaeologists have discussed for long the topic of the southern and the
eastern borders of the empires of Cush (Napata) and Meroe. The two Cushitic
empires traded with Egypt and the Mediterranean world and were linked through
desert routes across Sahara with Northwestern and Western Africa's farthermost
confines; but they did not have maritime vocation and they never controlled
today's Sudan's coastlands. Furthermore, it is known that neither Napata nor
Meroe extended their control beyond the region of Butana (Kessala, al-Gedaref,
Wad-Madani and Khartoum) in today's Sudan.
XIV.
Punt is Opone (Ras Hafun, Somalia): Impossible to locate it elsewhere
Written ca. 1550 years
after the 'Expedition to Punt', the 'Periplus of the Red Sea' mentions also
Punt (paragraphs 13-15); this time we don't have references to a kingdom but to
a city and post of call, which was the very last region of the "Other Berberia",
and like all the rest it was self-ruled. The very name Punt of the Ancient
Kemetian (Egyptian) hieroglyphic sources is rendered as Ὀπώνη - Opone in Ancient Greek and Latin sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opone
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0064:entry=opone-geo
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pwnt#Egyptian
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tꜣ-nṯr
This puts the entire
matter of Punt's location beyond any doubt, because, contrarily to the
'Expedition of Punt', the 'Periplus of the Red Sea' offers determinant practical
details and, more importantly, the distance of every port of call, trade
center, and harbor from the next, starting with Arsinoe (Suez). The unit of
measurement is the stadium (for links to the text, see above: unit XII). The
entire text is composed in the way paragraph 13 is written:
"Beyond
Tabae, after four hundred stadia, there is the village of Pano. And then, after
sailing four hundred stadia along a promontory, toward which place the current
also draws you, there is another market-town called Opone",…
The approximate length
of the stadium is known and thus, with the help of the anonymous author of the
'Periplus of the Red Sea', we are able to accurately locate Berenice, Ptolemais
Theron, Adulis, Avalites, Malao (today's Berbera) and all the other ports of call
until Opone and further beyond until Rhapta (today's Daresalaam in Tanzania).
Not one modern scholar disagreed with the identification of the exact location
of Opone in today's Hafun (Somali: Xaafuun; Arabic: حافون), near
the cape Ras Hafun (Somali: Ras Xaafuun, Arabic: رأس حـافـون).
Cape Ras Hafun is
located at a distance of ca. 100 miles (160 km) south the Horn of Africa, i.e. Cape
Guardafui, which is known as Ras Asir in Somali (Raas Caseyr). Ras Asir is also
mentioned in the 'Periplus of the Red Sea' (paragraph 12) as 'Cape of Spices'
(Ancient Greek: Ἀκρωτήριον Ἀρωμάτων / Akroterion Aromaton); in modern bibliography,
it is also referred to as 'Aromata' (in the Nominative case; because 'Aromaton'
is in the Genitive case, i.e. 'of the Spices'). There was actually a local
trade center at the Akroterion Aromaton, and this was the reason for which the
location was mentioned in that text (Ἀρωμάτων ἐμπόριον καὶ ἀκρωτήριον
/ Aromaton Emporion kai Akroterion / the Market and Cape of Spices).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malao
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadion_(unit)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ras_Hafun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Guardafui
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardafui_Channel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromata
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbaria_(East_Africa)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ras_Filuk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heis_(town)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosylon
Punt and Opone are
exactly the same word. For Punt, the basics are available here: Sir Alan Gardiner,
Egyptian Grammar, Cambridge 1957: Pwnt / (Pwenet), p. 565, left column, lower
part (p. 601/683 of the PDF; here: https://www.coptica.ch/Gardiner-EgyptianGrammar.pdf).
The Ancient Kemetian (Egyptian) hieroglyphic writing included also an alphabet,
but all the letters were considered as consonants, and therefore the
vocalization of several words is not always accurate. Written with the signs
Q3, E34, N35, X1 (that all have phonetic value) and N25 (as ideogram), the
toponym Punt could have been pronounced by Ancient Kemetians (Egyptians) as
Punt, Pune, Puene, Punet, Puenet, Punet or Puen. Detailed information about
these hieroglyphic signs is available here: index of signs on p. 544-547 (or p.
580 to 583 out of 683 of the PDF) and list of signs on p. 442-543 (or p. 478 to
579 out of 683 of the PDF) in the aforementioned link.
In the Ancient Kemetian
(Egyptian) name, the final –t (sign X1) may have had no phonetic value at all,
being then a determinative only to indicate that the preceding name was that of
a place, i.e. a toponym. This is quite plausible, but in this case the correct
pronunciation would be Puene, Puen or Pune.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinative
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs#Determinatives
Similarly, in the
Ancient Greek name of this location, the final –e (-η), which is one of the
typical endings of Ancient Greek toponyms, may have only been added as a form
of Hellenization of the Ancient Somali place name for the needs of the author's
Greek readership in Alexandria. Furthermore, the Ancient Greek writing of the
toponym Opone with omega (in the second syllable: Ω, ω) testifies to the existence
of a long vowel (omega already means 'great o'), which have been pronounced as
–u (-ou/-w).
The only remaining
slight phonetic difference between Punt and Opone appears to be the initial
Greek vowel O-. In Phonology, this may well be a typical phenomenon of
epenthesis, i.e. addition of one sound to a word. More specifically, as it
happens at the beginning of the word, it can be categorized as prothesis;
furthermore, it can be described as anaptyxis, because it involves a vowel (O-).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epenthesis#Beginning_of_word
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epenthesis#Anaptyxis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prothesis_(linguistics)#Semitic_languages
XV.
The Cushites of the Horn (Punt - Opone) were never controlled by the impotent
king Zoscales of Axumite Abyssinia
The identification of
the Ancient Kemetian (Egyptian) toponym, which has hitherto been only
conventionally known as 'Punt', with the Ancient Greek appellation of the same place
('Opone'), and the recognition of the exact location of Punt/Opone thanks to
the topographical details included in the 'Periplus of the Red Sea' irrevocably
cancel every attempt to locate Punt elsewhere or to link it in any manner with
territories related to Axum and Abyssinia.
This puts an end to the
extraordinarily fallacious Abyssinian state propaganda and to several Zionist,
anti-African pseudo-historians' publications and speeches in which they pretend
the opposite in order to promote their racist theories and various historical
distortions. In this regard, any maps that may have been posted online, which
show the land of Punt as connected in any sense with either Axumite Abyssinia
or Cushitic Ethiopia (in today's Sudan), are totally irrelevant and absolutely
fake.
The 'Periplus of the
Red Sea' makes it clear that the kingdom of Axumite Abyssinia never reached up
to Avalites (Assab in Eritrea). In paragraph 3 of the text, King Zoscales of
Axum is said to control the lands after the Call-Eaters, who were located south
of the territories of the Berbers and beyond Ptolemais Theron (Suakin in
Sudan's coastland), somewhere in the area of Tokar (طوكر), i.e.
close to Sudan's borderline with Eritrea. And in paragraph 5, we learn that
Zoscales' rule reached up to the borders of the 'Other Berberia'. Avalites (Assab)
is then mentioned as the first trade center and port of call of the Other Berberia;
there cannot be any doubt about the location of Avalites. The author of the
text states: "to this place the voyage from Arabia to the far-side coast
is the shortest" (as 'far-side coast' the text's anonymous author means
the Other Berberia). This concludes the case about the area of the Axumite
kingdom: it covered maximum ca. 50-75% of today's Eritrea's territory and few
more lands in the inland.
Even in Adulis, which
was the only port of call of the Axumite kingdom, a great part of the trade mentioned
used to take place in order to cover the needs of the Cushitic populations of
the adjacent regions. I will herewith present the details given in the 6th paragraph
of the text as regards the commercial activities in the port of Adulis in order
to compare the products
imported for the Cushites with the products imported for the king of Axum; this
will help us better
illuminate the trade realities of those days, which were proportional to the
financial potentialities of the Cushites and the meager needs of the Axumite
king.
Adulis imports for the
Cushites were the following:
There are
imported into these places, undressed cloth made in Egypt for the Berbers;
robes from Arsinoe; cloaks of poor quality dyed in colors; double-fringed linen
mantles; many articles of flint glass, and others of murrhine, made in
Diospolis; and brass, which is used for ornament and in cut pieces instead of
coin; sheets of soft copper, used for cooking-utensils and cut up for bracelets
and anklets for the women; iron, which is made into spears used against the
elephants and other wild beasts, and in their wars. Besides these, small axes
are imported, and adzes and swords; copper drinking-cups, round and large; a
little coin for those coming to the market; wine of Laodicea and Italy, not
much; olive oil, not much;
{I note that Wilfred H.
Schoff's translation (Longmans, Green, and Co. fourth avenue & 30th street,
New York, London, Bombay and Calcutta 1912) is quite confusing for the
non-specialist reader because he does not offer immediate geographical notes;
Arsinoe is today's Suez; Diospolis is Thebes of Egypt, today's Luxor; and
Laodicea is today's Lattakiyeh in Syria's coastland.}
Adulis imports for the king
Zoscales of Axumite Abyssinia were the following:
for the king,
gold and silver plate made after the fashion of the country, and for clothing,
military cloaks, and thin coats of skin, of no great value. Likewise from the
district of Ariaca across this sea, there are imported Indian iron, and steel,
and Indian cotton cloth; the broad cloth called monachê and that called
sagimtogênê, and girdles, and coats of skin and mallow-colored cloth, and a few
muslins, and colored lac.
Through the
description, it becomes clear that the Cushites ('Berbers' as per the text)
imported items that were necessary for tribal societies in their struggle with
Africa's wildlife, whereas Axum imported products necessary for the limited
Axumite stratocracy. Having a decentralized structure with no centripetal royal
authority, the Cushites lived evidently a better life, as they were reportedly
importing several articles of flint glass, olive oil, and wine.
Since the text mentions
the Cushitic presence ('Berberia') around Ptolemais Theron (Suakin) and also from
Avalites (Assab) further on alongside Northern Somalia's coastline (the 'Other
Berberia') up to the Horn of Africa and beyond, also detailing imports in and
exports from each port of call and trade center, the average reader may eventually
come up with the following question:
- Why products destined
for the Cushites were also imported in Adulis, which was the only Axumite
harbor?
The response is simple:
the text helps us understand that several regions of the Axumite kingdom were
also inhabited by Cushites whose presence on some nearby islands (easily
identifiable with Dahlak islands) is also mentioned in the Periplus of the Red
Sea. In other words, Eritrean regions like today's Keren, Agordat and Teseney (west
of Massawa) or Meder, Shali and Ti'yo (east of Massawa) and Tigray regions like
Adigrat and Mekelle (currently occupied by gangster Abiy Ahmed's army) were
inhabited by Cushites over whom Zoscales' authority was merely nominal.
This also explains the
text's references (paragraph 4) to the ivory trade from lands beyond the Nile
(meaning the Blue Nile); the trade was evidently in the hands of Cushitic
tribesmen, who inhabited the inland and preferred to pass their trade through Axum
(called 'Auxumites' in the test), instead of transporting it through Meroe and
Ptolemais Theron, where they would certainly pay heavier taxes to the Qore
(King).
The specific excerpt
reads (paragraph 4):
Opposite Mountain
Island, on the mainland twenty stadia from shore, lies Adulis, a fair-sized
village, from which there is a three-days' journey to Coloe, an inland town and
the first market for ivory. From that place to the city of the people called
Auxumites there is a five days' journey more; to that place all the ivory is
brought from the country beyond the Nile through the district called Cyeneum,
and thence to Adulis.
Apparently, Cyeneum (Κυήνειον) was located in the area between
today's Gedaref, Kessala (in Sudan) and Teseney (or Tessenei, in Eritrea) and
its place on the way from the 'country beyond the Nile' to Axum was important.
We can therefore suppose that the distances beyond Axum were considerably greater
than those mentioned in the text between the capital of Abyssinia and Adulis on
the coastland (Axum-Coloe/Qohaito: 5 days - Coloe/Qohaito-Adulis: 3 days). Although
ethnically related to the Qore (King) of Meroe, the Cushitic tribesmen
preferred to deal with the Abyssinian king of Axum and thus extract greater
profit for themselves. However, there is no mention of Axumite military
presence beyond the aforementioned transportation route that travelers needed 8
days in total to cross.
XVI.
Ancient Afars & Somalis: 'Other Berberia', Azania, and the Yemenites Sabaeans
(Sheba) and Himyarites in the Horn
The description of the
Cushitic populations of the Other Berberia within the Periplus of the Red Sea is
quite striking; the Egyptian captains and the Aramaean traders of those days
may have encountered hard partners and pushy sellers in those coasts. At the
end of paragraph 7, the Cushites of Avalites are described as "more unruly
than the rest". In paragraph 9, the Cushites of Mundu (near today's Heis/Xiis
or Maydh) are called as "harder to deal with". The absence of central
royal power and the self-administration of each and every port of call of the
Other Berberia are underscored at the end of paragraph 14, which recapitulates
the basic navigational schedules from Egypt to the Horn region up to Opone. The
local rulers are then called 'tyrants'; this word had at the time a different connotation,
totally distinct from the one it had had 400-500 years earlier in Ancient
Greece and fully unrelated to its modern meaning. It essentially denoted a
local chief, who was acclaimed by the elite of the natives but deprived of hereditary
power. The rulers of the cities-states of the Other Berberia were merchants and
administration chiefs very similar to the well-documented 'mukarrib' of Ancient
Yemen; at the same time, they were also pious persons with elementary priestly
tasks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukarrib
However, beyond Opone
(Hafun, near Ras Hafun), the unruly and indomitable Cushites of the Other
Berberia did not find any counterpart. Although according to all the historical
sources and the archaeological material record the populations living further
in the South were evidently of Cushitic origin too, the land from Opone down to
Rhapta (today's Daresalaam) formed a different socio-administrative entity. It
was called Azania; covering more than 3000 km of coastlands, Azania constituted
a Cushitic land administered as colony by the Ancient Yemenites. Capital and
major port of call - trade center of Azania was Rhapta, which was linked not
only to Alexandria, the trade centers of the Persian Gulf, and the ports of
call of the Indus River Delta, but also with the ports of call and trade
centers in the Deccan (today's India's southern half), Sri Lanka, Indochina-Indonesia
(called 'Chryse', i.e. 'Golden'), and China.
In the subsequent
paragraphs (15-18), the text gives ample information about the
Sabaean-Himyarite colonization of Azania and the early intermarriages that the
Ancient Yemenites arranged with the indigenous Cushitic Somalis, also learning
their language. The intermarriages seem to have been an old custom perhaps
initially introduced by the Qatabani Yemenites, who were the first great navigators
and the premier maritime power of the Indian Ocean during the 5th – 2nd c. BCE.
The alliance of Sheba and Himyar at the end of the 2nd c. BCE put an end to
Qataban, but it seems that the allied Sabaeans and Himyarites inherited the
already established colonial infrastructure in Azania and continued the same
practices, thus becoming acceptable partners for the local Somalis. The text
describes in detail the situation, putting beyond any doubt the fact that the
supreme ruler of the East African lands south of Opone at the time was the
Himyarite King Charibael, whose palace was located at Zafar ('Maphar' in the
Periplus of the Red Sea) in today's Yemen.
The text reads
(paragraphs 16-18):
Two days' sail
beyond, there lies the very last market-town of the continent of Azania, which
is called Rhapta; which has its name from the sewed boats (rhaptôn ploiariôn)
already mentioned; in which there is ivory in great quantity, and
tortoise-shell. Along this coast live men of piratical habits, very great in
stature, and under separate chiefs for each place. The Mapharitic chief governs
it under some ancient right that subjects it to the sovereignty of the state
that is become first in Arabia. And the people of Muza now hold it under his
authority, and send thither many large ships, using Arab captains and agents,
who are familiar with the natives and intermarry with them, and who know the
whole coast and understand the language.
There are
imported into these markets the lances made at Muza especially for this trade,
and hatchets and daggers and awls, and various kinds of glass; and at some
places a little wine, and wheat, not for trade, but to serve for getting the
good-will of the savages*1 . There are exported from these places a
great quantity of ivory, but inferior to that of Adulis, and rhinoceros-horn
and tortoise-shell (which is in best demand after that from India), and a
little palm-oil.
And these markets
of Azania are the very last of the continent that stretches down on the right
hand from Berenice; for beyond these places the unexplored ocean curves around
toward the west, and running along by the regions to the south of Aethiopia and
Libya and Africa, it mingles with the western sea.
*1 I must note at this point that the
translation ('of the savages') in the middle of the paragraph 17 is erroneous,
because the text mentions the 'Berbers' (Barbars), like in any other part
(between paragraphs 2 and 17), as an ethnic name for the Eastern African
coastland Cushites (and not as 'barbarians'). This mistake at this point is
also bizarre, if we take into consideration that the English translator and
scholar Wilfred Harvey Schoff (1874–1932) did not translate it mistakenly in
other parts of his translation. About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qataban
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charibael
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zafar,_Yemen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himyarite_Kingdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheba
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabaeans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabaean_language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatabanian_language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_South_Arabian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Harvey_Schoff
The Yemenite
(Sabaean-Himyarite) colonization of part of Eastern African coastlands proves
that in the wider region of Eastern Africa and Arabian Peninsula, the only
major imperial power that existed was the overseas empire of Sheba-Himyar,
which had inherited the Qatabani thalassocracy. Compared to the
Sabaeans-Himyarites, Axum was a pale, lackluster entity that lacked both, the
continental radiation and riparian expansion of Meroe and the maritime prowess
and colonial experience of Ancient Yemen. In other words, it was a second class
power.
The tight and absolute
Yemenite control of the maritime trade between the Mediterranean basin and the
expanse of sea around the Earth's southern-southeastern confines caused
actually the Roman military reaction, involving a land attack and a maritime
expedition against Yemen, which is widely documented (by Strabo, Dio Cassius, and
Pliny the Elder) and also mentioned in the Periplus of the Red Sea (in
paragraph 26). The event took place immediately after the Roman invasion and
occupation of Egypt (30 BCE); Emperor Octavian Augustus dispatched Aelius
Gallus to attack the Sabaean-Himyarite kingdom, which had caused economic
troubles to the Romans by heavily taxing all Oriental products passing from
Aden and by preventing straight navigation from the Red Sea's Egyptian harbors
to the coastlands of Deccan (which is also known as Coast of Malabar). About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Romans_in_Arabia#Gallus's_expedition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aelius_Gallus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabia_Felix
https://nabataea.net/explore/travel_and_trade/trade-on-the-red-sea/
The differentiation
among the Eastern African coastland Cushites in terms of governance (self-rule
for the Other Berberia, Sabaean-Himyarite colony for Azania) and social-behavioral
system (unruly and hard to deal with for the Other Berbers; urbane and friendly
for the Azanians) does not denote an early linguistic-ethnic differentiation
into the first stages of Afar and Somali languages and nations. This development
must have happened after the arrival of Islam in Africa. However, even today
both languages retain ample Ancient Cushitic vocabulary that was written in
Meroitic hieroglyphic and cursive writing before 2000 years. The Somali word
'boqor' (king) is identical to the title of the Cushitic kings of Meroe: 'Qore'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_aristocratic_and_court_titles#Kings_or_Rulers
XVII.
Meroe's Relations with Kemet/Egypt under the Ptolemies (305-30 BCE)
As Meroe (today's
Bagrawiyah) was located very far from Kemet (Egypt), there was never a chance
for attackers coming from the North (be they Kemetians/Egyptians, Iranians,
Macedonians or Romans) to reach the new Cushitic capital that rose to
prominence in the 5th and the 4th c. BCE. Alexander the Great never advanced
beyond Niwt, i.e. 'the city par excellence', as the Ancient Kemetians named
their own capital, Thebes of Egypt (today's Luxor). The Macedonian dynasty of
the Ptolemies was fully assimilated into the Ancient Kemetian (Egyptian)
imperial administration and expressed strictly Egyptian interests in the wider
chessboard between the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans.
In general, the
relations between Ptolemaic Kemet and Meroe were good, because with the relocation
of the Cushitic capital beyond the confluence of Atbarah with the (United) Nile,
every foreign attack from the North was predestined to doom long before
reaching the whereabouts of Meroe. In fact, the capital of the Meroites was
located at a distance of 1400-1500 km south of the Kemetian - Meroitic border
during the times of Ptolemaic - Roman Kemet. Taking into consideration the lack
of due training and the physical limits of northern empires' armies when
crossing the desert, one can understand why all significant Ptolemaic or Roman
expeditions in the South stopped in the area of today's borders between Masr
(Egypt) and Sudan.
The advance of Ptolemy
II (ca. 275 BCE) ended essentially in a compromise, i.e. the establishment of
Dodekaschoenus (also written as Dodekaschoinos) and Triakontaschoenus (also
written as Triakontaschoinos), namely two land zones alongside the Nile, which
both started in the First Cataract (immediately south of Syene / Aswan) and
extended southwards, the first being the northern part of the second. As per
the agreement, Dodekaschoenus would be integral part of Kemet and only Kemetian
army was allowed to move there, whereas in Triakontaschoenus Kemetian and
Meroitic soldiers would patrol together, while the land would be placed under
condominium. The two names (written in Latin and Romanized Greek as per above)
denote respectively two lands that are twelve schoeni (or schoinoi) long and
thirty schoeni long. One schoenus (or schoinos) was a measurement unit to
calculate the length; as unit of measurement, it was of Ancient Kemetian
origin, being named i͗trw (iteru). The Ancient Greeks accepted
this unit as equal to 40 stadia.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nwt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_dynasty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_Kingdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy_II_Philadelphus#Invasion_of_Nubia_(c._275_BC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy_II_Philadelphus#Colonisation_of_the_Red_Sea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemais_Theron
https://www.ancient.eu/Dodekaschoinos/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triakontaschoinos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoenus
The good relations
between the Ptolemies and the Qore (King) and Kandake (Queen) of Meroe were
reflected in Ancient Greek and Latin texts, and Diodorus Siculus' reference to
'Ergamenes' (identified with Qore Arakamani) reveals exactly the spiritual-religious
divisions that I mentioned earlier, when I stated that they characterized the
entire History of pre-Christian Kemet (Egypt) and Cush (Ethiopia) {in unit V.
Deep Spiritual-Religious Divisions among both, Kemetians (Egyptians) and
Cushites (Sudanese: Ethiopians)}. Reigning at the times of Ptolemy II, Ptolemy
III and Ptolemy IV (during the 3rd c. BCE), Ergamenes is said to have clashed
with part of the Meroitic priesthood and to have eliminated their spiritual
control over the Meroitic nation. There can be several interpretations of this
excerpt, but at this point, I only include the original Greek text and an
English translation:
Greek text
Κατὰ μὲν οὖν τοὺς ἐπάνω χρόνους ὑπήκουον οἱ βασιλεῖς τοῖς ἱερεῦσιν, οὐχ ὅπλοις οὐδὲ βίᾳ κρατηθέντες, ἀλλ´ ὑπ´ αὐτῆς τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας τοὺς λογισμοὺς κατισχυόμενοι· κατὰ δὲ τὸν δεύτερον Πτολεμαῖον ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν Αἰθιόπων Ἐργαμένης, μετεσχηκὼς Ἑλληνικῆς ἀγωγῆς καὶ φιλοσοφήσας, πρῶτος ἐθάρρησε καταφρονῆσαι τοῦ προστάγματος. Λαβὼν γὰρ φρόνημα τῆς βασιλείας ἄξιον παρῆλθε μετὰ {τῶν} στρατιωτῶν εἰς τὸ ἄβατον, οὗ συνέβαινεν εἶναι τὸν χρυσοῦν ναὸν τῶν Αἰθιόπων, καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἱερεῖς ἀπέσφαξε, τὸ δὲ ἔθος τοῦτο καταλύσας διωρθώσατο πρὸς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ προαίρεσιν.
http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/historiens/diodore/livre3a.htm
English translation
Thus, during the
earlier times, the kings were subject to the priests, not by force of arms or
due to violence, but because of the influence that the superstitions had over
their minds. But, during the reign of Ptolemy II, Ergamenes, king of the
Ethiopians, who had been educated after the Greek rules and was instructed in
philosophy, was the first to attempt to breach the order. Since he had acquired
a stature worthy of a king, he entered into the holy of holies, accompanied by
soldiers; this happened to be in the golden temple of the Ethiopians. There, he
slaughtered all the priests and he abolished that tradition, ruling afterwards
the country as it pleased him.
