The ‘Dynastic Race’
By David Rohl
The birth of Egyptian civilisation have always been a bit of a mystery. How did it come about? And who were the first pharaohs? Were they indigenous North Africans or Sumerians coming from the east? That thorny question had been a subject of heated debate amongst academics over the last 100 years … that is until fairly recently when our tendency towards political correctness deemed that such difficult issues should be swept under the scholarly carpet. But the question of pharaonic origins still remains one of the great puzzles of Egyptology.
In a previous article I proposed that the discovery of hundreds of prehistoric rock carvings in the Eastern Desert between the Nile and the Red Sea was evidence of a foreign invasion which occurred just a couple of centuries before the rise of the 1st Dynasty in Egypt. These amazing drawings show fleets of ships carrying warriors, chieftains, 'dancing goddesses' and what appear to be the standards of Sumerian gods. Many of the boats are being dragged by their crews, suggesting transportation of the vessels across the desert from the Red Sea to the Nile. It's time, then, to go in search of these 'people from the east' in the tombs, temples, hieroglyphs and paintings of ancient Egypt.
An hour's drive north of Luxor, on the west bank of the Nile, there is a vast necropolis of 2000 predynastic graves. The place is called Nakada after the nearby village. Nakada turned out to be one of the most important excavation sites in Egypt because of the light it sheds upon the origins of the pharaonic state. Its excavator was the 'father of Egyptian archaeology', Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the first British professor of Egyptology and founder of University College London's Egyptology Department where I myself studied and obtained my degree.
The cemetery at Nakada turned out to be the necropolis of the town of Nubt ('Gold Town') which grew up as a result of early gold-mining activities in the Wadi Hammamat region, just across the river in the Eastern Desert. 'Gold Town' was the Klondyke of predynastic Egypt.
What Petrie found in this vast cemetery were two groups of people which he designated Nakada I and Nakada II (and III). The people of Nakada I culture were the earliest occupants of the cemetery, whilst Nakada II superseded them and were therefore chronologically later. The burial goods and distinctive structures of the graves made Petrie realise, almost from the start, that he was dealing with two very different groups. The evidence seemed to indicate the arrival of newcomers in the Nile valley marked by the Nakada II graves which were soon shown, on stylistic grounds, to be contemporaneous with the rock art of the 'invaders' found in the Eastern Desert. Based on the evidence of the Nakada II graves, Petrie developed a theory of an incursion of easterners from Sumer who had taken over southern Egypt and subjugated the indigenous Nakada I population. These invaders, with their superior weapons and technology, eventually came to dominate the whole Nile valley and gave rise to what he called the 'Dynastic Race'.
Up until the 1950s Petrie's Dynastic Race theory received widespread support in Egyptological circles. Indeed, one of its proponents even began to refer to the predynastic invaders as a 'Super Race'. Petrie and his followers were very much of their age. They believed in the superiority of western civilisation over what we today call the Third World. They were colonialists with a colonial view of history. The idea of an intellectually superior race, invading Africa and civilising the region, was quite natural from their political perspectives. The Second World War, the Holocaust and the Arab/Israeli wars put an end to this way of thinking within ancient world studies.
In the politically correct world of late-twentieth-century scholarship the Dynastic Race theory has been quietly forgotten. As a result, it is very rare these days to find an Egyptologist prepared to give credence to the idea of foreign invaders at the dawn of Egyptian history. But should we reject the basic evidence because of the political views of past archaeologists? Nobody disputes that Petrie found what he found. So perhaps we should look again at the Dynastic Race theory – but this time without the rhetoric of pre-war colonialism. It is obvious that we cannot rewrite ancient history in the light of events in our own century. It is surely the historian's job to construct a coherent picture of the past based on the archaeological evidence – wherever it leads.
So, what does that evidence tell us about Egypt's origins?
Petrie found several new elements in the Nakada II graves. First, unlike the earlier Nakada I burials, many of the grave pits themselves were lined with mud bricks. This was the first time that bricks had been used in Egypt and archaeologists have determined that mud brick technology was a Sumerian invention.
