Royal Nubia lies under sand

National Post ^ | 4-22-02 | Margaret Munro

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Royal Nubia lies under sand

Canadian archaeologists in Sudan, using magnetometers, have found a 2,000-year-old palace in the heart of the ancient black civilization

If his partner had not fallen into an ancient tomb and broken both legs, Professor Krzysztof Grzymski would have discovered the ancient Nubian royal palace even sooner.

Still, Grzymski, a professor at the University of Toronto and a curator at the Royal Ontario Museum, is a happy archaeologist these days. He and his colleague, who is walking again, have found what they believe are the remains of a palace and a colonnade built more than 2,000 years ago by the greatest black civilization ever.

"It's quite remarkable, we can see them clearly beneath the sand," says Grzymski.

The discovery is in the ancient, and for the most part buried, city of Meroë, which was the royal capital of ancient Nubia. It is located about 200 kilometres northeast of present day Khartoum.

Meroë, considered one of the largest and most important archaeological sites in Africa, was at the heart of a powerful black civilization that flourished along the upper Nile River from about 750 BC to 350 AD.

Grzymski and his colleagues plan to start excavating the palace and colonnade next winter. But for now Grzymski is content to pour over the grainy images generated by a device that allowed the archaeolgists to "see" the ruins buried beneath the sand without digging them out.

Explorers -- and tomb robbers -- have long been aware of Meroë and its riches. But archaeologists were so pre-occupied with Egypt's pyramids and kingdoms to the north -- and deterred by the political conflict in Sudan -- they largely ignored the ancient Nubian culture. Many assumed it was merely an offshoot of a more advanced Egyptian culture.

"Here you've got this wonderful civilization that was literate, which extended over 1,000 miles, maybe more, up the Nile, and which built pyramids and palaces and temples and at the same time was a major centre of iron production, and yet it is generally unknown to scholars and the general public," says Grzymski.

He has been intrigued with the ruins since the 1970s, when he studied under Professor Peter Shinnie at the University of Calgary. Shinnie worked for years with Sudanese scholars on the ancient iron smelters of Meroë.

Grzymski helped keep the Canadian-Sudanese collaboration alive through his ROM work. And in 1999, he and archaeologists at the University of Khartoum were given a licence by Sudan's antiquities officials to explore the 50-hectare site of Meroë. About 10 hectares of the ancient city had been excavated in the early 1900s by British archaeologists. But most remains entombed under sand and shrubs.

The archaeologists had a hunch about where the best ruins lay. But they wanted to be sure.

"You can spend weeks and weeks digging nothing," he says.

To find the most promising areas, Grzymski recruited Tomasz Herbich, a Polish archaeologist and geophysicist who specializes in using magnetometers to find buried ruins. Magnetometers are sophisticated versions of the hand-held devices people use to find coins on beaches and parks. They can differentiate between the magnetic properties of materials -- such as sand, pottery, bricks -- and feed the readings into a computer. The readings then generate maps. Just before the archaeologists were to start scanning the Meroë site in the 2000-2001 season, Herbich, who works on ruins throughout northern Africa, fell into an abandoned ancient tomb in Egypt, breaking both his legs and injuring his spine.

"It was a terrible accident," says Grzymski. And it set the Meroë scan back by one year.

In February, Hebrich and his magnetometer went to the Sudan site. Within days, Herbich homed in on the palace and colonnade.

The palace, about 400 square metres in area, is about a half a metre beneath the surface of the sand. "There are traces of staircases, so it suggests there must have been upper floors," Grzymski says. The street in front of the building also came into view.

To their surprise, they found what appears to be a colonnade near one of the gates to the ancient city.

"We were absolutely delighted," says Grzymski. "It's really fascinating when you can see the urban design without excavating."

In October, Grzymski will return to Meroë to start digging with his Sudanese partners.

It remains to be seen what treasure lies beneath the sand, but the materials uncovered in the region over the years have made it clear the Nubian civilization was a powerful, inventive society.

The most incredible find was made almost 200 years ago in a pyramid near Meroë. An Italian physician and tomb robber known as Ferlini accompanied an Ottoman invasion of Sudan in 1821 and discovered exquisite gold amulets, signet rings and necklaces by blasting open the pyramid of Queen Amanishakheto, one of Nubia's most powerful rulers.

Ferlini tried to sell the treasure when he returned to Europe. But collectors would not believe such treasure could come from black Africa. They thought he was trying to pass off fakes, says Grzymski. "They were jewels of great quality and beauty and often influenced by Greek art, which was really a surprise," he says. "People didn't expect deep in the heart of Africa depictions resembling those of Egyptian or classical Greek art."