About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergamenes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arakamani
Good relations between
Ptolemaic Kemet and Meroe continued during the reigns of the kings Arqamani and
Adikhalamani and the Queen (Kandake) Shanakdakhete in the 2nd c. BCE. However,
both states faced many challenges in regions adjacent to their borders because
of many unruly elements and following raids or rebellions of either
ethnic/tribal or religious order. In the 2nd half of the 1st c. BCE, Kandake
Amanirenas became the Meroitic counterpart of the Kemetian Queen Hatshepsut,
who had ruled ca. 1450 years earlier: she ruled Meroe as Qore and Kandake
(Meroitic: Kdwe). She is correctly identified as the warrior 'Kandake' of
Strabo's narratives. Due to the scarcity of the Meroitic sources, we do not
know the real reasons and the motives that made her start the war against the
Roman province of Egypt.
Whereas for almost 300
years the Ptolemies, despite their Macedonian origin, ruled Kemet (Egypt) from
Alexandria as real Kemetian Pharaohs, the Roman occupation of Egypt was rather
reminiscent of the Achaemenid Iranian annexation of the Valley of the Nile,
which was completed 500 years earlier by Cambyses and Darius the Great. Kemet
was again ruled from a capital located several thousands of kilometers far from
the Nile. However, there was an enormous difference between the role that Kemet
had as satrapy of Iran and the position that Egypt had as province of the Roman
Empire. Africa's northeastern corner was far more important for the Iranians
than for the Romans. This was due to the totally different nature of the two
empires: Imperial Iran constituted the universal-imperial unification of all the
lands between Eastern Europe - Eastern Mediterranean - Eastern Africa and
Northern India - China - Siberia. Rome embodied the military-practical integration
of all coastal lands around the Mediterranean into one centralized authority
that started looking as a Western copy of an Oriental Empire but still had very
low and very poor imperial theoretical and spiritual standards.
Within the Achaemenid
Empire, the satrapy of Mudraya (Egypt) had a key geostrategic position, because
it offered an alternative route of transportation between the Mediterranean
satrapies of the Empire and its central province and capital (Fars &
Parsa/Persepolis). But within the Roman Empire, Egypt was merely a marginal
periphery. This development affected Meroe greatly. Although it is certainly
inaccurate to state that there was a Roman lack of interest (or ability) to
secure the southern boundary of the province 'Egypt', it is pertinent to stress
that this task was not the main priority of the imperial defense system. For
the Romans, the most important border to defend was that located north of the
Italian Peninsula in Central Europe opposite the Germans.
Certainly, there were
Roman legions everywhere to defend all borders, but regional developments did
not affect Rome directly. At the same time, unruly elements, notably the
Blemmyes (Βλέμυες/Bejas), the Nubai (Νοῦβαι/Nubians), the Troglodytae, the
Megabaroi, and other Cushitic and Nilo-Saharan ethnic groups of the desert
started demonstrating a mobility that was far more embarrassing for Meroe than
for Rome. These movements, which may have involved raids, looting or even
sacrilege, must have probably driven Kandake Amanirenas inside the Roman
territories in pursuit of a definite victory over the ethnic groups that
threatened the safety of the northern provinces of Meroe and the security of
the southern confines of Roman Egypt. About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arqamani
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adikhalamani
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanirenas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monarchs_of_Kush
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Persian_Egypt
https://www.academia.edu/43492808/Darius_the_Greats_Suez_Inscriptions_Birth_Certificate_of_the_Silk_Roads
http://www.ancientsudan.org/dailylife_01_diet.htm#
XVIII.
The War between Meroe and Rome (25-23 BCE)
The only noteworthy war
between Meroe and the Roman Empire is questionably and poorly documented; the
reason for this is the fact that Strabo's narrative (Geographica, XVII,
1:53-54) reflects a deeply partial, pro-Roman stance. Strabo was a close friend
of Aelius Gallus, who was dispatched against the Sabaeans and the Himyarites in
Yemen little time before the Meroitic attack against and occupation of Egypt's southernmost
city (Syene/Aswan), premier trade center (Elephantine Island in Aswan), and supreme
sanctuary (Isis Temple at the Island of Philae, 5km south of Aswan) at 25 BCE.
Greek text:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0197%3Abook%3D17%3Achapter%3D1%3Asection%3D54
English translation:
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/17A3*.html
In Strabo's text, Kandake
Amanirenas is mentioned as a 'masculine' queen and a 'one-eyed woman' whose
army attacked "because they realized that part of the Egypt-based Roman
forces was dispatched under Aelius Gallus" to wage war against Yemen. This
assumption, invented only to morally disparage the Meroites' attitude,
discredits the entire reference. Such a Machiavellian attempt would perhaps be
possible if there had been ceaseless wars between the Ptolemies and Meroe,
which was not the case.
Strabo's description of
the Meroitic attack against Roman Egypt as an opportunistic affair does not
correspond to any data coming from all sources available about the
Meroitic-Kemetian relations over the previous centuries; even more so, because
we don't have any other information about Meroitic incursions in Roman Egypt's
southernmost confines after Octavian invaded Alexandria (30 BCE). It is not my
intention to analyze Strabo's ca. 700-word excerpt here, but I mentioned its
untrustworthiness because an enormous deal of colonial forgery has been invented
and fabricated upon this excerpt. This academic forgery was then diffused
worldwide with target to disparage the Kingdom of Meroe, minimize the importance
of Africa's greatest kingdom of that time, and depict it as subordinated to
Rome – which was never the case.
While narrating Gaius Petronius'
military campaign and counterattack (24-23 BCE), Strabo mentions three
locations south of Aswan, namely Pselchis (Ψέλχις), Primnis (Πρῆμνις), and Napata (Νάπατα). Located at 120 km south of
Aswan, Pselchis (Pa Serqet in Ancient Kemetian) is the modern site of el-Dakka
where the temple of Thot was built (successfully transported to a new site
during the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, which was
undertaken by UNESCO during the period 1954-1978). Pselchis is not far from
Hiera Sykaminos (modern al-Maharraqa, 140 km south of Aswan) where the temple of
Isis and Sarapis was located (being similarly transported to a new location).
The Roman Emperor Octavian rebuilt and extended both temples in the first
decades of his reign. Hiera Sykaminos marked the end of Dodecaschoenus in the
Ptolemaic-Roman times.
Located at 200 km south
of Aswan, Premnis (or Primis) is the modern site of Qasr Ibrim, an extraordinarily
important location that was continually occupied over the past 2700 years. Qasr
Ibrim, as it was atop of a hill overlooking the Nile during the all the
historical periods, became an island after the erection of Aswan High Dam and
the rise of the artificial lake waters. Among the incredible treasure of
artifacts and monuments that have been excavated there, several remains bear
witness to the Roman presence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Dakka
https://www.trismegistos.org/geo/georef_list.php?tm=1949
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Maharraqa
https://www.trismegistos.org/place/846
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qasr_Ibrim
https://www.trismegistos.org/geo/detail.php?tm=1916
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/232575138.pdf
https://www.nino-leiden.nl/publication/qasr-ibrim-between-egypt-and-africa
https://whc.unesco.org/en/activities/173
http://www.sudarchrs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/SARS_SN10-Wilkins-Rose_opt.pdf
The third location that
Strabo mentions in this excerpt is Napata, the old capital of Cush, which was
not anymore the center of the Meroitic kingdom at the end of the 1st c. BCE. There
is only one reason for which the biased, pro-Roman, Anatolian author (Strabo
originated from Amaseia / Amasya, an important city of the Pontus kingdom in
today's Central-Northern Turkey) mentioned Napata. He pretended that Gaius Petronius
reached there and even sacked the city! This is highly unlikely; the distance
between Premnis (apparently the Roman prefect's farther point of advance) and
Napata (today's Karima in Sudan, near the Nile's Fourth Cataract) is more than 850
km alongside the Nile!
First, it is absolutely
impossible that the Roman prefect of Egypt managed to lead his army so deeply
in Cush, due to the extreme climatological conditions that they may have
encountered there. Only the Berber Pharaoh Psamtek (Psammetichus) II (of the
26th -'Libyan' as per Manetho- dynasty) managed to sack Napata (591 BCE), but
evidently his Kemetian (Egyptian) and mercenary soldiers were better acquainted
with the local climate. Also, the Iranian Achaemenid Shah Cambyses (530-522
BCE) advanced and occupied sizeable portions of Cush, after invading Kemet
(Egypt) in 525 BCE. Archaeological evidence from Buhen (in the area of the
Nile's Second Cataract, in Northern Sudan, close to today's Egyptian-Sudanese
border) and other sites makes it sure that the Iranians controlled that region,
which is located more than 100 km south of Premnis (Primis/Qasr Ibrim).
Second, Strabo's
mention of Cambyses' campaign and his comparison of the two campaigns, namely
the Iranian and the Roman (under Gaius Petronius), prove that his narrative was
rather propagandistic, as he tried only to present the Roman advance as more
important an exploit than the Iranian invasion of Cush 500 years earlier. In
fact, Strabo did not need to mention Cambyses at all; even worse, Strabo's fictional
identification of the place whereby natural phenomena destroyed Cambyses' army
(if this event ever occurred) is proven as totally misplaced, because of the
extant archaeological evidence. The Iranians had advanced further in the South.
This is Strabo's excerpt:
From Pselchis he
(:Gaius Petronius) went to Premnis, a fortified city, after passing through the
sand-dunes, where the army of Cambyses was overwhelmed when a wind-storm struck
them; and having made an attack, he took the fortress at the first onset.
Immediately after that
point, Strabo states that Gaius Petronius "attacked and captured Napata"
('Nabata')! This is typical Roman self-eulogy, untrustworthy rodomontade, and
hyperbolic description elaborated as a means of state propaganda.
Third, it is totally
unthinkable that the Romans reached Napata without Strabo also mentioning
several other sites much larger than Pselchis and Premnis. Major Meroitic sites
existed on the long way down to Napata. It is impossible that there were no
battles, no assaults on fortresses, no looting of palaces, and no mention of
captives. This most troublesome point makes us conclude that Strabo's narrative
about a Roman sack of Napata is totally imaginary. To be possibly credible,
Strabo had to mention either a few fights or some cases pillage or both in the
area of the Third Cataract, let's say in Tabo or Kawa (Gematon). Actually,
Strabo's extraordinary pretensions are refuted by the orderly and wealthy reign
that Amanirenas' successor, Kandake Amanishakheto seems to have had, as she
built many great monuments throughout her empire. Such activity could not have
been possibly undertaken, had the Meroitic kingdom undergone such an
extraordinary destruction.
Fourth, Strabo makes
one more mistake, pretending that Napata was 'still' the capital of Cush.
Already centuries earlier, the capital had been transferred to Meroe, as I have
already said. Quite lamentably, many modern Western scholars took this text
seriously and in doing so, they committed many other mistakes on the basis of
successive erroneous assumptions.
Fifth, comparatively
with Strabo's description of the military expedition of Aelius Gallus against
the kingdoms of Yemen (Geographica, XVI, 4:23; English translation: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/16D*.html),
the description of the war against Meroe makes it look far more successful than
the attack against Aden. Furthermore, there are no excerpts involving
self-criticism or error analysis, contrarily to Strabo's comments and remarks
about Aelius Gallus' stratagems and maneuvers. This probably suggests that in
reality, although Aelius Gallus was exposed to many diverse adversities, he
managed at the end to sack Aden ('Eudaimon Arabia' / 'Arabia Felix'), and this
is what Strabo explicitly states; quite contrarily, Gaius Petronius did not
manage to destroy any major palatial and urban center of Meroe. Consequently,
Strabo's narrative was intentionally written in order to present the two
military campaigns in a balanced manner, and that's why he expressed some
criticism about the most successful of the two campaigns (namely that of Aelius
Gallus) whereas he added an enormous lie in favor of the less successful one
(i.e. that of Gaius Petronius).
Last, irrespective of
what Strabo narrated in his Geographica, the aftermath of both military campaigns
shows the reality in a revelatory manner; the excerpt ends with the
negotiations between Candace and Gaius Petronius. The conciliation took a most
honorable form for the Candace and the Meroitic royals around her. The prefect
of Egypt treated them as superior and suggested that they meet Octavian
Augustus in person. Consequently, the Meroitic delegation crossed Kemet (Egypt)
and sailed from Alexandria to Samos Island where the Roman Emperor was at the
time. The specific excerpt's English translation reads:
Meantime Candacê
marched against the garrison with many thousands of men, but Petronius set out
to its assistance and arrived at the fortress first; and when he had made the
place thoroughly secure by sundry devices, ambassadors came, but he bade them
go to Caesar; and when they asserted that they did not know who Caesar was or
where they should have to go to find him, he gave them escorts; and they went
to Samos, since Caesar was there and intended to proceed to Syria from there,
after despatching Tiberius to Armenia. And when the ambassadors had obtained
everything they pled for, he even remitted the tributes which he had imposed.
About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buhen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambyses_II#Conquest_of_Egypt_and_its_surroundings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabo_(Nubia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawa,_Sudan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_relations_with_Nubia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Gaius_Petronius
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Petronius#/media/File:Ancient_Egypt_map-la.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mero%C3%AB#Conflict_with_Rome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanirenas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanishakheto
The Meroitic-Roman
treaty was respected from both sides, and this means that Octavian Augustus had
far greater foresight and cooler mind than Strabo. There are several reasons
that support the interpretation/reconstruction attempt as per which the early Meroitic
incursions (prior to the Roman military expedition) were due to the vital Meroitic
need to put unruly ethnic groups under control and to ensure security in the
Triakontaschoinos and the Dodekaschoinos. Most probably, some groups of
Blemmyes or Nubians, initiating a raid from the Roman Egyptian territory, had
attacked somewhere within the Meroitic territory at a moment the Roman army was
unable to react and, to avoid the Meroitic reprisals, they ran back and scattered
within the Roman Egyptian territory (Dodekaschoinos), thus dragging the
Meroitic regiments deep inside Kemet (Egypt) and up to Aswan. Apparently,
Octavian understood the reasons for this act.
Then, in the Anatolian
Island of Samos, Octavian Augustus and the Meroitic delegation came to agreement
that involved several measures of peacekeeping across the troublesome region of
their borders between the First and the Second Cataracts, which was located far
from their respective capitals, while being exposed to indomitable ethnic
groups of the desert. Rome paid due respect and solved all problems that
existed across the Dodekaschoinos. The centuries old Ptolemaic agreement, which
stipulated that the local income should be entirely donated to the Isis Temple
at the Island of Philae, remained fully valid. It seems that both, Nubians and
Blemmyes, preferred the local sacerdotal power and recognized it as supreme
authority for them.
Octavian Augustus cared
much about appeasing the Nubians and the Blemmyes. He therefore ordered the
reparation-reconstruction of several ancient temples across the Dodekaschoinos.
The temple of the Nubian god Merul (Mandulis in Ancient Greek and Latin) in
Talmis (Kalabsha) was reconstructed and expanded; on the temple's wall Octavian
was majestically depicted as Pharaoh making offerings. Also the temples of
Dakka and Maharraqa were extensively rebuilt, the entire Egypt as province
re-organized, the trade routes safely guarded, the temple renovation projects
completed, and the Ptolemaic taxation system reinstated.
XIX.
The Meroe Head: Bronze Head of Octavian Augustus Unearthed in the Capital of
Cush
A particularity in this
regard is a statue's head that was excavated in Meroe and seems to bear the
typical facial traits of Octavian Augustus. When John Garstang, the excavator,
dispatched the larger-than-life-size head to England (1910-1911), there was
still a doubt whether the monument depicted Germanicus (Octavian's
great-nephew); however, several scholars identified it -correctly- with Octavian.
Various historians and archaeologists offered several, rather erroneous
interpretation schemes about that monument with the typical traits of the Roman
Emperor, the expressive eyes, and the black colour. Most of the opinions
expressed suggest that the 'Meroe Head' was looted by the advancing Meroitic
armies from some place in the Dodekaschoinos or Aswan. To support this opinion,
they referred to Strabo's excerpts about the Meroitic invasion of Aswan,
notably the following: "and by an unexpected onset took Syenê
and Elephantinê and Philae, and enslaved the inhabitants, and also pulled down
the statues of Caesar (:
name used as title by Octavian)".
However, this statement
does not involve any reference about looting and transporting cut heads of
statues across vast distances (from Aswan to Meroe: ca. 1700 km) for no real
purpose, since the Meroitic attack against Roman Egypt's southern regions was
not undertaken against Octavian Augustus personally.
One idiotic, racist and
homosexual author, namely Neil MacGregor (included in The Independent's 2007
list of "most influential gay people"!?!), wrote in his otherwise
useless and nonsensical "A History of the World in 100 Objects"
(Penguin Books, 2013) that statues were erected "to remind the empire's
largely illiterate population of the emperor's power". This ignorant and pathetic
person (former director of the British Museum) failed to understand that in
Ancient Kemet (Egypt) and Cush (Ethiopia: Sudan) the concept of illiteracy
never existed due precisely to the hieroglyphics.
Quite contrarily to the
aforementioned, unsubstantiated theories and farfetched suggestions, it is far
easier to understand that the entire statue (of which only the head was found) was
created in Meroe by the Meroitic royal and sacerdotal authorities in honor of
the new ally of the Meroitic Kingdom, after the Samos negotiations and the
ensuing treaty. It can be argued that the statue and the head were made
locally, based on a mould that the Meroitic delegation got from Octavian's courtiers
and subordinates in Samos.
The exquisite artwork
was found underneath a stairway that was leading to an altar of victory. It is part
of premeditated scheme, racist thinking, Orientalist bias, and Western mind
sickness to interpret the location of the unearthed remarkable finding as
deliberately chosen in order to disparage the 'enemy'. This miserable attitude
never characterized the Ancient Kemetian and Cushitic nations and empires; it
consists in mere projection of perverse Western mentality onto the study topic.
In other words, colonial historians and Western archaeologists thought that the
Ancient Meroites were as vindictive, choleric and barbarian as the Modern
Europeans and Americans.
Precisely because the
Meroe Head was found close to a mound under the staircase leading to a temple,
one can deduce that the bronze statue (or bust?) of the Roman Emperor and ally
of Meroe was honorifically placed in front of a temple and then, during the
destruction of Meroe, which followed the raid of the Axumite King Ezana (ca.
360-370 CE), it was broken and fallen down to the position where it was found
during the excavations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mero%C3%AB_Head
XX.
Jebel Qeili, Qore ('King') Shorkaror, and the Meroitic Victory over the Axumite
Abyssinians
Jebel Qeili, which is
located at around 150 km east-southeast of Khartoum (and 40 km southwest of El
Murabba remains of Meroitic temple), is until now undeniably the southernmost
Meroitic site. Dating back to the time of Qore ('King' in Meroitic language)
Shorkaror (approximately 20-30 CE), the rupestral monument features an
inscription and a victory relief of the Meroitic ruler, who is depicted as
stepping over defeated Axumite Abyssinians, while presenting captives to and
receiving blessings from the sun-god. Portraying the sun-god almost like the
Iranian god Mithras with emanating rays, the Meroitic artists of the early 1st
Christian century bore witness to a remarkable Mithraic influence across the
wider region of Eastern Africa, as the artistic form is distinct and unique.
And while Shorkaror is rewarded by Mithras with a handful of sorghum, defeated
Axumites are represented as falling from mountainous cliffs, which suggests
that the battle took place in the mountains east of today's Kessala in Sudan,
being therefore a punitive action over the Axumite Abyssinians from the part of
the Meroites.
The astounding relief
serves also as another hint at internal religious divisions among the Cushites
of Meroe, because no relief of a sun-god has been preserved in any other
monument excavated across the vast area of the Kingdom of Meroe. It seems that
in Meroe there was one sacerdotal religion evidently documented on hitherto
preserved temples and another, different, royal religion of which the only
monument saved down to our days is the magnificent Jebel Qeili rock relief. Apparently,
Shorkaror was undertaking military campaigns, accompanied by priests and
artists, who obeyed him, and not the sacerdotal colleges that controlled the
temples of Meroe. This makes the above mentioned narrative of Diodorus Siculus
about King Ergamenes (Arakamani) of Meroe even more credible (see unit XVII).
The most plausible
interpretation of the reasons of this early Meroitic-Axumite Abyssinian war is the
use of trade routes nearby Meroe's southern-southeastern-eastern frontiers,
from beyond the Nile through the mountains and Axum to Adulis, by Cushitic
tribes ('Berbers' as per the 'Periplus of the Red Sea') inhabiting lands out of
control of either the Qore of Meroe or the Negus of Axum. I discussed the issue
above, in the last five paragraphs of the unit XV (The Cushites of the Horn
(Punt - Opone) were never controlled by the impotent king Zoscales of Axumite
Abyssinia). Apparently, King Shorkaror of Meroe did not want the wealth of the
elephant- and rhinoceros-trade to go to other royal treasurers, arrested some
Cushitic tradesmen, the king of Axum was asked to intervene, and finally the
Meroites vanquished the Axumite Abyssinian army. About:
https://de.zxc.wiki/wiki/Qeili
Topographical
Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings (by
Bertha Porter & Rosalind L. B. Moss; vol. VII: Nubia, the Deserts, and
Outside Egypt)
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a2bc/a869a6a79dd194c56a6e3af523a504549d45.pdf
Richard A. Lobban, Jr.,
Historical Dictionary of Ancient and Medieval Nubia (Lanham MD: Scarecrow
Press, 2004. Pp. ix+511 - ISBN 0-8108-4784-1), entry 'Jebel Qeili'; https://books.google.ru/books?id=5-z4DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105&dq=%22jebel+qeili%22+Shorkaror&source=bl&ots=gYMC5lgdkn&sig=ACfU3U1gF0V4MzLu33XjoCBX_jhxqk4R2A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiOlrLFy6DvAhUwzIUKHW96BOYQ6AEwEnoECDkQAw#v=onepage&q=%22jebel%20qeili%22%20Shorkaror&f=false
It is to be noted that
Qore Shorkaror was the son of Natakamani and Kandake (or Candace, i.e. Queen) Amanitore
and that, during and/or after his reign, Kandake Amanitaraqide's chief eunuch
may have undertaken a royal travel in the Roman Empire's southeastern
provinces, notably Egypt and Palestine, being then the 'Ethiopian' (: Meroitic)
eunuch mentioned in the New Testament as subordinate of the Candace (Acts 8:27-40).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorkaror
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kandake
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natakamani
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanitore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanitaraqide
https://www.academia.edu/3049911/_The_Queen_Mother_in_the_Kingdom_of_Kush_Status_Power_and_Cultic_Role_
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10963-015-9089-1.pdf
https://www.sag-online.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Sakamoto2016_SobaAndMeroiticSouthernFrontier_MittSAG27.pdf
https://www.academia.edu/25600850/Archaeological_survey_in_the_Blue_Nile_area_Central_Sudan_Prospecci%C3%B3n_arqueol%C3%B3gica_en_el_%C3%A1rea_del_Nilo_Azul_Sud%C3%A1n_Central
https://journals.openedition.org/ethnoecologie/4429
https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02926829/document
XXI.
