Written by Harry Bourne 

Southern Africa

This is one of four related papers of East Africa & the Sea in Antiquity; West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity; West Africa & the Atlantic in Antiquity & Abubakri II: Who He? The title of this article sequence should make self-explanatory where it fits in this sequence.

 Such terms as the A/A/A-arc, M/M/M-arc, etc, are explained as part of the background for Abubakri II: Who is He? So too are a number of problems about sailing on any part of the coasts of Africa They may make us wonder if anyone ever sailed on any part of the Indian Ocean Region (= IOR).

Sites just on the cusp of where the IOR becomes the Atlantic (or vice-versa) are claimed as showing where modern thinking first arose. They are a little to the east of Cape Agulhas at the southern tip of the continent of Africa. This means caves that are just on the eastern side of South Africa. Notable clusters are along the River Klasies and around Still Bay (esp. Blombos Cave).

Several online articles summarise this and that by Adam Schlingmann says that the River Klasies (South Africa) cave-dwellers collected shellfish plus fish. This suggests a way of life that is labelled as strand-looping or beach-combing. Christopher Hinshelwood (online) is a principal exponent of those taking this further via the Still Bay (South Africa) sites (esp. Blombos Cave). Much of this relates to the rise of rise of modern intellect. Instances of this include use of red ochre as body-colouring (as still practiced by some Cushitic tribes in east Africa), artificial rock-pools acting as fish-traps, the projectile-heads called Stillbai Points, etc.)

Stillbai Points frequently have surface-polish (? for reasons of aerodynamics) and it is suggested that they were part of fish-spears/leisters that are still used in parts of east Africa. More methods of catching fish include the early forms of fish-traps already referred to. Some interpretations of the fish-bone evidence regard that what is being shown is that a wide variety of fish were trapped but that only a narrow range was eaten. This strongly indicates some forethought went into what was going on.

The eating of raw fish collected on the beach is still being recorded millennia later from Tanzania/Kenya to Ethiopia/Eritrea of the Ichthyophagi (= Fish-eaters) of the type further described by such as Agarthachides (? 3^rd c. B.C. Greek), Strabo (1^st c. B. C. Greek), Periplus Maris Erythraei (= PME: 1^st c. A. D. Egypto/Greek), etc. The reality of what was happening over much of this vast period of time is described by Alan Villiers (The Sons of Sinbad 1940). He reports the placing of fish on beaches to be cooked by the blazing sun.

This seems to have been what lies behind the mode of life that we have seen was called that of Ichthyophagi (in Greek)/Gorchainqua (in Khoi/Khwe)/Tompo-ijo (in Bantu). Schlingmann (ib.) says boats shown by depictions on rocks and/or impressions in the sand have been revealed by excavations at sites of the Klasies River-folk themselves thought to skeletally be almost identical to present-day Khoi/Khwe. Monica Wilson is cited by Denis Montgomery (Seashore Man & African Eve 2007) as saying that some Khoi/Khwe retained a sea-fishing element in their economy but it should be said that most are noted hunter/gatherers. Felix Chami (The Unity of Ancient African History 2006) adds the long period that he regards the Khoi/Khwe as having used boats for.

This presumably means that benign fishing-regimes began earlier in southern Africa before the various Aqualithic/Wet Phases turned finally towards the hyper-aridity that is today’s Sahara Desert. How this may fit with the Ichthyophagi described by Messrs. Ptolemy (2^nd c. A.D. Egypto/Greek) and Lacroix (Africa in Antiquity 1998) is further discussed in “West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity” (online at Clarence@starry-eye.com ). This occurs in both brown-water (= lakes, rivers & coasts) plus blue-water (= deep seas = out-of-the-sight-of-land = ootsol) contexts. Ichthyophagi/related groups are shown by Mark Horton (Antiquity 1997) in Sub-Horn east Africa; by above-noted Greeks in Above-Horn east Africa; by Herodotus (5^th c. B. C. Greek) on Egyptian lakes.  

As just seen, fishing may have led on to use of boats very early. Dennis Montgomery (ib. & Eve at Home online) shows more fish-traps, fish-spears plus boats at such as Durban (formerly) in South Africa, Kosi (Sth. Africa), Inhambane (Moz.), etc. The PME shows the same at Rhapta (=? the Rufiji Delta, Kenya). W.E. Ingrams (Zanz.: Its History & Its People 1931) says the fish-spears of Zanzibar and adjacent parts of what is now Tanzania resemble those of Poseidon (the Gk. Sea-god). Word-lists by Derek Nurse (Azania 1983) take this to the Kenyan coast. If this marks Ichthyophagi-type economies, this marries with stretches from the small islands of Lamu (off Kenya) to those of the Alalious/Dahlaks (off Eritrea/ex-Ethiopia).

If this all really emanates from Still Bay, the Still Bay sites were truly influential. If further showing Ichthyophagi-type economies, these are further marked on other small islands from Lamu (off Kenya) to the Alalious/Dahlaks (off ex-Ethiopia/Eritrea). Further use of Ethiopia plus Eritrea is in the terms applied to the western Indian Ocean. Erythraean occurs in both the names of Eritrea and the term used in the Periplus Maris Erythraei (= PME = The Voyage of the Erythraean Sea) of the western Indian Ocean from eastern South Africa to Sub-Horn Somalia. Ethiopian/Zanj was used by such diverse sources as Ibn Batuta (12^th c. Arab) plus Piri Reis (14^th/15^th c. Turk) of the western Indian Ocean.

All these words originally meant Africa/African from all over Africa.   Christopher Ehret (The Civilizations of Africa 2002) plus others also refer to influences spreading across the continent of Africa. They describe the sedentism attendant on the rise of crop-planting in West Africa by (?) Proto-Bantu and that their rectangular long-houses had reached Egypt by c. 5000 B.C.

Some of the earliest cattlemen in east Africa were Sudanics but this was also shared with Nilotics, Cushitics and Bantus. Cushitic terms of Waa’ka (= the chief deity), wa’per (=? priest-kings), waa’limi/waq’limi (= an early term for king), etc, apparently passed to the Bantu of Ehret’s (ib.) Kaskasi/Kusi or Mashariki stage. Montgomery and Ehret show the easy-to-assemble conical round-houses of Khoi/Khwe hunter-gatherers and equally nomadic early cattle-herders also passed to various Bantu groups. Ehret also compared the small independent coastal chiefdoms from Rhapta to Punt and those of the Mashariki Bantus.

Montgomery (ib. & online) further that the conical round-huts just seen to closely attach to nomadic cattle-herders were also built by the decidedly non-nomadic Zulus plus Nguni. He further alludes to what anthropologists label as the Bantu Forest Pattern plus Central Cattle Pattern. The rectangular hut-plans already noted across Africa from West Africa to Pre-Dynastic Egypt are thought to belong to the Bantu Forest Pattern. Those of the Tonga/Tsonga have internal arrangements adhering to this tradition but are inside the round-huts more appropriate to the Central Cattle Pattern. Otherwise, Montgomery points to other Tonga erecting rectangular huts. However, it may yet prove that that an old idea going back to at least Carl-Richard Lepsius (19^th c. German) and revived by Messrs. Lacroix and Chami of the Bantu advance was rather earlier than generally accepted is so.

This would mean that the Bantu began their advance when they were still growers of yams plus palm-nuts not of cereals and became neighbours at dates well anterior to those that the received wisdom would have us believe. Further signs that what prevails today will not have been the case millennia comes with comparison of the Khoi/Khwe-like skeletons found at one end of Africa at Blombos (South Africa) and some of the earliest human figures depicted at the opposite or northern end of Africa in Saharan rock-art. On the Lepsius/Lacroix/Chami standpoint, the northern Khoi/Khwe merged with Phoenician colonists. It may be worth noting there are Afrocentric opinions regarding Carthaginians as becoming Africanised very quickly.

Phoenicians in North Africa could have been there as Phoenicians, the transitional Phoenico/Punics or as Carthaginians (= Punics for Rome). Strabo (1^st c. B. C.) wrote about the hippoi of the Phoenician colonists settled at Gdr/Gadir (= Gades in Latin/Cadiz in Spanish). He described them as a very poor kind of vessel. At the same time he reports they sailed for days on Atlantic waters between Gades/Cadiz in southern Iberia (=Spain & Portugal) and Lixos in northwest Africa or west Magreb (= Morocco). This was to fish for tunny off the Magreb (= North Africa west of Egypt). A hippos is said by Strabo to have found by Eudoxus (2^nd c. B. C. Greek) as a wreck somewhere that messrs. Cary & Warmington ( The Ancient Explorers 1963) felt was near Cape Delgado (Mozambique).

Another simple type was/is the raft. According to some earliest westerners writing about the arrival of Nusantarans (= Islanders from mainly the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia), the Nusantarans came on what were described as little more than open rafts. The main description was in whatever the sources were that were drawn on by Pliny in the 1^st c. A.D., so will probably date back to late centuries B.C. The Nusantarans also reached east Africa but the most famous of their western colonies was what led to the Malagasy of Madagascar. One of the better known of the Malagasy tribes was the Betisimaraka. The Betisimaraka raided the Comores (islands to the north of Madagascar) and east Africa for slaves. The slave-raids occurred over the long distances in what were no more than open canoes.

These are basic craft-types that in getting to east Africa will have met precisely the problems that we saw are alleged to have stopped Africans navigating their own coasts in the equally simple dugout-canoes. Such ancient sources as the Periplus (= Voyage) of “Necho” (as Herodotus); the Periplus of Hanno (as Pliny, Martianus Capella, etc); the wrecked Delgado hippos (as Eudoxus, Strabo, etc), may elaborate on this. If the Nusantarans/Proto-Malagasy did begin their west-going voyages at about the same time as those of the Phoenico/Punics, it is worth noting what is written about these “Phantom Voyagers” by such as Robert Dick-Read (2005), namely that the Nusantaran voyagers actually rounded Cape Agulhas.

This would mean that the circumnavigation of Cape Agulhas at the very southern tip of the continent of Africa was somewhat more frequent than generally supposed. This is certainly the conclusion of Felix Chami (ib.). We should further recall that the African dugout-canoe has also been described as a simple but sea-going form plus also that the problems met and surmounted by the equally basic Phoenico/Punic hippoi and Nusantaran rafts were also those of the west African canoes. To this added is that the dugout-canoe is a dominant type in east Africa  according to the sources drawn on by the author of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. That the dugout-canoe is a form that is paramount in West Africa and dominant in Sub-Horn east Africa, accords with the Chami (ib.) thesis that circumnavigations of Africa happened on so many more occasions than is generally accepted by most authorities. Equally to the point are the various terms of Erythraean, Ethiopian and Zanj. They are used from the above-noted prior sources by the unknown author of PME to ibn Batutta (12^th c. Arab) and Piri Reis (15^th /16^th c. Turk). They all originally meant African and applied to at the western parts of what today is the Indian Ocean. Interestingly, the Mare Ethiopium (= the African Ocean) was also once applied to the Atlantic Ocean in the same way that it seems was the Indian Ocean. As will be seen, this usually carries the implication of dominant users.               

 Africans trading with non-Africans going east-to-west or west-to-east around overlap with the Cape Delgado-to-Cape of Good Hope distribution of wrecks reported by messrs Eudoxus plus Morton (ib). They also considerably overlap with the interlinked but separate trade-marts envisaged by Montgomery (ib) from KwaZulu/Natal to Rhapta/Rufiji. He says such sites could come and go when destroyed by natural and other disasters. A prime for-instance may be Sofala (Mozambique). It was seen Montgomery plus Ehret are among those showing numerous cultural exchanges and another may be that Pre-Bantu fishing passed to Bantus on those sections of the Bantu reaching the east African coast.

Among them were shown to be the Tsonga/Tonga of northeast South Africa/south-east Mozambique. They are the subject of an interesting online study of “Muslims or Shamans: Blacks of the Persian Gulf” by Iraj Bashiri. He touches on two main theories. One takes us back to the “Out-of-Africa” period but the other has east Africans taken as slaves during the Siddis/Habshis period. He plumps for the latter and says that Tonga tradition puts this to c.1450/1500.

If enslaved Africans were taken from such widely separated parts of South Africa, a wide spectrum of belief would be expected. This is not so according to the Bashiri article comparing Tonga rites and those that the Persians called Ahl-I-Hava (= Spirits of the Air). Also this requires acceptance of large numbers of Tongas being transported to and sold in the slave-marts of the Persian/Arabian Gulf.

Phoenicians and/or Greeks would gladly have done so, especially if they could have done so on a regular commercial basis but could rarely do so, hardly ever went south of Rhapta/Rufiji and are temporally irrelevant for Tonga of 1450/1500. Arabs on land were scarce south of Somalia much before the 18^th c. (as per Grenville-Freeman & Allen) and at sea hardly ever went south of Cape Corrientes (as per Tibbetts & Montgomery). Allen also says that Nusantarans/Austronesics rarely went north of Cape Delgado, were much-loathed and bitter rivals of the Arabs, so they too are unlikely candidates for taking any large numbers of Africans to the Persian Gulf slave-marts, let alone the more specific Tongas.

This must mean that the Persian Gulf Blacks fit a pattern entirely different from the two allowed by Bashiri. The word of zimu/zima (= god/spirit/ghost) will be seen to not only have good Tonga links but also with the full Bantu name of the figure of Umlindi (see Part II). It only needs to be said that components of the Umlindi myths recall those attaching to Atlas who holds up the world.

It begins to look as if the four figures holding up the world and marking the basic points of the compass to north, east, south and west probably accords with Africa seen as rectangular on the earliest maps but which became personalised around Atlas. The term of zimu/zima is apparently synonymous with murungu/mulungu (& many other variant spellings) and it too is widespread across southern Africa, so again may be part of something originally Pre-Bantu passing to the Bantus.

The zima rites practiced as the Tonga/Ahl-i-Hava forms sent their practitioners “overseas” (= somewhere strange = the Spirit World). These rites are also said by Bashiri to have occurred on ships of the Swahili, so there is also a non-spiritual side to going overseas on the sea-going ships of the Swahili. On the other hand, it does not do to upset gods of the sea, as nasty things tend to happen.

There is a worldwide recognition what the consequences are of upsetting such gods. What are called Great Flood myths are a very good example of this on nearly all counts. They include the “drowned”-lands of Pan (under the north Pacific), Mu (under the south Pacific), Atlantis (under the Atlantic), Lemuria (under the western Indian Ocean), Sundaland (under the eastern Indian Ocean), etc. What tends to be missed in most studies of Great Flood myths is almost all of Africa (but see sect. on Ethiopia.).

Following the publication of the “Origin of the Species” by Charles Darwin (1863), Philip Sclater (another 19^th c. British scientist) looked at the distribution of a small primate called the lemur in south-east Asia, India plus Madagascar and coined the term of Lemuria. It was seen as stretching between Malaysia/India on one side of the IOR and Madagascar/the Comoros/east Africa on the other but centred on Madagascar. Various writers tell us that the Lemurians were 15 feet tall, had one eye and one foot and hopped about on that foot (= monopedalism, as opposed to the more usual bipedalism). By the 1930s, Mu and Lemuria were being seen as one and the same. Many reading this will know of Continental Drift and that it took several hundreds of millions of years to achieve, so Mu becoming Lemuria in less than 100 years does appear to have been an unseemly haste.

It is these details that make Lemuria my favourite in these tales about sunken continents but easily the most famous of them is Atlantis. Not nearly so well known is the Mojomby generally seen as placed as between the Comoro Islands and the opposing Mozambiquan coast as another of these “drowned-lands” (see sect. on Eth.).

The name of the Comoros is usually held to be from Arabic kmr/qmr. Verin (ib.) points to the problems with this Arabic word. This is because it can indicate Khmer (= Cambodia), the island of Madagascar, the islands of Comoro, the Ruwenzoris (= Mountains of the Moon [west Uganda]), etc. Nor is confidence helped when it is realised that kmr supposedly means crescent and a look at any map of Madagascar shows it has not the slightest tendency to be of that shape. This might apply to Comoro but there is also a viable African alternative (online). The capital of Comoro is Moroni. It derives from the Bantu “at the place of fire” and with the Bantu locative of “ko” (= place) plus “moro” (= fire) added, becomes Komoro/Comoro. What is being referred to here is the most significant feature of these islands, the still-active volcano dominating the island of Ngazidja (= Grand Comore).

Nor would this be the only African influences as far east as this. It is known that “Out of Africa” movement(s) has led to such terms as Africoid, Negroid, Negrito, Negrillo, Veddoid, etc. The reason for this welter of terminology is succinctly shown by Wayne Chandler (in African Presence in Early America ed. Van Sertima 1999) citing a conversation between two eminent German anthropologists named Edwin Palm and Alexander von Wuthenau. Palm recommended that von Wuthenau should use such terms because it removed the need to attribute anything directly to Africa and/or Africans. Superbly demonstrating this will be seen to involve depicted Africans quite literally thousands of miles apart (see below).

Despite this background, there is usually little disagreement as to the African sources of the Negritos reaching Madagascar and the Andamans (islands in the middle of the IOR). Here too are a wide variety of terms. They include Batwa, Twa, Pygmies, etc, If they are not to be seen as connected, there is certainly the very curious phenomenon of populations in both sets of islands, the Andamanese of the Andaman Islands and that part of the Vezo/Vazimba tribal grouping that is generally held to be early in Madagascar being said not to know the use of fire. There are questions here. Did they both originally have the use of fire that they lost? Are there grounds for assuming maritime connections at these early dates?

It is most often assumed that Madagascar was uninhabited when the first Nusantarans got there but we just have seen this may not have been the case. Certainly, Verin has suggested there that there is an early substratum that antedates the adoption of circumcision by the Bantus that Ehret puts to the early 1^st millennium B. C. Verin regarded them as an important component on the west coast that is the part of Madagascar facing Mozambique in east Africa. African traits in Madagascar include cattle as an indicator of wealth, cattle with notched, cotton spinning, long robes, pottery, serrated sickles, round shields, sculpture on wood, disc on the forehead, filing down of teeth, etc. Among east African words in Malagasy (= the main language of Madagascar & not of Af. origin) are omby (= ox), akanga (= guinea-fowl), akoho (= chicken), etc. Also part of the diet were products of the shore and sea leading to the Ichthyophagi/Tompo-ijo-type economies already seen along much of the east African coasts and in west Madagascar.

In a book otherwise lauding the achievements of the Nusantarans arriving in Madagascar, Robert Dick-Read (The Phantom Voyagers 2005) lists several more African words of later date in the Malagasy language that Dick-Read says always retains its ancestral structure. Kingdoms of a particular type are shown by Ehret (for the Bantu), Agatharchides (3^rd c. Greek [via Strabo] for sth. Somalia), PME (for Azania = African Ausan = Kenya/Tanzania/? Moz. / [?] further south.) Plus Verin (for Vezo/Vaziimba parts .of west Madagascar). The rulers were of the type that the Greeks would have called Tyrants in that they ruled small kingdoms not in the modern sense (= despots).

Ehret has also discussed the word of Mulungu (= straight/fitting) and felt this indicates the concept of a Creator-god in east Africa. Sir Richard Burton in “Zanzibar & Two Months in East Africa” (Blackwell’s Mag. 1858 & online) discusses Mulungu in terms of spirit and Felix Chami (Southern Africa & Swahili World 2002) does so in terms of associations with water. In “West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity”, Pieter Marees (17^th c. Dutch) was cited as seemingly stating that in the Gabon and the Congo, lungu seems to form part of words to do with boats and/or large bodies of water but also could also designate gods and/or ghosts (so is equivalent to zimu/zima/zimba). Murungu/Mulungu (note the interchangeable l/r) also in several east African countries. It should also be noticed that Verin gives close links to Veso/Vazimba and fishing (see below).