Second, the pottery shapes and techniques of decoration were also new – again with clear precursors in Mesopotamia.
Third, the Nakada II warriors were buried with a new type of weapon known as the 'pear-shaped mace'. This was in contrast to the Nakada I people who used 'disk-shaped maces'. Interestingly, not only do the Eastern Desert rock-drawings show the chieftains holding the round-headed weapon but it also became the weapon par excellence of the later pharaohs who were regularly depicted smiting their enemies with the pear-shaped mace.
Fourth, lapis lazuli appears amongst the grave goods for the first time in Nakada II. This beautiful dark blue stone comes from Badakhshan in Afghanistan and was traded across land and by sea (via the Persian Gulf) to Sumer where it was greatly prized. Its sudden appearance in Egypt thus confirms contact with the Sumerians of southern Iraq.
Fifth, the complex niched-facade mudbrick architecture which develops out of Nakada III culture is identically paralleled in Sumer where it was used to decorate the temples of the gods. In Egypt it became a standard design feature of the early pharaohs' tombs. The design is so complex that it is hard to believe the niched-facade structure could have been independently invented in the two regions. All authorities accept that such architecture originated in Sumer and was 'exported' to Egypt.
These are just some of the technologies and artefacts which clearly point to contact between Mesopotamian and Egypt. However, this does not prove that there was a military conquest (rather than simple trade) or if the Sumerian settlers in the Nile valley went on to become the first pharaohs. Here there are more tantalising clues.
A magnificent ivory knife handle was discovered near Nakada, at the turn of the century, which shows a Sumerian hero figure controlling two great lions on one side and a battle on the other between long-haired warriors (one of whom carries a pear-shaped mace) and short-haired opponents who are getting the worst of the conflict. The long-haired victors are associated with high-prowed boats, just like the ones found in the desert rock art, whilst the short-haired losers are represented by sickle-shaped boats made of papyrus and associated with the River Nile. The Gebel el-Arak predynastic knife (now in the Louvre) is not only an amazing 5000-year-old artefact but it appears to depict Sumerian invaders with their high-prowed ships in the very act of conquering the Nile valley.
The evidence for Mesopotamians in Egypt is even more compelling at the site of Butu (ancient Pe-Dep) in the western delta. There, German archaeologists have recently unearthed coloured clay cones which, if their counterparts in Sumer are anything to go by, were used to decorate buildings. This decorative cone technique is so striking that it is hard to imagine it being invented independently in Egypt after it had come into use in Mesopotamia.
Did this élite Sumerian clan eventually come to dominate the whole of Egypt and establish the first pharaonic dynasty? An important clue is found in the fact that the later nobility of Egypt called themselves by a special name. They were known as the 'Pat' or the iry-Pat ('belonging to the Pat') – a term which implied membership of a special clan or blood-line. This term was reserved for members of the royal family, courtiers and high officials. Interestingly, a text from the Middle Kingdom (1000 years after the unification of Egypt at the beginning of the 1st Dynasty) refers to a man who reached high office 'in spite of the fact that he was not iry-Pat', suggesting that the ruling class were expected to have been directly descended from an ancestral élite. These great founding ancestors were also known by another title. The later hieroglyphic texts refer to the 'Followers of Horus' who first established kingship in the Nile valley. They are shown in predynastic and early dynastic carvings carrying their standards into battle in support of kings who bore the title of 'Horus' as part of their names. So, was the first Horus-king a real person who later became deified. Could there have been an original human Horus and, if so, was he African or Mesopotamian?
To answer these questions we need to return to the stories in the book of Genesis and Holy Koran. In my book Legend – The Genesis of Civilisation I identified the location of the traditional site of the Garden of Eden in western Iran, the mountain of Noah's Ark in Kurdestan, and the Tower of Babel in southern Iraq. I argued that the Old Testament legends surrounding Noah and the Flood and then King Nimrod were also to be found in the Sumerian literary tradition. It appears that the Genesis narrative may have been based on actual historical events from primeval times.