The ancient Nubians exchanged plenty of ideas and goods with cultures around them. Nubian pyramids, monuments and jewels were clearly influenced by Egyptian, Mediterranean and Arabian cultures.

"They worshiped many of the same gods as the Egyptians and the royalty was buried in pyramids," says Grzymski.

Some of their pottery and burial talismans predate similar discoveries in Egypt, indicating Nubia may have influenced the Egyptians rather than the other way around.

At the height of their culture, Nubian kings are said to have ruled Egypt from 750 to 650 BC. They were driven south by the Syrians, says Grzymski.

Ancient trash heaps have revealed many details of daily life for the Nubians. Olive pits suggest the Nubians either imported olives from the Mediterranean or grew them on the banks of the Nile. And the animal bones they left behind reveal much about the climate and environment they lived in. Along with sheep and goats, the Nubians consumed gazelle, antelope, warthogs and other wild animals now seldom seen in Sudan. The bones, and ancient water reservoirs, suggest rainfall patterns have changed in the past 2000 years, shifting 300 to 400 kilometres to the south. "There has been quite a change in environment," says Grzymski.

But it is the Nubians' written language that he finds most intriguing. Borrowing 24 signs from Egyptian hieroglyphics and using them as an alphabet, they developed their own writing system, Grzymski says.

"It's the second-oldest writing system in Africa, but it has still not been deciphered."

So far, 1,500 inscriptions written in the ancient Nubian language have been found, but no one knows what they mean. Grzymski and his colleagues are sure to find more as they continue excavating.

While finding more palaces would make Grzymiski happy, what he would most like to find is some manner of bilingual inscription to enable scholars to unlock the messages left by the Nubian people. He says the archaeologists need something like a Rosetta Stone, the famed slab of black basalt inscribed in Greek text and Egyptian hieroglyphs that enabled scholars in the early 1800s to decipher the Egyptian writings.

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I don't know who to ping. Could you?

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Ivan Van Sertima, in his 1976 book, "They Came Before Columbus," believes the Nubians from this period made trips to the Americas and in fact may be responsible for the Olmec culture/ruins found in Mexico.

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Journal Of African Civilisations.

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The Nubians And The Olmecs

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I was thinking the Olmec were Ethiopian, which isn't far from Nubia.

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The Nubians and Olmecs

by

Clyde Winters

Haslip-Viera, Ortiz de Montellano and Barbour (1997) have argued that Olmec civilization was not influenced by Africans and therefore Afrocentrism should have no standing in higher education, but in fact it can be illustrated that the facial types as sociated with the Olmec people and Meroitic people are identical; and that Olmec figurines such as the Tuxtla statuette excavation are inscribed with African writing used by the Mande people of West Africa (Wiener, 1922; Winters, 1979 , of Manding writing provide the "absolute proof " recovered by archaeologists from "controlled excavations in the New World" demanded by Haslip-Viera, Ortiz de Montellano and Barbour (1997: 419) to "proof"/confirm Olmec and African contact.

The failure of Haslip- Viera, Ortiz de Montellano and Barbour (1997) to realize an African presence in PreColumbian America, is the result of their ignorance of the normal science of ancient Afrocentric studies (Winters, 1996). Haslip-Viera, Ortiz d e Montellano and Barbour (1997: 419) assume that ancient Afrocentric research is the result of the "cultural nationalism of the 1960's and 1970's. This view is false. The ancient Afrocentric studies research tradition was developed before the 1960's (Wint ers, 1994, 1996). The ancient Afrocentric studies research tradition reflects almost two hundred years of original research in the area of ancient Afrocentric studies ( Winters, 1994, 1996). Contrary to the views of Haslip-Viera, Ortiz de Montellano and Barbour (1997) ancient Afrocentric historical research makes ancient Afrocentric area studies a valid field of research (Winters, 1994). Haslip-Viera, Ortiz de Montellano and Barbour (1997) criticized the view held by many Afrocentrist that the Olmec peo ple were Africans, due to the research of Ivan van Sertima. Use of van Sertima (1976) by Haslip-Viera, Ortiz de Montellano and Barbour (1997: 419) to denigrate Afrocentrism is unfair, because this researcher has made it clear since the publication of his book They came before Columbus in 1976, that he is not an Afrocentrist. Although Haslip-Viera, Ortiz de Montellano and Barbour (1997: 431) acknowledge this truth in there rebuttal of van Sertima, the authors refer to Afrocentrist as purveyors of "ras m", interested only in denying the authentic role of Native Americans in the rise of American civilizations.