Mulungu/Murungu has now been variously seen as gods and/or spirits in Gabon plus Congo in West Africa, in 25 tongues across 40 tribes in east Africa. The related concept occurs in Madagascar, as the zima becoming the Ahl-i-Hava of Persian Gulf Blacks plus Murungu becoming Murugan among Dravidians of south India. The Dravidians may have been one of the Pre-Aryan groupings possibly also including the Harapan Culture of what is now east Pakistan/northwest India according to Runoko Rashidi (African Presence in Early Asia 2000) but now the Dravidians/Tamils are largely confined to south India.

The occurrence of east African spiritual beliefs in the Persian Gulf plus several parts of “India” at what appear to be early dates does much to confirm early Africans on the western IOR. It will be immediately obvious that there are doubts as to whether African sailors were the equal of those of the skilled Nusantarans. However, from the above, it is the case that Africans crossed the Indian Ocean and settled west Madagascar at dates apparently well anterior to those for the first Nusantaran arrivals in east Madagascar. Verin points out the fusion of east Africans and Nusantarans forming the Malagasy (the major ethnic component of Madagascar) arose from interactions that extend to maritime activities.

Eastern Africa

Glancing at a map quickly reveals that the distance between any part of Nusantara and east Madagascar is much greater than that between east Africa and west Madagascar. It has long been my opinion that Nusantara to Madagascar is an astonishing migration. Nusantaran and other Far Eastern Great Flood myths will be seen to have been studied in some depth recently. They share the normal traits but in east Africa details will be seen that are unknown in the Far East (see below).

It should also be borne in mind that Great Flood myths have much to do with navigation. Between the Creation and the Great Flood is described in the opening scenes of the epic poem by John Milton (17^th c. Eng.). As part of what Adam was shown, there is reference to Ophir (=? Sofala, Mozambique), Quiloa (= Kilwa, Tanzania), Melind (= Malindi, Kenya), Mombaza (= Mombasa, Kenya), Ercoco (= Arkiko, Ethiopia), etc.

Ophir also occurs in that book of the Old Testament called Genesis. This is most notably in the so-called “Table of Nations” and has become attached to versions of what have been called “Eastern Invaders/Dynastic Race” theories. The latter in turn closely associate with quite differing theories, namely the structures called Zimbabwe (= houses of stone). Zimbabwes have, of course, given rise to the modern state-name.

The Eastern/Dynastic Race theories on this count rest on Ophir/Sofala as somewhere in what is now called Mozambique and the Biblical Havilah (also to be seen in the Table of Nations in Genesis) as Rhodesia/Zimbabwe containing the source of some of the gold said in the Bible to have reached the Mediterranean.

Those following these theories have put forward a chronology that finds space for such old favourites as Adam, Eve, Abel, Cain, Seth, Noah, etc. It is also worryingly close to the Lightfoot/Ussher date-scheme coming with not just the year of Creation (= 4004 B. C.) but is even more helpful by providing the day and the very hour of the creation. Nor can it be overlooked that this chronology stands close to that of Immanuel Velikovsky with all the problems that this means.

One of the earliest books about Great Zimbabwe was written by William Hall and Richard Neal (The Ruins of Rhodesia 1904). Hall is better known as a one-time curator of Gt. Zimbabwe. He saw one of his first jobs as “clearing the site of its Kaffir filth”. When it is realised that Kaffir was a term used by white settlers in Colonial times for Africans and equivalent to the U.S. nigger, it immediately comes home what is meant by “Kaffir filth”. If the point needed to be underlined, there is Theodore Bent (quoted by Matthew Hall online) comparing Kaffirs (= Black Africans) and baboons.

Carl Mauch (19^th c. German) was probably the first European to see the monument. As he went over the site, he thought the timber used there reminded him of the sweet-smelling Cedars of Lebanon from the Lebanon homeland of the Phoenicians. Others have said that the layout of Great Zimbabwe matches that of northern skies not of south of the Equator. Strickland Wake (online) denies “Kaffir” astronomical skills. The birds of the Astarte-cult of Sidon (a city of the Phoenicians) are claimed to be echoed by those in soapstone found at Great Zimbabwe.

Phoenicia/Lebanon was/is a tiny country squeezed between powerful neighbours, mountains plus the Mediterranean Sea and did/does not possess very much in the way of military muscle. What little there was would have been dissipated by the fact that the city-states making up Phoenician/Lebanon were never collectively united as “Phoenicia”. So where the military wherewithal to invade Mozambique and/or Zimbabwe, march several miles inland, conquering (& holding) a kingdom and building a capital at Great Zimbabwe, etc, came from is left unexplained.

With Zimbabwe totalling several dozen and covering an area equivalent to metropolitan France according to C. A. Diop (The African Origins of Civilisation 1974), our “Phoenician” architects would have been very busy indeed. As Phoenicia had vanished in the 7^th c. B. C. and the floruit of Great Zimbabwe was of the 14^th c. A.D., even more remarkable would have been the longevity of these Phoenicians.

The Dick-Read book noted above yet again shows Africans as incapable of building much more than mud-huts and could not construct in stone. This is in spite of the Pyramids being on the continent of Africa but then, the Dynastic-Race theorists would regard them as of non-African inspiration. In “West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity”, brief allusion was made to the Darling (online) excavations of Yoruba earthworks in Nigeria. They may not be of stone but Patrick Darling (ib.) tells us that they involved more labour than either the Great Wall of China or the Pyramids.

Clearly, the lack of excavation in much of Sub-Saharan/Black Africa plays a major part why so little is known about the past there. Yet what can be said about the rise of early urbanism there owes very little to Phoenicians, Greeks, Arabians/Arabs/ Islam, Portuguese, etc. In the region of Great Zimbabwe, it seems the ancestral stages can be traced through an archaeological sequence of a Leopard’s Kopje/Mapungubwe/ Great Zimbabwe/Shona sequence. So again there is little need to look outside the continent of Africa.

In any case, Frank McCool (African Skies online) shows that astronomy was well within Proto-Shona/Shona abilities. So from this, it emerges that the astronomy shown by Great Zimbabwe is also of local sources and all is based on a cattle-based economy with gold as something extra. Strickland Wake’s (ib) “Influence of the Phallic idea in the Religions of Antiquity” (online) denied any direct                      linkage of cattle and star-lore but he did discuss bulls as solar symbols. Wake traced this in Egypt but denying an Egypto/Phoenician linkage for Great Zimbabwe need not rule out a connection along east African coasts. Indeed, this is part of what is one of the most recent attempts at reviving the notions of Ophir as Sofala (Mozambique) and Havilah. It has to be said that Milton saying “Ophir thought to be Sofala” plainly indicates that as back as the 17^th there were doubts as to whether Ophir was Sofala. Also Dick-Read plus others have pointed out there are doubts as to where Sofala was.

On the other hand, the “Test of Time” books David Rohl make him a leading exponent of the revival of Ophir as Sofala (near Beira in Mozambique) hypothesis. Then there is what will be seen as the Periplus (= Voyage) of Necho (from the rounding of Africa sponsored by Pharoah Necho of Egypt & reported by Herodotus) One of the doubts about this is that the Necho fleet taking three years to complete was uneconomic but 3-years were the norm for the Israel-to-Tarshish trips and both were crewed by Phoenicians. Messrs. Lacroix (ib) plus Lenderer (re. the 1^st rounding of Af. online) note antimony from Ophir/Moz. may have been known in Egypt.

Also here it is worth noting the Arabic name of Sufala al-Adanab (= S. the Golden) for Sofala. It will be seen that this accords with the above-listed wrecks and what was suggested by Wheeler but now something else arises.

It was suggested that early urbanism in Black Africa owes little to anything non-African. This can be said to be reinforced by what is said of the Northwest Atlantic Culture by Leo Frobenius (The Voice of Africa 1913) but which for reasons given in “West Af. …” is called the West African Atlantic Complex (= WAAC) here. Instances here include such as the Edo/Benin (Nigeria) towns, Yoruba (Nig.) towns, Jenne-jeno (Mali), etc, mainly to be apparently seen as springing up from the handling of large amounts of crops. Those crops were almost entirely of forms that at first were unique to West Africa.

 Also the second tranche of cities said to have settled by Hanno appear to represent resettlement rather than original foundations. In the same light is Lixos that is again said by Hecataeus of Miletus to be African-built and Pre-Phoenician in date.      Underlying this would be the sea-borne trade of the WAAC.

Another record of a large city in Pre-Punic west Africa was by Pseudo-Scylax (= Ps-Scylax [? 5^th c. /? 4^th c. B.C. Greek]) on the River Chretes (= the Senegal). It has traits very relevant for east Africa. If the WAAC is best seen as an informal trade-network rather than the formal empire envisaged by Frobenius, this is what seemingly emerges from the writings of Agarthachides (3^rd/4th c. B.C. Greek), Strabo (1^st c. B. C. Greek), PME (1^st c. A.D. Egypto/Greek), Cosmas Indicopleustes (6^th c. A. D.), etc. The PME has the fullest information but for rather longer stretches of coast than most of the other sources. Even with the relatively limited knowledge available to Agarthachides and Strabo, they could state that though there were nominal rulers, the reality was that each city had its own ruler (= the tyrants mentioned above). As just seen, the PME confirms this but for somewhat further south on east African coasts.

The name of Mozambique is perhaps surprisingly put to Mouzinho de Alberqueque (19^th c. Portuguese) on the Race & History website (online). As his main claim to fame was the very brutal putting down of a native rebellion, this is psychologically improbable. In any case, Adrian Room (African Placenames 1993) tells us that Mocambique is to be found as an island-name in the journals of Vasco da Gama (16^th c. Portuguese).

The da Gama journals certainly antedate the 19^th c., so the earlier suggestion can be set aside. Room suggests the name may arise from that of a local chief but of even more interest must be that mosambuco occurs in the da Gama journals. Comparison can be made of St. Louis Island at the mouth of the River Senegal and Mocambique Island (off the Moz. Coast) in terms of Ps- Scylax and da Gama’s Journal describing native boats apparently buzzing about non-native ships. Room (ib) suggests Senegal comes from sunugal (= [Place of] our boat) in the Wolof language of Senegal and that Mozambique also means “Place of our boat(s)”. The latter will be seen to apparently be a consistent east African pattern.

A country that is again seen as near the beginnings of Humanity is Tanzania but this rests on little that is Biblical and is rather more archaeology-based. This most famously attaches to the excavations at Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania). This is easily the best known of the early sites attaching to the rise of early mankind.

With the Evolved Olduwan seen abroad, this presumably tells for taking to the sea at a relatively early stage. According to the several online articles by Robert Bednarik taking to the sea was a considerable step forward in Man’s thinking but there will be more on this in the Ethiopia/Eritrea sub-section.

This gives a very long background against which to place maritime activity in the Indian Ocean Region (= IOR). Evidence for Indians in the western IOR may be told for by such as the Indian colony on Socotra, the archaeological testimony at Berenike/Berenice (Egypt) plus what Sunil Gupta (as Chami in African Archaeological Review 2003) identifies as pottery of the Indian Iron Age at Machaga Cave (Zanzibar off the Tanzanian coast).

Signs of Arabians (not usually Arabs at this period) in east Africa at this time appear shown by the name of Ausan as a leading kingdom of southern Arabia but also as the name of a long stretch of east African coast in PME. This is reinforced by the name of Maa’fir (called the Mapharitic Arabs in PME & always subject to the dominant power in Arabia) and to be as having some kind of ancient agreement over Mafia Island (again off the Tanzanian coast). The general suggestion is that Maa’fir/Mapharitic is to seen in the name of Mafia.

The PME tells the vessels most often plying between the Tanzanian coast and offshore islands were forms of dugout-canoes plus sewn vessels. In “West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity”, it will be seen that such canoes were one-piece constructions as long as the trees from which they were chosen. Many were seen as more seaworthy than the more famous Viking drakarr (= dragon-ships) and that many were as capable of being taken to sea as supposedly superior types. It has been successfully taken across the Atlantic.

Not only was the latter feat achieved by Hannes Lindemann (Alone at Sea 1958) but Hourani (ib) shows the dugout-canoe was not spurned by Arabs on the IOR on occasion (see just below). In “West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity”, views are cited as saying that dugouts could be the equal of Phoenician ships. Phoenician ships would have been in passing the desert drear of the Sahara and/or the Namib would have been in precisely the same position of such as Guinea/Angola voyages extended to the Cape and beyond yet this is dismissed as mere coasting.

This overlooks the fact that Gabon/Guinea (on the return) and Guinea/Angola trips went against prevailing currents and this is common among “primitive” sailors worldwide. Certainly, the dugout-canoe can be as simple as the aforementioned Phoenico/Punic type we saw was called the hippos and which convinced at least one ancient seaman that it could be taken from the Atlantic on to the Indian Ocean (as above). They are also taken by Felix Chami (The Unity of Ancient Africa History 2006) as showing that rounding southern Africa was more frequent than generally surmised. On the other hand, it will also be seen that dugout-based forms can be regarded as being as elaborate as small ships (as in Part I).

Otherwise, the main form in east Africa as described in PME was the rhapton ploiarion (= sewn vessel). According to PME, the name occurs in that of Rhapton. James Allen (Swahili Origins 1993) says that ploiarion leads to the expectation of small vessels but also that as rhapton ploiarion is a Greek phrase and that Greeks were wont to play non-Greek matters down, this need not be so. There are some doubts as to the Burton (ib.) suggestion that these vessels are the forerunners of the mtepe and/or dau of much the same coasts. However, whilst considerable development over time can be allowed for, it is undeniable that sewn craft have at least 2000 years of recorded history and probably very considerably antedate this. As to the east Africa and the mtepe, see my mention of Neville Chittick (below).

Burton also wrote of small coralline islands stretching from Mocambique (an island off the Mozambique coast) to the Alalious (the Dahlak Islands off Eritrea). One of them was Tanga. The name occurs as part of Tanganyika (= the mainland part of Tanzania). Messrs. Morton (as Room) and Room (ib) have discussed the name of Tanganyika. Morton is said by Room to have studied several possibles. Opinion seems to have settled on tanga (= to sail/sail) plus nyika (= place/coast/shore) with a general meaning of a place to sail and/or navigate towards. The more so given that one meaning links this to canoes that Ehret connects with the arrival of Bantus, by PME to those on the coast and Buzurg ibn Shahryar (10^th c. Arab cited by Hourani ib.) separating a dunj (= dinghy) from a mityal (= canoe). This suggests that even the Arabs were not wholly averse to dugouts as sea-going craft.

The coralline islands that Burton described included Mocambique, Mafia, Zanzibar, Pemba, etc. Kiliwa is said by Chami (in People, Contacts & Environment edd. Chami, Gilbert Pwiti & Chantal Radimilihy 2002) to mean “Kilwa in Water” (= the island of Kilwa). Tanga (as above), Malindi plus Mombasa were also known as islands. Burton continued this past the small Lamu Archipeligo (off Kenya) up to the Dahlaks (called the Alaliou Islands in PME).

Mafia, Zanzibar plus the Pemba are part of the “Spice Islands” of east Africa and were part of the “Shirazi” Empire. The Shirazi supposedly came from Shiraz (Iran/Persia). A look at a map of Iran showing the distance of Shiraz from the coast makes it an unlikely candidate for being the cradle of a sea-based empire over much of the coasts of east Africa. The Shiraz origin in Iran of the “Seven Brothers” claimed to have founded the dynasty competes directly with another version categorically stating the founders were Arabs and that they came from Bahrain or one of the islands of the Persian Gulf.

In any case, Allen (ib.) says the stressing of Arabic or Persian ancestry tended to marry against the rise or fall of Arabia or Persia in popularity among the Swahili. A particular case is that of the Comorans. In the past, they have tended to claim to be of Arabic extraction but are culturally, physically and linguistically Bantus. As Chami has further said, Muslim and/or Christian evangelising saying we are all Children of Adam or Abraham does not make it so. Moreover, Chami is able to demonstrate that Bantu shirazi simply means “dwellers by the shore”.

Chami’s excavations have also proved there were dwellers on the islands. The ceramic comparisons plus the C14-dates attest that this occurred between 1500/1000 B.C. at the latest. The excavations prove the islands were inhabited. This means boats, caves used for habitation, bones proving fishing, keeping of chickens, etc. On all these counts, this marries closely with what is said by Iambulus (? 4^th or 3^rd c. B. C. Greek). This is despite Messrs. Cary and Warmington (The Ancient Explorers 1963) placing Iambulus into their “Imaginary Voyages” category.

Y. U. Kobanishev (JAH 1965) thought these islands stretched to Madagascar but Chami (ib.) is more cautious. However, there is good evidence for maritime navigation here. Just getting to the offshore islands meant crossing some deep-sea channels of up to 800 feet in depth. The astronomy of mainland sites at such as Namoratunga (Kenya) plus Iambulus writing that the islanders had considerable star-lore indicates possible night-time navigation, as known from elsewhere in Africa (esp. by fishermen). When we also read that Iambulus wrote of the strange pets owned by islanders, cats may be what he describes. Alternatively, the unique wildlife of Madagascar has to be borne in mind.

James Hornell (Antiquity 1946) shows a “Shirazi” version of the Great Flood myths in “The Role of Birds in Early Navigation”. It comes from Zanzibar and contains details unknown from the Noah tales in the Bible or the Atlantis myths of Plato. It has interest that it has parallels elsewhere in east Africa. Above all, is the obvious interpretation that early Tanzanian seamen used land-seeking birds as navigational aids, as did the other groups mentioned in the Hornell article mainly relating to versions of Great Flood myths?

Reference has been made to the surprise that Africa is largely missed in the major studies of Great Flood myths. Further comment on this is made below but the African Aqualithic that became the Sahara should not be forgotten. Harpoons are thought by Messrs Sutton (ib.), Wicker (Egypt & the Mountains of the Moon1991) plus others to be a type-fossil of both the Ishango (Congo) sequence (from two-sided & multi-barbed to uniserial) and the Aqualithic. They in turn have been compared with a number at Khartoum (Sudan). This gives a Congo/Uganda to Nile Valley distribution for these hunter/gatherers.

There are probable parallels for the likely processes from the benign lake/river plus a little sea fishing of the Early Post-Aqualithic outside Africa. In west Iberia, such a development seems traceable from the Asturian Culture of mainly the Mesolithic but overlapping with the farmers of the Neolithic. So too does the Natufian named from caves around el-Natuf (Israel). Here caves were used for habitation and/or burial but the most famous Natufian feature is small round houses. They had pise/mudbrick walls on stone footings, domed/beehive roofs, etc. Given a pronounced entry, they acquire a plan very like an old-fashioned keyhole. This keyhole-plan also resembles the ancient A/A/A tomb-form(s) called tholoi (esp. those of the Halafian of Syria & the tholos of Greece). The Natufian round-house also sometimes takes on the burial function of the tholos when having burials in the house-floors (? so echoing the very African practice of keeping revered ancestors to hand).

Also apparently straddling altering lithic periods are “Capsian” types. Thus on the basis of the Three-Age System of Palaeolithic (= Old Stone Age)/Mesolithic (= Middle Stone Age)/Neolithic (= New Stone Age), the Capsian was mainly of the Mesolithic but has a Post-Mesolithic or Neolithic facies. Its distribution has been seen from Kenya in east Africa to the type-site at el-Gafsi/el-Capsi (Tunisia) in North Africa. Notwithstanding, this, the chronological priority has to be with Kenya, as it has the oldest material by far. The Tunisian type-site proves it occurs in the Magreb and Graham Clark (ib.) says it seems to have played a major part in the spread of the ever-smaller or microlithic Mesolithic tools of geometric or blade/trapeze forms. Clark (Mesolithic Interlude 1975 & other works) also showed it may have had coastal variants called Oranian (after Oran, Algeria) and Maurusian (= Mauritanian). When similar finds appear in Iberia (= Spain & Port.), it is tempting to regard them as a sea-borne expression of the migrations caused by growing aridity in the Sahara.