In a previous article I proposed that the discovery of hundreds of prehistoric rock carvings in the Eastern Desert between the Nile and the Red Sea was evidence of a foreign invasion which occurred just a couple of centuries before the rise of the 1st Dynasty in Egypt. These amazing drawings show fleets of ships carrying warriors, chieftains, 'dancing goddesses' and what appear to be the standards of Sumerian gods. Many of the boats are being dragged by their crews, suggesting transportation of the vessels across the desert from the Red Sea to the Nile. It's time, then, to go in search of these 'people from the east' in the tombs, temples, hieroglyphs and paintings of ancient Egypt.
An hour's drive north of Luxor, on the west bank of the Nile, there is a vast necropolis of 2000 predynastic graves. The place is called Nakada after the nearby village. Nakada turned out to be one of the most important excavation sites in Egypt because of the light it sheds upon the origins of the pharaonic state. Its excavator was the 'father of Egyptian archaeology', Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the first British professor of Egyptology and founder of University College London's Egyptology Department where I myself studied and obtained my degree.
The cemetery at Nakada turned out to be the necropolis of the town of Nubt ('Gold Town') which grew up as a result of early gold-mining activities in the Wadi Hammamat region, just across the river in the Eastern Desert. 'Gold Town' was the Klondyke of predynastic Egypt.
What Petrie found in this vast cemetery were two groups of people which he designated Nakada I and Nakada II (and III). The people of Nakada I culture were the earliest occupants of the cemetery, whilst Nakada II superseded them and were therefore chronologically later. The burial goods and distinctive structures of the graves made Petrie realise, almost from the start, that he was dealing with two very different groups. The evidence seemed to indicate the arrival of newcomers in the Nile valley marked by the Nakada II graves which were soon shown, on stylistic grounds, to be contemporaneous with the rock art of the 'invaders' found in the Eastern Desert. Based on the evidence of the Nakada II graves, Petrie developed a theory of an incursion of easterners from Sumer who had taken over southern Egypt and subjugated the indigenous Nakada I population. These invaders, with their superior weapons and technology, eventually came to dominate the whole Nile valley and gave rise to what he called the 'Dynastic Race'.
Up until the 1950s Petrie's Dynastic Race theory received widespread support in Egyptological circles. Indeed, one of its proponents even began to refer to the predynastic invaders as a 'Super Race'. Petrie and his followers were very much of their age. They believed in the superiority of western civilisation over what we today call the Third World. They were colonialists with a colonial view of history. The idea of an intellectually superior race, invading Africa and civilising the region, was quite natural from their political perspectives. The Second World War, the Holocaust and the Arab/Israeli wars put an end to this way of thinking within ancient world studies.
In the politically correct world of late-twentieth-century scholarship the Dynastic Race theory has been quietly forgotten. As a result, it is very rare these days to find an Egyptologist prepared to give credence to the idea of foreign invaders at the dawn of Egyptian history. But should we reject the basic evidence because of the political views of past archaeologists? Nobody disputes that Petrie found what he found. So perhaps we should look again at the Dynastic Race theory – but this time without the rhetoric of pre-war colonialism. It is obvious that we cannot rewrite ancient history in the light of events in our own century. It is surely the historian's job to construct a coherent picture of the past based on the archaeological evidence – wherever it leads.
So, what does that evidence tell us about Egypt's origins?
Petrie found several new elements in the Nakada II graves. First, unlike the earlier Nakada I burials, many of the grave pits themselves were lined with mud bricks. This was the first time that bricks had been used in Egypt and archaeologists have determined that mud brick technology was a Sumerian invention.
Second, the pottery shapes and techniques of decoration were also new – again with clear precursors in Mesopotamia.