Haslip-Viera, Ortiz de Montellano and Barbour (1997: 419, 423-25) argue that the claims of the Afrocentrists claims that the Olmecs were Africans, must be rejected because 1) the Olmecs do not look like Nubians, and 2) the absence of an African artifact recovered from an archaeological excavation. These authors are wrong on both counts, there are numerous resemblance between the ancient Olmec people and ancient Nubians, and an African artifact: Manding writing, is engraved on many Olmec artifacts discovered during archaeological excavation (Winters, 1979, 1997)

Haslip-Viera, Ortiz de Montellano and Barbour (1997) argue that the Olmecs could not have been Nubians or Kushites of the Napata-Meroe civilization, as claimed by van Sertima (1976) because the Olmec civilization preceded the civilization of the Kushites by hundreds of years. They also claim that the Olmecs had flat noses, while the Nubians had "thinner noses" because they lived in the desert (Haslip-Viera, Ortiz de Montellano & Barbour, 1997:423).

This view is false. The ancient Nubians like African- Americans today were not monolithic, they had different hues of skin, facial features and nose shapes (Keita, 1996: 104). This is evident in from the wall-painting from the tomb-chapel of Sebekhotep at Thebes, c.1400 BC, which show Nubians, of different types bringing rings of gold, incense and other luxury items to the Egyptian Pharaoh (Taylor, 1991).

One of the major Pharoahs of Egypt and Nubia/Kush was Taharqo. The Sphinx of Taharqo c. 690-664 BC, found in Temple 1 at Kawa and the shabti (tomb figure) of Taharqo in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is strikingly similar in facial features, including, the short round face, thick lips and flat nose associated with the Olmec people (Taylor, 1991).

King Taharqa

Moreover a comparison of Olmec heads and a bust of Taharqo illustrated striking similarities when they were placed along side each other (Winters, 1984b:47). The iconographic evidence of the ancient Nubians clearly indicate that there were many round faced, thick lipped, flat nosed Nubians described in the Classical literature (Snowden, 1996: 106) that fit the archtypical Olmec ruler type ( Haslip-Viera, Ortiz de Montellano and Barbour, 1997).

Although the Olmec and Meroitic iconographic documents share many analogous facial features , we must admit that the Nubian hypothesis for the Olmecs must be rejected. It must be rejected because the Kings of Meroitic Kush, and the Olmec Kings existed during different historical eras. The Haslip-Viera, Ortiz de Montellano and Barbour (1997) argument regarding van Sertima's Egypto-Nubian hypothesis has merit . It highlights the failure of van Sertima (1976) to critically read the sources of Africans in ancient America and study the archaeology of West Africa and the Sahara. A cursory reading of Wiener (1922) would have made it clear that the founders of the Olmec civilization were Mande/Manding speaking people.

Comparison of a Nuba and Olmec Head

I was misrepresented by Haslip-Viera, Ortiz de Montellano and Barbour (1997: 421). They claim that I support the Egypto- Nubian hypothesis of van Sertima, and belong to the so-called "extreme" Afrocentric position on Olmec civilization (Haslip- Viera, Ortiz de Montellano and Barbour, 1997: 421)

Granted, van Sertima (1976) was wrong about the identity of the Olmecs , but he was correct in claiming that the Olmecs were of African origin. And, there is no denying the fact that Africans early settled the Americas ( Wiener, 1920-1922; von Wuthenau, 1980).

Never in any of my publications on Olmec and African contact have I ever claimed that the Egypto-Nubians had contact with the Olmecs (Winters, 1979, 1981/1982,1983, 1984a, 1984c, 1997). Following Wiener (1922) I have maintained all along the traditional Afrocentric view of Olmec and African paradigm that the Manding speaking West Africans had contact with the Olmec.

Wiener (1922) based his identification of the Manding influence over the Olmecs (eventhough he was unaware of this people at the time) through his identification of Manding writing on the Tuxtla statuette which was created by the Olmecs (Soustelle, 1984; Tate, 1995).

The major evidence for the African origin of the Olmecs comes from the writing of the Maya and Olmec people. As mentioned earlier most experts believe that the Mayan writing system came from the Olmecs (Soustelle, 1984). The evidence of African styl e writing among the Olmecs is evidence for Old World influence in Mexico. The Olmecs have left numerous symbols or signs inscribed on pottery, statuettes, batons/scepters, stelas and bas-reliefs that have been recognized as writing ( Soustelle, 1984; von Wuthenau, 1980; Winters, 1979). The view that the Olmecs were the fir st Americans to 1) invent a complex system of chronology, 2) a method of calculating time, and 3) a hieroglyphic script which was later adopted by Izapan and Mayan civilizations, is now accepted by practically all Meso-American specialist (Soustelle, (1984).