Further marking hunter-gatherers is the round-house tradition discussed by G. P. Klinghardt (in Sagittarius = the journal of the Museums of South Africa 1984). This was also seen to attach to nomadic cattle-herders. M. L. Wilson (also in an online article in Sagittarius) shows that the people called the Nama applied San (= Bushmen = Khwe) to hunter-gatherers but Khoikhoi (= Hottentot) to those groups that had taken to stock-herding of sheep and/or cattle. So the difference between Khwe/San and Khoikhoi seems economic/cultural not physical/biological, hence Khoisan to cover both but as San is apparently derogatory, so Khoi/Khwe should be used. This may be the context in which to put the Khwe technique of donning ostrich-skins so as to be able to approach the birds without spooking them (as described in the Huntingford translation of PME 1980).

Something very similar is known in the Pastoral Neolithic (= PN = Central Cattle Pattern). The PN seemingly covers several ceramic traditions. Cattle here were used as “walking-larders”. The hunters donning bird-skins seems akin to herders covered in calf-skins. The last was done so as not to frighten the cow. Wicker says having neared the cow, her head would turn, her udders were butted and she would lower them for milk. On occasion, the calf-skins took the form of turbans. Something very like this and the dietary mix of milk plus blood was known to the Greeks from at least the time of Agarthachides and is shown by Huntingford of Cushitics (esp. the Masai of Kenya). As will be seen, this differs from mind-sets of groups living off the flesh of their cattle

Nor should the close associations of cattle-raising and the building of stone rings in the Pre-Borana phase at Namoratunga (Kenya) be overlooked. In this same “Borana” region of north Kenya/south Somalia (as defined by Allen ib.) there is a proven well-digging expertise according to Allen. The relevance of this for further north in Africa will be seen in later pages.

Easily the most well known thing about Namoratunga is the stone circles. They are seen as Pre-Borana (note Namoratunga = Men of Stone in the Turkana language of the area) locally. Some writers regard the builders as the remnants of what has been called the “Azanian” Culture. Both these writers plus native tradition seemingly head us towards 1000-500 B.C. A number of websites discussing Namoratunga 1and 2 relate them to the Cushitic calendar as it is known to have to have survived in the Borana area of Kenya/Somalia centring on the rising of Triangulum, Pleaides, Bellatrix, Aldebaran, Central Orion, Saiph, Sirius, etc.

Excavation has now proven the offshore islands off east Africa were inhabited at the appropriate period. It is also known how closely star-lore is tied to both astronomy plus navigation, so it has great interest when it is remembered that islands and astronomy come together in what Iambulus says about the inhabitants of the offshore islands possessing considerable knowledge of the stars. This to say the least, very strongly suggests that east Africans were very capable of maritime navigation. Of further interest is that besides the proven sea-skills of the Nusantarans, Swahili nautical words passed into the Nusantaran-derived Malagasy language.

The excavations on these islands also found cat-bones on Mafia and Zanzibar. There is a clear association with forms of rat at granaries and it is this that has led to the comment that as the dog is the friend of the hunter, so the cat is the friend of the farmer. When recalling the remarks of Iamblichus about IOR islanders having strange pets, it was allowed that cats belong here? After all, he was a Greek and Mildred Kirk (The Everlasting Cat 1977) showed that Greeks of 1000/500 B. C. were so unfamiliar with cats that they treated them as small dogs to be kept on leads and ancient Greek has no word for purr. Yet more cats on yet smaller east African islands are the “Cats of Lamu” discussed by Jack Couffer (1997) and furthering the connection of cats with east Africa is Fernand Mery (Life, Mystery & Magic of the Cat 1967).

Mery traced a path from (?) Somalia/Ethiopia to Egypt for cats. It is known that down to the 19^th c., Red Sea crews refused to sail unless a cat was aboard and there are such Kushite king-names as Shabako (= Great Cat), Shabakto (= Great Tom-cat) and the principle plus the religio/royal linkage is known in Egypt. Archaeology is starting to prove that Egypt is not the homeland of feline domestication but it is still the place most think of in this respect. The Nubian kadis/Numidian kadiska passed via Latin cattus into most European languages. The pet-calls are equally widespread, thus Erythraic bis/bisat; Egyptian bes/besat; west Magrebi bis-bis; part of west African ologbosi (in Ijaw), ologbi (in Isaka Igbo), ologbo (in Yoruba), etc; Brito/Irish bs/ps,  bus/pus, bis/bis, bws/puss, etc.

The dog can be said to have first claim on domestication that on some arguments goes back to 50,000 years ago. Not for nothing is it said the dog is the hunter’s friend. After all, cooperation between dog and owner gave greater access to prey than would have been available otherwise to the hunter. An early African breed is the Basenji or “Congo” Terrier. It was/is Africa-wide. Its head may have been that on which that of the dog-headed Egyptian god named Anubis was modelled. Something very like it was revered in Egypt by the Pharaohs and Ellen Minto (in Canaan Dog Breed Notes 2001 online) notes possible links right across the Mediterranean from the A/A/A-arc to M/M/M and Atlantic coasts. Ivan Van Sertima (They Came Before Columbus 1976) has suggested that the Basenji breed was taken by Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas at decidedly Pre-Columbian dates.

Other dogs in Atlantic-facing west Iberia are those attaching to the arrival of certain groups in north Iberia during the Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age. There are several ways of describing these groups. They are variously called Keltoi, Celtae, Galatae, Gallaici/Gailaici, Celt, Gaul, Gael, etc. The Callaici/Calaici or Gallaici/ Galaici named Galicia (in northwest Spain). Herding dogs here are linked by Messrs. Combe and Hutchinson in “The ancestral relationship of contemporary British herding breeds” (online) with those of Britain. There seems to be some kind of connection of Callaeci/Gallaeci and the herding-dogs called collies. Presumably related are British coilean (= whelp/pup/young dog) lying behind the place-name of Colwyn Bay (Wales) and the Irish word of cailin (= girl/young woman).

The pig is a prime candidate for a more-than-once domestication. Those of Nusantara (= the islands = mainly the Philipines, Malaysian islands plus Indonesia) probably were part of the ever-smaller stock-range taken to increasingly remote Pacific islands. This was to the east but to the west is Madagascar plus Erythraea (= east Africa & seen in the title of the PME) and in the term of Erythraic (= the tongues otherwise called Afrasian/Lisramic/Hamito-Semitic/Afroasiatic). The only branch of Erythraic occurring outside Africa is Proto-Semitic. Ahmed & Ibrahim Ali (The Black Celts 1993) say the Erythraic pet-name for pig was/is doorfu and that it occurs in the Gaelic language(s). Gaelic is more strictly the ancestor for the tongues otherwise known as Irish, Scottish plus Manx. Doorfa becomes Irish door/Scottish dooru.

In terms of stock raised, much of Africa departs from the sheep-to-cattle sequence of most regions. In particular this means that in the area now covered by the Sahara, cattle preceded sheep in the circumstances that sheep could survive the ever-growing aridity but cattle could not. In most of west Asia and Europe, sheep came before cattle. It is generally held the European Neolithic spread in two main ways. One was from Anatolia to the First Temperate Neolithic (= FTN) of the Balkans or southeast Europe to groups making pottery decorated with linear bands of ornament (hence Linearbandkeramik = LBK = Linear Pottery Culture) in middle and mid-west Europe. The other way was from western Anatolia to the coasts plus islands of the Balkans and/or the Aegean by groups making what have been called Impressed Ware(s). The further west Impressed Wares appear, the more the decorative impressions are made using shells that normally meant using cardium or cockle shells (hence Cardial-Impressed or Cardial Wares).

Changes occurring in traits originating in west Asia/Anatolia/the A/A/A-arc have been shown several times in these pages and this includes this Cardial Neolithic. Various studies have established that it has regional groupings. Now we know that the Sudanese/Saharan Wares develop entirely in the Sahara and owe little to the Neolithic of west Asia. A later stage of them is called after Khartoum (Sudan) and it seems it conjoins with Impressed/Cardial Wares in the eastern M/M/M-arc of the central Mediterranean to form what have been called the Magrebine/Italian Impressed Ware. In support of this would be Frobenius (ib.) citing German opinion saying that African sheep-farmers initiated sheep-herding in Latin Europe (= Italy, France, Iberia) and possibly in Nordic Europe. Reinforcing the latter would be Frobenius referring to the ram-as-lightning theme of the Sahara occurring as that of the Yoruba god named Shango in West Africa and as that of the Nordic god named Thor. More of the same must surely come with the Alis (ib.) saying yet another Africo/Erythrean pet-call was for sheep and that it was dirra/dirra and that this became Brito/Irish Derry.

Further to this is recent research is now proving that many of the first cattle-breeds of Africa are solely of African sources over a wide area from Kenya to the Sahara. Ruth Whitehouse (in The Origins of Europe ed. D. Collins 1975) compared the cattle-pens/enclosures widespread across Africa with a number of structures in the Balkans, Italy plus Iberia (= Spain & Port.). These European structures are called after Smilcik in the west Balkans, trincerati (= ditched-villages) in Italy, after El Garcel in Iberia plus those of the people we have seen are called LBK by archaeologists and who are deemed to have been expert cattlemen.

This equally applies to those seen as naming the Pastoral Neolithic (= PN) plus the Saharan/Fulani type of the Sahara and West Africa. Pet-names seen for livestock apparently right across from east Africa to the British Isles will not be liked by archaeologists and will probably not be proven by any form of genetic research but are almost identical across that vast stretch and have been seen to apply to several species. As to pet-names, we need only to consider what is said by the cited views relating to the cattle-herders of the PN and who were/are also very skilled in what they do. In line with this and the African connections of the Latin cattle-pens, the dates for the earliest of the Latin enclosures arrived at by both C14-dates plus accompanying Magrebine/ Italian Impressed/Cardial pottery, are very satisfactorily earlier than those of the LBK ditched-enclosures of middle/mid-west Europe.

A case can be made for the east African domestication of some species of geese, indeed some experts have seen the domestication of the greylag goose in east Africa (the northeast/Egypt) as showing where all first started. However, the start of the domestication of any fowl in a particular region is as difficult to prove as it is to disprove. Having already shown that what may not be proven by archaeology or genetics may be shown by the folklife/folklore so distrusted by archaeologists, there is yet for instance. This is that the Erythraic kuit-kuit for ducks becomes British kudu-kudu for chickens according to the Alis.

Messrs. Ali and Ali (ib.) plus Bradley (Dawn Voyage 1991) further refer to the importance of feathered cloaks across Africa. Anne Ross (The Everyday Life of the Celts 1970) noting Mogh Ruith (the Arch-Druid of the ancient kingdom/province of sth. Ire. called Munster) wore a feathered cloak or a bull-hide during divination, shows this very clearly of Irish Celts/Gaels. Legends attaching to the stone circle of Callanish (= the so-called Scottish Stonehenge) on the Scottish island of Lewis tell of Africans in feathered cloaks coming to build Callanish. Thomas O’Rahilly (Early Irish Mythology and History 1946) reports that divination under bull-hides occurred not only on the British island of Lewis but also among the British Celts of what was to become Wales after the Celts of southern Britain were split asunder by the Anglo-Saxon/Early English invasions. Bradley wants to attach feathered cloaks to yet more folklore about Africans sailing on Atlantic waters but this time heading west to the Americas not north to parts of west Europe.

Such large birds in the form of swans and/or geese have also been seen in the role of aids used by early sailors to guide them towards land. The comment by Pliny (1^st c. Roman) that birds used in this way in what is now Sri Lanka because  is  known to be incorrect by what is proven of the “Hydraulic Civilisation” there. Also by what is revealed by the excavations of the Namoratunga circles itself buttressed by such as the considerable mental-maths shown by Claudia Zaslavsky (Africa Counts 1999) of West African market-women (esp. among the Yoruba of Nigeria in West Africa).

Birds used as navigational aids are also shown by the Egypto/Greek writer named Cosmas Indicopleustes (= Cosmas the Traveller on the Indian Ocean/Of the Indian Ocean Region/IOR). He refers to birds denoting the IOR-facing littoral of east Africa during storms. Even more specific is ibn Majid (15^th c. Arab) mentioning the Kuraik and Munji birds as marking the navigation by ships as towards parts of the east African coast. This comes out from the short account by Pieter Derideaux (ib.) but much more fully in the Tibbetts book on Arab Navigation (1971).

The same kind of large seabirds were also known to attest the West African coasts according to Jean Barbot (17^th /18^th c. French). The book by George Tibbetts was far from being the only instance of Muslim knowledge of birds as navigational aids. According to Ivan Van Sertima (1976), the Islamic scholars of West Africa also knew of this decidedly Pre-Islamic knowledge. Further proofs of the antiquity of this are provided in the sources quoted by James Hornell (Antiquity 1946) plus my other papers in this series online at Clarence@starry-eye.com.

Somalia & Djibouti

 The stretch of coast so denoted by these birds extended right up to Somalia. That Pliny was wrong when attributing the use of birds by the Sinhalese of Taprobane (= Ceylon/Sri Lanka) illustrated a lack of mathematics and/or astronomy has been touched on. It does appear that what was seen to have called the Hydraulic Civilisation answers this on all counts. It should also be borne in mind that in a period that was largely without instruments, having another method of getting safely homeward would just be plain commonsense.

Certainly, in a pre-instrumental age, another weapon in the armoury to ensure safe voyages would be to the good. On the opposite side of the Erythraean Sea from Taprobane/Sri Lanka, these seabirds were seen to mean that the east African littoral was looming large according to the comments of Cosmas Indicopleustes (6^th c. A. D. Egypto/Greek). Ibn Majid is even more specific when writing about the munji marking the east African coast but stating that the bird called the kuraik indicated to the captain that the shore was even nearer.

The munji and the kuraik cannot now be identified with any certainty and Majid tells us that the kuraik could also have been a fish. This does much to suggest that this indicates an expertise akin to that of the Pacific Islanders and that the knowledge came from east African fishermen.

The transliterated title of ibn Majid’s book entitled “Kitab al-Fuwaid fi usul al-Bahr wal-qawa” translates as “The book of profitable things concerning the first principles and rules of navigation” according to Pieter Derideaux (The medieval authors on east Africa online) The magisterial work on ibn Majid by George Tibbetts carries the title of “Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean before the coming of the Portuguese (1971).

                        East Africa & the Sea in Antiquity

Here then would be expertise plus knowledge seen to have probably come from east African sailors as recorded by an Egypto/Greek in the form of Cosmas and an Arab sea-captain in the form of Majid. This may be the first indications that this age-old expertise was known to east Africa but that this was widely known earlier than this is well shown by shore-seeking birds particularly attached to western forms of Great Flood myths, especially the Sumero/Semitic versions from south Iraq.

The oldest known record of these Great Flood myths now seems to have been these Sumero/Semitic forms of what are the southern provinces of Iraq and Iran (esp. of Iraq) at the northern end of the Persian Gulf. The basic myths passed from Sumer to the later Semitic groups of the same parts of Mesopotamia/Iraq called Akkadians, Assyrians plus Babylonians. Stephen Oppenheimer (Eden in the East 1998) has shown that this most famously included The Epic of Gilgamesh well known from the translation of Nancy Sandars (1968).

This has the figure variously called Utnapishtim/Ziusudra/Xisuthros in the Noah role of sending out land-seeking birds, as seen in the Book of Genesis. The Genesis/Noah version(s) of the Old Testament may be the best known but those of Sumer are considerably older. They would have been known to the sailors that Messrs. Petrie (The Making of Egypt 1939), Rohl (the Test of Time books), etc, have described as the Eastern Invaders or the Dynastic Race.

The basic theme begins with Flinders Petrie (ib.) and was taken up by others but most fully by in the David Rohl Test of Time books entitled “A Test of Time: The Bible from Myth to History” (1995 & also known as Pharoahs and Kings: A Biblical Quest); “Legend: The Genesis of Civilisation” (1998); “The Lost Testament: The Story of the Children of Yahweh” (2002 and also known as From Eden to Exile: The Epic History of the People of the Bible).

There is very considerable criticism of the Eastern/Dynastic Invaders theories, especially when pertaining to the “New” Chronologies particularly enthusiastically put forward by Rohl (ib.). Discussion here will be confined to how these Eastern Dynasts are claimed to have impacted on the east African littoral.

The hypothesis is that the Eastern Race left Sumeria (= south Iraq) at the head of the head of Persian Gulf; sailed the length of the Persian Gulf; through the Straits of Hormuz; into the Indian Ocean; skirted Oman plus Yemen on the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula; into the Gulf of Aden and the Straits of el-Mandeb and into the Red Sea. Having arrived on the Egyptian coast, hauled their ships across the sands of the Eastern Desert towards the Nile, re-launched their ships on the river and went on to conquer the country. This then would have been the background of what some Egyptologists are calling “Dynasty 0” (= the Pharoahs before Dynasty I).

Reinforcing this are the claims that the Eastern Dynasts are further to be discerned under versions of the names to be associated with the Phoenicians or the Red Men. Thus to the east of their route were the Pani of India. In Oman are Kuryat plus Sur that in the case of Sur actually echoes the Phoenician city-name of Tyre according to S.B. Miles (Geographical ). In the Yemen was Himyar (= the Red).

Having covered the short distance between Yemen and Somalia, they founded Opone that is now Hafun (Somalia). From them came the name of Punt famous for trading with Egypt and Red men in both Punt and Egypt themselves.

The Indian term of Lohita Sagar also seemingly means the Red Sea. So too did the Erythraean Sea that we saw applied to the western Indian Ocean and shown as part of the full title of Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. The word of Erythrus has been given several origins but as employed of the Persian Gulf, this was the Red Sea in the time of Herodotus. As to the name of what is now called the Red Sea, there is every chance that it is only a translation of the Hebrew Yam Suph (= Reed Sea), therefore, would have no connection with the various “Red” Seas just noted.

The name of the Pani and that of the Poeni (= Phoenicians) are equally unlikely to be linked as Poeni is but one of many possible Greek etymons for Phoenicians Latinised as Puni or Poeni and so is too late to have any bearing on the original meaning. In any case, the term of Poeni really only applied to Phoenicians settled at Carthage. Both the Phoenicians of what was called Phoenicia and those that were settled at Carthage called themselves Canani/Kanani not Phoenicians and did so right up to the time of Augustine of Hippo (4^th c. Latinised Magrebi) who was told by still-extant remnants that they considered themselves to be Canani (= Canaanites).

This is in line with the desire by the Greeks to place the Phoenician homeland almost anywhere in the Indian Ocean Region. This is further shown in “Phoenicians in East Africa” (online at Phoenicia.org.). In that article nor in any of the several volumes penned by Petrie plus Rohl there is no mention of the recent findings published by the National Geographic (2007) that genetic evidence proves the antecedents of the Phoenicians lies in Anatolia not any part of the Indian Ocean.

Attached to this is the supposed trade of these Eastern Dynasts with the place that the Old Testament called Ophir here to be identified with Sofala (Mozambique) that can be said to be at one end of Azania (= most of Sub-Horn east Africa) with Opone/Hafun in  south Somalia at more or less the other end. Quite apart from the uncertainty of just where Ophir actually was, there is something else that is very interesting. What is left unexplained is that with our Eastern Dynasts having left Sumeria and what is now called the Persian Gulf and passing several places well worthy of settlement, just why they did that. Namely, that they did bypass them.

Trade with Ophir-as-Sofala demands some foreknowledge of the gold that is said to be that which the Bible said reached Solomon’s Israel and held to originate in neighbouring Zimbabwe. In tandem with this is that the Mozambique region was eminently suitable for colonisation, so why no settlement for here? Yet another question arises. If these Eastern Dynasts would put themselves to the bother of voyaging virtually the full length of the Red Sea (& passing other areas suitable for colonisation), why would they? Quite apart from the logistical nightmare that would tax even a modern task-force, the knowing of the need for towing ships across a desert that presumably means there would be prior knowledge of the fact that there would be no chance of living off the land. So again why?

Something else that is left unexplained is what would those about to invaded would be doing from the time that our Eastern invaders had established their beachhead to the Nile being reached and their ships had been re-launched but this time on the Nile. In any case, underlying the whole Eastern/Dynastic Invaders hypothesis is that Africans were/are incapable of higher civilisation. This means everything has to be introduced from outside.