Meroitic-Roman Relations (30 BCE-4th c. CE) and their Impact on Explorations
and Sciences
All the successors of
Octavian (Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero) pursued the same policy in
Egypt and maintained good relations with Meroe. Dozens of Ancient Kemetian
(Egyptian) temples hitherto preserved in Egypt were rebuilt or extended in the
first centuries of the Christian era; they were majestically decorated with
reliefs that bore the names of the Roman Emperors written in hieroglyphics from
Octavian Augustus down to the late 3rd - early 4th c. CE Tetrarchy (Diocletian,
Maximian, Galerius, Maximinus Daia).
https://pharaoh.se/roman-emperors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_pharaoh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Egypt
The good relations
between Rome and Meroe have been documented on many occasions, notably the
travels of the Meroitic Kandake's eunuch in provinces of the Roman Empire (Egypt
and Palestine) as reported within the New Testament (Acts 8:27-40).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_eunuch
Qore Amanitenmemide,
who reigned in the middle of the 1st c. CE, must have been the Meroitic king,
who helped the Roman mission sent by Emperor Nero advance further to the South,
proceed through territories of several indigenous chieftains, and explore the
sources of the Nile. Apparently, the Meroites did indeed dispatch a small
detachment with the necessary provisions and letters of introduction to the
various kings and tribal chieftains of the regions around the White Nile in
today's South Sudan. Few Roman sources detail rather briefly this groundbreaking
attempt: Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) in his monumental Naturalis Historia
(VI.XXXV, p. 181-187: https://web.archive.org/web/20161229101439/http://www.masseiana.org/pliny.htm#BOOK%20VI)
and Seneca the Younger (4 BCE-65 CE) in his Naturales Quaestiones (VI.8.3-5).
About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Elder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_History_(Pliny)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_the_Younger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturales_quaestiones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanitenmemide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero%27s_exploration_of_the_Nile_river
Pliny's brief
description mentions a Roman motif other than exploration; personal friend of
Emperor Vespasian (69-79), Pliny wrote that the exploratory expedition was
undertaken as preparatory step in view of a forthcoming conquest of Meroe. This
is however quite unlikely, because it is more probable that at an early
investigatory step, the Romans wanted to first discover what lies beyond Meroe
and the entire kingdom of Ethiopia and what the reason of Meroe's extraordinary
wealth was. This would eventually weigh at a later stage, and only then a
military survey would be undertaken. However, Pliny's excerpt is valuable,
because he offers numerous names of ethnic groups and tribes that lived around and
beyond Meroe, and also several toponyms. Seneca's detailed and characteristic description
helps us understand that the Romans, accompanied by the Meroites, reached the
vast region of marshes that is known as Sudd in today's South Sudan (ca. 60000
km2) and the Murchison Falls in Uganda that they considered as the sources of
the Nile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murchison_Falls
I herewith include the
original Latin text (excerpt from Seneca's Naturales Quaestiones) and an
English translation:
Original Latin text
[8,3] Nescis
autem inter opiniones, quibus enarratur Nili aestiua inundatio, et hanc esse, a
terra illum erumpere et augeri non supernis aquis sed ex intimo redditis? Ego
quidem centuriones duos, quos Nero Caesar, ut aliarum uirtutum ita ueritatis in
primis amantissimus, ad inuestigandum caput Nili miserat, audiui narrantes
longum illos iter peregisse, cum a rege Aethiopiae instructi auxilio
commendatique proximis regibus penetrassent ad ulteriorem. [8,4] Inde, ut
quidam aiebant, peruenimus ad immensas paludes, quarum exitum nec incolae
nouerant nec sperare quisquam potest: ita implicatae aquis herbae sunt et aquae
nec pediti eluctabiles nec nauigio, quod nisi paruum et unius capax limosa et
obsita palus non fert. Ibi, inquit, uidimus duas petras,
ex quibus ingens uis fluminis excidebat. [8,5] Sed siue caput illa siue
accessio est Nili, siue tunc nascitur siue in terras ex priore recepta cursu
redit, nonne tu credis illam, quicquid est, ex magno terrarum lacu ascendere?
Habeant enim oportet pluribus locis sparsum umorem et in uno coactum, ut
eructare tanto impetu possint.
https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Quaestiones_Naturales/Liber_VI
English translation
And don't you
know that among the explanations given of the occurrence of the inundation of
the Nile in summer, one is that it bursts forth from the ground, and is swollen
not by rain from above but by water given out from within the earth? I have
myself heard from their own lips the story told by the two non-commissioned
officers sent to investigate the sources of the Nile by our good Emperor Nero,
a monarch devoted to virtue in every form, but especially solicitous for the
interests of truth. The King of Ethiopia had supplied them with assistance and
furnished letters of introduction to the neighbouring kings, and so they had
penetrated into the heart of Africa and accomplished a long journey. "We
came indeed," I give their own words, "to huge marshes, the limit of
which even the natives did not know, and no one else could hope to know; so
completely was the river entangled with vegetable growth, so impassable the
waters by foot, or even by boat, since the muddy overgrown marsh would bear
only a small boat containing one person. There," my in formants went on,"
we saw with our eyes two rocks from which an immense quantity of water
issued." Now whether that is the real source or only an addition to the
river; whether it rises there or merely returns to the surface after its
previous course underground; don t you think that, whatever it is, that water
comes up from a great lake in the earth? The earth must contain moisture
scattered in numerous places and collected at depth in order to be able to
belch it out with such violence.
http://naturalesquaestiones.blogspot.com/2009/08/book-vi-tr-john-clarke.html
Contrarily to what
happened in other regions, notably Central and Western Africa, the existence of
the vast, developed and powerful Kingdom of Meroe in Eastern Africa was a
permanent stumbling block that prohibited every thought about an eventual Roman
expansion to the South. In other African regions, Roman legions advanced far in
the South, penetrating Sahara and reaching the first regions of Sub-Saharan
Africa. More specifically, Roman military expeditions reached the regions of
River Senegal and River Niger in Western Africa and Lake Chad in Central
Africa. However, in Eastern Africa, after the aforementioned events that took
place in the first decade of Roman rule in Egypt, there was never Roman
military presence or expedition south of the Dodekaschoinos in the Valley of
the Nile.
When it comes to the
Red Sea basin, Roman military presence extended up to Berenice in the southern
confines of Egypt's coast; still Berenice was located far more in the South
than Leuke Kome (today's al-Wajh in Saudi Arabia / الوجه), which was the southernmost Roman outpost (and former Aramaean
Nabataean port of call) on the Red Sea coast of the Arabian Peninsula. Up to
the middle of the 3rd c. CE, we can also assume that there was Roman military
presence in Ptolemais Theron (today's Suakin), continuing the trade with Meroe,
which the Ptolemies had initiated, founding this colony. About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Wajh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuke_Kome
The good, peaceful and
stable relations between Meroe and the Roman Empire did not only guarantee the
increased trade volume and the feasibility of the explorations undertaken, but
also ended up with improved knowledge of natural phenomena, expanded
familiarity with other nations and remote locations, enhanced registration of
data, and unprecedented diffusion of particulars and intelligence. In the 2nd
c. CE no other man expressed this reality better than one of the greatest
Africans of all times: Ptolemy the Geographer (Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος; Claudius Ptolemaeus - ca. 100-170 CE). Known to
have authored some of the ancient world's most ingenious works in Geography,
Astronomy, Astrology, Optics, Music and several other fields, he formulated the
millennia long Babylonian and Egyptian spiritual and scientific supremacy in an
unmatched manner, merging transcendental perception and material detail. Egyptian
of royal Ptolemaic origin, Ptolemy honored his country's spiritual tradition by
bearing the name of the last indigenous dynasty; as Roman citizen, he honored the
Claudia gens by bearing the name of the Roman Emperor (Claudius, 41-54 CE), who
granted Roman citizenship to one of his ancestors.
Particularly Ptolemy's
Geography is a 'must' for all Eastern, Northeastern, Northern and Northwestern Africans,
African pupils, students, scholars, identity theoreticians, anti-colonial
activists, Hamitic & Cushitic traditionalists, and liberation fighters. This
monumental work (Γεωγραφικὴ Ὑφήγησις
- Geographiki Hyphigisis
- Geographical Guidance) constitutes a geographical dictionary and directory that
contains names of locations (cities, villages, mountains, lake, bays, etc.), as
well as their respective geographical coordinates, while also including names
of ethnic groups and tribes. The text contains all locations and related data
then known about Europe, Africa and Asia; it starts with Ireland, covers most
of Europe, deals with Africa, continues with Asia up to China, and finally ends
with India and South Asia. Africa is presented in Ptolemy's fourth book and
Ethiopia (i.e. Sudan) "under Egypt" is discussed in ch. 7.
In some cases, the data
that Ptolemy offers demonstrate historical continuity for two millennia. It is
certainly a difficult reading for the non-specialist, as it is practically
speaking a catalogue of names with coordinates and few extra sentences.
However, the reward will be enormous for a Modern Kaffa in today's Abyssinia
(fake Ethiopia), when he will see that Ptolemy the Geographer, writing before
1870 years, knew the coordinates of Mount Kaffa. Ptolemy offers an incredibly
high number of scholarly valuable points, as it helps also as reconfirmation or
corroboration of other textual references.
Crosschecking points
mentioned in other historical texts with info included in Prolemy's Geography,
scholars and specialists can reconfirm projections and interpretations. I will
herewith offer an example: when studying the Periplus of the Red Sea, one learns
that the African coast from Assab (Avalites) to Somalia's Ras Hafun (Opone) was
named 'the Other Berberia' before 2000 years, and that the coast beyond Opone
down to Rhapta (Daresalaam) was called 'Azania'. This difference is basically
due to the different systems of governance in either region, namely self-governance
for the 'Other Berberia' and Sabaean-Himyarite (Yemenite) colony for Azania
(see above, unit XVI: Ancient Afars & Somalis: 'Other Berberia', Azania,
and the Yemenites Sabaeans (Sheba) and Himyarites in the Horn).
However, how can one be
sure that in both, the Other Berberia and Azania, the populations were of the
same origin, namely Cushitic? The text itself does not mention any particular
change, so we have good reason to believe that the population of Azania was
identical with that of the Other Berberia, with the only difference being the
intermarriages that the Somalis of Azania had with the Sabaean/Himyarite
(Yemenites) merchants and navigators. But at this point, Ptolemy's Geography offers
an enormous support (and reconfirmation of our projection), because Ptolemy
calls the Azanian ports of call 'Berberian', therefore identifying the local
population of Azania with that of the Other Berberia.
Although there are many
manuscripts of the colossal opus, few complete editions have been published in
the major academic languages of Europe over the past 500 years. The text is difficult
to present in a way to enable the average readers to easily follow and
understand. An academic attempt to analyze and comment the text's valuable
details would trigger a double or triple work of disproportionately monumental
size. That's why sizeable parts of this great geographical opus of the Ancient
World are still available only in the original Ancient Greek and Latin
translations. About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_(Ptolemy)
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/gazetteer/periods/roman/_texts/ptolemy/home.html
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Periods/Roman/_Texts/Ptolemy/4/7*.html
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Periods/Roman/_Texts/Ptolemy/4/8*.html
https://books.google.cn/books?id=4ksBAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
(scroll down until you
reach close to the bottom of the page!)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Geographia_(Nobbe_ed.)
https://archive.org/details/claudiiptolemaei01ptol
https://ia600203.us.archive.org/8/items/claudiiptolemaei01ptol/claudiiptolemaei01ptol.pdf
https://ia800209.us.archive.org/20/items/claudiiptolemaei02ptol/claudiiptolemaei02ptol.pdf
https://ia800903.us.archive.org/5/items/claudiiptolemaei03ptol/claudiiptolemaei03ptol.pdf
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudius_Ptolem%C3%A4us#Geographie
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographike_Hyphegesis
https://www.kps.unibe.ch/forschung/ptolemaios_forschungsstelle/publikationen/textband/index_ger.html
https://www.kps.unibe.ch/unibe/portal/fak_historisch/dsl/kps/content/e40850/e40852/e611242/e611247/e611301/textband_ger.pdf
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Friedrich_August_Nobbe
https://cs.ccsu.edu/~gusev/SciVis/PtolemyWestAfricaReconstructed.pdf
XXII.
Universalization of the Mediterranean World: Meroe, Rome, Armenia, and Mithraism
- Meroitic Ethiopian Gladiators in front of Emperor Nero and King Tiridates I
Even more importantly, the
peaceful and conciliatory relations between Meroe and the Roman Empire also
contributed to a major phenomenon of the World History that colonial
historians, racist theoreticians, elitist forgers and biased academics have
done their ingenious best to conceal. From the first pre-Christian century to
the 10th c. CE, the gradual diffusion of Oriental, Asiatic and African,
spirituality and spiritual sciences (studia divina), mythical perception of the
universe, cosmogonies, wisdom, cosmologies, world conceptualizations, oracles,
mysteries of initiation (esoteric rites), faiths, apocalyptic soteriology,
messianic eschatology, dogmas, doctrines, imperial theories, universal moral
values, and cults increased dramatically.
Although the earlier
elements of civilization in Greece, Rome and Europe were entirely Oriental,
although the encounter of the Greek, Roman and European barbarians with
civilized Asiatics and Africans had already started long ago, and despite the
fact that all the aspects of civilization in Europe, Rome and Greece were
entirely Oriental (namely Assyrian-Babylonian, Hittite, Kemetian/Egyptian,
Hamitic-Berber, and Phoenician), an unprecedented flood of Oriental cults,
religions, concepts, ideas, perceptions and expectations invaded Greece, Rome
and Europe starting with the first century BCE. This -unique in World History-
Oriental flood erased all earlier non-Oriental ideas, theories, behaviors and
trends that may have been developed on European soil, like the racist
pseudo-philosophy of Aristotle and the paranoid rationalism, materialism, and
atheism that prevailed in the marginal, city of Athens.
This phenomenon
testifies to the lower nature of the Ancient Greek culture and behavioral
system, which had failed to accurately comprehend, duly imitate, and
successfully reproduce one of the various extant models of Oriental
civilization. The current concealment of this reality is a seminal parameter of
all colonial fallacies, distortions, and fake historical dogmas that were
produced by the colonial academics only to keep the entire world subordinated
to their criminal hegemony. However, this topic is out of the scope of the
present article.
What matters in this
regard is the fact that the Orientalization of the Roman Empire and Europe
allowed the Meroites to be in the same wavelength as (not only the
Kemetians/Egyptians but also) the Aramaeans, the Phoenicians, the Berbers, the
Romans, the Greeks, the Celts, the Germans, the Brits, the Anatolians, the
Iberians and other Asiatic and European nations. Due to the diffusion of
Oriental cultures and civilizations, the Meroites had in fact almost the same faith,
concepts, cults and worldview, soteriology and revelatory mysteries as all the
nations of the Roman Empire. In other words, numerous European nations accepted
the Ancient Kemetian / Egyptian and Cushitic / Meroitic spirituality, mysticism,
culture, faith, world conceptualization, and religion simply because the Kemetian-Cushitic
civilization was evidently superior to theirs in eyes of the Greeks, the Romans
and the other Europeans.
As a consequence of the
Orientalization of the Roman Empire and Europe, many gods worshipped in Meroe
were adored in Anatolia, Greece, Gaul, Hungary, Rome, Britain and other parts
of Europe, had temples built in Delos Island (Aegean Sea), Paris, London,
Pompeii and elsewhere, and saw their priests traveling to remote lands to
initiate the ignorant and faithless nations of Europe to the mysteries of the
Oriental spirituality. With the exception of Apademak, who was a typical
Cushitic-Meroitic god, elaborately mythologized as the formidable son of the Kemetian
/ Egyptian goddess Sakhmet (basic element of the polytheistic Memphite doctrine
and theology, as consort of Ptah), the official sacerdotal religion of Meroe
comprised Kemetian gods mainly of the Theban doctrine, which revolved around
god Amun (rather deprived of his solar dimension, which in Kemet was attributed
through his association with Ra). Horus, Isis and Osiris, as the supreme
concepts of the divine world as per the Iwnw (Heliopolitan) doctrine and
theology, were also highly revered in Napata and Meroe. The same was valid for
Thot (representation of the Divine Wisdom), Anubis (representation of the
Divine Justice in the Hereafter), Tefnut, Satis and other Kemetian gods. And
almost all of these gods started having temples and being worshipped in
Anatolia, Greece and the Balkans, Rome and the Italian Peninsula, other parts
of the Roman Empire, and Europe.
The immediate
consequence of this development was that, when some Meroites, Blemmyes and
Noubai (Nubians) undertook a pilgrimage at the Island of Philae (5 km south of
Aswan) to venerate Isis' holiest temple worldwide, they prayed next to Greek,
Roman and other European pilgrims who arrived there for the same reason, after
crossing an even longer distance to reach the center of the world for all
adepts of Isidism (the universal-ecumenical religion which revolved around the
dogma and the mysteries of Isis). And the Holy Mountain at Napata, the old
Cushitic capital, was the 'Pure Mountain' for all the adherents of Amun's
polytheistic religion that spread across three continents. Pilgrims from across
the Mediterranean basin used to flock there and venerate Amun.
https://collections.mfa.org/objects/144530
http://www.museum.com/ja/showdia/id=2885
https://atelim.com/napatan-temples-a-case-study-from-gebel-barkal.html?part=2
Long before Islam, long
before Christianity and long before Manichaeism, Isidism, Mithraism and several
other Oriental religions became the shared faith, initiation, intuition,
transcendental wisdom, and apocalyptic soteriology of many various believers,
who originated from disparate nations, spoke different languages, and merged in
their supranational illumination and cult. The diffusion of
Kemetian-Egyptian/Cushitic-Meroitic faiths and doctrines throughout the Roman
Empire involved a remarkably massive movement of priests, hierophants, and
numerous representatives of the entire sacerdotal-academic class, who became
the new tutors and masters of the Greeks, the Romans and the Europeans. Living
at the times of highly intensified trade between East and West across the
silk-, spice-, and incense-routes, these persons quite often combined priestly
and commercial activities. As phenomenon, it was far wider than just a merely
Kemetian/Cushitic impact on Europe's religions and cultures.
The diffusion of
Iranian Mithraism across the Mediterranean, the Roman Empire and Europe
involved the transmission of fundamental concepts and values of Iranian culture
and civilization among Greeks, Romans and Europeans. Mithraism is entirely distinct
from Zoroastrianism, pre-Islamic Iran's main, monotheistic, religion. Mithra
(or Mehr) as merely one divine dimension existed already in the religion
preached by Zoroaster. However, Mithra (or Mehr) within the polytheistic
religion of Mithraism became a totally distinct god, after being mythologized
on the basis of spiritual and moral concepts totally rejected by Zoroaster.
From Iran, Mithraism was diffused through Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia,
Commagene, Pontus, Anatolia and Cilicia first among the Greeks and then among
the Romans and the other Europeans. As a matter of fact, colonial historians of
religion try nowadays to portray the Mysteries of Mithras as a 'Hellenization'
of Zoroastrianism (which is totally wrong and absolutely fallacious) in order
to conceal the reality that most Greeks, Romans and Europeans of this period
(1st c. BCE – 4th c. CE) were adoring an Iranian god, already worshipped in
many lands west of Iran (as per above). About:
Franz Cumont, The
Mysteries of Mithra
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/60547221.pdf
http://www.mithraeum.info/
https://www.mithraeum.eu/
There are hundreds of locations
where a Mithraeum (temple dedicated to Mithras) was erected and preserved or
excavated in Europe, Africa and Asia; I refer to lands outside Iran, because
the Iranian plateau and the region of Central Asia were in fact the cradle of
Mithraism and numerous shrines of Mithra have been excavated there. Nowadays, Mithraea
outside Iran can be visited in Portugal, Spain, England, Belgium, Austria,
Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Bosnia,
Romania, Hungary, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Armenia, Palestine, Egypt, and
Algeria, In Germany alone, there are 17 major sites with temples dedicated to
the Iranian god, who conquered Greece, Rome and Europe. About:
https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/mithraism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithra
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraism
http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/mithras/display.php?page=main
https://www.ancient.eu/Mithra/
https://www.ancient.eu/Mithraic_Mysteries/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraeum
https://www.mithraeum.eu/doc/Dr._Avh._%20Jonas_Bjoernebye.pdf
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/temple-of-mithras-carrawburgh-hadrians-wall/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Mithraeum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santo_Stefano_al_Monte_Celio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tienen_Mithraeum
https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/27445084/Sauer_etal_2016_B_Mithras_in_Scotland.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraeum_in_Hawarte
https://associationforiranianstudies.org/content/persianism-mithraic-iconography-cultic-scenes-hawarte-mithraeum
http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/mithras/display.php?page=cimrm34
https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/6746
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dura-Europos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dura-Europos#The_Mithraeum
https://www.accademiasicilianamitici.org/news/Abstracts_Papers_June_2_2016.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Nemrut
Zerzevan Castle and
Mithraeum in Diyarbakir, Turkey: https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6472/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraism_in_comparison_with_other_belief_systems
When it comes to the
Kingdom of Meroe and to the History of Cush, the above mentioned (in unit XX: Jebel
Qeili, Qore ('King') Shorkaror, and the Meroitic Victory over the Axumite
Abyssinians) brief description only underscores the importance of the Jebel Qeili
lapidary relief and the presence of the -evidently associated with Mithras- sun-god
to whom Qore Shorkaror of Meroe handed over the Abyssinian captives of Axum.
The diffusion of
Mithraism in the Aegean and Ionian Seas, Western Anatolia (Turkey), Greece, and
Southern Italy was a matter of piracy, religious rebellion and violent acts of
desecration of the otherwise useless temples and peak sanctuaries of the
Ancient Greeks; these deeds were undertaken by the formidable Mediterranean
pirates, who ravaged numerous harbors for several decades, while always hiring
new marines among those harmed because of the Roman expansion. As they were Greek
speaking Anatolians in their majority, their main headquarters were located in
the Taurus Mountains and Cilicia where Mithraism had already been diffused.
The destruction and
desecration of the Ancient Greek temples took place around 70 BCE, during the
so-called Third Mithridatic War (73-63 BCE), which was in fact a war waged by
Rome against the Iranian-Mithraic Greek kingdom of Pontus, namely the most
significant military force and the most remarkable center of civilization and
spirituality in the wider Black Sea region. It is evident that, reigning by the
grace of the Iranian sun-god of the Magi and bearing a Mithra-related theonym, the
wise and polymath King Mithridates VI of Pontus (135-63 BCE) helped his piratic
co-religionists, as they consisted in a line of defense against Rome. General
and Consul of Rome, Pompey was sent to fight against them and, after several
indecisive battles, he managed to vanquish them in the Battle of Coracaesium
(67 BCE), near today's Alanya in Southern Turkey. About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cilician_pirates
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Mithridatic_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_VI_Eupator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompey#Campaign_against_the_pirates
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Korakesion
Writing about Pompey's
life, ca. 170 years after the events, Plutarch (mystic, spiritual master, historian,
and high-priest of Ancient Greece's holiest shrine, namely the Oracle at
Delphi; 46-120 CE) expanded on the imposition of Mithraism in Western Anatolia,
Greece and Italy, as well as on the desecration of the local temples by the
pirates. The 'Life of Pompey' is part of Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives'. The
narrative about the imposition of Mithraism in Ancient Greece is to be found in
paragraph 24; quite interestingly, the pirates, who desecrated more than ten
(10) important temples in many parts of today's Turkey (Western Anatolia:
Claros, near Izmir; Didyma, near Aydin; Samothrace Island, Samos Island), Greece
(Mount Olympus, Hermione, Epidaurus, Isthmus, Taenarus, Actium, Leucas, Argos),
and Southern Italy (Calauria, Lacinium), did not attack the Oracle at Delphi. This
highlights the traditionally pro-Iranian position of this most revered
religious center, which -400 years before the Mithraic pirates' attacks- had wisely
advised the Greek cities to accept the Iranian Achaemenid supremacy and become
part of the Iranian Empire (but the disbelievers who ruled the Ancient Greek
cities-states did not accept the oracular answer).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutarch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Lives
Plutarch's excerpt
reads as follows:
24. The power of
the pirates first commenced in Cilicia, having in truth but a precarious and
obscure beginning, but gained life and boldness afterwards in the wars of
Mithridates, where they hired themselves out, and took employment in the king's
service. Afterwards, whilst the Romans were embroiled in their civil wars,
being engaged against one another even before the very gates of Rome, the seas
lay waste and unguarded, and by degrees enticed and drew them on not only to
seize upon and spoil the merchants and ships upon the seas, but also to lay
waste the islands and seaport towns.