In 1979, I announced the decipherment of the Olmec writing (Winters, 1979). It is generally accepted that the decipherment of an unknown language/script requires 1) bilingual texts and/or 2) knowledge of the cognate language(s). It has long been felt by many Meso-Americanist that the Olmec writing met non of these criteria because, no one knew exactly what language was spoken by the Olmec that appear suddenly at San Lorenzo and La Venta in Veracruz, around 1200 B.C.

The view that Africans originated writing in America is not new. Scholars early recognized the affinity between Amerindian scripts and the Mande script(s) (Wiener, 1922, v.3; Rafinesque, 1832). In 1832, Rafinesque noted the similarities between the Mayan glyphs and the Libyco-Berber writing. And Leo Wiener (1922, v.3), was the first researcher to recognize the resemblances between the Manding writing and the symbols on the Tuxtla statuette. In addition, Harold Lawrence (1962) noted that the "petroglyphic" inscriptions found throughout much of the southern hemisphere compared identically with the writing system of the Manding.

The second evidence pointing to the Manding origin of the Olmec writing was provided by Leo Wiener in Africa and the Discovery of America (1922,v.3). Wiener presented evidence that the High Civilizations of Mexico (Maya and Aztecs) had acquired many o f the cultural and religious traditions of the Malinke-Bambara (Manding people) of West Africa. In volume 3, of Africa and the Discovery of America, Wiener discussed the analogy between the glyphs on the Tuxtla statuette and the Manding glyphs engraved on rocks in Mandeland.

Up until 1995, there were only a few published Olmec inscriptions (Winters, 1979). Today there are many Olmec inscriptions published in Jill Gutherie (1995) catalogue for the exhibition "The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership", organized by the Art Mu seum of Princeton University. Manding Origin of Mayan term for Writing

The linguistic evidence (Brown, 1991), forces us to aknowledge that the Mayan term *c'ib is probably derived from Manding *Se'be. This provides the best hypothesis for the origin of the Mayan term for writing given the fact that the Mayan /c/ corr eponds to the Manding /s/, and the archaeological and linguistic evidence which indicate that the Maya did not have writing in Proto-Mayan times. And as a result, the term for writing had to have come into the Mayan languages after the separation of Proto -Maya. This would explain the identification of the Olmec or Xi/Shi people as Manding speakers. In addition to the Manding origin of the Mayan term for writing, there are a number Mayan terms that are derived from the Olmec language .

In conclusion, the Manding speaking ancestors of the Olmecs came from the Saharan zone of North Africa (Winters, 1983, 1984c, 1986). Here the Proto-Olmecs left their earliest inscriptions at Oued Mertoutek (Winters, 1979,1983). They took a full fledged literate culture to Mexico.

This view is supported both by 1) our ability to read the Olmec inscriptions; 2) confirmation that the Mayan term for writing *c'ib, is of Manding origin; and 3) the symbols for Mayan writing are cognate to the Manding writing systems used in Africa . Moreover, the evidence presented in this paper makes it clear that the people who introduced writing to the Maya when they met at Nonoulco, may have been Manding speaking Olmecs.. Discovery at Olmec sites such as LaVenta Offering No.4 , of Manding writing provide the "absolute proof " of African and Olmec contact. The presence of readable African writing on Olmec celts, masks and statues, is the genuine African artifact found "in controlled excavations in the New World" demanded by Haslip-Viera, Ortiz de Montellano and Barbour (1997: 419) that confirms the Afrocentric claim of ancient African and Olmec contact.

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Journal of African Civilizations

The Journal of African Civilizations, founded in 1979, has gained a reputation for excellence and uniqueness among historical and anthropological journals. It is recognized as a valuable information source for both the layman and student. It has created a different historical perspective within which to view the ancestor of the African-American and the achievement and potential of black people the world over.

It is the only historical journal in the English-speaking world which focuses on the heartland rather than on the periphery of African civilizations. It therefore removes the "primitive" from the center stage it has occupied in Eurocentric histories and anthropologies of the African. The Journal of African Civilizations is dedicated to the celebration of black genius, to a revision of the role of the African in the world's great civilizations, the contribution of Africa to the achievement of man in the arts and sciences. It emphasizes what blacks have given to the world, not what they have lost.

St. Claire Drake, in his major two-volume work Black Folk Here and There, speaks of the Journal as "one of the most important events in the development of research and publication from the perspective of Pan-African scholarship." The Journal is now in the forefront of the struggle being waged to alter school curricula and to modify "Western" and "World" civilization courses in the United States.

