In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

3 NUBIA EGYPT’S PRIMARY SPHERE OF INFLUENCE 19 hroughout all its ancient history Egypt oriented itself upriver: south would have been “up” on any pharaonic map large enough to include northeastern Africa. The word for “west,” imntt, was derived from the Afro-Asiatic root for “right hand,” and the verb “to go forward (by ship)” meant “to sail south.” The “forward part” of every township was located on its southern side, and the “forward part of the earth” denoted the southern extremity of Nubia. The latter, then, constituted Egypt’s ~eld of vision and, certainly in the Old Kingdom, the main focus of its interests. THE MANPOWER RESOURCES OF THE SOUTH The outward expansion of the warlike Horuses of the First Dynasty was apparently not continued in the Second Dynasty. For unknown reasons, in both the Sudan and Asia Egypt seems to have suspended its efforts to implant a domestic authority among peoples who did not speak Egyptian. The one exception was the barren stretch of the Nile between Silsileh and Aswan, the upper part of which was always remembered as “the Land of the Bow,” that is, Nubia. But this may have been but sparsely settled in the early third millennium, and in any case the natural frontier of the cataract beckoned, a more secure barrier than Silsileh. Now Egypt’s interests were restricted to the resources of the region south of the cataract, and its overall policy was modi~ed to ensure access and acquisition. The high cartouches of the king might glower over the cataract1 and forti~ed blockhouses might watch the frontier,2 but a much more effective way of realizing goals was to mount an armed “march-about,” a veritable pharaonic chevauchée.3 This was bound to produce booty, if not goods and slaves acquired through trade (if the locals proved suf~ciently intimidated), and consequently would more than T pay for itself. The evidence that has survived suggests that expeditions were mounted on a grand scale. The annals for Snofru’s thirteenth or fourteenth year record in part “hacking up the land of the Nubian: bringing living captives, 7,000; cattle, 200,000.”4 On the rocks of Lower Nubia are found two graf~ti that date from not long after Snofru’s reign: “royal chargé-d’affaires5 for the 17th Upper Egyptian township Kha-bau-bat: his arrival with an army of 20,000; the hacking up of Wawat,” and “the royal chargé-d’affaires for the northern district of the ‘East’ Zau-ib; seizing 17,000 Nubians.”6 The immediate result of such bondage en masse must have been the depopulation of Lower Nubia (which does in fact show up in the archaeological record).7 Pictorial depictions of such captives are more dif~cult to produce,8 although they turn up pictured in domestic service as (generically) nh syw “Nubians,”9 h ˘ 3styw “foreigners,”10 or -(w “kilt-(wearers).” The last, wrongly translated as “interpreters” in the older literature,11 are in fact paramilitary units, used as auxiliaries or perhaps police, as were the Medjay in the New Kingdom. Nubians were highly regarded as ~ghters, and this reputation was to survive the reality. Already in the Old Kingdom the recruitment of an Egyptian host bears eloquent testimony to the value placed on them as auxiliary troops. When Weny, the governor of Upper Egypt, was commissioned by Pepy I (c. 2350 b.c.) to command a punitive expedition against the inhabitants of Palestine, he levied troops not only from Upper and Lower Egypt but also “Nubians of Irtjet,12 Nubians of Medja,13 Nubians of Yam,14 Nubians of Wawat and Nubians of Kaw.”15 During the First Intermediate Period, when Egyptian in_uence over Nubia weakened perceptibly , Nubians still sought employment in Egyptian military units. Nomarchs of Upper Egypt were by no means averse to attracting Nubians into their small municipal militias.16 THE PRODUCTS OF THE SOUTH From remote prehistoric times the inhabitants of the Nile Valley and Delta north of the First Cataract had been aware that the source of a large number of desirable tropical products lay not in Egypt but in the lands of the Sudan, if not farther south. For the Predynastic Period only chance ~nds in archaeological contexts provide the rather spotty evidence on what Nilotic communities were able to procure from the south; but with the invention of writing a more complete record becomes available. Then it is apparent that acquisition of goods from...

Share