In this case, that outside agency has to be the Eastern/Dynastic Race from Mesopotamia/Iraq (and see the last two sections). It would be useful if Opone/Hafun could be proven to have even half the antiquity that it is claimed that it had according to these theorists. Moreover, do not ideas of a “Dynastic” Race in such circumstances stand worryingly close to some of the nastiest ideas of the 20^th c? Any supposed antiquity for Opone/Hafun would have to rest on totally separate grounds.

It has long been accepted that major depictions of the Punt-to-Egypt are in the wall-art of the temple-complex fronting the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari (Egypt). Amongst other things shown there is the steatopygea (= a condition causing protruding buttocks). This is fully developed in the Queen of Punt and is incipient in her daughter. Montgomery (Seashore Man & African Eve) cites George Weber as saying that the only peoples showing this feature are the Khoi/Khwe and the people of the Andaman Islands. However, the author of the Wikipedia article on steatopygea adds the Pygmies to here and goes on the state that this feature stretched from the Gulf of Aden to Cape

In short, the east-to-west extremes of southern Africa and the expert evidence cited by Montgomery (ib.) holds that this indicates considerable antiquity. Also known right across southern Africa and of the same horizon would be early exploitation of haematite in parts of southern Africa to produce ochre. This has further relevance in the light of the comparisons of Khoi/Khwe-like figures shown above from southern parts of Africa to northern parts of Africa and so-called “Venuses”.

The most famous Venus figure is Sarah Baartman (= the so-called Hottentot Venus & Hottentot = Khoi/Khwe) of infamous treatment. A figurine of the required age also called a Venus with the protruding buttocks plus signs of the use of ochre is that from Tan-Tan (Morocco).            

Not only is the Venus principle plus ochre used for personal decoration shown from the deep south of Africa to the far north of Africa but seems known across Europe from Iberia (= Spain & Portugal) to east Europe. Probably the best known of those in Europe is that from Willendorf (Austria). Not all combine the basic traits in the one item but presumably combine enough of them to fit the category and Willendorf certainly has protruding buttocks. Of particular interest are the rows of ringlets depicting hair on the Willendorf figurine. Not only does the basic theme take us back to Africa but so too do these ringlets in that they appear to be an early example of a standard representation of coiled African hair, probably best known in Europe via the earliest depictions of Memnon (see next section).

This probably gives us a particularly African background for the feature of steatopygea and strongly suggests a Khoi/Khwe background for that of the area of Punt. So too does the hunting technique seen to have been adopted by PN groups. It also strongly suggests that here were the group(s) later recorded as Ichthyophagi seen in PME to be very relevant for trade around the Horn of Africa.

So too were the Proto-Swahili/Early Swahili. These are generally accepted as Africans of Proto-Bantu type with an overlay that was mainly Arabic and possibly some Persian. Acceptance of some of Chami’s (ib.) ideas of means that the west African-derived Bantu element has arrived in east Africa very much earlier than the received wisdom would have it. The Swahili Shungwaya and the Old-Egyptian Ta-Neter come together meaning the same with considerable agreement on just where Shungwaya/Ta-Neter was in east Africa.

In the section on Kush/Sudan, a little more flesh is put on these bare bones but the salient point is here that discussion tends to confirm that Djibouti/Somalia are the most probable candidates for being Shungwaya/Ta-Neter. Also in Djibouti were part of the groups those that the “civilised” tended from the Greeks plus Romans to the Arabs tended to dismiss as “barbarike” (= barbarians = uncivilised). As part of the evidence of this the eating of raw fish picked up from the beach is instanced but if so, this also included “civilised” Arabs. However, it has been shown elsewhere in these pages what the true situation is (as per Villiers in Sons of Sinbad ib.).

It is true that Barbarike and Ichthyophagi come together as the Barbarike Ichthyophagi of some Greek writers describing east Africa from Djibouti to south Somalia/Kenya and coincides with the area that Egypt probably identified with Ta-Neter (= Punt). Chami (ib.) also says that the Punt of the Egyptians became later Paancha/Panchaea and that it further relates to Pa-ntu/Ba-ntu. Not only does this considerably overlap with what some writers have termed Azania but coincides with the suggestions that Azania covers east Africa from Sudan to Mozambique with some South African theorists wanting it to include South Africa.

It has particular relevance the suggestion that Azania is a term covering most of east Africa has a west African analogy in that in “West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity”, it was shown that Guinea covered most of west Africa from Senegal to Angola/(?) Namibia. An early vessel-form of this Azania (= later Zingion for Chami) was the mtepe. Several writers have regarded it as of Arabic sources. However, the studies of the basic type include that of Neville Chittick (International Journal of Nautical Archaeology = IJNA 1980).

Chittick (ib.) says the absence of the type in the adjacent Arab-influenced areas (esp. the Maldive Islands) means that the mtepe evolved in east Africa, this means it is not a degenerate form of the mtepe dau or dau/dhow. He also says it had a very long life in Somalia below the Horn of Africa. This probably means it was a long-favoured inshore type of the Swahili.

Another section shows the Khoi/Khwe had a dominant role in the trade of the northern Horn at the southern end of the Red Sea. This especially means that commerce between the Alaliou Island (= Dahlak Island) and the coast of what currently is Eritrea (= the ex-Eth. Coast) that is attributed to these Khoi/Khwe under various labels by Agarthachides, PME, etc, but which usually include that of Ichthyophagi further seen by Horton (Antiquity ib.) as responsible for much of the trade of Azania already seen as most of east Africa.

Much of this centres on Djibouti that between being the French Protectorate of Somaliland and independence was called the territory of the Afars and the Issas. Both the Issas and Afars appear to be Somali sub-groups. Afar seemingly means dust in Arabic and the Ethiopian word for them is Danakil. A number of traits of seen to appear in west Africa were noted having as analogies in east Africa. This will have included the variously called dumb/silent trade/barter/commerce referred to Herodotus in west Africa and Cosmas Indicopleustes in east Africa.

Herodotus (5^th c. B.C. Greek) put this to Carthaginians and west Africans and these west Africans are thought in the Bovill book on The Golden Trade of the Moors (1968) to been Mauritanians. Herodotus says they traded gold for what Bovill held was salt but that mentioned by Cosmas (6^th c. A. D.) seems to have involved trading gold for mainly beef in different parts of Ethiopia. A curious but related detail seems to have been the houses of salt-blocks reported by writers from Herodotus to ibn Battuta (14^th c. Arab) in the Sahara are apparently matched by those reported of the Danakil Desert by messrs. Nesbitt (as Rhys Carpenter ib.) and Carpenter (Beyond the Pillars of Hercules 1973).  

It generally accepted that these instances of dumb-trade in Africa occurred on opposite sides of the continent but for Chami (ib.) they are apparently to be linked as having occurred in east Africa. This he attributes to Khoi/Khwe elements allied with the Carthaginians. The linkage with gold is particularly intriguing in the light of the author of the Wikipedia on the location of Ophir. One of the suggested locations was in the Afar region. Whether this rests on any than a similar pronunciation of Afar and Ophir remains moot.

There is another reason for looking at the Afars seen to centre on Djibouti but also reaching into Eritrea plus Ethiopia. This is because Afar is one of the many suggested origins of the name of the continent of Africa. That most commonly put forward is of that of Ifriquya (= most of Tunisia). Another is the Hebrew Epher (= grandson of Abraham) put forward by Josephus (1^st c. A. D.). Greek aphrike plus the privative “a” means without cold and was suggested by Leo Africanus (15^th c.). Latin aphric (= sunny) is another but adding Afar is merely adding to an impressive number   If this means Djibouti may have had rather more of a maritime history than generally realised and in this respect there is an interesting distribution of placenames along the east coast of Africa. Thus Mosambuco (leading to Mocambique/Mozambique) as “Place of Boats”; Tanga plus nyika (leading to the Tanganyika part of Tanzania) as “Place of Navigation” and/or “Place by the Sea”; Shirazi as “Dwellers by the Sea”; Djibouti meaning “Place by the Sea” in the language of the Afars.

Ethiopia & Eritrea

 The names of Eritrea and Ethiopia are coupled here because basically, Eritrea is what was formerly the coast of Ethiopia lost to Ethiopia because of constant warfare (witness too the history of Bolivia in South America).

Very early inhabitants are represented by what archaeologists have termed Australopithecines (= ape-like men). The most famous of these Australopithecine remains is that called Afarensis and the most famous of them is Lucy (said to be so named because the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was playing at the time of the discovery). Lucy has also been given the name of Dinknesh (= Beautiful in Amharic [the main language of Abyssinia/Ethiopia]).

Some Afarensis skeletons are nearly six foot tall. This is generally taken as a height not usually achieved till relatively recently. On the other hand, most hominids of the time are thought to have been quite small. If this opinion is correct, this needs to be borne in mind by those that wish to box-&-cox all Africans into this or that category. In short, from very nearly the very beginnings of Humanity in Africa, there was a mix of types and this still remains so today.

Most tend to think of the true African as the very black West African sometimes called the true Negro or the Niger/Bantu type. This very clearly overlooks the lanky Nilotics/Nilotes and Cushitics, the tiny Twa/Pygmies, the Khoisan nor can we entirely be very sure just when and how the first Proto-Berbers emerged in the Magreb. Equally, the range of skin-tones needs to be borne in mind here. Put simply, not all “Blacks” are not particularly black and can range from very pale to very dark. At nearly one end of Africa are what for European eyes are the very black Zulus yet a word they use of themselves is Abatasuntu (= the Brown people); in the middle of Africa are the relatively paler-skinned Twa plus some of the yellow-skinned Khoisan. In the north, it is claimed the Berbers are “White” and that they always have been yet we come across mention of the major part of the Berbers in the 12^th c. A.D. that were called Sanhaja and they consisted of 22 black clans and 19 white ones. Furthermore, this neglects the presence of the groups of the west Magreb originally called Gaituli or Mauri/Moors. The latter term actually means black and another Saharo/Magrebi people are the Garamantes who are called termed white by many moderns but which forgets the Greco/Roman terms meaning black/very dark that were applied to Garamantes. Among them are furvi, perusti, nigri, etc.

In like vein is that Gaitulia became more or less Mauretania named by the Mauri/Moors already seen to attest the Greco/Roman word for black. Mauretania is to be seen in Mauritania (the ancient spelling), Mauritania (the modern spelling & country some 400 miles sth. of ancient M.) and in Morocco (via the Arabised spelling of Marrakesh). It is also worth remembering that above, the suggestion was followed that Soudan can be the term for the southern Sahara. It is basically the same word as Sudan and both derive from the Arabic Bilad-es-Sodan (= Land of Blacks). Another Arabic word for blacks was Zanj and it connects with Azania (= African Ausan = Panchaea) and occurs in the most famous part of Tanzania (= Zanzi/Zanji-bar), as part of the word of Tanzania and may yet appear as the African name of what is still South Africa. The names of Abyssinia and Ethiopia are synonyms for the same country. Abyssinia is from Habasha which is yet another Arabic word for blacks and Ethiopia is from Greek Aethiopes (= Burnt-faces = Blacks).

This kind of thinking probably pleases neither side of the arguments lying behind what is called Afrocentrism. Behind this are people tending to consider things almost literally in terms of Black and White. Clearly complicating matters are the numerous cultural interchanges mentioned above. A few of them are touched on in these pages.

Some of the traits appear to be more appropriate for Great Flood myths. These myths are best known from those of the Atlantis and the Genesis forms. The Atlantis story was brought to attention by the writings of Plato (5^th c. B. C. Greek) plus Ignatius Donnelly (19^th c. American). According to the family tradition of Plato, the legend of Atlantis came from Egypt to Greece. Not nearly so well known is the story of the Egyptian god named Atum wanting to punish mankind for impiousness by flooding the world. Moreover, if examples of the basic flood-tales are needed, these of the Nile should not be ignored. The more so given that Herodotus tells us Egypt was “the gift of the [River] Nile”.

Herodotus also has a story of men from the Saharo/Libyan tribe called the Psilli in full armour going out to fight the encroaching sands in the manner that Aristotle (4^th c. B. C. Greek) described of Celtic warriors going out fight encroaching seas and so described what seems to be a Celtic version of flood-tales. Again if flood-tales require a factual basis, it should be remembered that most of what has been called the Aqualithic is what today is mainly the Sahara Desert.

Much of what was said in the in the way of evidence is confirmed by satellite photographs of wadis (= now-dry riverbeds) attesting once mighty rivers not too far under the Saharan sands. Clyde Winters (Atlantis in Mexico 2006; Afrocentrism: Myth or Science 2006 & many online articles) has compared the Poteidan aspect of the trans-Saharan deity called Maa with Poseidon (the Greek god of the sea). There are several references to Greek legends about massive lakes plus rivers. They are apparently paralleled by those of the inhabitants of the Sahara called the Berbers.

Many writers have wanted to place the location of Atlantis off northwest Africa (= west Magreb). To the west of the Magreb are the island-groups called the Azores, the Madeiras plus the Canaries? They are regarded by Donnelly (ib.) plus others as the above-sea remnants of Atlantis flooded at the behest of gods punishing Atlanteans. Frobenius (ib.) also compared Olokun (= Lord of the Sea = the Yoruba god of the sea) and Poseidon. Olokun also wanted to flood the world because of irreverence towards him but was stopped by the other gods. Frobenius (ib.) also wanted Atlantis to lie off Yorubaland (now part of Nigeria), especially given there are Yoruba tales of golden cities under the sea in the same direction with the Niger lagoons in the role of the Atlantis canals.

South Africa figures in theories about there having been several Atlantises in the past. Most notable here are the writings of Helena Blavatsky (= the better known Madame Blavatsky & 19^th c. founder of theosophism). This has had the advantage for believers in Atlantis to place them into almost any period that is convenient. Blavatsky saw this as a horseshoe-shaped island stretching from Tanzania/Mozambique in the east, round South Africa to Namibia/Angola in the west.  The Greek concept of Okeanis (the Ocean or World-stream) has further meant Atlantis can be put to almost anywhere on the planet (& has been). Sea-flooding does happen in parts of South Africa plus Mozambique and of the trade-marts on the Montgomery (ib.) model, may explain why the ancient ports of Ophir-as-Sofala, Rhapta, etc, cannot now be located with any certainty. Those still wanting to believe in Atlantis might to consider the western Indian Ocean islands of the Maldives, Seychelles and Comoros groups as being of the Azores/Madeiras/Canaries groups but these Indian Ocean islands are mainly of coral. In any case, the claimed drowned continent here is Lemuria. Moreover, belief in Atlantis should look at just how snugly northeast South America fits under the Bulge of Africa.

Pierre Verin (Azania 1976) points to Mojomby as a drowned land vaguely placed between the Comore Islands and the opposing Mozambiquan coast. Groups settled at the mouth of the River Rufiji (Tanzania) harked to Mojomby as their homeland and African-derived groups from a homeland surrounded entirely by water (= an island) that was thought by Verin to be the island of Madagascar also did so. It may yet turn out that these are mainland and island versions of the basic flood-myth. Mojomby was flooded as a punishment for the immorality of its inhabitants.

The Genesis and Zanzibari versions of Great Flood myths have land-seeking birds prominent in the unfolding of the story. So does that of the Masai of Kenya having Tumbainot in the Noah role. The Zanzibari and Masai versions have birds feeding off the dead of the Flood but it is a raven in that from Zanzibar but a vulture in the Masai version. Al-Masudi (10^th c. Arab) has another African version when telling of Kushites and Nubians splitting at the time of Noah’s Flood but as to how far south the Nubians are supposed to have come is shown by other means (see below).

Most of the African forms share the traits normal for these tales, thus impious and/or sinful folk; they needing to be punished; that punishment usually taking the form of a widespread flood; western versions usually involving land-seeking birds, etc. So similar are they to the Genesis version that in the major study of these myths by Sir James Fraser (Folklore in the Old Testament 1918), they are treated as no more than reflecting the Bible stories of Christian missionaries.   

Fraser (ib.) also argues that this was also the case with another story but this time from Sumatra in what was the Dutch East Indies but which is now Indonesia. Just how these non-Christian ones fit with those of the Bible and how much about birds in a shore-seeking role comes from Nusantarans being amongst the best sailors on the Indian Ocean has been touched on. However, it seems more likely the Nusantaran ones result from their maritime experience not missionary influences.

The east African ones also have details that are largely local. Those pertaining to Kushites and Nubians return us to a time when Kush, Nubia, Libya and Ethiopia were considered as synonyms and all meaning all of Africa. The Swahili and Masai versions are seen to have elements unknown in the Noah stories. This is emphasised even more by Tumbainot of the Masai taking aboard two wives, a vulture that does not come back so shows land returning; a rainbow at all the cardinal points of the compass. It is just possible there was a now-lost east African tale-cycle that involved sea-going east Africans. The fact that most of the just-noted details do not appear in the Old Testament tales about Noah, the Ark and a Great Flood is more than enough to indicate that this does not arrive with the missionaries.

It is surprise that more is not made of these African flood-myths. Even more of a puzzle is that whilst the speakers of Cushitic languages are not notable sailors, the Cushitics called the Masai have the Tumbainot version containing much that would be fully at home in maritime-based Great Flood myths. This is particularly true of western forms of these myths but then neither was the Hebrews especially noted as seamen and yet basic tales about Noah and his Ark are part of Jewish tradition.

By the some token, yet another Cushitic people are given maritime links but this time it is the Oromo/Galla. Non-Oromo tradition in Ethiopia has been has been coming by sea but the Oromo Liberation Front (online) state this is part of anti-Oromo lies by Amharic Ethiopians. Galla is an Amharic term used of the Oromo that the Oromo regard as perjorative and as part of Amharics trying to prove that the Oromo are johnny-cum-latelys, therefore, not really entitled to the land(s) that they now occupy. However, if the sea-route of Madagascar/Lamu/Kenya suggested by Ethiopian court historians were to be maintained, this has much against it.

This is because the earliest Egyptian Pharoahonic dynasties are known to have come under Oromo influences. Also the facial traits of non-Abyssinian Ethiopians in the form of those of the Oromo/Galla are known on Egyptian sphinxes that are Pre-Hyksos (i.e. earlier than c. 1600 B. C.). This would mean that the theories put forward by the Royal historians of Imperial Ethiopia would have the consequence of having Proto-Oromo/Early Oromo coming by sea to Ethiopia and en route at dates very much earlier than they would want to accept. A further corollary would be that this would indicate that Oromo were occupying territory in what is now part of Ethiopia early on.

As it also has been shown that Khoi/Khwe too may also have had more maritime aspects than perhaps expected, it might be suggested that Cushitic sea-going came from them but the lanky Cushitics had little regard for their smaller neighbours. Yet it has been shown that Khoisan did influence their neighbours. Their click-sounds passed to Proto-Bantu and the conical huts passing to Bantus and Cushitics has also been touched on. The Khoisan hunting technique of donning a bird or animal skin so as not to frighten prey was seen to have been adopted by Cushitics for much the same reason relating to not spooking their cattle. Ehret (ib) shows Khoisan numerals also passing to Cushitic (observe not Kushite) groups.

    This seemingly indicates the Trogodytica referred to in PME may have been Khoi/Khwe remnants. If so, we also find from Casson’s translation of PME that there was Trogodytica Ichthyophagi/Trogodytica Barbaroi. This presumably indicates these remnants were among those that had fishing as part of their economic activities. Several writers over millennia have taken the reports of fish stranded on beaches on the retreat of the tide being picked up and eaten raw at face value and this is taken as indicative of low culture. This may have true once (see above re. Stillbai sites) but Alan Villiers (Sons of Sinbad 1940) very clearly notes subsequent developments when showing crews placing fish on the sands of a beach to bake in the blazing sun and that these fish were then eaten when cooked. Writers who had not seen the whole operation but only the end of it just prior to the meal would be bound to misinterpret matters.