Third, the Nakada II warriors were buried with a new type of weapon known as the 'pear-shaped mace'. This was in contrast to the Nakada I people who used 'disk-shaped maces'. Interestingly, not only do the Eastern Desert rock-drawings show the chieftains holding the round-headed weapon but it also became the weapon par excellence of the later pharaohs who were regularly depicted smiting their enemies with the pear-shaped mace.
Fourth, lapis lazuli appears amongst the grave goods for the first time in Nakada II. This beautiful dark blue stone comes from Badakhshan in Afghanistan and was traded across land and by sea (via the Persian Gulf) to Sumer where it was greatly prized. Its sudden appearance in Egypt thus confirms contact with the Sumerians of southern Iraq.
Fifth, the complex niched-facade mudbrick architecture which develops out of Nakada III culture is identically paralleled in Sumer where it was used to decorate the temples of the gods. In Egypt it became a standard design feature of the early pharaohs' tombs. The design is so complex that it is hard to believe the niched-facade structure could have been independently invented in the two regions. All authorities accept that such architecture originated in Sumer and was 'exported' to Egypt.
These are just some of the technologies and artefacts which clearly point to contact between Mesopotamian and Egypt. However, this does not prove that there was a military conquest (rather than simple trade) or if the Sumerian settlers in the Nile valley went on to become the first pharaohs. Here there are more tantalising clues.
A magnificent ivory knife handle was discovered near Nakada, at the turn of the century, which shows a Sumerian hero figure controlling two great lions on one side and a battle on the other between long-haired warriors (one of whom carries a pear-shaped mace) and short-haired opponents who are getting the worst of the conflict. The long-haired victors are associated with high-prowed boats, just like the ones found in the desert rock art, whilst the short-haired losers are represented by sickle-shaped boats made of papyrus and associated with the River Nile. The Gebel el-Arak predynastic knife (now in the Louvre) is not only an amazing 5000-year-old artefact but it appears to depict Sumerian invaders with their high-prowed ships in the very act of conquering the Nile valley.
The evidence for Mesopotamians in Egypt is even more compelling at the site of Butu (ancient Pe-Dep) in the western delta. There, German archaeologists have recently unearthed coloured clay cones which, if their counterparts in Sumer are anything to go by, were used to decorate buildings. This decorative cone technique is so striking that it is hard to imagine it being invented independently in Egypt after it had come into use in Mesopotamia.
Did this élite Sumerian clan eventually come to dominate the whole of Egypt and establish the first pharaonic dynasty? An important clue is found in the fact that the later nobility of Egypt called themselves by a special name. They were known as the 'Pat' or the iry-Pat ('belonging to the Pat') – a term which implied membership of a special clan or blood-line. This term was reserved for members of the royal family, courtiers and high officials. Interestingly, a text from the Middle Kingdom (1000 years after the unification of Egypt at the beginning of the 1st Dynasty) refers to a man who reached high office 'in spite of the fact that he was not iry-Pat', suggesting that the ruling class were expected to have been directly descended from an ancestral élite. These great founding ancestors were also known by another title. The later hieroglyphic texts refer to the 'Followers of Horus' who first established kingship in the Nile valley. They are shown in predynastic and early dynastic carvings carrying their standards into battle in support of kings who bore the title of 'Horus' as part of their names. So, was the first Horus-king a real person who later became deified. Could there have been an original human Horus and, if so, was he African or Mesopotamian?
To answer these questions we need to return to the stories in the book of Genesis and Holy Koran. In my book Legend – The Genesis of Civilisation I identified the location of the traditional site of the Garden of Eden in western Iran, the mountain of Noah's Ark in Kurdestan, and the Tower of Babel in southern Iraq. I argued that the Old Testament legends surrounding Noah and the Flood and then King Nimrod were also to be found in the Sumerian literary tradition. It appears that the Genesis narrative may have been based on actual historical events from primeval times.