So that now there
embarked with these pirates men of wealth and noble birth and superior
abilities, as if it had been a natural occupation to gain distinction in. They
had divers arsenals, or piratic harbors, as likewise watch towers and beacons,
all along the sea-coast; and fleets were here received that were well manned
with the finest mariners, and well served with the expertest pilots, and
composed of swift sailing and light-built vessels adapted for their special
purpose. Nor was it merely their being thus formidable that excited
indignation; they were even more odious for their ostentation than they were
feared for their force. Their ships had gilded masts at their stems; the sails
woven of purple, and the oars plated with silver, as if their delight were to
glory in their iniquity. There was nothing but music and dancing, banqueting
and revels, all along the shore. Officers in command were taken prisoners, and
cities put under contribution, to the reproach and dishonor of the Roman
supremacy.
There were of
these corsairs above one thousand sail, and they had taken no less than four
hundred cities, committing sacrilege upon the temples of the gods, and
enriching themselves with the spoils of many never violated before, such as
were those of Claros, Didyma, and Samothrace; and the temple of the Earth in
Hermione, and that of Aesculapius in Epidaurus, those of Neptune at the
Isthmus, at Taenarus, and at Calauria; those of Apollo at Actium and Leucas,
and those of Juno, in Samos, at Argos, and at Lacinium. They themselves offered
strange sacrifices upon Mount Olympus, and performed certain secret rites or
religious mysteries, among which those of Mithras have been preserved to our
own time, having received their previous institution from them.
But besides these
insolencies by sea, they were also injurious to the Romans by land; for they
would often go inland up the roads, plundering and destroying their villages
and country-houses. And once they seized upon two Roman praetors, Sextilius and
Bellinus, in their purple-edged robes, and carried them off together with their
officers and lictors. The daughter also of Antonius, a man that had had the
honor of a triumph, taking a journey into the country, was seized, and redeemed
upon payment of a large ransom.
But it was most
abusive of all, that when any of the captives declared himself to be a Roman
and told his name, they affected to be surprised, and feigning fear, smote
their thighs and fell down at his feet, humbly beseeching him to be gracious
and forgive them. The captive seeing them so humble and suppliant, believed
them to be in earnest; and some of them now would proceed to put Roman shoes on
his feet, and to dress him in a Roman gown, to prevent, they said, his being
mistaken another time. After all this pageantry, when they had thus deluded and
mocked him long enough, at last putting out a ship's ladder, when they were in
the midst of the sea, they told him he was free to go, and wished him a
pleasant journey; and if he resisted, they themselves threw him overboard, and
drowned him.
Plutarch's Lives
(Clough)/Life of Pompey
Plutarch's Lives (1859)
by Plutarch, edited by John Dryden and Arthur Hugh Clough, translated by
"eminent hands" https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Plutarch%27s_Lives_(Clough)/Life_of_Pompey
The above described
groundbreaking event may look like a great threat against the order and the
discipline that the ailing Roman Republic wanted to impose, but 130 years
later, the entire picture had changed totally and spectacularly. The generals,
the senators and the consuls of the otherwise worthless Roman Republic may well
have been vainly fighting against the pirates of Mithraism in 67 BCE, but in 66
CE the great Roman Emperor Nero welcomed in Rome King Tiridates I of Armenia,
another Oriental king, who was reigning by the grace of Mithra. Even more
importantly, Nero, who was already a Mithras adept and initiate, was offered a
superior initiation and revelation of mysteries by the Armenian king, who was a
high priest of Mithra in his kingdom. This fact alone shows the overwhelming
diffusion of Mithraism that had already taken place across the Roman Empire.
Now, these events
between Rome and Armenia may seem to be of minor importance for an Oromo, a
Sidama or an Arabic-speaking Sudanese but they are not, because some of today's
Cushitic Africans' ancestors were present in a historical Roman spectacle performed
in front of Nero and Tiridates I. And this underlines the nature and the
dimensions of the overwhelming development that I herewith describe as
'Orientalization of the Roman Empire' and 'Universalization of the
Mediterranean World'. To thank Tiridates I, Nero arranged a gladiatorial
exhibition in Puteoli (today's Pozzuoli in Naples), but to make it most
exquisite, he brought in Meroitic ('Ethiopian') gladiators; in a most
fascinating manner, the spectacle involved male, female and juvenile
gladiators!
Writing in the early
3rd c. CE about the event, the Anatolian Roman consul, senator and historian
Dio Cassius (155-235 CE) offers a captivating narrative (Roman History, LXIII
3).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiridates_I_of_Armenia#Visiting_Rome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassius_Dio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator#Women
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/home.html
The excerpt reads as
follows:
Nero admired him
for this action and entertained him in many ways, especially by giving a
gladiatorial exhibition at Puteoli. It was under the direction of Patrobius,
one of his freedmen, who managed to make it a most brilliant and costly affair,
as may be seen from the fact that on one of the days not a person but
Ethiopians — men, women, and children — appeared in the theatre. 2 By way of
showing Patrobius some fitting honour Tiridates shot at wild beasts from his
elevated seat, and — if one can believe it — transfixed and killed two bulls
with a single arrow.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/62*.html
The presence of a group
of Meroitic gladiators in Rome in the 2nd half of the 1st c. CE constitutes one
of the hundreds of occasions, which reveal and underscore the friendly
relations between Meroe and Rome and highlight the role that the Ancient
Meroites played in the diffusion of Oriental cults, sciences, religions, wisdom,
mysticism and spirituality across the Roman Empire and the then backward and
poorly civilized European continent. These gladiators may have actually had
multiple functions, being also Isis initiates, poets, authors and translators
(writing Isis aretalogies in Greek or Latin), priests, Amun devotees, Anubis
hierophants, servants of other Meroitic gods, merchants or sailors.
https://rhakotis.com/2019/04/16/aretalogies/
http://philipharland.com/greco-roman-associations/aretalogy-of-isis-mentioning-initiates-ii-i-bce/
https://isiopolis.com/2014/11/30/i-am-isis-the-goddess-her-aretalogies/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aretalogy
(H.) Engelmann The Delian aretalogy of Sarapis (Études préliminaires aux
religions orientales dans l'empire romain, 44.) Leiden: Brill. 1975. Pp. [viii]
+ 63, frontis., I text fig. Fl. 40.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-hellenic-studies/article/abs/div-classtitleengelmannhthe-delian-aretalogy-of-sarapis-etudes-preliminaires-aux-religions-orientales-dans-landaposempire-romain-44-leiden-brill-1975-pp-viii-63-frontis-i-text-fig-fl-40div/B8BDCA43F1B4F45FF568EC6047C348CC
As the Mithraea
(temples dedicated to Mithras) were increasing like mushrooms across the Roman
Empire, pretty much like the temples built in honor of other Oriental gods
(which also involved major migration of diverse populations), it is not strange
that on 25th December (birthday of Mithras) 274, the Roman Emperor Aurelianus
decreed Mithraism as official Roman imperial religion. Under the title 'Sol
Invictus' (Invincible Sun), Mithra became then the official god of the Roman
Empire. Half a century later, in 321, the Roman Emperor Constantine decreed the
Dies Solis ('day of the Sun' - Sunday) as the official day of rest across the
empire; this shows Mithraism's extent of diffusion and depth of acceptance
throughout the Roman Empire. This development took place only 8 years after the
Edict of Milan by which Constantine accepted Christianity as one of the
religions of the empire; it therefore shows that the rise of Christianity did
not consist in direction opposition to Roman Mithraism. In fact, Christianity
was absorbed into the new official Roman religion, accepting all its basic
characteristics (like the 25th December as feast for Christmas, Sunday as holy
day of rest, etc.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Invictus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Invictus#Constantine
Following the diffusion
of Mithraism across the Roman Empire and as a consequence of the establishment
of regular communication among Iranian communities in Egypt and other parts of
the Mediterranean world thanks to the Silk Roads, new faiths, trends, ideas and
soteriological systems generated in Iran were more easily diffused within the
Roman Empire and across Europe before or after the Christianization; among them
one can mention Zurvanism, Gayomardism, and Mazdakism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zurvanism
https://iranicaonline.org/articles/zurvanism
https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/gayomard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyumars
https://iranicaonline.org/articles/byzantine-iranian-relations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazdakism
http://www.armeniapedia.org/wiki/The_Tondrakian_Movement
XXIII.
Orientalization of the Roman Empire: Meroe, Rome, and Isidism - when Egyptians,
Meroitic Ethiopians & Berbers taught their Greek and Roman Pupils the
Supreme Spiritual Wisdom
The two most popular
and most influential Oriental religions among those diffused in Greece, Rome,
across the Roman Empire, and throughout Europe were Mithraism and Isidism. Although
Mithraism in Iran and Mithraism in Rome are exactly the same systematized faith
and theology, Isidism outside Kemet and Cush was not identical with the Ancient
Kemetian/Cushitic religion that became rather known as the Iwnw (Heliopolitan)
dogma and doctrine. First, as I said above {unit V: Deep Spiritual-Religious
Divisions among both, Kemetians (Egyptians) and Cushites (Sudanese: Ethiopians)},
in Ancient Kemet and Cush, the Heliopolitan religion was only one of the
existing religions – at any time.
Second, in the Nile
Valley, Isis was only one nine (9) dimensions of the Divine World that formed
the pillars of the Iwnw dogma (which was also known as Ennead among Greeks and
Romans), and not the central one; the dogma Heliopolis (Iwnw) was revolving
around Atum-Ra – whose emanations all the other divine dimensions were (Isis
included). But not all the Ancient Kemetian/Egyptian religions were equally
diffused in the Roman Empire; as example, the Hermupolitan dogma (also known as
the Ogdoad) was not diffused outside the Valley of the Nile. In its essence, Isidism
outside Kemet/Egypt and Cush was not different from the Heliopolitan religion
as preached, believed and practiced alongside the Nile, but it is certainly an
Isis-centered system. This development took place because of several reasons.
No systematic
evangelization or proselytism was undertaken in Rome by a well-prepared
priestly delegation sent on purpose abroad; in fact, Isis was diffused in Rome
not as a state religion or as a sacerdotal dogma, but as a popular cult, faith,
narrative and culture, due to the personal-professional contacts that Kemetian /
Egyptian and Cushitic / Meroitic believers of Isis had with indigenous people
in various parts of the Roman Empire and beyond. The earlier indications of
Isis cult in Rome date back to the 2nd c. BCE, whereas Kemetian/Egyptian
presence and monuments in the Aegean Sea, Western Anatolia, Crete and Greece go
back to the 2nd and sometimes the 3rd millennium BCE. However, that early stage
of African expansion on European soil was very different, as it involved
military and sacerdotal physical presence, ended up in sheer colonization of
South European lands, and consisted in a permanent impregnation giving
structure, form and contents to the earliest samples of civilization in Europe.
When it comes to the
diffusion of Isis cults in Rome, merchants, navigators and official delegates
must have been the first to make Isis known to Romans; several among them must
have also been priests, mystics, initiates, masters of spirituality, experts in
spiritual sciences, doctors, etc., and through their interaction, they
certainly impressed their poorly skilled Greeks, Romans and other European
partners, associates, interlocutors or friends.
The exponential
increase in the number of Roman and European adepts of Isis is due exactly to
- the excellence of the
comprehensive mythical perception, understanding, description and explanation
of the Universe that Isis' Kemetian/Egyptian and Cushitic/Meroitic hierophants
could offer,
- the net superiority
of Isis' soteriology,
- the eminent dexterity
the Kemetian/Egyptian and Cushitic/Meroitic in narrating the 'Past'
(:Cosmogony) and the 'Future' (:Messianic Eschatology) as an indivisible unity
and as an eternal recapitulation, and
- the unique, unmatched
effectiveness of the Kemetian / Egyptian and Cushitic / Meroitic magicians,
astrologers and soothsayers, who ascribed their spiritual prowess to the divine
power that they acquired as Isis' apprentices, initiates and priests.
Compared to them the
ignorant and impotent priests of Greece and Rome were viewed as pale and
inferior competitors; more importantly, the idiotic 'philosophers' were
understood and proven as ineffectual, useless, and perilous impostors because
their childish and nonsensical systems were pathetic assumptions upon
assumptions. With their vapid, insipid and boring theorizing, the
'philosophers' could not perform 'miracles', whereas the Kemetian / Egyptian
and Cushitic / Meroitic magicians, astrologers and soothsayers were doing
wonders.
Roman authorities
attempted several times to stop the diffusion of Isidism and the spread of other
Oriental religions, cults and esoteric mysteries, because the devotion of the
Roman masses to the new cult and mysteries totally eliminated their interest
for the public affairs and the dirty politics of the Roman Senate, thus
evaporating the control that these elites and gangsters had over the victimized
Roman people. In a way, the diffusion of Oriental spirituality, faith,
worldview, soteriology and lifestyle among the Greeks and the Romans was a true
liberation of these peoples from the materialistic and rationalistic impasse of
the political absurdity and tyranny, which was due to their inferior religions
and cultures.
Temples of Isis escaped
the state control, although some of them were located very close to the
neuralgic centers of the Roman administration. The fast increase of the number
of believers and the absolute dedication to their new faith and cult became
worrisome matters for the Roman Senate, which many times tried to destroy
shrines and symbols of faith. During the period of Roman division as regards
Egypt and Cleopatra's schemes with Caesar, Caesarion and Mark Anthony (48-30
BCE), there was in Rome a deep division among the people; there were enthusiastic
supporters of Isis mysteries and fanatic opponents. After annexing Kemet/Egypt,
Octavian prohibited the erection of Isis temples in the traditional precinct of
the city of Rome, but this was totally futile; after his successor Tiberius'
death (or assassination at 37 CE), Egyptian cults and temples flooded Rome to
such extent that a visitor would truly view Rome as an entirely Oriental
capital; the same was also true for many other cities across the Roman Empire.
After the second half of the 1st c. CE, the traditional Roman divinities were
in fact either totally eclipsed by or subordinated to the Egyptian gods.
Next to Isis, a myriad
of Kemetian/Cushitic deities or aspects of divinities were worshipped in Rome,
Greece and Europe: Sarapis, Anubis, Osiris, Horus, Amun, Bes, etc. Sometimes,
they acquired multiple dimensions, traits, and therefore names, being then associated
with other Egyptian, Greek and Roman divinities. The vast socio-cultural phenomenon
ended up with an enormous spiritual, religious, cultic and apocalyptic fragmentation,
which is well reflected in names like Isis Invicta, Isis Panthea, Isis Tyche,
Isis Fortuna, Isis Pelagia, Hermanoubis, Haroeris, Harpocrates, Harmakhis
(hypostases of Isis, Anoubis and Horus respectively), Dionysus-Osiris, etc.
This situation
exercised an overwhelming impact on Greek and Roman authors, poets and
thinkers; the notion of Theophany (or Epiphany), namely the possibility of true
believers to see the God (or the god) put an end to worthless philosophies,
like the agnosticism, the materialism, the rationalism, the voluptuary hedonism,
and to the catastrophic paranoia of the politics-related 'Aristotelian ethics'.
Devotional acts, prayers, spiritual exercises, revelation of mysteries, oracle
sessions and oracular statements, divination and astrology, apocalyptic
soteriology, cultic practices, and abstinence became the epicenter of life, the
preference of the heart, and the interest of the mind for the average
populations in Rome, Greece and Europe.
What is nowadays called
as Neo-Platonism or Neo-Pythagoreanism is a Western colonial fallacy; in fact, these
'schools of philosophy' do not constitute groups of various philosophers in the
typical sense (as in 5th - 4th c. BCE Greece) but mere apologists, advocates
and propagandists of Oriental cults, religions, mysteries and spiritual
exercises. Colonial historians and racist academics use these terms in order to
conceal the reality that the Orientalization of the Roman Empire put an end to
the otherwise fake, nonexistent, invented in Modern Times, and literally
fabricated 'Classical Civilization'. There is no Hellenistic Philosophy; there
is no Hellenistic Astrology; and there is no Hellenistic Period in the first
place. The correct terms are respectively: 'Numinous Intellect of Late
Antiquity Orientalizing Greco-Roman Thinkers', 'Orientalizing Astrology in the
Roman Empire', and 'Orientalistic Period of European History'.
When authors express
concern about the restoration of Osiris's body, Isis' magical healing spells,
the simulated descent into the underworld during the initiation rites, the
instantaneous change in the ecstatic initiate's behavior, the impersonation of
Anubis and other gods during the mysteries, the spiritual visions and many
other similar experiences of the apprentices, the ritualistically performed
incantations, the staging of theatrical acts of numinous character and the
representation of scenes of the Nether World, the transcendental, supernatural
phenomena that took place during the sessions of divine art (theurgy), and the
link between the mysteries and the eternal salvation, then we attest the final
abandonment of philosophy, politics, rationalism, materialism, agnosticism, and
atheism, and the ultimate salvation, i.e. the deliverance from human corruption
and social degradation. Consequently, we understand why all the initiates
prepared themselves for the distresses and the misfortunes of this life and, in
addition, they enthusiastically welcomed the troubles and the adversities, the
obstacles and adventures that their souls would face, when crossing the Duat
(the Nether World); everything is tolerable when it comes to the human life's supreme
target and ultimate search, namely the soul immortality in the Sekhet Aaru (sḫt-jꜣrw / Paradise).
Within the context of
the Orientalization of the Roman Empire and Europe, the great African mystic
and author Apuleius (124-170 CE) highlighted the importance of abstinence and
material purification for anyone seeking the true spiritual awakening, synergy
between the soul and the mind, and final immortality. Apuleius was a Hamitic Berber
from Numidia (Inumiden in Amazigh), and he became famous for his 'Metamorphoses',
which is a masterpiece of transcendental, mystical symbolism and narrative
addressed to adepts of Isidism across the Roman Empire.
We can safely claim
that, as Apuleius was Black, he envisioned the story of Psyche and Cupidus
within its original context, namely that of the African Berber initiates of
Isis. The moralist, didactic story has therefore nothing to do with
Neo-Platonism, in striking contradiction to the unsubstantiated pretensions of modern
colonial and racist academics. In its origin, the moral topic is of entirely
Oriental, African, Hamitic and Cushitic essence. Many centuries later, European
poets, authors, painters and thinkers have appropriated the topic and in doing
so, they misrepresented it and totally altered its spiritual value and moral
significance, by describing it as an attempt to overcome the obstacles that
exist in order to prevent the love between Psyche and Cupidus (Desire). Quite
contrarily, writing for Isis' initiates who were trained in abstinence,
Apuleius wanted to warn the readers about the dangers lurking for those, who
are weak enough to succumb to their desires and to lose their purity in the
process.
Consequently, Apuleius'
'Metamorphoses', as a masterpiece of African, Berber spirituality and
literature, has nothing to do with white naked bodies that perfidious and
perverse Modern European painters have depicted in an effort to totally remodel
and disfigure Apuleius' original concept, moral principles, and mystical
symbolism. About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis#Spread
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/world-history-magazine/article/isis-egyptian-goddess-worship-spread-egypt-england
https://www.ancient.eu/isis/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Isis
https://www.ephesus.us/ephesus/temple_of_isis.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Isis_and_Serapis
https://aeon.co/essays/how-an-obscure-oriental-cult-converted-a-vast-pagan-roman-empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysteries_of_Isis
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=23510a985d884a1f887bb6bd7a7f757b
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG58874
https://www.academia.edu/41091383/Isis_Pelagia_Images_Names_and_Cults_of_a_Goddess_of_the_Seas_2020_
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horus
http://www.globalegyptianmuseum.org/glossary.aspx?id=168
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horus#Her-ur_(Horus_the_Elder)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpocrates
https://www.alexanderancientart.com/harmakhis.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieracosphinx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermanubis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus-Osiris
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_philosophy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_astrology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_period
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris_myth#Isis,_Nephthys,_and_the_Greco-Roman_world
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysteries_of_Isis#Deities_and_religious_symbolism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apuleius
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Ass
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupid_and_Psyche
https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Metamorphoses_(Apuleius)/Psyche_et_Cupido
XXIV.
The Mysteries of Isis and Plutarch: when the Highest Priest of Greece became a
devotee and an enthusiast of the Kemetian-Egyptian and Cushitic-Ethiopian
Spirituality
The prevalence of
Oriental, African, Kemetian/Egyptian and Cushitic/Meroitic spirituality, faith
and culture across the Roman Empire and the enormous diffusion of Isidism are
also highlighted by Plutarch's treatise about Isis and Osiris ('De Iside et
Osiride' in Latin translation; 'Περὶ Ἴσιδος
καὶ Ὀσίριδος'
in Ancient Greek – Peri Isidos kai Osiridos; 'About Isis and Osiris'). This
16000-word text (in 80 paragraphs) consists in the 26th unit of a major opus (composed
of 78 units in total), which is titled 'Moralia' ('Ηθικά' - Ethica). This magnificent
piece of Ancient Greek sacerdotal literature was elaborated by the high priest
of the Oracle at Delphi around the beginning of the 2nd c. CE. An English
translation is available here:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Plutarch%27s_Moralia_(Loeb)/Isis_and_Osiris
(Plutarch’s
Moralia (1927 & seq.) by Plutarch,
translated by Frank Cole Babbitt, Harold Cherniss, F. H. Sandbach, Benedict
Einarson, Phillip H. De Lacy, W. C. Helmbold, P. A. Clement, H. B. Hoffleit,
Lionel Pearson, Edwin L. Minar Jr., & Harold North Fowler; No. 197 in the
Loeb Classical Library. Index compiled by Edward N. O'Neil.; in that edition,
the treatise 'About Isis and Osiris' can be found in the 5th volume /there are
16 volumes in total)
Because of his
sacerdotal identity, his supreme spiritual authority, and his permanent
predisposition to reveal the truth and to present everything and everyone in
their true dimensions, Plutarch has been repeatedly targeted by Western
pseudo-historians, bogus-academics and Orientalist forgers. Plutarch reduces
Herodotus and Aristotle to total insignificance and reveals their repugnant
malignancy; this fact demolishes the fake doctrines and the pseudo-historical
dogmas diffused by the criminal intelligentsia of Western Europe and North
America. That's why in Western colonial universities, only extremely rarely can
one find and attend courses and seminars about Plutarch's and his great works,
and when this happens, the instructors either attempt to denigrate Ancient
Greece's greatest mystic, sage and author or avoid speaking about topics that
demolish the fallacy that the criminal universities of the Western World
shamelessly teach as 'historical truth'.
Already the fact that an
Ancient Greek author cares to learn, study, know, understand, eventually adhere
to, and apparently write about the Ancient Kemetian/Egyptian mysteries offers
ample possibilities for enlightening comments; it is quite telling. Ancient
Kemetian scribes and writers only rarely and briefly reported about the Ancient
Cretans and the Ancient Greeks; they only recorded few points every now and
then, when there was a need to state an interaction. What does this mean?
This question is never
made (let alone answered) by the criminal gangsters of the disreputable
universities of Western Europe and North America. Colonial academia and racist
forgers of the World History want to hide the most determinant fact of all
times, namely the indisputable reality that the Ancient Mesopotamians
(Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Elamites, Hurrians), the Ancient
Anatolians (Hittites, Hatti, Luwians), the Ancient Kemetians / Egyptians and
Cushites / Ethiopians, the Ancient Canaanites, Phoenicians and Aramaeans, and
the Ancient Iranians constituted the epicenter of the World History.
Their lands were the
center of the historical evolution, the cradle of the World Civilization, the repository
of human wisdom, science and knowledge, and the place where all the important
developments had taken place. The Valley of the Twin Rivers, the Nile Valley,
and the Plateau of Central Anatolia are the early fulcrum of human ascendancy.
Outside these lands, there was only a barbarian periphery useless to study,
contemptible to deal with, and good only for either civilizing it or keeping it
at a distance. Antiquity existed only in the above mentioned lands where the
History of the Mankind was unfolded; there was no Antiquity in Greece, Rome or
Europe, and a Kemetian/Egyptian high priest or mystic, erudite sage or master
of spiritual sciences had nothing to learn there, so there was no reason to
care about those lands of the periphery.