The Icthyophagi/Trogodytica were known on the coast seems further proven by the terms of Trogodytica (= land of the Trogodytes)/Barbarika chora (= Barbarian country) apparently for the stretch of coast between the Straits of Deire (= Straits of el-Mandeb) and Adulis. Icthyophagi on the Somali/Djibouti/Eritrean coasts are confirmed by Artemidorus (via Diodorus Siculus) plus Agarthachides (via Strabo) and on Sub-Horn east African coasts by Mark Horton (Antiquity ib.).

Horton (ib) saw the Icthyophagi as having initiated trade on Sub-Horn coasts of east Africa. When we realise that Erythraean in the title of Periplus Maris Erythraei (= PME) is but a Greek word in Latinised form akin to Eritrean, we expect signs of this trade on this coast too. This is actually confirmed by PME, when it tells us that Icthyophagi transported goods from the Alaliou/Dahlak Islands to the port of Adulis (? to their fellows). Here then is the basis of the trade described by Stuart Munro-Hay (Aksum: an Africa Civilisation of Late Antiquity 1991) and Richard Pankhurst (Ethiopia on the Red Sea & the Indian Ocean online) as attracting others.

Chami (ib), Munro-Hay (ib) and Pankhurst (ib) have all seen Indians as among those others. The Sanskrit dvipa (= island) occurs across the IOR, as in Laccadives, Maldives, Dvipa Sukhadhara (= Island of Bliss), etc. The Sukhadhara of the last in Greek became Dioskouridou (= of the Dioscourides). In turn, this Grecicised form became Socotra and PME tells us of an Indian trade-post on the island of Dioscourides/Socotra (Yemen). The Chami excavations on Mafia and Zanzibar islands found Indian Iron Age pottery and there is also report that an “ancient” Indian map (= the “Hindu” map) helped J. H. Speke (19^th c. Eng.) become the first European to find the source of the River Nile.

Virgil had (1^st c. A.D. Roman) thought the Indus was the source of the Nile; Eusebius of Caesaria (3^rd c. A. D. Greek) thought somewhere in Ethiopia was; Apollonius of Tyana (3^rd c. A. D. Greek) harked to somewhere in Egypt. The Memnon tales are held by many to originate in India and became attached to Ethiopia later. Something similar is held to have happened about the Prester John myths of the Middle Ages. Bringing this down to the 19^th c. is Pankhurst’s article.

Messrs. Huyse and Van Donsel in “Ethiopia, relations with Persia” (online) do as much as the Pankhurst article does with India/Ethiopia but do so in terms of overland not Persian Gulf/Gulf of Aden/Straits of el-Mandeb/Red Sea routes. Rohl’s “Test of Time” books do discuss the Persian Gulf-to-Red Sea routes but do so in support of Poeni (= Phoenicians) founding Opone (= Ras Hafun, Somalia) and Punt (in Ethiopia) that then going on to conquer Egypt. Hossein Nourbaksh (Iranians, Pioneers in Persian Gulf Navigation online) plus Rodolpho Fattovich (The development of urbanism in the northern Horn of Africa online) sought Persian fleets in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea respectively. Van Donzel (ib) says Persians under the terms of “Fors/Fars/Pars” were held to be responsible for extensive irrigation-works, superb plantations and gardens in Ethiopia.

Arabian/Arabic influence on east Africa has been suggested to be attested by such as the name of Mafia Island (off the coast of Tanzania) echoing that of the Maa’fir (= Mapharitic Arabs; Lamu Islands (off the coast of Kenya) from al-Amu itself echoing such terms as Amu (= ? an Old-Egyptian word for “Sand-dwellers”= ? Proto-Bedu/Arabs), etc. From PME it emerges that a lengthy but undefined stretch of east African coast was called Ausan and that this names mirrors that of the Arabian kingdom that was also Ausan (= Azania). The strongest claims for Arabian influence on east Africa are in that part that came to be called Ethiopia

This particularly means Arabians from Saba/Seba/Sheba in Yemen. Sabaean Yemen had massive temples plus monumental sculpture. Sabaean titles of mkrb (= mukharab =? priest-king) and mlk (= malik = king) appear in Ethiopia. The latter most famously occurs in Bin ha Malik (= The King’s Son = Menelik = son of the [Queen of] Sheba). The Bilqis of the Koran is the Makeda of the Kebra Negast, the Queen of Sheba of the Bible and Nikaulis of The Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus (1^st c. A. D. Jew), etc. The Introduction to the Wallis Budge translation of the Kebra Negast (= The Book [of the Glory] of Kings) tentatively ties the Dabra Makeda (=Place/City of M.) with Axum and Gebal Nkrumah (Older than Egypt online) does the same with “Aksumai” (of the same Sabaean family as Sheba/Makeda/Bilqis) and Aksum/Axum.

Most authorities emphasise how difficult it is to trace the ancestry of the Memnon stories. It can be said that many Greeks saw their point of origin as vaguely “the East”, Elam (= roughly “Kush”/Khuzistan = southwest Persia/Iran) and/or India. To this end, Eos (= Dawn) was roped in as mother of Memnon. We are told she was from Susa (capital of Elam & winter capital of the later Persian Empire) and that Memnon was also Susian. Martin Bernal (in Vol. 2 of Black Athena 1991) shows a Persian king named Artaxerses adopted Memnon as part of his name apparently in order to help legitimise his reign among the still-extant Elamites that the Persians ruled in the 4^th c. B.C.

Despite the emphasis on how difficult it is find where the Memnon tales began, most writers happily plump for eastern/Indian sources on the basis of little more than opinion. Arktinos (? 10^th c. Greek) wrote a play called Aethiopis that as the title suggests was about someone African and that someone was Memnon of Kush (= Sudan). The date put forward here for Arktinos is from Bernal (ib). He regards Arktinos as earlier than or coeval with such as Hesiod plus Homer and these Bernal also places in the 10^th c. B.C. Equally to the point is, the earliest images of Memnon are in Greek art and they consistently display him with thick lips, tightly-coiled hair plus black skin and these are Greek conventions for showing Aithiopes (= Africans).

There can be very little doubt there was a dual tradition about where Memnon came from. By same token, it is equally certain that the Ethiopian tradition was the salient one (& see below re. Kush/Nubia as Sudan).

Something of this was seen to apply to the Prester John stories. They have at their core, reports of a mighty Christian empire able to see off the hitherto all-powerful Muslim Arabs. It will be immediately apparent that the tiny Christian communities of south India just cannot have been where the legends of a mighty Christian empire began, whereas Ethiopia could and did. The account of the invasion of Ethiopia by the Arab conquerors of Egypt and the account of the Battle of Makuria by Chancellor Williams (ib.) is well worth reading. Following the massive defeat of the Egyptian Muslims by the Ethiopians in open battle, the next Islamic attempt at conquest of Ethiopia was defeated by guerrilla tactics. So on all counts, Ethiopia provided the basis of the Prester John myths.

As to Indians in east Africa, Allen (ib.) thought they were scarce in Sub-Horn east Africa before c. 1000 A. D. and before c. 500 B.C  in Above-Horn/Red Sea east Africa they are as nebulous a presence as the Persians. Having followed opinion that the claimed Persian ancestry of the “Shirazi” is simply wrong, there are the Fars/Pars of Above-Horn east Africa to consider. Fars is yet another Persian city and from it came the term of Fors. Comment was made already about the Persians being very shadowy in Above-Horn east Africa. Van Donzel (ib.) has shown the term of “Fors” has been used of Assyrians, Chaldaeans, Medes, and Persians too. Also the great “Fors” irrigation-systems, gardens plus plantations have been variously been attributed to the Ethiopian people called the Beja and/or Byzantine Greeks. Asseb is claimed as a city of the Persian Fors/Fars but is also attributed to Sabaeans in Ethiopia.

The claimed Arabian presence in Sub-Horn east Africa at so early a date has come under heavy fire from academics of late. This seems especially true of Messrs Casson (in his 1989 translation of PME) and Lacroix (Africa in Antiquity                1998). The latter doubts the equation of Tanzanian Mafia and Arabian/Arabic Maa’fir and suggests that the name of Mafia Island indicates that of a local people, the Mboya. Quite where this leaves the Lamu/al-Amu etymology is very uncertain. As to east African Ausan as the Ausenitic Coast echoing the name of the Arabian kingdom of the same name, this has prompted comments of anachronisms, as the Arabian kingdom had vanished by c. 700/600 B.C. Most translations have mentions of the Ausenitic coast but Casson’s (ib.) bold approach to the uncertainty has been to omit any reference to the African Ausan.

It has already been said that the strongest claim for Arabian (not Arabic at this stage) influence on what is in effect Pre-Axumite Ethiopia came when Saba/Seba/Sheba was the strongest power in the southern Arabian Peninsula. Sabaeans founding Aksum/Axum could be allowed whilst nothing prior was known at Axum but now a very obvious Pre-Axumite Ethiopia has been revealed by Stuart Munro-Hay (ib) plus others. The consensus now seems to be that the Arabian influence was largely confined to what are now Eritrea plus the Ethiopian province of Tigray. This would signify that the Pre-Axumite kingdom of DMT (= Damot/Daamot & other variants) was a mainly Ethiopian development that led on to the Axumite Empire by c. 100 B.C./100 A.D. and its extensive  sea-trade

When it comes to the seawards expansion of Ethiopia, interestingly early dates arise. What was seen above as the Olduwan Culture marking very early man in east Africa also has Ethiopian find-spots. What has been called the Developed Olduwan runs in date with the Pre-Acheulian (named after Acheul, France). Pre-Acheulian finds appear across the Straits of Gibraltar from northwest Africa/west Magreb in Iberia (= Spain & Portugal) according to Sean McGrail (Mariner’s Mirror 1991). Pre-Acheulian finds appear at several sites in the Yemen and Saudi Arabia according to Messrs. Whalen & Pease (Saudi Aramco World 1992 & online).

Whalen and Pease attribute dates of 1:5 million years ago (= mya) to these Pre-Acheulian finds and are inclined to the opinion that this marks an early expansion of Homo erectus across short stretches of sea. This is not unlike what is said by Bednarik of Homo floresiensis (a now extinct branch of Homo [= Mankind] that seemingly diverged between 1 mya & c. 850,000 B.C.). Here very similar small-finds appear on small islands of what is now Indonesia separated by short stretches of water. These Indonesian finds appear alongside bones of giant rats, Komodo dragons, Stegodont (a now-extinct species of small elephant), etc, and in some cases, cordage that may be the remains of fish-nets. It will be recalled that Bednarik is of the view that going to sea is a very considerable advance in the thinking of mankind.

In this light, it is of the greatest interest that this advancement seems to have occurred in Africa and spread from different corners of Africa to southwest Europe and to southwest Asia. This was most likely from Ethiopia/ Eritrea/Djibouti in the latter case. This gives us a very long background against which to place such as the trade-routes between south Asia and eastern parts of Africa. It might be thought that the spread from Africa would have gone overland and this applied to very much later period might be thought to explain how such as the lapis lazuli got from Afghanistan to Pre- Dynastic/Archaic (= Pre-4000/3500 B. C.) Egypt.

However, Juris Zahrins (in Reade ib) placed the semi-precious lapis lazuli, cowrie-shells, coral, aromatic gums, etc, against a background of “Obsidian in the Larger Context Pre-Dynastic/Archaic Egyptian Red Sea Trade”. Trace-analyses prove at least some of the obsidian is of Eritrean/Ethiopian origin. The word obsidian is well known to have come from a mistake by a printer changing obsianus to obsidianus. The word of obsianus is generally recognised to have come from Obsius.  He is said by Pliny to have been the first to find obsidian and this was in Ethiopia. Here we find tradition bolstered by archaeology.

Trade the length of the Red Sea would also be what the Kebra Negast tells us about. The Kebra apparently has its sources in the earliest Coptic gospels but since then has become the holy/national book of Ethiopia that in its present form was probably complied in the 14^th c. It, the Bible plus the Koran agree that Makeda/ “Sheba”/Bilqis got to the Israel of Solomon but do so with somewhat divergent accounts. There is relatively little controversy about how Makeda reached Israel but the real divergence comes in the person of Menelik

Menelik also is said to have reached Israel to see Solomon (his father). Little reference is made to how he travelled to see Solomon but leaving Israel in something of a hurry (having just stolen the Ark from the Temple at Jerusalem); he did so in a ship. That ship brought him home but home not to any part of Arabia but to Ethiopia. The Kebra tells us that Makeda had many ships and an international network of servant/agents who sent them hither and thither. Menelik is credited with taking to the Indian Ocean and winning victories there. Samuel Purchase (17^th c. Eng.) recorded a separate tradition of an Ethiopian general called Ganges making conquests in India and leaving his name in that of the mighty Indian river.

Kobanischev (ib.) showed that ships of the Axumite Empire traded all over the IOR. The Kobanischev article was “On the Problems of the ancient sea voyages of Africans on the Indian Ocean”. In similar vein are “The foreign trade of the Axumite port of Adulis” (Azania 1983), “Aksum: an African Civilisation of Late Antiquity 1991), “Axumite Overseas Interests” (in Reade 1996), etc, all by Stuart Munro-Hay. Taken with the above, there is an obvious maritime interest seen on the part of ancient Eritrea/Ethiopia and this is further shown by anti-piracy forces with an Admiral-type in overall charge and there is a long and widespread history behind such policies.

In West Africa the Hari-forma (= Chief of the Waters) of the Malian Empire plus the Aromire (= Friend of the Waters) of the Yorubas in Nigeria. Marina Tolmacheva in “Navigation in Africa” (online) refers to the Mkuuwa Pwani (= Master of the Shore/Coast) of the Swahili. The Barnagash (= Lords of the Sea) are referred in G. B. Huntingford’s translation of the PME and were Ethiopian officers. Several of these Admiral-type officers are attested in the records of ancient Egypt.

Pliny noted Ethiopian folding-boats that Nibbi (ib.) saw as skin-boats and are seen as a sea-going class trading overseas elsewhere. Reed-craft are discussed by Rafael Patai (The Children of Noah: Jewish Seafaring in Ancient History 1998). He mentions the passages in the Old Testament that refer to these vessels telling us that those of Ethiopia were sea-going. Thor Heyerdahl (The Ra Voyages 1971; The Tigris Voyage 1981) has proven that forms of papyrus/reed-craft could also be not just sea-going but ocean-going. There were also sea-going sewn-craft. Tolmacheva (ib.) cites 18^th c. writers saying that Massawa (=? ancient Adulis) sewn boats were slight but capable of bearing considerable cargoes.

Axumite ships are recorded as present in Taprobane (= Ceylon = Sri Lanka), India and elsewhere on the Indian Ocean. This fits with Africans on the IOR on several grounds.  Yet another seems to lie behind the Chinese terms of Lin Yi and Kunlun-po. Between them, Joe Strongrivers (Negroes in the South Pacific: Filipinos, Malaysians, Polynesia, Fiji, all from Africans? etc. online) and Runoko Rashidi (African Presence in Early Asia edd. Rashidi & Van Sertima 1995) show this. Messrs Christie (as Huntingford ib.) and Huntingford (translation of PME 1980) also refer to a type of IOR ship known from India to Nusantara and China known as kolandophonta (in India) and kunlun-po (in China). Rashidi (ib.) says that kunlun-po means ships of the Blacks. It is also known the same term refers to the Africans in service and slavery in the Far East (especially China.)   

An Axumite ship en route to Syria with timber to construct a church there was barely out of Ethiopian waters before it sunk. Munro-Hay (ib.) shows the timber was diverted to Mecca (Saudi Arabia). The structural forms of early Ethiopian monasteries were echoed by what was built of this Ethiopian timber at Mecca. The Mecca structure was the prototype of the Kaaba and it was to become the holiest of the shrines of Islam. Presumably, this accords with Ethiopia as a place of refuge for early Muslims until things finally turned their way in Arabia.

Yet another claimed wreck involves Ethiopia plus Islam. Tarik Knapp and his colleagues on the Muslim Project called Musa (the claimed son of one of the inner circle & an Ethiopian woman) suggest that Musa wanted to carry the Islamic message to southern Africa. He was eventually wrecked off Cape Agulhas (the most southerly point of Africa. To this is added the ring of protective Kramats (= shrines/graves of local eminent Muslims) that stretches from inland to as far west as Table Bay.

Sudan

            There are several names for the region of Sudan that is under discussion. It came from the Arabic Bilad-es-Sudd (= Land of Blacks) and so too does Soudan that the French seemingly applied to the north of Africa west of Egypt. This was North Africa from Sudan in the east to Mauritania/Morocco (also meaning Land of Blacks) in the west.

            It will be noted this excludes Egypt but then so too does the term of Magreb usually equated with the Sahara or Soudan but which excludes Sudan (& observe the difference in spelling). The normal term for most of what is now called Sudan was Kush. Other equations for Kush are contained the titles of two books. The first is “The Wonderful Ethiopians of the Kushite Empire” by Drusilla Dungee Houston (1926 & online) and “The Black Pharoahs: Egypt’s Nubian Rulers” by Roger Morkot (2002).

            Ethiopian is from Aethiopia in turn derived from the Greek compound of Aethiopes (= Burnt-faces). Another equation is of Nubia with Kush/Nubia. A.J. Arkell (The History of the Sudan 1956) says Nubia derives from nub (= Old Egyptian for gold) and also that enslaved Kushites so regularly dug gold for them that nub came to indicate Kushite slaves.

            This also means the people labelled as Nubians were named by a slave. Further that Egyptians frequently depicted Kushites/Nubians as slaves. To the amazement of many modern authorities, this was long continued by the Kushites/Nubians themselves. To underline the Egyptian contempt for the inhabitants of Kush/Sudan, Pharaoh Senwusret I (= Sesostris I) sailed homewards from campaigning in Kush down the River Nile with a Kushite tied to the stem of his vessel

            The Sesostrid (= 12^th-Dynasty) Pharoahs built defences at the point where Egypt proper meets the Sinai Peninsula. According to such sources as “The Tale of Sinuhe” plus “The Prophecy of Nefertiti” refer to those Sinai forts as “The Wall of the Kings/The King’s Wall” and “The Wall of the Princes/Prince’s Wall”. They tell us that this series of forts was specifically for the purpose of controlling and/or exclusion of “The Sand-dwellers” or Asiatics from entering Egypt.

            On the southern extremes of Egypt are forts on the Upper Nile. They were apparently built for the express purpose of banning Africans from Kush getting into Egypt. They gave reinforcement to what was said in an inscription found at Semna (Egypt). This tells us that Senwusret forbade entry of Kushite Africans to Egypt. Goods being carried on the River Nile in Kushite vessels were allowed up to the Egyptian border but then transhipment occurred.

            Egyptian texts also carry the words “Kush keshty” (= wretched Kush) that reinforce what has already what has been said about Egyptian terms of contempt for Kushites. As part of this, when Senwusret had finished fighting in Kush and left Kush with a symbol of a female vulva. This was to indicate that the Kushites had fought like women, therefore, were cowards.

            Henry Aubin (The Rescue Jerusalem 2002) gives numerous quotes from the Old Testament plus Assyrian texts that have led to similar conclusions of cowardice that were applied to the Kushites at a later time. The enemy this time were the Assyrians. There are several quotes based on what the Old Testament says about King Taharquo of Kush as a coward “scuttling back to Napata”

            Depiction of Kushites as bound slaves/captives also continued into Assyrian times. Probably the most famous example of this has to be the Zinjirli (Syria) stele. On it are depicted three figures. They are Esarhaddon (King of Assyria), Baalithobel (King of Tyre [Phoen.]) plus Usanahara (a son of Taharquo). Esarhaddon is shown as holding chains passing through the lips of the other two. Later still, Morkot (ib.) shows Kushites fleeing Roman troops before any actual clash of arms.

            This then seemingly adds up to a convincing scenario of cowardly Africans as described by chroniclers from three different nations. However, a look at the number and size of the Egyptian fortifications stopping Kushites from entering Egypt should prompt very great wonderment. After all, not only were there 14 separate forts but that at Buhen is described by William Adams (Nubia: Corridor to Africa 1977) as of a size that staggers the imagination.