Following the abandonment of the Tower of Babel, the biblical story tells of a great migration of the 'sons' of Noah. His eldest, Ham, was the father of Cush who journeyed to north-east Africa in order to establish a kingdom in the lands of Ethiopia and Sudan. The Egyptians knew this area as the 'land of Kush' – after Noah's grandson. Cush had a younger brother called Mizraim and he was the traditional founder of the Egyptian civilisation. The '-im' ending of this name is a West Semitic pluralisation. Thus the original name of Noah's second 'grandson' was Mizra. It is therefore interesting to note that the Assyrians referred to Egypt as Musri whilst a modern Egyptian calls himself a Masri ('one of Masr'). The biblical tradition of an eponymous ancestor of the pharaonic state called Mizra/Musri/Masr thus has extra-biblical confirmation.
I think we can make one further important connection between the Genesis/Koran text, Sumerian tradition and pharaonic royal mythology. The Egyptians believed that their first king was called Horus. Now this name means 'the distant one' suggesting someone who came from afar. It is surely more than an extraordinary coincidence, then, that the Mesopotamian flood heroes, Ziusudra (Sumerian), Atrahasis (Akkadian) and Utnapishtim (Babylonian), all bear the same epithet 'the distant one'? Could it be that the legendary Horus of Egypt was none other than the biblical flood hero and that his descendants, through Ham and Mizraim, settled in Egypt as the Followers of Horus (i.e. 'the ones descended from Horus, 'the distant one')?
Given this extraordinary possibility, perhaps we should investigate how some of the other primeval gods of Egypt might fit into the picture.
It was well known in the ancient world that the Egyptian goddess of love and fertility, Isis (written Iset), was the equivalent of Mesopotamian Ishtar and Canaanite Astarte (biblical Ashtaroth). She is regularly depicted at the head of Pharaoh's sarcophagus, arms raised in the act of prayer. This striking image is identical to the 'dancing goddess' figure found in the Eastern Desert rock drawings and on the Nakada II pottery. So, could this predynastic goddess, associated with the invaders, be the earliest form of Isis/Ishtar? The answer perhaps lies with her husband, Osiris.
The names Isis and Osiris are Greek forms of Egyptian Iset and Asar. The latter is written with the hieroglyphs of a throne and an eye. Amazingly, a Sumerian god local to Eridu (where I have placed the Tower of Babel) is also called Asar and his name is written in Sumerian with the symbol for a throne. It appears that the Egyptian god of vegetation and rebirth may originally have come from southern Iraq, having been introduced to the Nile valley (along with his consort) by Sumerian worshippers.
The tombs in the Valley of the Kings are decorated with scenes from the Amduat ('That which is in the Underworld'). The dead king's spirit is seen being transported from his tomb in the western necropolis across the great underworld ocean of the abyss towards the eastern horizon. His craft is a high-prowed boat just like the ships found in the predynastic rock art. The dead pharaoh is accompanied by the primeval gods, with Re-Atum as his protector. Together, they journey through seven gates before reaching the shore of the underworld desert where the crew is depicted dragging the boat of Re-Atum towards the dawn horizon. There the spirit of the king is reborn as the rising sun over the Isle of Flame. This place is otherwise known as the primeval mound of creation surrounded by the Waters of Nun. It was here that the original primeval temple was constructed by the gods. The island is described as a sandy circular mound surrounded by reeds growing in a freshwater marsh. The temple shrine lies at the centre of the island on a low mound. All later Egyptian temples are architecturally designed to recreate this setting. To enter the temple you pass between two great artificial desert mountains (the pylon gateway) and cross an expansive desert (the open-air perystyle court. You then enter the reed marsh of the Waters of Nun (the hypostyle hall with its giant reed and papyrus columns) surrounding the Island of Nun, before reaching the sacred shrine (the holy of holies) representing the primeval Temple of Nun. All this time you have been gradually ascending as the floor of the temple rises up, step by step. This represents the mound of creation on which the primeval shrine rests.
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Taken from: http://www.davidrohl.com/dynastic_race_11.html