For every Asiatic, for
every African, and for everyone who rejects the evilness and the inhumanity of
the colonial powers, it is absolutely imperative to study Plutarch's
disparagement of the racist Carian pseudo-historian Herodotus, who after
betraying his own country because of the Pro-Iranian stance of his fellow
countrymen, settled among the barbarians of Athens and wrote scores of
villainous and paranoid lies that today's barbarians viciously present to
students and readers as 'History'. Plutarch's 'On the Malice of Herodotus' is a
ca. 10000-word text that irreversibly demolishes the fake 'Father of History'
whom the disreputable universities, the colonial academia, and the racist,
bureaucratic nomenclature of the Western World have criminally propagated
worldwide for centuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Malice_of_Herodotus
Writing about the
overwhelming adhesion of Ancient Greeks, Romans and Europeans to Isidism,
Plutarch offers a vivid presentation of their creational-soteriological dogma,
which consisted in complete Africanization, Kemetization / Egyptianization and
Cushitization of the various nations of Europe. His splendid treatise
demonstrates that he was well-aware of the Ancient Greeks' abandonment of their
useless politics and inferior religion, and of their conversion to a later form
of the Iwnw / Heliopolitan dogma of Ancient Kemet/Egypt.
Offering a brief historical
background in the beginning of his text (10th paragraph in the above link),
Plutrach states clearly the -today hidden by the criminal colonial academia- historical
truth that all the Ancient Greeks knew quite well, but modern Western
academics, racist intellectuals, colonial scholars, and biased, anti-African,
anti-Asiatic, anti-Oriental, anti-Christian and anti-Islamic intelligentsia have
been systematically attempting to conceal over the last centuries: the top among
Ancient Greece's philosophers went to Egypt, Babylonia, Phoenicia and Iran to
educate themselves, because there was no spirituality, no erudition, no wisdom,
no science, no knowledge, and no education among the multi-divided,
fratricidal, superstitious and fanaticized barbarians of Greece. This fact concludes
the case of the otherwise nonexistent Ancient Greek 'philosophy', reducing it
to its real, evidently insignificant dimensions and proving that the Ancient
Greek philosophers -in the best of their case- were merely minor pupils and
inferior novices of the great hierophants, mystics, and high priests of the
Orient. Plutarch mentions even the names of the known -down to his time-
Kemetian / Egyptians tutors and masters of Ancient Greece's major philosophers.
This is the specific
excerpt:
Witness to this
also are the wisest of the Greeks: Solon, Thales, Plato, Eudoxus, Pythagoras,
who came to Egypt and consorted with the priests; and in this number some would
include Lycurgus also. Eudoxus, they say, received instruction from Chonuphis
of Memphis, Solon from Sonchis of Saïs, and Pythagoras from Oenuphis of
Heliopolis. Pythagoras, it seems, was greatly admired, and he also greatly
admired the Egyptian priests, and, copying their symbolism and occult teachings,
incorporated his doctrines in enigmas. As a matter of fact most of the
Pythagorean precepts do not at all fall short of the writings that are called
hieroglyphs; such, for example, as these: "Do not eat upon a stool;" "Do not sit upon a peck measure;" "Do not lop off the shoots of a
palm-tree;" "Do not poke a fire with a sword within
the house."
The main part of Plutarch's
text contains the narrative of the Myth of Osiris, which is the description of
the World History, viewed diachronically from the Creation to the End of Time,
and expressed in symbolic terms. The mythical language of the Ancient Oriental
civilizations constitutes down to our days the World History's superior and
unsurpassed manner of perceiving the eternal reality and describing it in the
only possible human terms. The basic terms and 'ciphers' of the Myth are the
symbols, which -in and by themselves- constitute the only means able to reveal
the spiritual reality (of spiritual and material events) into the human heart
and mind, thus connecting the layers of spiritual and material existence within
a being. The ancient Oriental symbols have nothing in common with what today's
demented materialist and atheist scholars define as 'myth'. Myth is the revelation
of the only absolute Truth, which can never be understood (let alone
'expressed' or 'said') by means of 'ratio' or 'logos' or any rational system of
thought.
The limits of the
present article do not allow a brief presentation of the nature of the Osiris
Myth, which involves spiritual and material dimensions like Osiris, Isis, Seth,
Nephthys, and Horus. Their emanation from earlier forms of Divine Being, their
interaction, clash and acts, and the outcome of the overwhelming affair are in
fact the quintessence of what has happened in the History of the Universe and in
the History of the Mankind until now and what will happen until all things end.
There is no anthropomorphism in the Osiris Myth; the symbols consist of
composite parts the meaning of which the newcomers to the Isis mysteries were
learning progressively during their initiations in the successive degrees of
spiritual mastership. Osiris's name in Ancient Kemetian/Egyptian was 'Wser' and
this meant the 'Well-being'.
Seth represented the
evil in all its forms; in Ancient Kemetian / Egyptian, his name was 'Zeta' or
'Zute'. Although the name was regularly transliterated in Ancient Greek as Seth
(Σήθ), Plutarch renders it as 'Typhon' to attribute to it markedly cosmic
dimensions known to Hesiod's epic 'Theogony' (7th c. BCE), which was an earlier
effort to transfer among Greeks the Ancient Hittite Anatolian spirituality,
cosmogony and epic literature. As a matter of fact, the Ancient Kemetian/Egyptian
Seth, the Assyrian-Babylonian Erra, and the Anatolian Hittite Kumarbi pre-modeled
and pre-fashioned 'Satan', i.e. the evil force as described within the Ancient
Hebrew Bible, the Gospels of Christianity, and the Quran of Islam. The Myth of
Osiris depicts the World History as an appendix of the Primordial Fight between
Osiris ('Well-being') and Seth (Typhon/Satan). It is of seminal importance at
this point to underscore that Osiris, according to the Iwnw (Heliopolitan)
religion and to Late Antiquity Isidism, is NOT the supreme, eternal,
omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient Atum from Whom every divine and
spiritual being emanated. The Myth of Osiris only slightly refers to the
sublime Atum.
The early plot of Seth
against Osiris ended with the dismemberment of the latter's body, and then
started the tenacious effort of Isis to assemble the parts of Osiris and to
reconstitute them into oneness, and to rehabilitate them in life. At the end,
Isis engendered, educated and groomed Horus {i.e. the Egyptian concept of the
Messiah or Christ or Mahdi or Saoshyant (Zoroastrianism) or Maitreya (Buddhism)
or Etana / Ninurta (there were two messianic versions in Assyrian-Babylonian eschatology)
or Tasmisu (Hittite messianic soteriology)} for the ultimate battle against
Seth. Ancient Kemetian/Egyptian temples' gigantic walls are covered with
inscriptions narrating and bas-reliefs depicting the circumstances and the
episodes of the Osiris Myth.
The dramatic,
inconclusive for long, and phenomenal battle between Horus (Messiah) and Seth
(Antichrist), the final victory of Horus over Seth (Typhon), and the ensuing
elimination of the Evil from among humans are narrated in numerous reliefs and
texts that cover sizeable parts of the internal part of the monumental,
external western wall of the magnificent temple of Horus at Edfu (Ancient
Behedet, 110 km south of Luxor, in Upper Egypt).
In the Christian Book
of the Revelation (chapter XII, 1-2), the description of the 'Woman of the
Apocalypse' corresponds exactly to Isis; the attributes that the last book of
the New Testament mentions in the case of that Symbolic Woman have been for
millennia known as those of Isis in Kemet/Egypt and Cush/Meroe.
The excerpt reads as
follows:
A great sign
appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet
and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in
pain as she was about to give birth.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2012&version=NIV
About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_of_the_Apocalypse
The aforementioned
description of solar, lunar and sidereal dimensions constitutes the mystical
symbolism of Isis, who is the symbolic mother of Horus-Messiah; even more
importantly, the three mythical persons of the 12th chapter of John's
Revelation (1-5) are the three main symbolic figures of Isidism, namely Isis,
Seth (Typhon) and Horus:
- The 'woman clothed
with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her
head' is Isis, who 'was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give
birth';
- The 'enormous red
dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads' is Seth
(Typhon according Plutarch); and
- The child born 'a
male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter' about which it
is also said that it 'was snatched up to God and to his throne' is Horus.
Although Plutarch's
treatise about Isis and Osiris is a late (2nd c. CE) and external (i.e.
non-Kemetian / Egyptian) source and the earlier hieroglyphic texts containing
excerpts of the Myth of Osiris date back to the 3rd millennium BCE, the high
priest of the Oracle at Delphi preserves indeed a very interesting apocalyptic
reference to Cush ('Ethiopia') in his 13th paragraph. While describing (at the
very beginning of the entire stroy) the plot invented by Typhon (Satan) against
Osiris, Plutarch states that Typhon cooperated with an apparently most evil
queen from Ethiopia (i.e. Sudan - Cush) who was named Aso. This interesting detail
has not been hitherto attested in any hieroglyphic text.
The except reads as
follows:
During his
absence the tradition is that Typhon attempted nothing revolutionary because
Isis, who was in control, was vigilant and alert; but when he returned home
Typhon contrived a treacherous plot against him and formed a group of
conspirators seventy-two in number. He had also the co-operation of a queen
from Ethiopia who was there at the time and whose name they report as Aso.
Typhon, having secretly measured Osiris's body and having made ready a beautiful
chest of corresponding size artistically ornamented, caused it to be brought
into the room where the festivity was in progress.
The interpretation of
Plutarch's treatise is not the scope of the present article, but at this point
and concerning the mention of Aso, the 'queen from Ethiopia' who offered
valuable service to Seth/Typhon, I have to refer to the herewith
aforementioned, major issue, which incessantly characterized the Ancient
History of Kemet/Egypt and Cush/Ethiopia, namely the extremely profound
spiritual, sacerdotal, and social division and the rivalry between conflicting
priesthoods that ravaged nations and countries alongside the Nile for millennia
{see unit V: Deep Spiritual-Religious Divisions among both, Kemetians
(Egyptians) and Cushites (Sudanese: Ethiopians)}.
This division and
conflict is in reality the essence of the Myth of Osiris, because this event of
worldwide dimensions, which was also attested in Mesopotamia (Sumer, Akkad,
Assyria, Babylonia and Elam) and Anatolia (Hittites, Hatti, Luwians) and was thence
diffused worldwide, determined in fact the World History. What Plutarch tells
us with his mythical-symbolical mention of the early Cushitic queen Aso is that
at a very early stage of that division, Ancient Cush played a critical role;
this mythical reality can indeed be reconstituted thanks to numerous existing
Ancient Kemetian/Egyptian sources.
About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moralia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris_myth#Synopsis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_(deity)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erra_(god)
https://www.osirisnet.net/dieux/osiris/e_osiris_04.htm
https://www.persee.fr/docAsPDF/antiq_0770-2817_1956_num_25_1_3286.pdf
Plutarch's treatise
about Isis and Osiris concerns the diachronic Hamitic-Cushitic spirituality,
the basic trends of which had been constituted at a very early historical stage
(4th–3rd millennium BCE) only to be later immortalized on the walls of various
tombs and temples in Kemet/Egypt and Cush/Ethiopia, crystallized in narratives
like that of Plutarch, and maintained down to our days in the faith, the oral
traditions and the records, the cults and the cultures of the Oromos
Waaqeffattas, the Magano-faithful Sidamas, as well as in other surviving today,
traditional religions of the modern Cushitic nations.
No modern Cushitic
religions can be deeply assessed, their historical formation cannot be
adequately understood, and the authenticity of their concepts and rites cannot
be accurately evaluated without an extensive, comparative research with the
spirituality, the religious systems, the cults and the cultures of Ancient
Kemet/Egypt and Cush/Meroe. This cannot be achieved at the current stage, but
it is high time for the process to kick-start. Oromos, Sidamas and many other
modern Cushites must systematically study Egyptology and Sudan Archaeology;
they have to meticulously learn Kemetian/Egyptian hieroglyphic, hieratic and
demotic writings, Meroitic hieroglyphic and cursive scripts, Coptic, and other
modern Cushitic languages of their neighboring nations.
This is a nationwide
project of the utmost importance; the Oromo Diaspora and wealthy Oromos in
Occupied Oromia must set up a private fund to finance the project. Several
dozens of Oromo graduates must receive grants to study abroad for at least ten
(10) years and up to the level of PhD. This effort can be materialized in
Germany, Russia, Italy, several Central European countries (Poland, Hungary,
Austria, Czechia) and Japan because the universities of these countries offer
less biased seminars and courses. This project cannot be carried out in
universities of criminal colonial countries, namely England, France, America,
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Holland, and Belgium, which have continually
promoted the Greco-centric, Romano-centric and Euro-centric fallacy that
consists in a most repugnant, racist distortion of the World History.
It goes without saying
that the dozens of Oromo students of Egyptology and Sudan Archaeology will have
to undertake this great effort of national and supranational Cushitic-Hamitic
Awakening, having as compass the great contributions of scholars like Martin
Bernal and Edward Said, renowned authors of the venerated 'Black Athena' and
'Orientalism' respectively. However, these prospective Oromo students will have
also to keep in mind that the refutation of the colonial Western falsification
of History, as undertaken by these two illustrious scholars, represents in fact
less than 5% of the totality of forged points that need to be rejected,
denounced and annulled. It is the duty of today's African and Asiatic students
to carry out the formidable duty of irrevocably refuting and irreversibly
cancelling the Post-Renaissance Western European Historical Revisionism, which
caused all the wars, the ensuing abysmal bloodshed, the materialist darkness
and the spiritual ignorance, the atheist paranoia and the political amorality,
the colonial discrimination and the sexist inhumanity, the historical forgery
and the abject immorality that the colonial gangsters scattered worldwide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Bernal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Athena
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Said
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book)
Only after the first philosophical
dissertations of Oromos about inherently Egyptological subjects will be
published, will today's Oromos realize the staggering historicity of the
Irreechaa festival and subsequently find out its links with several Ancient
Kemetian / Egyptian and Ancient Cushitic / Meroitic festivals that took place
alongside the Nile, also involving statues of divinities sailing over holy
vessels. And when it comes to the diffusion of Isidism across the Mediterranean
and throughout the Roman Empire, the famous spring festival Navigium Isidis
(lit. 'the Vessel of Isis' in Latin), which took place every year on 5th March
and has been eloquently narrated by Apuleius in his Metamorphoses, revealed the
blessings of Isis to all the participants of the littoral celebration. About:
https://www.academia.edu/5916064/Isis_the_Sea_Star_and_the_Ceremony_of_Navigium_Isidis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigium_Isidis
https://the-avocado.org/2018/03/05/navigium-isidis-an-ancient-religious-festival/
https://neosalexandria.org/syncretism/navigium-isidis/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opet_Festival
https://www.ancient.eu/article/1032/festivals-in-ancient-egypt/
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/ideology/festivaldates.html
http://factsanddetails.com/world/cat56/sub365/entry-6122.html
https://jfhsc.journals.ekb.eg/article_85771_01d837c65b418f0b8a9117809607e6ea.pdf
https://escholarship.org/content/qt4cd7q9mn/qt4cd7q9mn.pdf
XXV.
Silk Roads and the Prevalence of Oriental Civilization in Greece, Rome and
Europe: Aramaean, Anatolian, Phoenician Spirituality, Gnostics, and the
Manichaeans of Alexandria
Except Mithraism and
Isidism, many other Oriental cults, mysteries, religions, schools of
spirituality and initiation, and cultures were diffused across the Roman
Empire, throughout the Mediterranean, and in other parts of Europe. This topic
totally escapes the scope of this article, but I will mention the most
important of these religions, taking into consideration the extent of their
diffusion; this will help today's Cushites understand the interaction of their
forefathers with believers of other religions, mystics and merchants originating
from other lands, and people of different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.
Anatolian religions,
mysteries, cults and initiation rites revolving around Cybele, Attis, and
Sabazios flooded Greece, the entire Balkan Peninsula, and Rome. The origin of
Cybele's cult is definitely Mesopotamian, as the Anatolian goddess name is the
adaptation of the original Sumerian name Kubaba. Viewed by the Romans as a
Trojan goddess, Cybele was easily accepted as ancestral deity into the Pantheon
of the Romans as early as the 3rd c. BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybele
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubaba
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabazios
Aramaean and Phoenician
religions, mysteries, cults and initiation rites revolving around Atargatis
(also known as 'Dea Syria', i.e. 'Syrian goddess'), Jupiter Dolichenus (Jupiter
of Doliche, which was a holy location, near Gaziantep in today's SE Turkey),
Elagabalus (an Aramaean sun-god with Mithraic traits amalgamated with those of the
old Aramaean cult of Baal), and Astarte (a Phoenician goddess similar to Ishtar
in Babylonia and Isis in Kemet/Egypt and Cush/Meroe) spread also throughout the
Roman Empire and Europe. Not only the cults and the mysteries of these
priesthoods were revered and accepted as salvation in Greece, Rome and across
Europe, but also every related literature spread widely and eclipsed the
useless political philosophies of the Ancient Greek and Roman elites.
Lucian, an erudite
Aramaean author from Samosata (today's Samsat, near Urfa in SE Turkey) who
wrote in Ancient Greek in the 2nd c. CE, expanded on the 'Syrian goddess',
writing an entire treatise about the cults associated to Atargatis. So
overwhelming the diffusion of the Oriental cults, mysteries, soteriology and spirituality
across the Roman Empire was that, in the early 3rd c. CE, the Roman Empire was
ruled for four years by a young emperor named Elagabalus after the Aramaean god
whose high priest he had served before ascending as emperor. About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atargatis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Syrian_Goddess
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Dolichenus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astarte
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elagabalus_(deity)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elagabalus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Roman_mysteries#Other_mystery_schools
To great extent the
diffusion of Oriental spirituality, soteriology, religions, mysteries, cults
and cultures throughout the Roman Empire and in Europe was the result of the
contact and the trade with the Orient. The phenomenal consequences of the
silk-, spice-, and incense-trade across land-, desert-, and sea-routes revealed
to everyone the insignificance, the poverty, and the misery of the indigenous,
barbarian cultures of Greece, Rome, Ancient Europe, as well as their
inferiority opposite the Ancient Oriental civilizations of Mesopotamia, Anatolia,
Phoenicia, Carthage, Kemet/Egypt, Cush/Ethiopia, Yemen, Iran, Turan (Central
Asia & Siberia), and China. What was known as important in Ancient Greece
and Rome appeared to all as insignificant, useless and miserable. Compared to supernatural
deeds, revelation of mysteries, acquisition of spiritual force, rites of
salvation, consideration of the eternity of the spiritual world, and the
universality of the imperial rule, the execrable demagoguery and the filthy interests
of the ignorant, idiotic and corrupt 'politics' of the petty Greek cities and
Rome look like an insult or blasphemy.
That's why Christianity
invaded the Roman Empire as another Oriental religion that looked like
Mithraism and Isidism; all the traits of Mithras were attributed to Jesus, who
was portrayed as god and all the attributes of Isis were ascribed to Virgin
Mary. But the underlying reality was that Jesus was evidently performing
'miracles', just like the hierophants of Mithras, the high priests of Isis, and
the spiritual mystics of all the Oriental cults and mysteries; in fact, all
these deeds are not properly speaking miracles, but spiritual-material
synergies and ordinary possibilities of every duly initiated, adequately
trained, and properly subsisted mystic.
·
When Jesus walks on the surface of the waters, every
superfluous idiot, like Aristotle, Thucydides, Demosthenes or Pericles, is
reduced to absolute meaninglessness.
·
When Jesus gets metamorphosed and appears next to Moses
and Elijah, every ignorant, like Cicero, Seneca or Caesar, is diminished to
total uselessness.
·
When Jesus says to his disciples that, if they have
little faith, they can move mountains, every corrupt and evil person, like the squalid
Jewish priests, namely the villainous Pharisees and the Sadducees, every
Talmudist, and every Cabbalist, is belittled to extreme worthlessness.
During the first three–four
centuries of the Christian era, Christianity was not accepted in the Roman
Empire as 'the religion of love' as today's Zionists, Freemasons, Jesuits, fake
popes and patriarchs, heretic priests, anti-Christian theologians, colonial
academia, and atheist intellectuals fallaciously and shamelessly pretend.
Christianity was accepted as an Oriental mystery religion with basically
soteriological vocation; Christianity had nothing in common with
- the Ancient Greeks
and their miserable politics,
- the Ancient Romans,
their stratocracy, and 'gravitas',
- the Ancient Hebrews
and their holy book that the Jews had deliberately and devilishly distorted
after the departure of the Israelites from their land (722-719 BCE).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_ancient_Rome#Religion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_in_the_Greco-Roman_world#Personages_of_the_Roman_Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_religion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_ancient_Rome#Roman_Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanitas
Another form of
Oriental impact exercised on Greece, Rome and Europe during the Late Antiquity
was the diffusion of numerous Oriental schools of mystical initiation, which
helped members attain spiritual knowledge, conduct magical acts, acquire
spiritual power, understand the spiritual truth, communicate/cooperate with souls,
spirits of the elements, other spiritual beings and intelligences, and achieve
a complete formation in terms of cosmogony, apocalyptic eschatology,
soteriology, and cosmology. As they revolved around spiritual and material
knowledge ('gnosis'/'γνώσις'
in Ancient Greek), they became known among Modern Europeans as 'Gnosticisms'. Their
founders and members are therefore called 'Gnostics'; this represents one more
bias of the colonial academia, because the improper terminology gives the
impression that these mystical systems were Greek whereas they were not.
Gnostics existed in
many countries and spoke different languages; Gnostic texts have been found in
Coptic, Syriac Aramaic, Pahlavi (Iranian), Sogdian, Middle Persian (Pazend),
Greek, Latin, Manichaean, Armenian, Arabic, Old Uyghur, and Chinese. Some
Gnostic systems were associated with early Christians and there have been several
Gnostic groups, which believed faiths that would look like Christian heresies. Today's
Mandeans in Iraq constitute the only Gnostic religious system that has survived
down to our times. The greatest Gnostic system was Manichaeism, which was
preached by Mani in the 3rd c. CE; it soon became the world's most expanded
religion, since Manichaeans spanned from the Atlantic (Maghreb) to the Pacific
(China). At the times of the Roman Emperor Diocletian (284-305 CE), the
majority of the population of Alexandria were Manichaeans, and the diffusion of
the religion of the Iranian Mani (216-277) throughout the Roman Empire had
reached such scale that in 296 Diocletian issued a decree to order the
immolation of all the Manichaean priests and the burning of all the Manichaean
books. This practice was repeated at the times of Justinian I (527-565),
because the Manichaeans remained a threat for the Roman Empire before and after
its Christianization, thus testifying to the compact, irreversible and
permanent Orientalization of the Roman Empire, and of Europe in its entirety.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandaeism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletianic_Persecution#Manichean_persecution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mani_(prophet)
Except the Gnostics and
the Manichaeans, several other Oriental schools of mystical systems were diffused
across the Roman Empire, in Europe, and throughout the Mediterranean world,
notably Chaldeanism and Ostanism. Both schools consisted in complex systems of
spiritual sciences and practices revolving around Babylonian astrology and
numerology, Iranian oracles, divination practices, incantation rituals, magic
and demonology. Inscriptions in incantation bowls, texts of oracles, and
references in various known authors' narratives and works (such as the 'Oracles
of Hystaspes' and the 'Chaldean Oracles') help us better understand these
practices that spread greatly at the level of popular culture across the Roam
Empire and beyond. About:
https://universaltheosophy.com/articles/taylor/collection-of-the-chaldean-oracles/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaldean_Oracles
https://iranicaonline.org/articles/hystaspes-oracles-of
http://www.bombaxo.com/2007/10/24/the-oracle-of-hystaspes/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incantation_bowl
https://iranicaonline.org/articles/ostanes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostanes
When it comes to the
History of the World Civilization, a very important dimension of the phenomenon
that I have just described in a very brief manner is the fact that the
Orientalization of the Roman Empire and Europe did not take place as an elite
movement or after a state decision. The gradual diffusion of the Oriental cults,
mysteries, faiths and cultures across the Mediterranean world and throughout
Europe was the result of the interaction of average people, namely merchants,
sailors, caravan members, and trade partners, who came thus to know one another
better and evaluate the spirituality, the wisdom and the knowledge of the
'other'. The Roman state failed every time it tried to prevent the diffusion of
Oriental cults; and every time, the Roman Empire accepted a cult or a religion,
that faith had already been cherished by numerous followers. In fact, the
Orientalization of the Roman Empire constituted in the prevalence of the
popular culture over the elite culture.