            Why so many forts? Why is that at Buhen so huge that “the imagination is staggered”? After all, it is just wretched and cowardly Kushites that were being contained but then such questions should have set us thinking anyway. Moreover, that the forts could have been bypassed on either side via the desert should also lead us to have doubts about whether these were solely defensive structures. Some kind of context comes with studies of the material from the south and the west of Egypt.

            Such research has tended to reinforce those studying the folklore of much of Africa. Several writers have said for ancestors, tribes in West Africa have tended to look to the northeast, those in east Africa to the northwest and in Egypt to the west and south. If this shows migratory movement(s) dating to approximately to the Aquatic Tradition or Aqualithic before the drying-out that is represented by the Sahara happened and sources in the central Sahara indicated this is unlikely to be very wide of the mark.

            More signs of migratory movement appear shown by the people that the Egyptians recorded as Temehu. The Saharo/Sudanese or “wavy-line” pottery occurs in Egypt. Winters (ib.) says such Saharan traits as phallic sheaths or cod-pieces, feathers in the hair, types of reed-boat, etc, are known in Egypt too. The Saharan Neolithic took to cattle-raising in a very serious way, as did the earliest Egyptians.

            Agarthachides (3^rd c. B.C. Greek) was shown to have noted a hunting technique probably borrowed from Khoi/Khwe hunter/gatherers and still being used by Khwe/San hunters well to the south millennia later. This was adopted by what was noted above as the Pastoral Neolithic (= PN) as part of the “walking-larder” concept. Agarthachides also wrote that the “Trogodytes” (=? Khoisanoids)  revered bulls as their ancestors. Wicker (Egypt & the Mountains of the Moon 1990) shows the similarities of the Ankole cattle of east Africa (esp. Uganda) and those of Egyptian mural art.

            E.E. Pritchard-Evans (in “Culture & Societies” ed. Ottenbergs 1960) shows that Nilotics (esp. the Nuer) of Sudan not only named cattle but pet-named them too. Timothy Kendall (Genesis of the Pharoahs: Genesis of the “Ka” & the Crowns online) shows the PN feature of rarely killing cattle is also recorded of early cattle-raisers in Sudan and Egypt. The high regard for cattle is particularly well marked at Nabta Playa (Egypt). This seems especially shown by cattle in apparent sacrificial contexts and even these were replaced by bovine-looking statues that were also buried. Both the PN and Nabta Playa show few signs of slaughter-sites.

            Allen has commented on the age-old well-digging expertise of parts of east Africa and this particularly means the “Borana” region of Kenya/Somalia. Here there are also megaliths in the form of stone rings. At Nabta Playa, the megaliths also included at least one circle. Another Nabta feature were walk-in wells that played a major part in making the area habitable. Margaret Murray (The Splendour that was Egypt 1963) refers to the expertise in digging wells in Egypt till much later.

            The PN/Nilotic concept towards cattle, thus rarely slaughtering them; doing so mainly as sacrifices; offering up a sacrifice only when necessary; even this being replaced by bovine-looking statues, etc, all belong here. Something of this reverence towards cattle was just seen to still be shown by Sudanese Cushitics and Nilotics. The Wikipedia (online) article on the Ankole cattle shows this further attaching to the sacred in Egypt. Thus the Ankh (= symbol of life) from the thoracic vertebrae of a bull; the Djed (= symbol of stability) from the sacrum of a bull’s spine; the Was (= symbol of power) from the dried penis of a bull.

            Wicker (ib.) shows that the Khoisan technique of donning animal-skins as adopted by the PN cattle-herders was mainly in the form of donning skins of dead calves. Wearing either the full hide or part-hide as almost a turban, the wearer would approach the mother of the dead calf, butt her udders, this induced her to lower her teats and give milk. He says the calf-skin turbans greatly resemble the Deshret (= Red Crown). The Kendall article (reviewing The Genesis of the Pharoahs by Toby Wilkinson) tells us that the standard of Min shown by rock-art in the Sudanese wadis has all the traits that went into the making of the Deshret symbolic of Lower Egypt.

            Wicker also called attention to the nest of the weaver-bird. It begins green but soon turns white as it is bleached by the sun. Worn as part of possible headgear, it closely resembles the Hedjet (= the White Crown). The earliest known depictions of the Hedjet for shape and colour are on the incense-burner found at Qustul (Egypt). Here it seems a Pharoah-like figure is surrounded by (?) sub-kings and/or nobles but the main feature is that he wears a Hedjet. Qustul was part of what once was Kush/Nubia but is now a little north of the present Sudanese/Egyptian border. Kush itself was not just the name of the country south of Egypt but was also the name of a nome (= province) of ancient Egypt.

            It seems there is growing acceptance that also from south of Egypt came the figure(s) that imposed unity on the whole country. Symbolic of this unity was that the Hedjet of Upper (= south) and the Deshret (= north) combined to form the Pshent (= the Double Crown). The Hedjet also combined with the feathers of Busiris (a major cult-centre of Osiris) to form the Atef Crown. It seems that most of the leading Egyptian deities (esp. Osiris, Horus, Ra, Isis, etc.) are from the south but Busiris was in the north of Egypt. So it seems it that the Pshent represents the political unity of the country so the Atef symbolised the religious unity of the country.

            Feathers from the Martial eagle are described by Wicker (ib.) as magnificent. He also says that the habitat of this eagle is confined to central-east Africa. They are likely to been important items-of-trade, especially as they appear to important parts of the cult of Min traced in Kush by Wilkinson (ib.) and Kendall (ib.). Min also emerged as an important deity in Egypt.

Numerous writers have commented on the considerable similarities of the elaborate coiffures of again mid-east Africa (esp. those of the Watutsi) and the Khepresh (= Blue Crown) of Egypt. It may be no coincidence that this seems to have the most practical of all the Egyptian crowns and the one that Pharoahs preferred to wear in battle.

Thick curly hair typifies most Africans. It is the feature most often described by non-Africans, thus the early Buddhas of Asia, the Great Heads of Mexico, the Memnon heads of Greek art, etc. It is repeated by the wigs of Queens of Egypt plus other high-status females in Egypt. The Somali barshin/barshi (= headrest) of wood closely resemble Old-Egyptian barshi (= head-rest). As Wicker (ib.) has said, the barshi is made of wood and is extremely uncomfortable for all but those having the thick bushy hair of most Africans.

The beards of the type called after the region of east Africa called Punt also appear in Egypt. So too do the kind of “sensuality” belt exampled in southern and eastern Africa by such as the Khoisan/Hottentot Venus plus females depicted in Egyptian mural art.

The name of Perahu seems to closely resemble Per-Aha (= Great House) and from which came the title of Pharaoh. It has long been speculated that the African concept of sacred kingship is echoed in that of the Egyptian Pharaoh. Kenneth Kitchen (in The Archaeology of Africa edd. Shaw, Sinclair, Andah & Okpoko 1993) seemingly regards Perahu as some kind of High-King (as paralleled by such “King” Arthur of Britain; Brian Boru of Ireland, etc). It does appear that we have the Qustul Pharaoh in this role as depicted on the Qustul incense-burner.         

            An African phenomenon not often commented on but was once widespread and not confined to Africa is the cutting off penises as trophies. In South Africa, it was practiced by the Zulus having defeated the British at Isandlwana (South Africa). Allen (ib.) cites Portuguese texts coyly recording it as “tokens of the fact” of the Afars/Danakils. In Egypt, it was recorded as Osiris having his penis cut off by Set; those of Sea-Peoples cut off following defeat in Egypt. However, the last has also been interpreted as simple accountancy.

            This is even more pervasive in Africa than is generally realised, so the elephant-tusks of Yoruba villages in Nigeria acting in the manner of the “forest of phalli” at such as Timuthutu (Ethiopia) reported by John Mattelaeur (online). This rampant sexuality is further exampled by such gods as Eshu of the Yoruba and Boaz of Ethiopia compared by Martin Bernal (Vol. II of Black Athena 1991) to that of Min already as a major god in Sudan plus Egypt. To this is added yet another Egyptian god, namely that of the tiny Bes.

            Bes may indicate knowledge of Pygmies in Egypt but many doubt that this is so yet this overlooks the trade-trips made as early as those of Harkhuf (21^st c. Egyptian). Also several writers have compared the small size of Pygmies with that of Bes and Harkhuf is said in Egyptian records to have brought a Pygmy back to Egypt. John Dayton (online & cited by Bernal) says there is a Busumbi (Uganda) origin for material in Egyptian cosmetics. Confirming the mid-east African connection that this all calls for is Dayton (ib.) saying that Ugandan tin occurs beyond Egypt as far north as Israel.

            Gods of Africa may not be as difficult to identify in Egypt as some may have us believe. Winters (ib.) refer to a Trans-Saharan deity called Maa. This name may form part of Maasai/Masai (=? Children of Maa) in east Africa and Mande (=? Children of Maa) in West Africa respectively.

            Further echoes may lie with the Min/Man/Mon arguments applied to Kush and Egypt by Bernal (ib.). In line with this is Punt as Ta-neter (= Land of the Gods for Egypt) and the distance echoed by the name of Osiris (= the Distant One). Reinforcing this would be that Osiris is also surnamed the Great Black One plus Isis as not just not black but also depicted as black.

            More religious traits are those traced from Kenya to Eritrea/Sudan by Allen (ib.). One is large stone cairns/mounds of rectangular plan of around Kwale (Kenya & also naming ceramic style). They are related by Allen (ib.) to those of Somalia and by Huntingford (ib.) to those of Sudan. Animal-horns atop some of these cairns are of cattle atop the Aweer of Lamu (Kenya); of goats atop those of the Trogodytes of (?) Somalia to (?) Eritrea; of gazelle atop the Bur Heybe (Somalia) mound plus other settlers in Sudan. Presumably the dates for the Trogodyte cairns arrived at via the sources on by Agarthachides (3^rd c. B.C. Greek) accords with the c. 500 B.C. for the Bur Heybe (Somalia) cairn.

            The gazelle-horns and goat-horns appear to represent the Trogodytes as Khoisan hunter/gatherers turned goat/sheep/cattle-herders. Others involve Cushitics, Nilotics and/or Bantus in Kenya. Singly, they have been compared with single standing-stones/posts or menhirs and doubly, with doubled menhirs/posts. This is particularly when they are of y-shape.

            Stones/menhirs in the form of circles have been shown from Kenya to Egypt. In south Egypt lay the Pyramid of Pepi at South Saqqara (Egypt). Here there was a menhir that is anomalous relative to the other stones there that are usually blocks. M. J. Foster (Circle: South Saqqara Mound Mystery online) relates it to a Pre-Pyramid stone circle there. He further compared the plan of the temple-complex there with what in the British Isles would be described as a henge monument (named after the earthen ditch-&-mound enclosing that most world-famous of stone circles, Stonehenge, Wilts, Eng.).

            Also closely associated with Pyramids are pits of boat-shape, as that of the Pyramid of Unas at Saqqara. More pits for boats but actual boats/ships too were discovered at the Pyramid of Senwusret I/Sesostris I at Dahshur. However, easily the famous Pyramid associated with actual ships/boats is that of Khufu/Cheops at Giza/Gizeh. The Khufu ship is claimed as not just the oldest known in Africa but also as the oldest known in any part of the world.

            Yet it is not the oldest vessel known in Africa. On the western edge of the one-time Lake Mega-Chad (= the enlarged Lake Chad of millennia ago) lay the stream of Konudaga Gana (in the northeast of Nigeria). Here at Dufuna was found a small dugout-canoe bearing the C14-dates of 5670 +/- 110 B.C. plus 7264 +/- 55 B.C. These bear on c. 6000 B. C. and make the Dufuna Canoe the oldest found in Africa.

            This places it alongside the reed-boats that appear in rock-art of the Sahara. African reed-boats as ocean/sea-going is confirmed by Eratosthenes (3^rd c. B.C. Egyptian) writing about Nile-like ships on the Indian Ocean; by what the Book of Isaiah says about “Ethiopian” ones on the Red Sea; plus those built for Thor Heyerdahl (The Ra Voyages 1971) on the Atlantic Ocean; etc.

            Another African sea-going form may have been the skin-boat. They may include the peculiar Puntite craft that Norman de Garis (Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum 1936) says prompt laughter when described. They are depicted on the walls of a tomb at Thebes that following normal conventions, usually bears a number and not a name. It is Tomb 143. They are said in the de Garis text accompanying the pictorial material to be probably be carrying goods from Punt to Egypt. Allessandra Nibbi (Revue Egyptologie 1993) was seen to regard as probable that skin-boats were also known in Ethiopia plus Egypt.

            Nibbi refers to what is said by Paul Johnstone (Sea-craft in Prehistory 1980).  Gabriel Beranger (as Johnstone ib.) reports an Irish skin-boat of currach type looking glasslike when the sun was behind it; Sverre Marstrander (as Johnstone) proved this by a photo of a skin-boat of umiak type of Canadian Inuits; Nibbi (ib.) felt this feature was echoed by certain Egyptian craft. Currachs are shown as surviving ferocious seas by Richard Mac Cullagh (the Irish Currach Folk 1993). They are also shown as trading at opposite ends of the Irish Sea by such as Diodorus Siculus (1^st c. B.C. Greek), Cormac Mac Cullenainn (9^th c. Irish), etc.

            The relevance of this is that according to such as de Garis (ib.), Kenneth Kitchen (in The Archaeology of Africa edd. Shaw et al ib.), etc, also believe skin-boats were capable of being used the length of an enclosed sea but this time, the Red Sea. Yet if Punt were to be seen as the Indonesia of some authors, this would be an incredible distance for skin-boats of any kind to cover. Another candidate for being Punt is west Arabia but though giving fewer problems, it and Indonesia are effectively ruled out by the content of the murals at the tomb-complex of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari (Egypt).

            The el-Bahari pictures attest giraffes and rhinos that are African animals, so do not allow Punt to be anywhere other than in Africa. It is unlikely to have been in Kush/Sudan as Kush and Egypt constantly warred, whereas, Egypt and Punt are rarely known to have done so. Plants giving the aromatic gums sought for the Egyptian temples grow in Ethiopia but were inferior to those of Punt. Neville Chittick (as M.H.Nur ib.) points out that the steep cliffs of the Eritrean coast are not depicted as part of the Puntite coast in the Hatshepsut reliefs.

            This brings us to the much-favoured Djibouti/Somali coasts. Here there is the Swahili tradition of Shungwaya (= Land of the Gods/Gods-Land) definitely set in Somalia plus the Old-Egyptian tradition of Ta-neter (= Land of the Gods/Gods-Land) probably set in Somalia/Djibouti. As Ta-neter is apparently also to be identified with Punt, from this it seems Punt is also to be identified with what today are Somalia/Djibouti. Further confirmation of this probably comes with the fact that the superior plants sought from the Land of the Gods do grow in some profusion in Somalia plus the fact that the rhinos, giraffes, huts-on-stilts in the Hatshepsut murals are still known in the same parts of east Africa.

            Felix Chami ((The Unity of African Ancient History 2006) says that such as Pa-ancha/Pwenet/Puanit/Punit are the Swahili versions of the words that became Punt in Egyptian and Panchaea in Greek. The trade with Punt was paid for in beads and other gifts to the King of Punt. More Egyptian beads were found in Jubaland (on the Kenya/Somalia border) plus Nakuru (Kenya) that Louis Leakey (as Nur ib.) says were from a chiefly grave. This gives royal connections for trading of goods for trinkets that looks remarkably like the age-old pattern of things valuable being traded for beads and the like. However, this does overlook that such items become exotica in their own societies and take on a value in their own right.

            The trade also has been/will be seen to have begun in Pre-Dynastic times. This might prompt the land-link to loom large in our minds but various minerals, Red Sea shells, coral, etc. confirm the Red Sea connection even at this early date for Egypt. For writers of the same ilk as Emmanuelle Honore (Earliest Cylinder-seal Glyptic in Egypt: From Greater Mesopotamia to Naqada online), such as the earliest cylinder-seals in Egypt were of Mesopotamian origin.

            Honore explaining Mesopotamian traits as items-of-trade is to be preferred to the Mesopotamian invaders demanded by the revived Dynastic-race theories of David Rohl’s Test of Time. However, just how much of this comes from Mesopotamian trade remains open to debate. The more so as it involves such as sloping with niches, the shape of the Pyramids, the form of the Great Sphinx at Giza/Gizeh, high-sided ships, etc.

            The mastaba is a local tomb-form with sloping walls with niche-like doorways and is one of the many suggested prototypes of the Pyramids. One more for the latter is the shape of Saharan sand-hills according to those followed by Margaret Murray (ib.). Another is the Tutu/Otutu shrine seen by Nai Nii-Tete (Tutu-Ani & the Otutu online) as stretching from Kush/Nubia to Ghana plus Nigeria and greatly resembling the form of the Stepped Pyramid(s). Even more unlikely is that the forms of the Great Sphinx plus ships with high-ended stems and sterns are from Mesopotamia.

            The high ends are a function of going to sea, so are not solely attributable to Mesopotamians. This was a principle incorporated into such reconstructions of ancient craft in West Africa and Egypt by Michael Bradley (Dawn Voyage: The Black Discovery of America 1991) plus Thor Heyerdahl (The Ra Voyages 1971) respectively. If the point needs stressing, it is worth recalling Heyerdahl’s failure to cross the Atlantic and the reason why he failed. The reason for the failure was that the purpose of the so-called “harp-string” (= a line depicted in some murals) was not appreciated. That purpose was to keep both ends of a reed-built vessel out of the sea. It was when one end of the vessel drooped into the Atlantic that Ra I just a little short of its final destination started to sink.

            The ships depicted on the walls of Tomb 100 at Nekhen (= Hierankopolis, Egypt) plus the handle of a knife found at Gebel/Jebel el-Arak (Egypt) loom large in arguments about the Mesopotamian element called the Dynastic Race in Pre-Dynastic Egypt. It seems to have been the case that this began with the works of Flinders Petrie (ib.) and revived by Rohl (ib.). The reputation of Petrie (ib.) was such that he is considered to be “The Father of Egyptology”.  Yet in “The Making of Egypt” (1939) he argued that the black ship depicted on the walls of Tomb 100 at Nekhen/Hierankopolis or the Gebel el-Arak knife-handle were those of Blacks.

To this is added that Alexander Harris (Pre-Dynastic Kmt online) shows that the “Two Gazelles” Palette and the Narmer Palette accord with norms of Africans depicted in Egyptian art in side-view with a profiled head for centuries. It will be seen shortly that this fits with other evidence of southern conquests of Egypt.

To the probably successful Pre-Dynastic Kushite conquest of Egypt is added what is said in an inscription found at el-Kab (Egypt). The el-Kab inscription records a massive Kushite victory over Egypt that left the country ripe for conquest but was never followed up. When to this is added the several other Kushite successes, it becomes obvious why there was an Egyptian need for so many Nile forts and why that of Buhen was so vast. In short, Kush was not so wretched after all.

This also does something to attach sea-borne invasions to Kush at very early dates. It has long been a puzzle of deeply Kush penetrated into Black Africa. Matters are not helped by the ancient confusions of “Ethiopia” and “Kush”. However, there are some hints. The el-Kab inscription apparently noting an alliance of Punt and Kush would reinforce the maritime connection and provide a possible background for the name or epithet of the admiral of the fleet to Punt depicted at Deir el-Bahari.

The fleet was that sent by Hatshepsut from Egypt to Punt. This was by so means the only one but it is easily the most famous. If there was some prior connection between Kush/Nubia and Punt/Somalia, this might explain the background of the admiral just seen to have led their expedition. The name/epithet was Nehessy and is also the root of the Hebrew/Jewish Phineas. It was one of the Old-Egyptian words for blacks, so indicates Hatshepsut’s admiral was a Kushite.

Al-Masudi (10^th c. Arab) wrote that Nubians and Kushites parted at some early date and that the Nubians went east and Tolmacheva (ib.) cites al-Mujawar (13^th c. Arab) to the effect that Kushites drove invaders off from the Horn of Africa. This has been interpreted as linked to one of the various Indonesian attempts at trans-oceanic colonisation that if it were to be seen as tied to the records about Punt (as noted above) would have started rather earlier than is generally accepted.

On the analogy of the Mare Ethiopium as the Sea/Ocean of Blacks/Africans and known to apply to the Atlantic waters washing the western shores of Africa, we come to such as the Persian Gulf, Arabian Gulf, Indian Ocean, ma’lono d-kush, Zanj-e-Bahr, etc. These are terms seemingly referring to the perceived dominant users of a particular body of water at the time of the record being made.

The term of ma’lono d-kush translates as the Sea of Kush according to the unknown writer of the Causa Causourum in turn cited by Hideyomi Takahashi (in Hugoye = Journal of Syraic Studies 2003 & online). It is probable that ma’lono d-kush refers only to the Red Sea but there are enough hints to suggest that it might extend to what PME was seen refer as the Auseneitic Coast (= most of Sub-Horn east Africa). Those hints lie with such terms as Bahr-e-Zanj/Zanj-e-Bahr and the constant confusion of Kushites, Nubians, Ethiopians and Zanj.

These are all ancient terms for Africans. Zanj comes from Arabic or Persian and was especially applied to those of Sub-horn east Africa. This Persio/Arabic terminology is also used by Piri Reis (15^th/16^th c. Turk). Piri Reis is famous more from discussions about possibly early maps of Pre-Columbian date but his surviving fragments also map parts of east Africa facing the Indian Ocean that he labels as Bahr-e-Zanj/Zanj-e-Bahr.

To this can be added that we should recall what has already been said about the words of Indian koland and Chinese kun-lun that again both mean Africans occurring in such as kolandophunta and kunlun-po that apply to types of Pre-European sea-going vessels. The point seems fully made when we repeat that Zanj-e-Bahr translates as Sea/Ocean of Blacks and as it means the Indian Ocean, offers an exact parallel for the Mare Ethiopium marking the Atlantic Ocean. A webpage dealing with Zanzibar history tells us that Bahr-e-Zanj/Zanj-e-Bahr was applied to east African coasts from Sudan to Mozambique till well into the 20^th c.              

Another marker of Kushites to the south of Kush/Sudan is tombs around Yeha (Ethiopia) fitting a context of Kushite conquest from Ethiopia to Egypt. According to such as Petrie (ib.), from Kush came the “0” (= Pre-Dynastic), 7^th, 10^th, 12^th plus 25^th Dynasties of Egyptian Pharoahs. Kush also provided several Egyptian Queens. The names of Steua plus Ta-Seti appear to have been applied to Kush/ (?) part(s) of Kush by the Egyptians. They both appear to have had a general meaning of Land of the Bow and this was very appropriate, as Kushite archers were a mainstay of Egyptian armies for a very long time. Kushites from the group otherwise called the Medjay formed the police-cum-militia for much of the New Kingdom.

It now becomes even more obvious why at times, Egyptian Pharaohs felt the need to build lots of forts on the Upper Nile, why that at Buhen is so huge and why when Egypt fell out with Kush, there was the need to so denigrate the enemy. The last is hardly unknown to us today and denigration of Kushites was continued when Kushite-ruled Egypt and Assyria went war.

It has already been shown that Kush was nothing like as wretched as ancient texts from Egypt would have us believe and Henry Aubin (The Rescue of Jerusalem 2002) fully shows this applies equally to when the Kushite-based 25^th Dynasty of Pharoahs fought against Assyria.

Even more stressing that the “cowardly” tag did not apply to the Kushites comes home when we read Messrs Brunson (as Brooks-Bertram ib.) and Brooks-Bertram (in Egypt: Child of Africa ed. Ivan Van Sertima 1994). They wrote of ferocious battles that led to the Assyrian invaders being bereft of troops in Egypt. It may also be worth noting the bravery show by the Sudanese when fighting 19^th c. Britain en route to becoming the greatest empire has ever seen.

All Pharaohs wanting to protect Egyptian commercial interests in what archaeologists term Syro/Palestine or what says the Egyptians called Khor, had to have regard to what was going on there. Aubin shows that that Kush-to-Khor trade was sufficient for Khor to have adopted a full-scale Egyptian weights-system in the time of Kushite rule over Khor (esp. under Taharquo)

He also mentions that Taharquo made sure that Egypt had good harbours in Khor in which Egyptian ships could safely and securely anchor overnight. The relationship that Peggy Brooks-Bertram (ib.) says Kush/Egypt had with Cyprus would also require a Kushite concern for maritime matters.

Far from accepting that Taharquo was the coward that fled not just to the Egyptian capital but to his Kushite one at Napata, Aubin (ib) cites ancient and modern writers saying otherwise. Indeed, with a radical reinterpretation of what is said in the Old Testament, he arrives at a very different conclusion from that usually put forward about what the Bible calls the Deliverance of Jerusalem.

The normal explanation put forward about the Deliverance is that plague carried off the Assyrian troops surrounding Jerusalem. What is left unexplained is why given the state of ancient hygiene; something so contagiously virulent only affected one of the two bodies of troops that were so close to each other. Aubin tells us it was Taharquo (= Tirhaka of the Bible) who was “The Deliverer” of Jerusalem. It seems it was this feat that prompted Strabo (1^st c. B.C. Greek) to place Taharquo in a select band as Tearco.

Strabo was writing about brilliant military commanders who had become forgotten. He listed Madys the Scythian; Tearko the Ethiopian; Cobus the Treran; Sesostris plus Psammitechus of Egypt; Persians from Cyrus to Xerxes. It will be seen that Taharquo is there under another ancient spelling of his name. He also appears in an even more select list.

That even more select group was of from the east Mediterranean who was thought capable of leading expeditions from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. They included Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia, Hercules of Greece plus Taharquo as Tarraco of Kush.

Here we revert to what al-Masudi was seen to have said about Nubians going to the left (= east) and the Kushites to the right (= west). Added to this is Procopius (6^th c. Greek) recording that Africans had invaded Iberia long before his time; Strabo saying that Africans held the coast right up to Dyris (= north Morocco); al-Makary (10^th c. Arab) also saying that Tarraco had invaded and conquered Iberia.

To sum this up, the Kushites were thought capable of mounting amphibious invasions at both ends of the Red Sea and at both ends of the Mediterranean and doing so successfully.

Egypt

Of all the civilisations of the ancient world, that of Egypt bids fair to be easily the best known but for some writers its sources lie within Mesopotamia (= Land between The Two Rivers = mainly modern Iraq). In the Test of Time books by David Rohl, this starts with a Garden of Eden to the north of present-day Iraq but that the population drifted towards what is now south Iraq. It has had several changes of names. This includes Sumeria, Akkadia/Accadia/Agadia, Babylonia, etc. Particularly salient here is that these people now faced the head of the Persian Gulf.

            For a much earlier generation led by Flinders Petrie (Ancient Egypt 1896, The Making of Egypt 1935), groups at the head of the Persian Gulf loomed large in theories about the sources of Pre-Dynastic Egypt. These theories have been recently revived by a group calling itself Shemsu Hor (= Sons/ Children/Followers of Horus) led by David Rohl. They see the Dynastic/Eastern Race sailing for Egypt and conquering it. In doing so, Ophir (= Sofala, Moz.), Opone (= Hafun, Somalia), some kind of Proto-Phoenicia (? nr. Djibouti) were established.

            Ships of claimed Mesopotamian type are claimed by Shemsu Hor amidst the rock-art of wadis (= dry river-beds) in the Eastern Desert. The Sumerian hieroglyph for the sea is said by Thor Heyerdahl (Early Man & the Sea 1978) to be the same as the Egyptian one for ship. From the Semitic successors of the Sumerians in Mesopotamia came the word of yam and from this came Egyptian ym (= sea). The last is said to appear in syllabic not hieroglyphic form and this is held to indicate a foreign word. The material described by Zahrins (ib.) underlies part of the Eastern/Dynastic route via the Red Sea to Egypt.

            Depicted on the walls of Tomb 100 at Hierankopolis (Egypt), the knife-handle from Gebel el-Arak (Egypt), pottery of the sort named after a type-site at Naqada (Egypt), etc, are scenes that are taken to indicate some kind of naval or river battle. Some of the vessels are of the claimed Mesopotamian or foreign type. A ship of this type is also noted by a contributor to the Unexplained Mysteries Discussion Forum (= UMDF online). Aboard were the Mesopotamian gods called Enki, Enlil plus a form of sphinx? This same source goes on to compare the faces of the gods with that of the Great Sphinx at Gizeh (Egypt).

            Another comparison was of the shape of the Mesopotamian ziggurat type of temple and some of the early Pyramids (esp. the Stepped Pyramid). Yet more are clay-brick masonry; walls with slopes and niches; the niches marked by hero-effigies; the walls patterned by coned pattern-makers; cylindrical seals; pear-shaped mace-heads; types of pottery; the robed figure on the Gebel el-Arak knife, etc.

            The cause of those wanting to place the Great Sphinx back to between 11,000/9000 (= the West/Shoch hypothesis) will not have been greatly helped by John West wanting to attribute it to Martians. Nor by other adherents in the form of messrs. Hancock & Bauval (Message of the Sphinx 1996). They want to regard monuments on the Giza Plain as reflective on the ground of Orion in the sky. On the web-page called “The Atlantis/Giza Connection Challenged”, it is pointed out that in order to make this happen, the map of Egypt has to be turned upside down and that for the Sphinx to have been Leo the Lion, it has to be taken across the Nile.  

            Entirely separate and having the opposite effect by a considerable shortening is the chronology attached to the Eastern/Dynastic Race schemes. It must be a concern that they stand to the Master-race theories. They are also worryingly close to the date-schemes of such as the 17^th c. divines in the form of Messrs. Lightfoot, Ussher, etc. and to those of Immanuel Velikovsky. A corollary of this is that Ramesis III still fought the Sea-Peoples. However, the latter are no longer to be seen as dispossessed Anatolians, dispossessed Mycenaeans plus other motley groups but as Persians

No hypothesis is ever going to fully explain all that has happened in the past but what is left unexplained is why sail all that way and bypass perfectly good places to colonise en route? If there was prior knowledge of what was on offer in Egypt, there would surely be easier ways of doing things than reaching the Red Sea coasts of Egypt and then hauling their vessels overland towards the Nile, then fight a beach-head action that was eventually to lead to the conquest of Egypt. My knowledge of such matters is not that of an expert but this seems to be a logistical nightmare. Also the Rohl chronology gives such as the Kushite dynasty short shrift.

The web-site on which the claimed the claimed Mesopotamian face of the “Great Head” otherwise called the Great Sphinx also occurs has more UFO/men-from-space problems. In any case, the Mesopotamian case fails on acceptance of the Europoid/European face arrived at via computerised images by Mark Lehner cited by Joel Freeman (online) plus Richard Poe (Black Spark, White Fire 1999), etc.

West is quoted by Poe (ib.) as saying that the methods of Lehner could equally have proven that the face of Elvis Presley was that of the Great Sphinx. Yet another opinion is one that has had a very long history. Herodotus (5^th c. B. C.) pointed to a Negroid component in Egypt that he thought was dominant there. This came to the mind of Count Constantin de Volney (18^th/19^th c. French) when looking at the face of the Great Sphinx. Moreover, Baron Vivien de Denon (18^th/19^th c. French) did an etching before the supposed 19^th c. damage to the face and concluded that it was the face of an African. J. T. Willard (as Van Sertima in Early America Revisited 1998) shows a photograph that leads us on similar lines. Then there are the by now much-cited line-drawing by Frank Domingo. He was a forensic artist for the New York Police and for West, did these line-drawings. The drawings are probably the most comprehensive study of the face of the Great Sphinx ever been done.

Domingo proved as far as things are ever likely to be, it is the face of an African Negro. It fits a consistent pattern shown above on more than one count. One is of natural prototypes taken up by Egypt and turned into monuments and this included the African face turned into that of the “Great Head” named the Great Sphinx. We also know the natural prototypes for such as the Pyramids, the Great Sphinx, massive statuary, etc, were part of a growing Egyptian trend for gigantism.

The denial of African origins for what have been called Great Heads like that of the Sphinx is something else with both a very long history and being worldwide and will be seen to figure Egypt in more than one way. An example is that near Medina (Saudi Arabia) called “Ishmael” by Messrs. Chandler & Rashidi (in Africans in Early Asia edd. Rashidi & Van Sertima1995) but as always, rock-art is difficult to date and the Medina Ishmael is no different. Marilyn Reidel (The Peopling of the Americas online) cites opinion saying that claimed features on the heads of giant plus other Buddhas across Asia indicate snails on the head of holy-men to cool them. More Great Heads are those of Olmec type in Mexico but traits here are attributed to (a) errors; tools blunted by too-hard stone; intention to depict “baby-faces” and/or were-jaguars, etc. Also belonging here for different reasons is the Zinjirli (Syria) stele depicting Esarhaddon (king of Assyria), Baalithobel (king of Tyre, Phoen. /Lebanon) plus another figure said to be there because a mistake by the sculptor.

The Medina Ishmael closely resembles what is shown in several books written or edited by Ivan Van Sertima of a Nuba (Kenya) chief plus the sphinx-like Monument F at Tres Zapotes (Mex.). Snails on the head to “explain” what might otherwise be taken as the tightly-curled hair of Africans sounds like a joke but one that loses appeal on realisation of what is being attempted here. In any case, it leaves unexplained the black skin, flat nose plus thick lips of many of these Buddhas. This is reinforced by some epithets of Krishna (= Black) of Shyama (= Great Black One), Jaganoth (= Great One). Nor should the Great Black epithet of Osiris be overlooked here. Folklore in west Europe (esp. that of Irish Celts) shows Africans as Fomoire (=? From the Sea) and a king named Balar having a vast head. More Africans appear in Mexican folklore and is reinforced by the traits of Olmec Great Heads, terracottas in the Von Wuthenau collection, Weircinski/Vargas studies of Mexican skeletons, the Underhill et al genetic studies, etc.

There is more on this in “West Africa & the Atlantic in Antiquity” but to be particularly noted is that the notion of sculptural errors applies equally to the Olmec Great Heads as to the Zinjirli stele. Brooks-Bartram (ib.) cites Arkell (ib.) as joining those stating that the so far unnamed third figure on the Zinjirli stele was a mistake and cannot be an African. However, these same authorities have no difficulty in identifying any number of items as those marking the Kusho/Nubian presence in Egypt. It further turns out the third Zinjirli figure is none other than the son of Pharaoh Taharquo of Kushite Egypt.       

From this it seems that the face of the Great Sphinx is neither that of a Europoid nor of a Mesopotamian. The ship on which the supposed prototypes of the Great Sphinx were on was of a type that had been known in Egypt centuries before this. They are said to have been black ships of square shape and they were opposed by crews in white ships of sickle shape according to Petrie (ib.). An opposing viewpoint is that the white sickle-shapes were those of invaders and the black ones those of indigenes. The basic type is shown by Wicker (ib.) in central Africa, by Lhote in the Sahara and by several in the Eastern Desert. So it can be assumed here is an African type. The more so given that those depicted in the Wadi Hammamat are centuries earlier than claimed Mesopotamian prototypes. From what is shown by Bjorn Landstrom (Ships of the Pharoahs 1970), the rock-art of the Eastern Desert shows sickle-shapes, square shapes and in-betweens.

When we realise the combatants in the reported battle-scenes also wear very African-looking loin-cloths, the more it looks as if the battles are between two groups of Africans. In the Hierankopolis tomb-art presumably relating to the rock-art of nearby wadis, some of the combatants are red and some black. This clearly has echoes elsewhere in Africa (see above re. physical differing types in Af.). In Petrie’s opinion, the Blacks are seeing off the Reds because of superior types of club in pear-shaped mace-heads. In the case of these superior mace-heads, it is worth noting their similarity to the Zulu knobkerries and the dubious choice that disgraced Zulu nobles had of execution by knobkerrie or by the axe (the fate of the common folk). If another example of long survival of ancient symbols of office in Africa is needed, look at what is said by Kendall (ib.) in his review of Wilkinson (above) about Madhist leaders and a Was sceptre alongside Korans.

Further on the African connection for Egyptian water-craft comes again from Wicker (ib). One is in the boats of the Great Lakes region of mid-east Africa (esp. Zaire & Uganda) and the “Great Ship” found adjacent to the Great Pyramid. This was for no keel, edge-on planks transversely sewn, “mid-stern over… mid-section & sutured in place” plus “round and caulked lathes”. Bull-horns originating in African tribal masks were used to decorate Egyptian masts plus sterns according to Landstrom (ib.). African banners of animal-skin were seen by Landstrom (ib.) as the prototypes Egyptian sails. Figures wearing Min-type head-dresses with the African-like eagle-feathers are in the boats of the Wadi-type rock-art presumably attest chiefs.

The circumstance of the Nile flowing north but prevailing winds going south are thought to be the context of the first sails. Thus having towed boats north, southward progress would be aided by gentle breezes behind the animal-hide banners already referred to and observation of this would lead in time to the first sails. It will be recalled that the animal-skin plus the mast plus stern decoration were regarded as probably African in origin. Given that the banners were on two poles, is it coincidence that the earliest Egyptian water-craft had two masts?

Winters (ib.) feels there was a Poteidan (= Wooden Mountain =? Ark-like vessel) aspect of a Sahara-wide deity called Ma/Maa. He considers it went west to the Niger Valley with the ancestors of the Mande (= Children of Maa) and east to the Nile Valley with the ancestors of the Masai/Maasai (=? Children of Maa). Another such god was the Waa’ka that Ehret (ib.) found existed in several languages in east Africa. Petrie also passed comment on this god that he regarded as found in Egypt under the spelling of Uak-ha. A family of this name may be of 5^th/6^th Dynasty date (= c.3000/2500 B.C.). Their 9^th/10^th Dynasty tombs were of Kushite type but unknown in Egypt before they were built at Qua (nr. Abydos). The hammer-work by stone balls of one of the Qua rock-cut tombs seems echoed at Abydos.

The study & measurement of skulls shows heads of non-Abyssinian Ethiopians and members of the Waa’ka/Uah-ka family are very similar and confirm the Africo/Egyptian connection. Among those non-Abyssinian Ethiopians are the Galla and who are the model for the faces for a number of sphinxes that Petrie (ib.) shows were taken from their original place of deposit by Hyksos (15^th Dynasty Pharaohs = c. 1660/ c.1555-50 B.C.), so antedate the Hyksos Pharoahs. A family name was Senwosret. It was the name of several 12^th-Dynasty Pharaohs (see below).

To what has been said about the African ancestry of Dynasty 0 (= the rulers now known to have preceded Dynasty 1), can be added what is what is said by Petrie (ib.) about the Sudanic 3^rd, 7^th and 10^th Dynasties plus the Oromo/Galla 12^th Dynasty. The 12^th Dynasty is that to which the Senwosret Pharoahs belong.

The 12^th Dynasty Pharaohs run Amenemhet I, Senusret I, Amenemhet II, Senusret II, Senusret III, Amenemhet III, Amenemhet IV, Queen Sobeknefru, etc. The main king-list is from Manetho (3^rd c. B. C. Egypto/Greek). It should be observed that the names in his list undergo innumerable spellings not only because his original text has long been lost and in the hands of other writers become something else.

It is one of the Senwosrets that set up the Semna inscription banning entry by blacks to Egypt and Poe (ib.) quotes Emily Vermeule saying that that coming back from a military expedition and having set up the Semna stele, Senwosret III came home with a Kushite tied to the stern of his boat.

If the claimed African ancestry of the 12^th Dynasty stands, is there not something contradictory here in that the Sesostrids not only forbade entry to Egypt to what would have been their kinsfolk but what of  the Blacks already living within the bounds of Egypt ? Also why the need for the savagery towards what might be deemed to be one of their own? Why the need to leave the hieroglyph of a woman to indicate that the Kushites had fought like women?