At the time the Roman
elites continued speaking their jargon with references to Pericles, Thucydides,
Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Aristotle, Plato, and all the nonsense of the
so-called 'Classical Athens', the Roman masses disregarded politics, disdained
the Ancient Greek ignorance and faithlessness, worshipped Iranian, Anatolian,
Aramaean, Kemetian/Egyptian, Cushitic/Ethiopian gods, practiced Oriental cults
and focused on their salvation, instead of wasting their time in politics
discussed in the 'Agora' of the Greek cities or the 'Forum Romanum'. Mithras,
Isis, Cybele, Osiris, Horus, Anubis and the myriad of Oriental concepts and
faiths diffused across the Roman Empire eliminated the pathetic gossip of the
Greek philosophers and the fake promises of the disreputable Athenian and Roman
statesmen. Manichaeism and its derivative systems (Paulicianism, Bogomiles),
Christianity and Islam were only the last of the Oriental religions to be
diffused in Europe.
This reality had been
systematically hidden from the eyes of the average people because the colonial
academia and the racist politicians of Western Europe and North America do not
want today's nations to be liberated from the fake dogmas, the dirty politics,
and the evil, Zionist, Jesuit and Freemasonic propaganda, which have been
systematically diffused worldwide ever since the gangsters of Western Europe
started expanding overseas and massacring indigenous nations (around 1500). But
since the historical truth is published everywhere, the shameless academics
cannot truly conceal it; that is why they either act duplicitously (speaking
differently in academic conferences and in the general public) or act in a way
that the truth goes unperceived by the average people. However, the sources can
be easily found or even discovered online.
An enormous series of
research volumes has been published over many decades to document the
phenomenal spread of Oriental religions, cults, mysteries and cultures across
the Roman Empire and Europe. Its title (in French) is: 'Études préliminaires
aux religions orientales dans l'Empire romain' (EPRO: Preliminary Studies on
the Oriental Religions within the Roman Empire). The disreputable but
sophisticated forgers, who launched Wikipedia only to blind the average people
and fill the world with paramount disinformation, find it 'logical' or
'permissible' to feature simple and often worthless and nonsensical books in independent
entries in the Wikipedia, but they did not write a word about this monumental
series of more than 120 books, which consisted in only 'preliminary' studies of
the vast and unique phenomenon of the Orientalization of Greece, Rome and
Europe.
Here you can find the
complete list of the 100+ volumes published in the series:
Études préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l'Empire romain
https://brill.com/view/serial/EPRO
https://brill.com/flyer/serial/EPRO?print=pdf&pdfGenerator=headless_chrome
To give only an
indication of the enormous Egyptian and Egyptianizing material record, which
has been excavated in Greece, Rome and Europe and bears witness to the
overwhelming Orientalization of the Roman Empire, I merely mention that a group
of French Egyptologists needed four entire volumes to write down the complete
bibliographical inventory (no analysis) of monuments related to the cult of
Isis that have been unearthed across the Roman Empire and throughout Europe;
these four volumes are part of the aforementioned series (EPRO): J. Leclant;
Inventaire Bibliographique des Isiaca (Ibis): Repertoire Analytique des Travaux
Relatifs a La Diffusion des Cultes Isiaques, 1940-1969
http://www.sudoc.abes.fr/cbs/xslt//DB=2.1/SET=2/TTL=1/SHW?FRST=3
https://brill.com/view/title/18951
http://turkce-kitabin.ancient-egypt.ru/inventaire_bibliographique_des_isiaca_ibis_repertoire_analytique_des_travaux_relatifs_a_la_diffusion_des_cultes_isiaques_1940_1969_r_z_iv_etudes_religions_orientales_dans_l_empire_romain__92934-book_complete.html
Another monumental
series that contains abundant information and extensive analysis about the
Orientalization of the Roman Empire is the German ANRW – 'Aufstieg und
Niedergang der römischen Welt' (Rise and Fall of the Roman World). It goes
without saying that any proper, unbiased and complete presentation of the Roman
World indispensably mentions the expansive diffusion of Oriental religions,
cults, mysteries and cultures across the Roman Empire and Europe.
http://www.bu.edu/ict/anrw/pub/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aufstieg_und_Niedergang_der_r%C3%B6mischen_Welt
XXVI.
Heliodorus, Aethiopica, and the Sublime Idealization of Meroe in Late Antiquity
Greco-Roman Literature
The interconnection of
the Asiatic, African and European nations that occurred over the span of many
centuries, after the re-opening of the Old Suez Canal (linking the Nile to the
Red Sea; ca. 520-510 BCE) by Darius the Great, the Achaemenid emperor of Iran,
was the most groundbreaking change that occurred in the History of the Mankind
prior to the diffusion of Islam. In the world before the establishment and
expansion of the universal Achaemenid Empire, there were commercial and
cultural exchanges among nations, but they remained at a rudimentary level.
However, following the
maritime connection of the Iranian province of Kemet / Egypt with Persia (Fars),
the central province of Iran, many earlier commercial roads were interlinked
into a unified network across most of the lands between the Atlantic and the
Pacific; this is exactly what we nowadays call "silk-, spice-, and
incense-trade across land-, desert-, and sea-routes" or in brief, silk
roads. This fact triggered the interconnection of most nations over the three
continents between the Atlantic and the Pacific. As a consequence, the
diffusion of Oriental religions, cults, mysteries and cultures across the Roman
Empire and Europe brought about reciprocal knowledge, mutual understanding,
shared values, and common heritage that –all- had nothing to do with either
with the civil wars of Ancient Greece or with the Ancient Roman stratocracy.
This is the reason why
references to the barbarians of Ancient Greece and the savages of Ancient Rome
were necessary for the 15th c. uncivilized Western Europeans, who wanted to
expand overseas; and that's why they made of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome
the supposedly 'classical world' of Human History. Without the Ancient Greek texts
about the ceaseless local fratricidal wars among the Ancient Greek
cities-states, …
without the Latin texts
about the anti-Carthaginian (anti-Punic), i.e. anti-African, racism of the
Romans, …
without the dirty
material interests, the hypocrisy, the greed, and the sinful context of the
Ancient Greek and Roman pseudo-republics, and …
without projecting all
those monstrous, repugnant and hideous massacres, those immoral and valueless
societies, and those ignorant and faithless mindsets onto the rest of the world,
which they targeted for corruption and destruction,
….. the colonial powers
would never achieve to destroy numerous lofty civilizations and to profane the
entire world in the way they managed to.
In striking contrast
with the modern European colonials, their racist pseudo-academia, and their bogus-historical
dogma, the Ancient Greeks and the Ancient Romans, who interacted with Oriental,
Asiatic and African for many long centuries, accepted the Oriental values,
ideals, worldviews, and principles of a sacred life within a universal empire,
and they were progressively civilized, abandoning the unholy notions of
democracy, republic, and politics, and searching the ideal society, the perfect
order, and the divine blessings in parts of the Orient, namely in Asia or
Africa.
Writing in Ancient
Greek, 900 years after the first among the Ancient Greek philosophers went to
study in the great temples-universities of Babylon and Kemet/Egypt, the
Aramaean mystic, priest and author Heliodorus of Emessa (today's Homs in Syria;
3rd - 4th c. CE) locates the culmination point of his symbolic and mythical
narrative in Meroe. Those days may well have been a period of decay for Meroe,
as the scarcity of the Meroitic sources and monuments during the end of the 3rd
and the 4th c. CE suggests instability, incursions, turmoil and gradual collapse.
However, the magnificent reputation of Meroe as capital of Ethiopia in today's
Butana in Central Sudan still radiated across the Mediterranean world. In
Greek, the author's name means 'the present of the Sun', and this allows us to
understand that his family rather stressed the Mithraic traits and concepts of
their faith.
Meroe has had a long
record of eulogies and encomia among Ancient Greek authors as the superlative
land, capital and kingdom at the southernmost confines of the surface of the
Earth. Even Herodotus, who traveled throughout Kemet/Egypt and down to
Syene/Aswan in the 5th c. BCE, included majestic references to Meroe in the 3rd
book of his Histories (chapters 17-18), speaking about the illustrious 'Table
of the Sun'; he briefly mentioned this mysterious and hitherto unidentified
table, while describing of the military expedition that the Achaemenid Iranian Emperor
Kabujiya (Cambyses) undertook against Ethiopia (Sudan). Modern scholars
attempted to make a materialistic and senseless equation, pretending that
Herodotus' 'Table of the Sun' in Meroe is a typical Ancient Kemetian/Egyptian
and Cushitic/Meroitic table of offerings; but the text of Herodotus contradicts
them totally.
The excerpt reads as
follows:
After this
Cambyses [King of Persia] took counsel with himself, and planned three
expeditions. One was against the Carthaginians, another against the Ammonians,
and a third against the long-lived Ethiopians, who dwelt in that part of Libya
which borders upon the southern sea. . . while his spies went into Ethiopia,
under the pretense of carrying presents to the king, but in reality to take
note of all they saw, and especially to observe whether there was really what
is called "the table of the Sun" in Ethiopia. Now the table of the
Sun according to the accounts given of it may be thus described: It is a meadow
in the skirts of their city full of the boiled flesh of all manner of beasts,
which the magistrates are careful to store with meat every night, and where
whoever likes may come and eat during the day. The people of the land say that
the earth itself brings forth the food. Such is the description which is given
of this table.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Herodotus/3a*.html
https://collections.carlos.emory.edu/objects/25694/relief-of-a-woman-seated-at-a-table-of-offerings
https://www.anecdotesfromantiquity.com/the-table-of-the-sun/
Heliodorus' Aethiopica
(a text totaling ca. 103.000 words) is described as an 'Ancient Greek novel' by
various experts in Comparative Literature, colonial philologists, ignorant
Classicists, and racist historians or historians of Art. Of course, I must
admit that, starting with Renaissance, Heliodorus' text had indeed a second
life, as it was not only studied by academics, but also used as inspiration for
novels by European writers, adapted by playwrights, transformed into a libretto
for an homonymous opera, depicted in numerous paintings, and even featured as
design in palatial carpets. However, the fascination of Modern Europeans with
Aethiopica is totally unrelated to Heliodorus, his great opus, its real
meaning, and the purpose for which it was written.
An analysis of the
spectacular narrative is not within the scope of the present article, but I
have however at this point to stress the fact that Heliodorus was an initiate and
priest (or a high priest) of Elagabalus (see previous unit XXV: Silk Roads and the
Prevalence of Oriental Civilization in Greece, Rome and Europe: Aramaean,
Anatolian, Phoenician Spirituality, Gnostics, and the Manichaeans of Alexandria).
The text of Aethiopica was apparently written for the needs of his disciples
and the mystics, who participated in Elagabalus' mysteries. The numerous
mentions of Ancient Kemetian/Egyptian concepts, notions, and perceptions of the
Divine World, the setting of the narrative in the Nile Valley (Kemet/Egypt and
Cush/Ethiopia) and Greece, the Iranian names of several heroes of the story,
and the location of the final episode of the plot in Meroe suggest that Heliodorus
has instituted or studied in a school of spirituality, which attempted to merge
Kemetian / Egyptian and Cushitic / Meroitic spirituality and soteriology,
Aramaean mysteries, Iranian esoteric, mythical traditions and names, and Greek
holy shrines for the needs of an apparently Greek-speaking audience of
Aramaeans, Romans, Greeks and Iranians of Emessa (Homs).
In fact, Heliodorus'
Aethiopica (involving ten chapters; and thus reflecting the Kemetian/Egyptian
and Cushitic/Meroitic preference for the decimal system) is a masterpiece of mystical
literature full of notions of eschatology and soteriology, as it ends with a
holy marriage at Meroe. The perils, obstacles, threats and adversities that the
two main characters (Theagenes, Chariclea) encounter correspond to rites of
initiation that Heliodorus' school of spirituality applied to their neophytes. Already,
the selection of the aforementioned theophoric names hints at the major
messianic figures of the Myth of Osiris. In Greek, Chariclea means 'the glory
of the joy' and Theagenes signifies 'the offspring of God'.
https://www.name-doctor.com/name-chariclea-meaning-of-chariclea-47892.html
https://www.name-doctor.com/name-theag%C3%A9nes-meaning-of-theag%C3%A9nes-55994.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliodorus_of_Emesa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aethiopica
https://www.elfinspell.com/HeliodorusTitle.html
https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/3210/321027646009.pdf
I herewith include a
brief excerpt from Heliodorus' Aethiopica (10th chapter), in which Meroe and
the surrounding landscape are described. To offer a geographical clarification,
I only add the explanation that 'Nile' means the united Nile; 'Astaboras' is
the Greek form of the Ancient Meroitic name of Atbarah River; and 'Asasoba' is
another, now-extinct river, which was also tributary to the united Nile (like
Atbarah / Astaboras). The text refers also to the confluence of the White Nile
and Blue Nile, which takes place at today's Khartoum. The description of Meroe
as an island was quite typical during the Antiquity; a triangular piece of land
surrounded by three rivers was viewed by definition as an island.
The excerpt reads as
follows:
Meroe the chief
city of Ethiopia is a three-cornered island about which do run navigable
rivers, the Nile, and the Astabora and the Asasoba. At the topmost point is the
Nile, which there divides itself into two parts; the other two rivers run on
both sides one by the other, and then meeting fall into the Nile, and yield
their waters and their name. The island is very large and almost imitates the
mainland — for it is three hundred three score and fifteen miles long and six
score and five broad — and it engenders beasts of wonderful greatness of all
kinds and especially elephants. Trees grow there without the work of men, and
it brings forth much other fruit. There are palm trees of great height which
bear stores of dates, and corn and wheat of such tallness that it will hide a
man on horseback and even sometimes though he sits upon a camel. And the reeds
that grow there are such as we spake of before.
https://www.elfinspell.com/HeliodorusBk10.html
XXVII.
Blemmyes, Nubians, Axumites and the End of Meroe
During the 3rd c. CE,
major tribal conflicts and movements started taking place on both sides of the
Nile and the region between the First and the Second Cataracts seems to have
been destabilized. Desecration of holy shrines venerated by opposite ethnic
groups became a practice. In the temple of the Nubian god Mandulis at Talmis
(Kalabsha), the Roman Governor Aurelius Besarion {also known as Ammonius (Αὐρήλιος Βησαρίων alias Ἀμμώνιος),
i.e. believer of the Theban god Amun} had to intervene (ca. 250 CE) and forbid
the presence of swine; this means that Blemmyes had desecrated the temple of
the Noubai (or Nobadai, i.e. the Nubians). The situation may well have
interrupted the contacts between Meroe and Rome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romans_in_Sub-Saharan_Africa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuke_Kome
https://www.academia.edu/392078/On_the_Location_of_Leuke_Kome
https://www.academia.edu/14825342/Roman_Policy_on_the_Red_Sea_in_the_second_century_AD
https://www.trismegistos.org/ref/detail.php?ref_id=127591
What Aurelius Besarion was
able to do ca. 250 CE, the Romans were not able to achieve 50 years later. An
attempt to interfere in the conflicts between the Blemmyes and the Noubai would
be consuming too much time and even more energy from the Roman side at a time
many parts of the Roman frontiers in the East were under the attacks of the Iranians
and other invaders. Even worse, the entire Roman empire was crossing a period
of upheaval. That is why in 298 CE Diocletian withdrew the Roman forces from
Dodekaschoenus, made of the region of Aswan (the Nile's First Cataract) the
empire's southernmost border in the Nile Valley, fortified the place, and
signed a treaty with the warring parts, namely the Blemmyes and the Nubians. About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blemmyes
https://sudaneseonline.com/en2/publish/Articles_and_Analysies_12/Sudan_s_Beja_Blemmyes_and_their_Right_to_Freedom_a_929.shtml
Olympiodorus Thebaeus
(i.e. from Thebes of Egypt, today's Luxor), writing slightly more than 120
years after the events (ca. 422-424 CE), recorded the disorderly situation that
prevailed in the region of Dodekaschoenus, because of the ceaseless wars
between the Blemmyes and the Noubai (Nubians). Only fragments of his works have
been preserved by Eastern Roman authors, sages, and polymaths, notably Photius
who was twice the patriarch of Constantinople (Photius, Bibl. Cod. 80) in the
9th c. CE. Published in the series Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum (5 vols),
they can be found online in the Digital Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum
(DFHG); the specific fragment (paragraph 37) is available here (Ancient Greek
text and Latin translation):
http://www.dfhg-project.org/DFHG/digger.php?what%5B%5D=author%7COLYMPIODORUS+THEBAEUS&onoffswitch=on
Details were recorded
more extensively, 250 years after Diocletian's visit to Aswan, by the Eastern
Roman historian Procopius, who lived at the time of Justinian I in the middle
of the 6th c. CE. In the 19th book (chapters 27-37: 1.19.27-1.19.37) of his
opus 'About the Wars' (in Ancient Greek: Υπέρ των Πολέμων - Hyper ton Polemon; Latin
translation: De Bellis), Procopius of Caesarea (a city in Palestine) offers an
enthralling description of Diocletian's arrival in the Roman Empire's
south-easternmost confines and of the chaotic situation that prevailed there at
those days. The text in Ancient Greek and in English translation can be found
here (Procopius, De Bellis, XIX 27-37):
http://khazarzar.skeptik.net/pgm/PG_Migne/Procopius%20Caesariensis_PG%2089/De%20bellis.pdf
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0670%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D19%3Asection%3D37
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/History_of_the_Wars/Book_I#XIX
About: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procopius
As it appears the
relations between Meroe and Rome were cut some time in the middle of the 3rd c.
CE. Archaeological evidence from the region between the First and the Third
cataracts suggests that the Meroites, after the retreat of the Romans at 298
CE, invaded and inhabited several sites for some period. But the consequences
of the long lasted conflict between the Blemmyes and the Noubai (Nubians) had a
dire impact on Meroe, cutting the capital of Cush from its main commercial
partners in Roman Egypt and the Mediterranean World. During the 4th c. CE, we
know that Meroe progressively collapsed. The outcome of the Blemmyo-Nubian wars,
which took place at the end of the 3rd c. and during the 4th c. CE, shook the
Meroitic kingdom from its foundations and eventually brought about its end,
already before the military expedition and the conquest of Meroe by king Ezana of
Axumite Abyssinia (ca. 360-370) took place. These wars also predetermined the area
where the two nations, i.e. the Nubians and the Blemmyes/Bejas, have lived ever
since, namely the Valley of the Nile (Nubians) and the Eastern Desert and the
Red Sea coastal zone (Blemmyes/Bejas).
Among the unruly
nations, which were in conflict at the time on both sides of the Nile and
throughout the Eastern Desert, the most bellicose element was the Cushitic
Blemmyes. The Cushitic dexterity in battle apparently impressed the Copts, the
Greeks, and the Romans, and a hitherto unknown poet (using most probably the
pseudonym of 'General Germanus') composed an epic or a panegyric to celebrate
the 'Blemmyomachia' (Fight against the Blemmyes) and his victory over the
rebels. Fragments of the text have been preserved in papyri from Kemet/Egypt {P.
Berol. (= Papyri der Staatlichen Museen Berlin) 5003}; it is most probably dated
in the 2nd half of the 4th c. Some scholars attributed the poem to Olympiodorus
Thebaeus, but this idea seems to be wrong.
The text and its
English translation can be found in the series FHN ('Fontes Historiae
Nubiorum'/'Sources of the History of Nubians'), vol. III, p. 1182-1185, no 326
(The Blemmyan War). Also:
Blemmyomachia (ch. XI,
unit 1, p. 108)
https://ia800901.us.archive.org/20/items/epischeundelegis00schuuoft/epischeundelegis00schuuoft.pdf
About:
M. Steinrück, 'Neues zur Blemyomachie'; in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und
Epigraphik, vol. 126 (1999), p. 99-114;
L.S.B. MacCoull,
'Papyrus fragments from the Monastery of Phoebammon', in: Proceedings of the
Sixteenth International Congress of Papyrology (New York, 24-31 July 1980; Chico),
p. 491-498;
E. Livrea, Anonymi
fortasse Olympiodori Thebani: Blemyomachia (P.Berol.5003), Meisenheim am Glan
(1978)
https://www.late-antique-historiography.ugent.be/database/works/825
https://www.persee.fr/docAsPDF/rea_0035-2004_1983_num_85_1_5540_t1_0164_0000_3.pdf
http://dc3-01.lib.duke.edu/dclp/64704?rows=2&start=0&fl=id,title&fq=author_str:Olympiodorus&sort=series+asc,volume+asc,item+asc&p=0&t=0
About the series FHN:
'Fontes Historiae
Nubiorum'/'Sources of the History of Nubians' is a very wrong title for a very
good scholarly work, because the contents included in the series, namely the
textual and epigraphic evidence collected, translated and discussed, do concern
indeed several different nations: the Ancient Kemetians / Egyptians, the Ancient
Cushites / Meroites, the Greeks and the Romans who were present in the region, the
Nubians, the Blemmyes, and several other indigenous nations. The fallacious
title is therefore an unprecedented distortion, because it covers no more than
5% of the contents. It is tantamount to writing the 'History of Portugal' and
titling the book as 'History of Europe'. However, the subtitle of the series is
correct: 'Textual Sources for the History of the Middle Nile Region between the
Eighth Century BCE and the Sixth Century CE'. Here you can get a chronological
idea about the contents of the series:
Fontes Historiae
Nubiorum I-IV
https://digitalt.uib.no/handle/1956.2/3083
v. 1. From the eighth
to the mid-fifth century BC
v. 2. From the mid-fifth
to the first century BC
v. 3. From the first to
the sixth century AD
v. 4. Corrigenda and indices
https://ia803207.us.archive.org/9/items/romaindavid4_hotmail_FHNI/FHN%20I.pdf
https://archive.org/details/fonteshistoriaen0003unse
More than a century
separates us from the time of John Garstang's excavations in Meroe (1910-1914),
but the major questions then formulated about the demise of the great African
empire remain still unanswered. With capital at Meroe, this kingdom radiated across
Northern Africa and the entire Sahara for ca. 800 years (500 BCE-300 CE), but
its end is a mystery until now.
Numerous excavations
took place in Sudan over the past century and they abundantly documented
various stages of the Meroitic civilization. Archaeological teams unearthed
scores of valuable monuments in earlier unknown sites; the dramatic increase in
the material record gathered and studied certainly helps better reconstruct the
Ancient History of Meroe. However, this situation has had only minor impact on
our understanding of the end of Meroe. There are several reasons for this. As a
matter of fact, since the early 20th century, divergence of opinion among
scholars has always existed as regards the reasons that caused the fall of
Meroe and the conditions under which this event took place.
In my communication
(Meroitic/Oromo Ethiopian Continuity: Call for a Research Project) in the Oromo
Studies Conference in 2005 (Washington D.C.), I categorized the various
scholarly opinions about the end of Meroe into five (5) groups. The text of the
communication was published in the 2005 Conference Proceedings by the Oromo
Studies Association (Journal of Oromo Studies, vol. 14 no 1 (February-March
2007), p. 7-33); the entire volume can be found here: https://www.oromostudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/JOS-Volume-14-Number-1-2007.pdf
The five categories can
be found in the unit 'The End of Meroe' (p. 13) here: https://www.academia.edu/34472471/Meroitic_Oromo_Ethiopian_Continuity_Call_for_a_Research_Project
A slightly
edited/updated version can be found here:
https://www.academia.edu/24273923/The_Meroitic_Ethiopian_Origins_of_the_Modern_Oromo_Nation_By_Prof_Dr_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis
The end of Meroe is
certainly a very perplex affair and more recently, it became quite obfuscated
by today's politicized scholars' unintelligible garbage, which is due to their
extremist and uncontrollable indoctrination. The problem does not concern only
the sector of Egyptology and Cushitic/Meroitic Archaeology, but it is general,
covering all fields of the Humanities. In order to maintain in validity the
colonial falsehood that had been diffused by earlier, pioneering Orientalists
and Africanists, today many academics, specialists and scholars cover the true
data under an enormous layer of uselessly ideologized jargon and thus 'fight'
against chimeras, tilting at windmills like Don Quixote. For the
non-specialist, this attitude is surely catastrophic, because it keeps all
ordinary people in absolute darkness about the historical facts and the
archaeological findings. In reality, average people are able to easily detect
the nonsense, if this is phrased in simple words; that's why today's mostly
ignorant and largely pathetic scholars stick to their ludicrous jargon in order
to keep the normal people far from their worthless gobbledygook.