History is full of things that at first glance appear anomalous and a couple of instances from English (not British) history may serve to illustrate matters in general. Henry II of England appointed Thomas a’Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury but once having become a Prince of the Church, Thomas went native (as the phrase has it) but eventually ended being hacked to death by some of Henry’s knights in front of the high altar in Canterbury (Eng.) Cathedral. Even nastier was what happened to Edward II of England when he fell out with members of his own family and the reported manner of his murder.

This is what happens things go wrong. It should be borne in mind that Amenemat I had arranged for Senusret (his son) to be co-regent and successor yet it seems there was a very serious attempt to derail this intended orderly succession. Ammenemat I was murdered and it seems there was an attempted burning alive of Senusret and his family by none other than one of his own brothers.

Senusret apparently learnt of his dead father en route from campaigning. On the arguments of Bernal, Poe plus others, such campaigns were not just the expected ones in Syro/Palestine but also ones to as far away as Anatolia (= Turkey), Scythia (= Ukraine), Colchis (= Georgia), Thrace (= Bulgaria), mainland Greece, the parts of Greece that are the islands of the Aegean Sea (esp. Crete), Cyprus, etc.

It is now that statues loom large. The first is that of Ammenemat I found at Mit Rahina (part of the Thebes [Egypt] complex). On it is an inscription that Bernal considers is an equivalent for something that is written by Herodotus (5^th c. B. C. Greek). The Mit Rahina inscription tells of apparent tribute to the Pharoah from places well outside Egypt and this would accord with such non-Egyptian writers as Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus (1^st c. B.C. Greek) plus others recording Egyptian conquests in the regions listed in the previous paragraph.

It is the claim of Egyptian conquests in Anatolia, Scythia plus Colchis that have attracted most criticism(s). According to Herodotus, statue-pillars were set up marking the conquests in Anatolia telling us that “Sesostris” set up statue-pillars on the Ephesus-to-Phocaea and Sardis-to-Smyrna roads. They told us of conquests that “Sesostris” had made by his own strong right arm and bore the Egyptian hieroglyph for vulva marking females to indicate the locals fought like women (= cowards).

However, critics wrote that even if these pillars/menhirs still existed in the time of Herodotus, (a) they could be as much in Hittite as in Egyptian, (b) that Herodotus would not have been able read either Hittite or Egyptian, (c) this meant that H. would not have been able read or understand the inscriptions, (d) that Herodotus would not have understood what the vulva symbol meant. To this should be added that Bernal (ib tells us that the menhirs marked Amenemhat II that he says was called Memnon by the Greeks not Senusret who was Sesostris for the Greeks. Not to be overlooked is that Greek tradition links Memnon with Eos (= the Dawn & Memnon’s mother) and with Kush seen as “Khuzistan” placed between India and Iran

Is it really too subtle to suggest that the priestly keepers of Egyptian historical records might have told Herodotus what the vulva meant? Another such symbol was left behind in Kush after a successful campaign by Senusret III. In short, such markers do attach to Egyptian conquests and more specifically, to conquests outside Egypt by 12^th-Dynasty/Sesostrid Pharoahs. As to Herodotus not being able to read Egyptian hieroglyphs, early 20^th c. Egyptologists could and still mispelt a name they gave as Usertessen. It has had to be corrected to Senusret.  

The relationship of Senusret I and of his son, who became Amenemhat II and foreign campaigns, may have a parallel in Pharoah Shebiktu and that of his son who became Pharoah Taharquo and what in the last section was said about events at Jerusalem. In both cases, it will be very obvious the sons at a young age were the titular heads of the troops on campaign in foreign parts. This would give Amenemhat a possible connection with Anatolia.

As to Amenemhat as Memnon, we can look at another aspect of this with Messrs. Meek (ib.) and Bernal (ib.). Meek (Journal of African History 1960) points that Amun/Amon/Ammon are frequent African names/part-names and (ib.) we learn that Amenemhat means “At the head of Amun”. Memnon was seen in the oldest Greek records as of Kush and from the oldest Egyptian, Assyrian and Biblical records there is absolutely no difficulty in placing Kush in “Aethiopia” (= Africa) to the south of Egypt. Bernal (ib.) says that a version of The Iliad called The Aethiopis was written by Arktinos (? 8^th c. B. C. Greek) and centred on Memnon. Also the earliest Greek art shows Memnon in the non-African conventions of tightly-curled hair, thick lips, black skin, etc. In short, as an Aithiope (= African).

This gives us very solid African contexts for the names of both Amenemhet and Memnon. As to the Anatolian connection, the very earliest known Greek literature in the form of The Iliad gives Memnon close links with Anatolia. This especially means that part variously called Ilion/Troy/Hissarlik for Homer (the author of the Iliad & put by Bernal to the 10^th c. B. C.). Mit Rahina and Herodotus are seen by Bernal as showing Egyptian conquests and/or tribute-lists in general and what has been called as the Tod Treasure as showing tribute from Anatolia in particular.

 Near what was Djerty/is now Tod (Egypt) was a temple dedicated to Montu (Egyptian god of war) by Senusret I. In it were four copper caskets containing mostly metalwork to which Bernal gives a mainly Anatolo/Caucasus background. They bore the name of Amenemhat II. Thus the Tod Treasure seemingly is the archaeological counterpart of the Memnon legends.

The statue most directly linked with doubts about the Sesostrid invasion of Scythia is that which Darius of Persia wanted placed alongside that of Sesostris plus his Queen at the Temple of Hephestiaos according to Herodotus. It is generally accepted that this was the Temple of Ptah at Thebes (Egypt). Herodotus further says that the request of Darius was refused because Sesostris I had conquered Scythia, whereas Darius had not. This whole story has been dismissed as a fantasy concocted by Egyptian sources to give Egypt a more glorious history than Persia. It is also said that it cannot be a correct one because Scythia did not exist at the time of Sesostris I.

Again, is it really too subtle to suggest that knowing little about Pre-Scythian Ukraine and the area being Scythian-ruled in his own day, Herodotus assumed it always had always been so? However, if the Herodotian account hinges on the accuracy of that about the statue of Darius not ending up at the Temple of Ptah at Thebes, the notes to the Selincourt (in several Penguin editions) translation of Herodotus have the greatest interest.

Selincourt (ib.) tells us about a statue found at Susa (the winter capital of the Persia). On it was carved an inscription running “This was the statue that Darius had made for Egypt to prove the Persian man held Egypt”. In short, the Herodotian account about the statue has fact not fantasy behind it and presumably removes this as the reason for doubting the invasion of Scythia/Ukraine.

Even more controversial must be what was written by Herodotus about Sesostris invading what was Colchis/is now mainly Georgia. This involved Blacks and much of the controversy revolves around the fact that Bernal’s volumes have this as a centre-piece of Afrocentric arguments about African influences acting on the Balkans (= Bulgaria, Rumania, Greece, Albania, & the ex-Yugoslav countries of Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia, etc.). Matters are probably not helped when realise that Egyptian sources do not record Sesostris as a king-name.

At least, Sesostris (as Herodotus) plus Sestoosis (as Diodorus) more closely resemble Senusret than does the Uterhessen of early 20^th c. Egyptologists.  As to the presence of Blacks in Colchis/Georgia, rather than try to whip yet more controversy by saying that Senusret/Sesotris abandoned some of his troops, it may be more constructive to examine possible reasons.

The included suggestions are near-starvation (as Diodorus), Scythian cold (as Bernal), simple weariness (as Herodotus), etc. Meanwhile, it cannot be entirely insisted that any present-day Blacks in the region must be relict populations from the remote past but given the background Bernal, Poe plus many others have argued for, Blacks in the port areas of modern Georgia must at the very least be very suggestive.

In this light is the Wikipedia entry on the town of Ulcinj (Albania). Local tradition there is quoted as saying the town of Ulcinj was founded by colonists from Colchis. Seperately, blacks in the Ulcinj population are explained in terms of rescued survivors from a Saracen ship. This does remind us that slaves that were by no means always black were being ferried around the Mediterranean that included Romans, Arabs, Turks, etc. On the other, given what has just been said about the Black-derived 12^th Dynasty of Pharaohs, Africans choosing to stay in Colchis, etc, the separate associations of colonists from Colchis plus another of Blacks from a sinking ship should make us wonder if these are not strands that have become unravelled from something that once combined both in a coherent origin-tale.

            African Blood Groups in Greece (online) seemingly tells of more Blacks in Greece and underlies the work of Antonio Arnaiz et al in “HLA genes in Macedonia and the Sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks” (in Tissue Antigens 2001 & online). However, the Arnaiz work on Human Lymphocyte Antigens (= HLAs) has come under considerable attack. Yet not only does the cited article on blood-groups support this but so too does the Semino et al work on “Origin, diffusion & differentiation of y-chromosome haplogroups e & j: inferences on the neolithicisation of Europe & later migratory events in the Mediterranean area” (in Amer. Journal of Human Genetics 2004 & online). Semino et al (ib.) hark to Somalia for nearly 50% of y-chromosomes in the Peloponese (= most of south Greece) and Arnaiz et al (ib.) look to a wide spectrum of Africans from west to east that includes the Oromo/Galla. The latter is of great interest in the light of the Oromo antecedents of the 12^th Dynasty.

            More of the same occurs with what is written about Blacks in Greece according to Greek tradition. Famous instances are what is said by such as Aeschylus (5^th c. B. C.) plus Apollodorus of Rhodes (2^nd c. B.C.). Aeschylus describes Danaus watching the approaching Aegyptiads/Egyptians. There is an argument mentioned by Anthony Browder (Nile Valley contributions to Civilisation 2004) plus others that the Old-Egyptian word of Kmt/Kemet can only apply to the land and not the people and this brings us to the Greek word of Melampus (= Blacklegs). The latter is used of Egyptians by Greeks because Egyptian farmers stomped about in the Nile mud when planting. Danaus comments on the black legs of the Aegyptiads contrasting with the white of their tunics. Unless it be assumed that the Aegyptiads came aboard with legs still caked with black Nile mud, it will be obvious that that the black legs of the Egyptians are part of an overall black skin and will impinge on Kmt as applied to the land, the people or both, with the latter being the most probable.

            Apollodorus is quoted by Poe (ib.) as saying Epaphos was the African ancestor of the twin brothers named Danaus (naming the Danaids) and Aegyptus (naming the Aegyptiads), so leads us to expect black skins. Poe (ib.) tells us there is some reason to regard Epaphos as a version of the Menes/Narmer generally seen as the first true Pharoah of all Egypt and of Nubian/south Egyptian birth (usually = black in Eg. terms). Much of this seems confirmed by the Danaids describe themselves as “black & smitten by the sun” (almost in the terms of the Atalante/Atarante of the Atlas Mtns. acc. to Herodotus) and by the above-noted description of the Danaids.

            The general tales about the Danaids plus the Aegyptiads have Aegyptus ordering Danaus to allow the 50 Aegyptiads (sons of A.) to marry the 50 Danaids (daughters of D.), Danaus building the first ever ship and escaping to Argos in the Peloponnese region of Greece that we have seen as having some 50% of African-type Y-chromosmes. His twin brother plus the Aegyptiads followed and as they near Argos is the scene of the description by Danaus noting that the Aegyptiads were black. Poe tells us that the families descended from Epaphos were considered as royalty in both Egypt plus mainland Greece. The Africo/Egyptian Men/Min may belong here too as the Cretan Minos is shown by opinion cited by Frank Snowden (Blacks in Antiquity 2000) as a title rather than a name.         

Min/Men would join several other god-names shown across Africa and known in Egypt too. The African eagle-feathers Wicker (ib.) felt symbolised Min presumably agrees with Wilkinson (ib.) saying Min was a frequent god-name in much of east Africa and Egypt. Menes was just seen as the claimed first Pharaoh of Egypt. Min may appear as Minos on Crete. Minos is regarded more as a title than a name and from it came the term of “Minoan” used by Sir Arthur Evans (at various dates) for the Palatial Period in Crete. As in the Bible, Pharaoh is used as much as a name as a title and following Sesostris in the short Herodotean king-list is Pheros which is clearly a Greek version of the same title. Bernal (ib.) adds the throne-names of Kheper-ka-re (= Senwosret I), Kha-keper-re (= Senwosret II), Kha-kau-re (= Senwosret III) and their similarity to Kekrops (the subject of a Greek myth). In Egypt, not only is there Pharaoh as a title but also Men/Min is a part-name of several early Pharaohs.

Early Africans in the Cyclades and other Aegean islands and at what dates is a controversy in itself. It seems probable that the earliest Negroid strains there fit with such as that among the Grimaldi Culture of Italy and the Pre-Natufian of Israel on the other side. Greek tradition lists a number of Pelasgian peoples. Pelasgian tends to be equated with aboriginal or autocthnous in terms of Greece and the Aegean. In his account of the rise of Minoan Crete, Thucydides (5^th c. B.C. Greek) tells us there were various sea-based groups that were eventually defeated by the Cretan fleet. This includes Carians/Garians linked by Winters (ib.) to the Garamantes of the Magreb

More Africans in the wall-paintings just mentioned at Thera in the Aegean islands called the Cyclades plus those of the Minoan Palace at Knossos/Cnossos put this Negroid element in the Aegean between 2000/1500 B. C. at the latest. This is the so-called Pre-Palatial Period and so is clearly much earlier than the reign of Pharaoh Ahmose II (= 7^th c. B.C. Pharaoh & Amasis of the Greeks). Yet it is commonly written that early Ethiopian and/or Nubian Africans in the Aegean only came as mercenaries of  Pharaoh Ahmose/Amasis (7^th c. B.C.) and/or as slaves but never of their own volition.

It is accepted there is probably an otherworldly element in the Theran and Minoan murals and the variously termed “River Nile/River/Nile/Nilotic” scenes part-share in this. Where cats are depicted as hunting in such frescoes, the Nile originals shine through, the more so that they too involve an idealised paradise that the dead came eventually came to. Among the mix of influences shown by these murals, the Egyptian connection will be further shown by comments about Egyptian ships.

Evidence for Africans on Crete and the Aegean islands is no earlier than the reign of Ahmose/Amasis is the opinion of such as Frank Snowden plus others. Evidence to the contrary might be provided by “HLA genes in Macedonians & the sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks” by Antonio Arnaiz et al (in Tissue Antigens 2001 & online) but hefty criticism has been levelled at it but those who have read “West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity”, will immediately realise this path has been trodden before. They will recognise this from the skeletal and cranial studies of Andrej Wiercinski that in turn are reinforced by Great Heads research, the Von Wuthenau figurines, Mexican folklore, etc.

On the other hand, Snowden (ib.) says Cretan tradition regarded Africans as having been numerous on the island in the past. The Arnaiz et al research may have been heavily criticised but it seems confirmed by other studies. On the website called “Refuting Racial Myths”, Sanchez et al plus Cruciani et al are cited as saying that E3b is a Y-chromosome haplogroup originating in east Africa. Also that it provides something like 50% of the Y-chromosomes of the Peloponnesian region (= most of southern Greece). Mourant et al (1976) looked at African blood-groups in Greece. Arnaiz et al (ib.) look to a spread across Africa from the Rimaibe, Fulani, Mossi (of west Af.), Nuba (mid Af.) to the Amhara, Oromo (east Af.), etc. Arnaiz et al (ib.) look to a route via islands of the Aegean Sea plus Athenian parts of east Greece.

They add comparisons of Cretans and Macedonians. Wendy Logue (Africans in Minoan & Theran Wall Paintings online) holds that the Africans depicted in these murals demonstrate that they were integrated into Minoan and Theran society. This of itself very clearly illustrates something very much older than the Palaces. Logue further says dark skins plus curly hair are conventions in Egyptian art for depicting non-Egyptian Africans and that this would have been adopted by Minoan Crete for depicting Africans. This would equally have passed into the similar frescoes of Akrotiri in the Cyclades on Thera (= what is now called Santorini).

Coming to Cyprus and returning to Mourant et al (The distribution of the human blood groups and other polymorphisms ib.), it is found that they wrote that the incidence of more than five per cent cDe suggests immigrants from Africa. They also commented that around the Mediterranean Basin that CDe being high is the norm and that between five and six per cent cDe is again strongly indicative of African sources. Another online article is that with the surely self-explanatory title of “Across the Wine Dark Sea: Egyptian Influence in Cyprus”. In this article, Nancy Corbin reports there are portrayals of Africans to be found and are attributed to the period (? s) when Egypt controlled or ruled in Cyprus.

The location of Cyprus relative to that of its neighbours has been both a blessing and curse to the island. It was blessed with easy-of-access minerals (esp. copper from whence comes its current name of Kypros = Cyprus) plus abundant timber. Cyprus exported copper to most parts of the Mediterranean. Early signs of this are the distinctive oxhide-shaped/H-shaped copper ingots found as west as Sardinia and as far south as those depicted on the walls of the tomb of Rekhmire (Vizier to Thutmose III & Amenhotep II of the 18^th Dynasty) at Thebes (Egypt). This is part of what prompted Bernal to suggest Egyptian sovereignty over the parts said to have been conquered by Egypt as early as the reign of Senusret I/Sesostris I.

The term of wine-dark sea does bring to mind just how many times the imagery of red/reddish has been used to describe seas. An apparently ancient Indian term for the Indian Ocean was Lohita Sagar (= Red Sea). In the time of Herodotus, erythros (= red) described what today is sometimes called the “Gulf”/the Persian Gulf/ Arabian Gulf. Otherwise, what we have seen as the Periplus Maris Erythrae (= PME) or the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea is what today is called the Red Sea and the word of erythros is to be seen in Latinised form in the name of the country called Eritrea (facing the Red Sea). Also very ancient is the description of the Mediterranean as wine-dark presumably invoking the dark red of a wine of a colour like burgundy.

Nor are descriptive terms the only unifying factor of what my “Phoenicians in East Africa” (online) calls the Red and Med. Seas. The vessels on the Punt-run that we have seen as from Somalia-to-Egypt on the Red Sea were the same as those on the Egypt-to-Byblos run in the A/A/A-arc of the east Mediterranean. This is proven by the story of the slain captain of a force sent by Pharoah Seti II to build a KBT/Byblos-ship in the Eastern Desert for trading with Punt. Eratosthenes (3^rd c. B.C. Greek) compared the reed-build, rigging, sails, etc, of Egyptian ships on the Nile and those sailing the Indian Ocean between the Red Sea and Egypt.

Several words of Africo/Egyptian origin passing to Greeks to with the sea, types of vessel, items for shipboard use are listed by Martin Bernal (Black Athena: Vol. III 2006). Building techniques, side-rigging, side-mounted steering-oars, black crews, paddling, etc, of Egyptian ships are clearly to be seen among the mix of influences shown in the Theran murals. Greek tradition has it that the African Danaus was the first to go to sea. Plainly, this is not so. Millennia before the c. 1600 B.C. put forward by Greek legend as the date when Danaus landed in Greece, men had been sailing the seas (even in the Med.). However, having seen the opinion of some maritime historians that the conditions on the Nile were conducive for the earliest development of the sail, it may be possible to reconcile this with the Danaus legend. Especially given what is said by Johnstone (ib.) about Egyptian sails in the IOR.

Playing a major role in such would be that whatever lay behind the Danaus tales might be interpreted as the Greeks saying that Egypt played a large part in the development of the first true ships. It will also be recalled that not only was this attribution made by non-Egyptians called Greeks but also that from the same source came the description of the Aegyptiads as African Blacks and that they were the crews of these supposedly early ships.

Lady Diana Woolley (Antiquity 1957) showed ships with Egyptian features were among those scratched on the walls of the temple/tomb of Hal Tarxien (Malta). Paul Johnstone (Sea-craft of Prehistory ib.) regards these ships engraved on the walls of Hal Tarxien as votive thanks by grateful sailors having survived shipwreck in much the manner that a shrine functioned on yet another small island, this time on the Aegean island of Delos. 

Eratosthenes (ib.) plus Thor Heyerdahl (The Ra Voyages 1971) can be said to have proven that Ra-types of papyrus/reed-build were capable of being ocean-going on the Indian and Atlantic Oceans respectively.

Harry Bourne