Vicious neo-colonial
academics, like the notorious Patrice Lenoble, can unfortunately be opinionative
enough to think everything they thought and to write everything they wrote in
order only to oppose (and hypothetically 'refute'!) every single word and
sentence published by the distinguished American scholar George Andrew Reisner
(1867-1942), because they imagine that 'he was a racist'. Of course, the
'Father of American Archaeology' (G. A. Reisner) was not a racist, but a
truthful scholar, who excavated in Cush (Sudan), Kemet (Egypt) and Palestine
(not 'Judaea', and surely not 'Israel') and described his findings very
accurately, while also formulating his conclusions wisely. However, these
descriptions do not correspond to the fallacious concepts and the criminal
politics of the modern Zionist, Jesuit and Freemasonic gangsters, who
monopolize the authority of today's bogus universities of the Western countries.
Consequently, texts
like the one below testify only to deliberate distortion of facts and to
fallacious interpretation due to extreme, radical and fanatic indoctrination:
Patrice Lenoble and
Nigm ed Din Mohammed Sharif,'Barbarians at the gates? The royal mounds of El
Hobagi and the end of Meroë' (published online by Cambridge University Press:
02 January 2015)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/barbarians-at-the-gates-the-royal-mounds-of-el-hobagi-and-the-end-of-meroe/BEACC76991495F2278E79FBBA8DE4E98
El Hobagi is a
remarkable site though, located 65 km southwest of Meroe; it bears witness to
the fact that in some cases there was Cushitic-Meroitic continuity in
post-Meroitic times; but people were apparently migrating. Plenty of typical
Meroitic objects were excavated and also one brief Meroitic inscription was
found there; the presence of many weapons demonstrates that this community of
migrating Meroites was in war or they had to be continually ready for war. It
is however interesting that the site, which has no traces of Christian remains,
was abandoned, after it was inhabited for the span of few generations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El-Hobagi
https://books.google.bg/books?id=GSAyC6Mwn0kC&pg=PA272&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
Several other
archaeological sites in the region between Meroe and the confluence of the Blue
Nile and the White Nile bear witness to early migratory movements. The area of
El Salha and the nearby Al Khiday cemetery near Omdurman in Central Sudan have
been the focus of systematic excavations over the past decade; they testify to
Late Meroitic and post-Meroitic burials. About:
Romain David, Donatella
Usai, Sandro Salvatori, Tina Jakob, 'The Al Khiday Cemetery in Central Sudan
and its 'Classic/Late Meroitic' Period Graves', Journal of African Archeology
12/2, 2014, p. 183-204.
https://www.academia.edu/8512478/The_Al_Khiday_Cemetery_in_Central_Sudan_and_its_Classic_Late_Meroitic_Period_Graves_Journal_of_African_Archeology_12_2_2014_p_183_204
https://core.tdar.org/document/429361/a-view-from-the-periphery-bioarchaeology-and-funerary-archaeology-at-al-khiday-central-sudan
It may sound bizarre,
but I have to further expand on the topic, because the end of Meroe, pretty
much like many other archaeological and historical topics, has today been
highly politicized and ideologized. Excavating Cushitic, Meroitic and
post-Meroitic sites, Reisner unearthed monuments that testify to absolute
collapse of civilization across the Middle Nile Region (from Aswan to Khartoum)
after the fall of Meroe. Avoiding a term that would clearly denote ethno-linguistic
association and identification, Resiner named the material record left by
people, who settled in numerous sites of the Meroitic Empire's northern
circumference after the fall of Meroe, as X-Group culture.
He rightfully described
them as migrant barbarians, because compared with the earlier imperial culture
and the magnificent remains of the highly developed and extremely sophisticated
Cushitic-Meroitic civilization, the newcomers were inferior, unsophisticated,
and primitive. This is very correct. There is nothing wrong with it; there have
been civilized Africans and barbaric Africans; there have been civilized
Asiatics and barbaric Asiatics; there have been civilized Europeans and
barbaric Europeans; and there have been civilized Pre-Colombian Americans and
barbaric Pre-Colombian Americans. Barbaric nations are part of History indeed.
And the science of History consists mainly in the search for truth. Academic
research, scientific scholarship, and the exploration of the past cannot be the
field where anyone has to express his own psychologically unbalanced mind,
ideological paranoia, farfetched theory, political corruption, and evil agenda.
On the other hand, it
also correct to associate X-Group culture with Noubai/Nubians and the kingdom
of Nobatia, which was constituted ca. 70-80 years after the fall of Meroe in
the middle of the 5th century. About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Group_culture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Andrew_Reisner
Look at this racist,
Zionist garbage against G.A. Resiner to get a small idea about today's
anti-African politicized gibberish:
https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-10-31/how-father-american-egyptology-underestimated-what-some-call-real-life-wakanda
https://www.berkshirefinearts.com/10-25-2019_ancient-nubia-now.htm
I mention only one type
of problems associated with the interpretation of the fall of Meroe, so that
average people today effectively get an insight into the dirty motives of
various pseudo-academics. Non-specialists must definitely be helped to discern
the reasons for which many fallacies, many false names, and an extraordinary historical
forgery are attested in so numerous articles, books and speeches of today's
historians and archaeologists about Nubia. As a matter of fact, the existence
of a worldwide group of power, which intends to promote the formation of a
Nubian state in parts of today's Egypt's and Sudan's territory, is the reason
for which the members of this group of power cannot admit in public the
historical fact that the ancestors of today's Nubians were initially uncultured
barbarians whose material culture was dramatically inferior to the heritage of
the Ancient Cushites / Meroites and to the legacy of the Ancient Kemetians /
Egyptians.
That's why a systematic
and overwhelming effort has been undertaken worldwide in order to Nubianize the
Cushitic and Meroitic monuments, to falsify the Ancient History of Cush and
Meroe, to fallaciously attribute it to Nubians, thus depriving today's Oromos,
Sidamas, other Cushitic nations of Ethiopia, and Central Sudan's
Arabic-speaking Sudanese from the common, national and cultural heritage that
belongs to all of them. And this was the topic of my communication ("Fake
Nubia: a Colonial Forgery to deprive Cushitic Nations from National
Independence, Historical Identity and Cultural Heritage") in the 5th
Annual International Conference of the Network of Oromo Studies, which was held
electronically on 27 February 2021 (NOS: http://networkoromostudies.com/; see
above: Part A)
XXVIII. The End of Meroe and the Rise of Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia: Terminus-post-quem and Terminus-ante-quem for the Early Migratory Wave
As I already said, the
end of Meroe is a very perplex historical event. Without having a clear idea
about the interminable wars between the Blemmyes and the Nubians, which may
have lasted over 150 years (250-400 CE), until the two nations finally settled
in distinctly separate regions (the Nubians only in the Nile Valley and the
Blemmyes / Bejas exclusively in the Eastern Desert and the Red Sea coastal
zone), we will not be able to accurately realize how Meroe collapsed. It would
also be important to know on whose side the last Qore (Kings) of Meroe fought,
whose attacks they had to repel, what collateral damages incurred, and how all
these developments weakened the Meroitic rule. It seems that the entire
northern part of the Meroitic kingdom from the Nile to the Red Sea had been
affected: the Batn al Hagar, the Abri-Delqo Reach, the Dongola Reach, and the
Abu Hamed Reach were probably out of the Meroitic control during the last 50-70
years of Meroitic royal authority. Maps and geographic details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Nubia
If we take into
consideration the fact that Axumite Abyssinian inscriptions in Ge'ez and in Ancient
Greek mention indeed Abyssinian attacks against also the Nubians (stating the Axumite
victories over them), we realize that the entire problem was of enormous extent
and it endangered also Axum, which was located farther. The existence of
post-Meroitic sites in the region around today's Khartoum and in the Gezirah
province of Central Sudan demonstrates that the Cushitic inhabitants of the
central regions of Meroe (the 'Shendi Reach') had only one way to escape the
attacks of the Nubians from the North and the incursions of the Axumite
Abyssinians from the East, namely to migrate beyond the Meroitic kingdom's
southwestern confines and further to the south in the lands between the Blue
and the White Nile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gezira_(state)
For the issue of the
Meroitic migration to the South (across Gezirah, and then alongside the White
Nile, toward the area of today's borders between the modern states of Sudan,
South Sudan, and Ethiopia), the conditions
and the circumstances that caused the final collapse of Meroe play a relatively
small role. The apparent scarcity of population in the main Meroitic sites
during the post-Meroitic period is a major issue that demands explanation. This
becomes more imperative, since there is no evidence (either textual or
archaeological) of massive extermination of conquered populations. Irrespective
of the reasons and the circumstances under which the migration started (either
some Meroites migrated first to avoid the Nubians attacking from the North or other
groups of Meroites moved later following the incursion of the Axumite
Abyssinian king Ezana), the relocation movement of the first groups (or the 'early
migratory wave') generated its own dynamics and many Meroites imitated them in
the subsequent decades. I have to repeat at this point that, supporting the
thesis about the Meroitic migrations to the South, I mainly speak of the
Cushitic inhabitants of the central (the 'Shendi Reach') and the southern
regions of Meroe.
Various discussions
about the end of Meroe can be found here:
Stanley M. Burstein, 'Axum
and the Fall of Meroe', Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, vol.
18 (1981), pp. 47-50 (4 pages)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40000342
Stanley M. Burstein,
'Sayce's Axumite Inscription from Meroe'
http://www.meroiticnewsletter.org/MeroNews25d.pdf
Supplementum
Epigraphicum Graecum (SEG) 24-1246. Meroe (nunc Khartoum in Museo Historico).
Epistula regis Meroae, s. Vp(?).
Entry: Titulum ab A. H.
Sayce, Proc. Soc. Bibl. Archaeol. XXXI 1909, 189/90, c. del. pl. XXIV,
primum iuris publici factum, denuo ed. F. Altheim et R. Stiehl, Klio XXXIX
1961, 242/8, c. im. ph.
https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/supplementum-epigraphicum-graecum/seg-24-1246-meroe-nunc-khartoum-in-museo-historico-epistula-regis-meroae-s-vp-a24_1246?s.num=9897&s.start=9880
Terminus post quem,
i.e. limit after which one can date the beginning of the early migratory wave,
can be fixed at around the middle of the 4th c. CE. There may actually have
been more than one Axumite Abyssinian attacks against Meroe, and before them,
several devastating events may have already been caused by Nubian attacks. The
early migrations may have consisted of many numerous local events, which over
the span of some decades (340-400 CE) ultimately generated a major exodus of
the central and the southern populations of the Meroitic kingdom. It is
reasonable to assume that there have been numerous provisory 'stations' during
this movement, because the expectation for a return to the old capital and
cities may have been very strong in the beginning. The aforementioned site of
El Hobagi must have only been one of these 'stations'. The problem in this
regard is the fact that, until recently, 'Sudan Archaeology' meant practically
field work in few sites and almost exclusively in the area between Meroe and
the Egyptian border. The misperception as per which Ancient Cush/Meroe was
often viewed as an 'annex' of Ancient Kemet/Egypt played a negative role in
this regard. The same is true also for the idea or mentality that excavations
are worthwhile only when major monuments are attested in the surface survey.
Terminus ante quem,
i.e. limit before which we have to date the completion of the early migratory
wave, can be fixed at approximately the middle or even the final decades of the
6th c. CE. As anyone can understand, this means an enormous period of time of
approximately 200-240 years (340-580 CE) during which several migration
movements toward the South may have taken place; all of them viewed together
consist the 'early migratory wave'. A very interesting point is the fact that
the rise of the three Christian kingdoms in the area of today's Sudan was
entirely due to impact originating from the North, i.e. Christian Roman Egypt,
and not from the Southeast-East, namely Axumite Abyssinia. This clarifies
something very important: king Ezana's incursion and destruction of Meroe did
not actually happen as an attempt to diffuse Christianity in Meroe. This
reality will be discussed and elucidated further below, in the next unit.
Actually, there has
never been found the slightest sign to indicate an Axumite Abyssinian policy to
proselytize Meroites or to impose in any way Christianity as religion in the
part of Meroe that seems to have been temporarily occupied by king Ezana. And
there is no indication that the Axumite Abyssinian control over the
southeastern regions of Meroe lasted for more than perhaps just few years. As a
matter of fact, there was never an Axumite Abyssinian church built in today's
Sudanese territory. This renders king Ezana's pretension (as written down in
his victorious stele, which was found in Meroe) a worthless assertion
meaninglessly articulated by his courtiers and pompously inscribed by his
scribes.
Biased Western academics
and racist scholars have always tried to over-magnify the supposed importance
of king Ezana's incursion in Meroe, but this serves only as reconfirmation of
their well-known untrustworthiness. A quite typical example in this regard is
offered by the pro-Abyssinian propagandist and author Benjamin Hendrickx, a
Belgian colonialist married to a Greek and hired by the apartheid South African
regime (in 1991, by the Rand Afrikaans University, which is now known as University
of Johannesburg). This disreputable racist 'scholar' accepts Ezana's Axumite
propaganda at face value, while also erroneously calling the Axumite Abyssinian
ruler Kaleb an 'Ethiopian' (sic!). Furthermore, B. Hendrickx invented an
otherwise nonexistent 'autonomous' Ethiopian Meroitic 'principality' supposedly
located in the region of Dodekaschoenus after the evacuation of the Roman
soldiers. To add insult to injury, the incorrigible spin-doctor and white
'professor' Hendrickx of South Africa (!?!) calls the Eastern Roman Emperor
Justin I (518-527) a 'Byzantine', only to promote the racist, pseudo-historical,
Greco-centric dogma, which is still imposed in Western Europe as an insult to
the rest of the world, and notably against all Africans ('On the Withdrawal of
the Roman Troops from the Dodecaschoenos in AD 298'; https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/234768148.pdf).
Although it is widely
known that three Christian kingdoms were established in Sudan's territory,
namely (from North to South) Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia, not many specialists
have observed that the third, southernmost kingdom was formed remarkably later
than the other two. Nobatia was established first in the North, between the
first and the third cataracts (for about 600 km alongside the Nile, south of
Aswan) and with Faras as capital (in the area of today's Sudanese-Egyptian
border) – already ca. 400-420 CE. As the name suggests, Nobatia was the first
and the last state formed by the Nubians throughout History. The inscription of
king Silko on the walls of the temple of Nubian god Mandulis at Talmis
(Kalabsha) details his victory over the Blemmyes. Silko is described as
'basiliskos' (i.e. little king) of the Noubadai (Nubians) and of all the Ethiopians
(i.e. the Meroites). This is entirely propagandistic and untrue, but it also bears
witness to the transformation of the Ancient Nubian temple into a Christian
church, something that occurred in many Ancient Kemetian/Egyptian temples.
After the middle of the 5th c. only nuclei of worshippers of Isis, Horus and
other Ancient Egyptian gods were left in Upper Egypt (until they were finally
prohibited by Justinian I in 537 CE). Officially, Nobatia became Christian at
ca. 540 CE. About:
https://homepage.univie.ac.at/helmut.satzinger/Wurzelverzeichnis/Silko_Inscription.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silko
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobatia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faras
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocese_of_Faras
https://press.ierek.com/index.php/ESSD/article/downloadSuppFile/279/32
Makuria was located
south of Nobatia and stretched between the third and the sixth cataracts, thus
encompassing most of the territory of the Meroitic kingdom. In fact, Makuria is
the main Christian kingdom of Ethiopia (: Sudan), and it lasted for no less than
900 years from the 5th c. to the 14th c. The first historical references to
Makuria date back to end of the 5th c., and apparently the kingdom rose in
direct religious opposition to Nobatia; the Nubian kingdom was linked with the
Coptic Patriarchate of Alexandria and accepted Monophysitic (Miaphysite)
Christianity, whereas the kingdom of Makuria was connected to the Eastern Roman
Patriarchate of Alexandria and adhered to Orthodox ('Chalcedonian', i.e.
accepting the theological resolutions of the Council of Chalcedon – 451 CE)
Christianity.
Exactly because Nobatia
was an obstacle to cross, a Makurian delegation managed to reach Constantinople
only as late as 573. It is however noteworthy that during the early Islamic conquests,
Makuria proved to be strong enough not only to successfully repel the attacking
armies (which momentarily reached as far as Dongola in the South), but also to
save Nobatia and to limit the Islamic Caliphate territories in the North. For
several centuries, Islamic rule was exercised only in Lower (: Northern) Egypt
up to the region of Al Minia (250 km south of Cairo). The Makurian king entered
into an early agreement with the armies of the Caliphate ('Baqt') and this was
respected by both sides for many, long centuries. 8th c. Coptic chronicler John
the Deacon describes the king Merkurios of Makuria as 'the new Constantine'.
The capital of Makuria
was initially located near Napata (in the 2nd half of the 5th c. CE) and then
it was transferred at Dongola Agouza (Old Dongola), ca. 550 km south of the
Sudanese-Egyptian border. Makuria controlled an area ca. 1400 km long next to the
Nile. The Christian Makurian king commanded sizeable, adjacent parts of the
Western and the Eastern deserts, notably the Bayuda. The population of Makuria was
mainly Meroitic, but in the 5th c. CE, it was drastically reduced in comparison
with that of Meroe several centuries earlier. And the epicenter of the Meroitic
kingdom, i.e. the region around the confluence of Atbarah River with the Nile,
was scarcely inhabited in the Makurian times. To oppose the advance of the
Islamic armies in the early 9th c., Nobatia had to merge with Makuria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makuria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkurios_of_Makuria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_the_Deacon_(Egyptian_chronicler)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baqt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Group_culture
http://www.ancientsudan.org/burials_07_xgroup.htm
https://oi.uchicago.edu/museum-exhibits/nubia/x-group-culture
http://www.ancientsudan.org/dailylife_02_clothing.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20100706170708/http://www.numibia.net/nubia/sites_salvage.asp?p_Numb=13
https://web.archive.org/web/20111005022116/http://www.numibia.net/nubia/x-group.htm
XXIX.
Nobatia, Makuria, Axum, and the Christianization of Alodia (Alwa)
Whereas the
Christological differentiation between Nobatia and Makuria testifies to the critically
different ethnic-linguistic backgrounds of the two Christian kingdoms of Sudan,
the fact that the southernmost Christian kingdom of Sudan accepted the
Christian faith quite later shows how different the situation was in the wider
region of today's Khartoum and the Gezirah province ('state': wilayat'). Contrarily
to Nobatia where Christianity rose to prominence in the early 5th c., and in
contrast with Makuria where the Christian faith spread in the late 5th c., in
the region around Khartoum, Coptic (Monophysitic or Miaphysitic) Christianity
was first preached almost 100 years later: in the last two decades of the 6th
c. CE. We even have very little information about the emergence of the kingdom
of Alodia (or Alwa).
Soba, the known capital
of Alodia, has until now been mainly known through textual historical sources
(basically in Arabic Islamic historical texts). Few monuments were already noticed
in that site during the 19th and the early 20th c. by several European
travelers, notably the pioneering English Orientalist and Egyptologist E. A.
Wallis Budge. The site is located at ca. 20 km from Khartoum on the eastern (right)
bank of the Blue Nile; early excavations were undertaken in the 1900s by Wallis
Budge, in the 1910s by Somers Clarke, and the 1930s by Ugo Monneret de Villard.
Peter Shinnie excavated for two periods in the early 1950s, and later, D. A.
Welsby led the work of a team of archaeologists in the 1981 and 1982 periods;
the work continued for the years 1989-1992. Salvage excavations were undertaken
in the 2000s (by the Sudan Antiquities Service) and more recently (2019). The
site has suffered from human activities and from the Blue Nile floods,
similarly with other apparently Alodian sites between Khartoum and the 6th
Cataract, namely Abu Nafisa fort and Hosh el-Kab fort that testify to
post-Meroitic monuments down to the Funj (Islamic) times. Soba is an enormous
site (275 hectares) and until now only 1% of the area has been explored in
detail and/or excavated.
It is only to be hoped
that the Polish interdisciplinary project "Soba – the heart of Alwa",
launched in 2019-2020 by the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology
University of Warsaw and the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the
Polish Academy of Sciences, will bring fruitful results over the next few
years, thus better documenting our knowledge about the origins and the long History
of the kingdom of Alodia (or Alwa). About:
http://soba.uw.edu.pl/en/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alodia
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11759-019-09370-x.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soba_(city)
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Соба_(город)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Shinnie
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00672708309511320
http://www.sudarchrs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/SARS_SN22_Drzewiecki_et_al.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Nafisa_fort
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosh_el-Kab_fort
Jay Spaulding, The Fate
of Alodia, Meroitic Newsletter 15 October 1974 (starting p. 12)
http://www.meroiticnewsletter.org/MeroNews15.pdf
Although known also as
toponym in pre-Christian sources, Alodia (Alwa) may well have originally been a
city. However, in the first mention of Christianization of Alodia, we find a
reference to a local king, who wanted to be baptized along with his subjects.
This dates back to ca. 580-585 CE, and according to historical sources of the
same period, the king of Alodia sent a letter to the king of Nobatia, asking
the Nobatians to dispatch to Alodia a famous Coptic (: Egyptian) Monophysite /
Miaphysite Christian bishop and missionary named Longinus to preach
Christianity to the Alodians.
This event highlights
the Christological disputes, which disparaged the Christian communities from
the Atlantic Ocean to Central Asia to the Indian Ocean; the kingdom of Makuria,
in opposition to Nobatia, was aligned with the Chalcedonian Orthodox
Christianity (i.e. the Patriarchate of Constantinople), as I already said in
the previous unit. The fact that a non-Christian king of Alodia, at the end of
the 6th c. CE, wanted to be Christianized, through the help of the Nobatian
king, by a Coptic bishop (and not by the nearby Christian kingdom of Makuria) clearly
demonstrates a spiritual-cultural-royal rivalry with Makuria. Apparently, the
Alodians -at a moment they had no idea about Christianity- did not want to
accept Christianity through any contact with the Makurians. This situation
reflects spiritual and cultural differences that had existed within the
Meroitic kingdom between its northern (between Napata and Kawa, and further in
the North) and its southern (around Meroe) inhabitants. The origins of these
pre-Christian, spiritual and religious divisions that existed in both, Kemet/Egypt
and Cush/Meroe, go back to the 3rd millennium BCE {see above units V: 'Deep
Spiritual-Religious Divisions among both, Kemetians (Egyptians) and Cushites
(Sudanese: Ethiopians)' and XVII: 'Meroe's Relations with Kemet/Egypt under the
Ptolemies (305-30 BCE)'}.
This fact fully
reconfirms the aforementioned terminus ante quem; it also makes it clear that until
the end of the 6th c. (580-585) CE, there were no Christians in the region of
the epicenter and in the southern-southeastern periphery of the already bygone Meroitic
kingdom. This shows that the 'early migratory wave' lasted long and consisted
in the relocation of many Meroites from the Shendi Reach to today's Gezirah
province of Sudan and further to the South, up to the area of the modern city
of Malakal. The conversion of Alodia to Christianity, following the royal
invitation extended to a Copt Monophysitic bishop, is a major and truly
critical historical development that greatly concerns the History of the
Meroitic-Oromo migrations and the History of Christianity in Eastern Africa.
First, it is quite
indicative of the fact that the Axumite kingdom of Abyssinia never controlled
any part of the territories of today's Sudan and South Sudan, except perhaps
the territories up to Meroe and only for few years. So, one understands very
clearly that the map of the kingdom of Axum, which is disreputably published in
the respective Wikipedia entry, is a complete forgery, probably paid by the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Abyssinia (Fake Ethiopia), which has
systematically undertaken over the past decades a major propaganda effort. The
Abyssinian state's historical falsification campaign involves the
over-magnification of all things Abyssinian in order to promote worldwide its
bogus-historical dogma, while also starving and massacring the subjugated and
persecuted nations imprisoned in this obsolete, colonial and genocidal tyranny.
This is the fake map paid by the Abyssinians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum#/media/File:The_Kingdom_of_Aksum.png
Second, it shows that
the Axumites were not trusted by the Cushitic/Meroitic populations of Alodia. Despite
the fact that Axum was far closer to Alodia than either Alexandria (capital of
the Eastern Roman province of Egypt and headquarters of a leading Patriarchate)
or Faras (capital of the kingdom of Nobatia), the king of Alodia did not send
letters to Axum to ask for a bishop to evangelize Alodia.
Third, it also proves
that the Axumite kingdom of Abyssinia, although linked with the Coptic
Patriarchate of Alexandria and connected with the Eastern Roman Emperor at
Constantinople, never carried out proper Christian missionary activities,
rather constituting an isolated and marginal case. By the time the king of
Alodia dispatched his letter to his counterpart in Nobatia, the descendants of
king Kaleb in Axum had faced a stinging defeat in Yemen at the hands of the
Sassanid Iranian army sent there by Emperor Khusraw I of Iran (Axum had sent an
army to Yemen, following an imperial demand from Constantinople).
Fourth, this event also
shows that, in fact, the kingdom of Axum was a non-African, Yemenite kingdom on
African soil and therefore alien to all the Hamitic and Cushitic kingdoms and
states, which stretched from Africa's northeastern corner to the Black
Continent's south-easternmost confines inhabited during the Late Antiquity (the
northern coast of today's Mozambique). We can consequently realize that Ezana's
incursion of Meroe was rather an isolated event, which took place most probably
due to the threatening Nubian attacks across the eastern territories of the then
ailing Meroitic kingdom.
Fifth, it is also
interesting to notice that, although Constantinople used Axum to support the
Eastern Roman interests in Yemen against Iran, no Eastern Roman emperor had the
'foresight' to ask the Axumites to evangelize the Alodian Meroites. This is
also quite telling.
Longinus was a famous
bishop and missionary, who consolidated Coptic Monophysitic / Miaphysitic
Christianity in Nobatia first; he spent years in the Nobatian capital Faras
duly institutionalizing the local Christian kingdom against the Eastern
Orthodox Patriarchates and guaranteeing the pro-Monophysitic stance of the
Nobatians. One cannot truly understand the historical developments that took
place in Eastern Africa during the 5th and the 6th c. CE, without properly and
fully contextualizing them within the Christological disputes that caused great
and very passionate divisions, persecution and bloodshed among the Christians
of those days. Makuria, the Cushitic kingdom that was located south of Nobatia
and north of Alodia, had sided with the Eastern Roman capital Constantinople
and the Orthodox Patriarchates, against the Coptic (Monophysitic/Miaphysitic) Patriarchate
of Alexandria and Nobatia. Consequently, Makuria ferociously opposed Longinus'
travel to Alodia and effort to evangelize the local Cushitic people. However,
the tenacious missionary managed to reach Alodia and convert the local Meroites
to Coptic Monophysitic/Miaphysitic Christianity.
The major source of
information about Longinus' activities in Alodia, Nobatia and Egypt is John of
Ephesus (507-588), an Aramaean born in Amida (today's Diyarbakir in Turkey),
who was bishop of Ephesus (in today's Western Turkey) and remained until now as
one of the major Fathers of the Christian Church.
https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/cce/id/1223
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longinus_(missionary)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Ephesus#Writings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syriac_Orthodox_Church
John of Ephesus wrote a
monumental Ecclesiastical History in Syriac Aramaic in which he covered a
period of 600 years from Julius Caesar to the end of the 6th c. CE; this superb
opus consisted of three parts, and each part contained six books. The first
part seems to have probably been lost; the second part was reproduced in most
of its contents in the Syriac Chronicle attributed to Dionysius of Tell Mahre;
the third part, saved in a 7th c. manuscript, covers the narration of events
that took place in the period 571-588. One of the few translations of the third
part of the Ecclesiastical History of John of Ephesus (published by R. Payne Smith)
is available online in the site Christian Classics Ethereal Library (https://www.ccel.org/
/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Classics_Ethereal_Library / https://www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/morefathers/files/index.htm
/
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/morefathers/files/ephesus_0_preface.htm
/)
The description of
Longinus' mission to Alodia covers several paragraphs of the fourth book (of
the third part), notably paragraphs 48-53; John of Ephesus adds to his own
narrative a Letter of the King of Alodia to the King of the Nubians (Nobadae),
in which the former thanks the latter for having dispatched bishop Longinus,
and a Letter of the king of the Nobadae to Theodore of Alexandria. https://www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/morefathers/files/ephesus_4_book4.htm
The narrative about the
Christianization of Alodia includes a critical point for the reconstruction of
the Cushitic History by modern historians. John of Ephesus makes repeatedly clarifications
about the ethnic identity of the Alodians, and by so doing, he overwhelmingly
demonstrates that today's highly politicized and ideologized scholars'
assumptions and pretensions that Makuria and Alodia were 'Nubian' kingdoms and
'Nilo-Saharan' nations (like Nobatia) are misplaced, inconsistent and erroneous.
There is nothing 'Nubian' in either the Makurians or the Alodians; both nations
and kingdoms were Cushitic/Meroitic, i.e. 'Ethiopian'. The sole Nubian kingdom
was Nobatia, as I already stated.
These are the crucial
excerpts and the clarifications that John of Ephesus, a 6th c. CE Aramaean who
wrote in Syriac, made twice:
- "whom the
Greeks call Alodaei, and who are supposed to be Aethiopians"
- "the
conversion of the people whom the Greeks call Alodaei, but whom we believe to
be Aethiopians, to the Christian faith"
This means that John of
Ephesus was fully aware of the Cushitic/Meroitic Ethiopian identity of the
Alodians and he kept using the name by which Aramaeans were describing the
Meroites and the Cushites in the past.
The description of
Longinus' mission to Alodia contains several other important excerpts which
highlight critical historical points; I herewith select three excerpts, which
respectively underscore the following issues.
A) The deep hatred of
the Chalcedonian, pro-Constantinopolitan Makurians against the Aramaean, Coptic
and Nobatian Monophysitic/Miaphysitic Christianity; this excerpt is
particularly impressive:
"the
Makoritae; and when their king heard that Longinus had started on his journey,
Satan in his envy stirred him up to set watchers in all the passes of his
kingdom on all the roads, both in the mountains and in the plains, as far as
the sea of weeds 28, in hopes of arresting Longinus, and so hindering the
salvation of the powerful people of the Alodaei".
B) The existence of a
Blemmyan kingdom in the Eastern Desert and the Red Sea coastlands, with which
Christian Nobatia was in good relations indeed; the following excerpt makes
everything clear in this regard.
"But because
of the wicked devices of him who dwells between us, I mean the king of the
Makoritae, I sent my saintly father to the king of the Blemyes, that he might
conduct him thither by routes farther inland; but the Makorite heard also of
this, and set people on the look out in all the passes of his kingdom, both in
the mountains and in the plains, and as far as the sea of weeds, wishing to lay
hands on my father, and put a stop to the good work of God, as my father has
written hither to tell me. And great was the wearisomeness and the bitter
trials of soul and body which he endured in the land of the Blemyes, together
with extreme privation and want. And yet even so the wicked devices of his
enemy could not hinder the readiness of my saintly father in doing the work of
God; and the Lord our God directed his ways and ordered his paths so that he
travelled safely over long tracks of country, and escaped the strong garrisons
set in his way, although he lost his retinue of camels and the other beasts of
burden with him."
C) The diffusion of the
heresy of Julian of Halicarnassus among the Axumite Abyssinians, who seem to
have established some sort of commercial contacts with the Alodians. Longinus
is therefore mentioned (by John of Ephesus) as narrating his opposition to another
Christian heretical theory (Aphthartodocetae), which had been diffused to some
extent in Abyssinia. It is also interesting to notice how the author describes
clearly the Nubians and the Alodians ('Ethiopians') as distinct from the
Abyssinians.
"But
inasmuch as there are certain Abyssinians, who have fallen into the malady of
the fancy of Julianus, and say, that Christ suffered in a body not capable of
pain, or of death, we have told them what is the correct belief, and have
required them to anathematize this heresy in writing, and have received these
persons upon their presenting their recantation"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_of_Halicarnassus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphthartodocetae
Quite strikingly, one
of the very early references to Alodia concerns the transaction of sale:
Richard Holton Pierce, 'A
sale of an Alodian slave girl: A reexamination of papyrus Strassburg Inv. 1404'
(Symbolae Osloenses, vol. LXX, p. 148–166) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/216645651_A_sale_of_an_Alodian_slave_girl_A_reexamination_of_papyrus_Strassburg_Inv_1404
XXX.
Jebel Moya, the First and the Second Migratory Waves, and the Transformation of
the Migrant Meroites and Alodians into Oromos
When Alodia accepted
Christianity (580-585 CE), the early migratory wave of Meroites had already
been completed. A great number of descendants of the subjects of the various
Qore (kings) and Kandake (queens) of the 1st and the 2nd centuries CE lived, 400
years later, in numerous, autonomous, self-ruled communities, which were
located in an area 200-600 km south of today's Khartoum. Among them, there was
no 'Qore' anymore. That is why it is not strange in Af Somali this word was
preserved (as 'boqor': king) until now, whereas in Afaan Oromo it was not. The
two Cushitic groups separated quite early, both retained the same word for
millennia, but when one of these two groups experienced circumstances whereby the
word turned out to be useless, it simply fell in desuetude and it became
obsolete.
The early migratory
wave can be reconstituted very well, after the advance of archaeological
research in the region between the White Nile and the Blue Nile; several sites
have been excavated thus far in the Gezirah province, but the immensity of some
of them necessitates time until we can get an accurate idea about the existing archaeological
strata and the findings. In these cases, stratigraphy matters greatly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratigraphy_(archaeology)
Archaeological research
must be undertaken further in the South, beyond the region between the Sudanse
cities of Sennar and Kosti, throughout the Sennar, Blue Nile, South Kordofan,
and Upper Nile administrative regions of Sudan and South Sudan. The region
around Ed Damazin and up to Malakal must be explored systematically; this is
what the Roseires Dam heightening archaeological salvage project and the
excavations at Azaza site ROSE 5 suggest. See the Preliminary Report (by
Mahmoud Suliman Bashir, Murtada Bushara Mohamed and Mohammed Saad Abdalah —
Sudan & Nubia, No 16, pp. 132-139; published by The Sudan Archaeological
Research Society, 2012) here:
https://issuu.com/sudarchrs/docs/s_n16_mahmoud_suliman
https://www.si.edu/object/siris_sil_1032260
Greatly interesting
findings have also been unearthed in Gheresli, Abu Geili and Saqadi, three
sites in the vicinity of Sennar. In Saqadi, the church seems to have been
constructed through use/adjustment of an earlier building, which is indication
of a settlement that belonged to the early migratory wave, before it became
part of Alodia. From several sites in the Gezirah and Blue Nile regions, we get
a clear idea about sheer continuity in textile activities from Meroitic to
post-Meroitic times. This means that, when it comes to basics of communal daily
life, the migrant Meroites continued the same habits and used the same techniques
that they had inherited from their forefathers. About:
'Gheresli: a
post-Meroitic activity center in the Blue Nile region' (by Mohamed Faroug Abd
el-Rahman — Sudan & Nubia, No 10, p. 104-109; published by The Sudan
Archaeological Research Society, 2006)
https://issuu.com/sudarchrs/docs/s_n10_faroug_grs
Abu Geili and Saqadi
and Dar el Mek O. G. S. Crawford and Frank Addison (1951)
https://ils.uofk.edu/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=3058
Elsa Yvanez, 'Clothing
the elite? Patterns of textile production and consumption in Ancient Sudan and
Nubia', Fasciculi Archaeologiae Historicae, fasc. XXXI (2018), p. 81-92
https://rcin.org.pl/Content/67584/WA308_87895_PIII348_Clothing-the-Elite_I.pdf
Elsa Yvanez, 'Spinning in
Meroitic Sudan: textile production implements from Abu Geili', Dotawo 3 (2016),
p. 153–178
https://escholarship.org/content/qt5k30d90d/qt5k30d90d_noSplash_b86c40ff79a3dc79e7d71c17ccc0926e.pdf
A major site in the
wider Gezirah region is Jebel Moya; it was early excavated by the pioneering
entrepreneur, Adventist, Freemason, collector and amateur archaeologist Sir
Henry Wellcome in the period 1911–1914. The monumental size of the unusual site
required thousands of workers, and only a determined adventurer like the
American-born English businessman-turned-excavator could manage to do it, by
hiring thousands of laborers. Despite the massive scale of the excavations,
only one fifth of the entire site was dealt with until the archaeological
activities stopped because of WWI. Around 3000 tombs were reported and almost
all were excavated.
Various artifacts,
statuettes and scarabs, imitating the Meroitic style, as well as ornaments and
amulets have been unearthed, although not in big numbers as it regularly
happens in sites close to the center of the Cushitic/Napatan and the Meroitic
kingdoms. However, due to the nature of the attempt, and following several
obstacles (including Sir Henry Wellcome's death in 1936), the official report
of the excavations was first published in the late 1940s (in three volumes). As
a quarter century had passed after the excavation, numerous notes and detailed
observations were lost, and the troublesome excavation ended up with a
problematic publication and an erroneous dating. The series is available online:
The Wellcome
excavations in the Sudan (authors: Addison, Frank; Crawford, Osbert Guy
Stanhope; and Lacaille, A. D.) 1949-1951
v.1. Jebel Moya (Text)
by F. Addison, with a chapter by A.D. Lacaille
v.2. Jebel Moya
(Plates)
v.3. Abu Geili, by
O.G.S.Crawford and Saquadi & Dar el Mek, by F. Addison.
https://wellcomelibrary.org/item/b20457911#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&z=-0.6929%2C-0.0684%2C2.3857%2C1.3689
Also:
https://digitalt.uib.no/handle/1956.2/2544
http://www.sudarchrs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/SARS_SN13_Brass_opt.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4214402/pdf/raza48_455.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4851119/pdf/10437_2014_Article_9164.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wellcome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jebel_Moya
http://azharisadig.blogspot.com/p/jebel-moya-re-born.html
Jebel Moya was not only
a cemetery, but also an inhabited site with very complex stratigraphy; due to
the bothersome story of the site (an early, partly and improper excavation
followed by a late and confusing publication of the report), several other
researchers attempted to date the apparently three main periods of site
occupation, but failed to come up with plausible interpretative scenarios and
comprehensive understanding of the archaeological phenomenon of Jebel Moya. In
some extreme cases, archaeologists (particularly Rudolf Gerharz) attempted to
solve the 'problem' in the easiest manner; when they cannot duly assess the
complex details, they give a remote date.
However, most of the
site specialists nowadays reasonably date the third (last/more recent) period
of occupation in the first millennium
CE, including Late Meroitic and post-Meroitic times. It is only to be hoped
that the Jebel Moya Project will come up with further, extensive excavations, a
more systematic approach, and a pragmatist interpretation of the material
record. It is very promising that the earlier, radical and misplaced hypothesis
of Jebel Moya being inhabited only by various 'pastoralists' is by now
abandoned and that leading field scholars state clearly that Jebel Moyans were "pastoralists
and farmers" alike.
As a matter of fact,
the dimensions of this crucially important archaeological site are such that
one can be sure that, irrespective of earlier occupations (which are now
logically dated back to the 3rd, 2nd and 1st millennia BCE), Jebel Moya Phase
III represents a site of migrant Meroites, who had already spread in the wider
region for two centuries and made of this location a holy site for ancestral
commemoration. The otherwise inexplicable abandonment of Jebel Moya Phase III
at ca. 500-550 CE will be fully elucidated with the identification and
excavation of other sites further in the South in the direction of Malakal and
beyond.
https://thejebelmoyaproject.wordpress.com/
The Jebel Moya Project:
Pastoralists and Farmers in Southern Sudan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXIWXp06fxA
https://ucl.academia.edu/MikeBrass
http://meroe-project.uw.edu.pl/archaeological-sites/
A major drawback that
prevents many archaeologists from shaping an accurate idea about the sites that
they excavate is the model of archaeology that they have in mind. The academic
formation of an archaeologist involves his indoctrination with one of the
several existing theoretical models or paradigms of archaeology to which he/she
subsequently tries to adjust his/her practical field work. Models of
archaeology play a determinant role in the way excavators interpret findings
and reconstitute life as they think it took place in the past; this is so
because, in reality, these models are ways of perceiving life phenomena. The
topic is vast and an enormous literature exists in this regard. This situation
affects greatly the topic of the Meroitic-Alodian migration from the Nile
Valley through various parts of Eastern Africa to the highlands of today's
Oromia.
The reason for the
impact that the academic indoctrination and formation has on the Meroitic-Oromo
migration is the fact that until recently all the earlier models of archaeology
ostracized the concept of 'migration' and rejected the eventuality of 'foreign
impact' or 'influence', preferring (in a most mistaken manner) to study the
local findings independently from the wider context and to extremely minimize
any external influence exercised within a certain land. Why this happened is
easy to assess; anyone, studying external influences exerted on a
culture/civilization, will soon reach conclusions, which will give a lethal
blow to the still prevailing false Euro-centric (Romano-centric and
Greco-centric) dogma of History. By theorizing about an 'independent historical
evolution in every land of civilization', today's fake academics and
ideologized archaeologists thought that they will gain some time to further
diffuse their racist fallacy as 'true History'.
Consequently, what was
missing was a model of archaeology based on a Migration Theory; only recently a
real debate on migration in archaeology started taking place. This will bring
forth new viewpoints on the already existing material record; more importantly,
it will affect many Africanists' and Sudan archaeologists' approach to the
future archaeological research in the wider Eastern African region and to their
task priorities. I give an example of the new, rising concept and
archaeological model with the excerpt below; it is taken from the abstract of
an article co-authored by three scholars and published only last year.
Traditionally,
patterns of population movements were denoted from material culture and
interpreted within the context of ethnicity and the diffusion of ideas without
considering underlying processes and incentives, despite active consideration
of these issues by geographers and sociologists. It was not until the 1990s
that a more integrated archaeological discussion on the various stimuli,
influences, and mechanisms of why people choose to migrate was beginning to
evolve. Since then, the debate on migration in archaeology has not only
reflected on patterns of cultural and technological change but also
increasingly on aspects of identity and self-realization; both in terms of how
migrants themselves adapt and adjust to their new home environment, and how the
host-communities themselves respond and interact with newcomers.
McSparron, C., Donnelly, C., Murphy, E. et al. Migration, Group Agency, and Archaeology:
A New Theoretical Model, Int J Histor Archaeol 24, 219–232 (2020) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-019-00519-6
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10761-019-00519-6
In my aforementioned
(see above unit XXVII: Blemmyes, Nubians, Axumites and the End of Meroe)
communication in the Oromo Studies Conference in 2005 (Meroitic / Oromo
Ethiopian Continuity), I spoke about two migratory waves and identified their
direction as following the flow of the Blue Nile (Ed Damazin and Asosa). Over the
past 15 years, following my research, I slightly modified my early ideas about
the direction taken by the two migratory movements. Both movements consisted of
Nile river Cushitic farmers and pastoralists, but they took different direction
in their migration, although at the end, they encountered one another in the highlands
of Oromia.
The first migratory
wave (340-580 CE) advanced to the South and, after abandoning sites -already
known to us or not- in the Gezirah, the migrant Meroites proceeded further to
South, moving alongside rivers like the White Nile (of course, east of the
vast, swampy Sudd region), Sobat, Baro, Gebba, Birbir and Omo, down to the
region of the northern shores of Lake Turkana. From there, in later periods and
for different reasons, they moved northwards. This movement was triggered by the
chaotic situation, which prevailed throughout the Meroitic kingdom during the
4th c. CE, because of
a) the long lasted
fights between Blemmyes and Nubians,
b) the Nubian attacks
against Meroitic territories, which led to the collapse of Meroe, and
c) the Axumite
Abyssinian incursion in Meroe.
As migratory movement,
it consisted of many partly moves. To better visualize the movement, see maps
published here:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Nile_basin_map.png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Ethiopia_Physiography.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Nile
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobat_River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baro_River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebba_River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birbir_River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illubabor_Province
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omo_River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Turkana
The second migratory
wave (550-650 CE) was quite smaller; the migrant Cushites of the Alodian periphery
advanced to the southeast-east, moving alongside rivers like Dinder, Rahad,
Dubaba and Gelegu, and later they proceeded further to the east-southeast. This
movement was generated because of the rise of the Alodian royal rule, which
could not be easily accepted by numerous post-Meroitic communities that were
already accustomed to decentralized and autonomous self-administration. The
Christianization of Alodia (ca. 580-585 CE) may have not been a major issue for
the migrant Cushites, except for the strengthening of the royal authority that
it may have caused. These migrant Cushitic Alodians may have been part of the
early migratory wave, but they had settled in lands, which later became the
epicenter of the Alodian kingdom.
Recent archaeological
surveys and excavations in the upper flow of Gelegu river in the Amhara Region
(Qwara woreda) shed light into the Gelegu culture, which is by all means
identified as closely related to Meroitic, post-Meroitic and Alodian settlements
in the adjacent lands of Butana and Gezirah. About:
Alfredo González-Ruibal
and Álvaro Falquina, 'In Sudan’s Eastern Borderland: Frontier Societies of the
Qwara Region (ca. AD 600-1850)', Journal of African Archaeology, Volume 15,
Issue 2
https://brill.com/view/journals/jaa/15/2/article-p173_173.xml?language=en
Alfredo González-Ruibal,
'The cosmopolitan borderland: western Ethiopia c. AD 600–1800' (published
online by Cambridge University Press: 17 March 2021)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/cosmopolitan-borderland-western-ethiopia-c-ad-6001800/943C5CC549900C3C0764520024AEFCCE
Closing this overview
of topics pertaining to the Cushitic migrations across Eastern Africa, I have
once more to stress (as I already did before 15-16 years for the first time) the
need for today's Oromos to systematize their research on the following four
main axes, in order to better document, duly elucidate, plainly assess, and
accurately comprehend the Meroitic-Alodian migrations, which drove the Cushites
from the Nile Valley to the highlands of Oromia:
A- Culture, religion, spirituality,
philosophical-behavioral system
B- Archaeology
C- Linguistic-epigraphic
approach
D- Comparative anthropology
(Culturology or cross-cultural studies)
The recently increased
scientific focus on cultures and sites of the Meroitic periphery will only
facilitate the task. However, it is imperative for today's conscious and
patriotic Oromos to systematically finance the preparation of a small group of
young Oromo Egyptologists, epigraphists, Coptologists, Sudan archaeologists,
Cushitic linguists, and historians of religion, who -having studied in
non-colonial countries like Germany, Poland and Russia- will be able to
undertake this research project of national dimensions, which will reconfirm
what I already said before 15 years:
The common origins,
ethnic identity, cultural heritage, and ancestral lands of the Oromos and the
Arabic-speaking Sudanese must make of these two peoples feel that they are the
two faces of the same coin.
- The Oromos preserved
the ancestral language.
- The Arabic-speaking
Sudanese preserved the ancestral land and monuments.
It is high time that
the two peoples unite in one nation, one land, and one state and rise in force as
the ultimate resuscitation of the eternal Cush – Sudan – Oromia –Ethiopia, while
also liberating the other Cushitic nations of Eastern Africa from the Abyssinian
Amhara-Tigray barbarism, cruelty and tyranny.