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1. AFRICAN PRESENCE in EARLY AMERICA (Van Sertima's address to the Smithsonian)
Eighteen years have passed since They Came Before Columbus appeared, in which Van Sertima presented most of the facts that were then known about the links between Africa and America before Columbus. But since then many more sculptures have emerged from the earth or from the back rooms of private collections. New stone heads have surfaced in recent excavations while a very old one with a seven-braided Ethiopian hairstyle has come out of a century of obscurity into sudden prominence. Far more sophisticated analyses may now be presented of ancient African astronomy, map-making, scripts, navigation, trade routes, pyramidal structures, linguistic connections, technological and ritual complexes. In this collective work, Ban Sertima is joined by half a dozen other colleagues. The work focuses largely on contact between African and American towards the close of the Bronze Age (circa 948-680 B.C.) and the Mandingo-Songhay trading voyages (from early fourteenth to late fifteenth century).

2. BLACK WOMEN in ANTIQUITY
This volume provides an overview of the black queens, madonnas and goddesses who dominated the history and imagination of ancient times. The authors have concentrated on Ethiopia and Egypt because the documents in the Nile Valley are voluminous compared to the sketchier record in other parts of Africa, but also because the imagination of the world, not just that of Africa, was haunted by these women. They are just as prominent a feature of European mythology as of African reality. The book is divided into three parts: Ethiopian and Egyptian Queens and Goddesses; Black Women in Ancient Art; Conquerors and Courtesans. There are also chapters on the diffusion into Europe of the African goddess, Isis, and on the great scientist Hypatia, whose African ancestry during the Greek-invader period is deduced not only by her lineage but by a comparative study of the rights of African and European women.

3. THEY CAME BEFORE COLUMBUS
A celebrated classic, They Came Before Columbus, deals with a number of contacts - both planned and accidental, between Africans and Americans in different historical periods. Evidence for a physical/cultural presence of Africans in Early America is methodically examined.

4. GOLDEN AGE of the MOOR
This work examines the debt owed by Europe to the Moors for the Renaissance and the significant role played by the African in the Muslim invasions of the Iberian peninsula. While it focuses mainly on Spain and Portugal, it will also examine the races and toots of the original North African before the later ethnic mix of the blackamoors and tawny Moors in the medieval period. The study ranges from the Moors in the literature of Cervantes and Shakespeare to his profound influence upon Europe's university system and the diffusion via this system of the ancient and medieval sciences. The Moors are shown to affect not only European mathematics and map-making, agriculture and architecture, but their markets, their music and their machines. The ethnicity of the Moor is re-examined, as is his unique contribution, both as creator and conduit, to the first seminal phase of the industrial revolution.

5. AFRICAN PRESENCE in EARLY EUROPE
This book places into perspective the role of the African in world civilization, in particular his little known contributions to the advancement of Europe. A major essay on the evolution of the Caucasoid discusses recent scientific discoveries of the African fatherhood of man and the shift towards albinism (dropping of pigmentation) in Europe. The debt owed to African and Arab Moors for certain inventions usually credited to the Renaissance is discussed, as well as the much earlier Afro-Egyptian influence on Greek science and philosophy. The book is divided into six parts: The First Europeans: African Presence in the Ancient Mediterranean Isles and Mainland Greece; Africans in the European Religious Hierarchy (madonnas, saints and popes); African Presence in Western Europe; African Presence in Northern Europe; African Presence in Easter Europe.

6. BLACKS in SCIENCE: Ancient and Modern
This book draws on the latest researches to show that Africa had an impressive scientific tradition in certain centers and historical periods. It highlights steel-smelting machines in Tanzania dating back 1,500 years ago, using semi-conductor technology and achieving temperatures 200 degrees higher than the best in Europe; an observatory in Kenya 300 B.C.; 13th century discoveries by West African astronomers of an invisible star, their accurate plotting of its orbit around its parent star as well as an orbit on its own axis, a fact unknown even to modern science, cultivation of crops and domestication of cattle 6,000-7,000 years before Asia or Europe; African first discoveries of tetracycline, vaccines, aspirin, as well as advances in operations like eye-cataract surgery and cesarean sections; African invention of half a dozen scripts before European colonization. The book also deals with African-American inventions, especially in the fields of telecommunication, space, and nuclear science.

7. AFRICAN PRESENCE in EARLY ASIA
This volume, co-edited with Runoko Rashidi, is divided into five sections. The first discusses the peopling of Asia from Africa and identifies African people with Asia's first hominid as well as modern human populations. The second section demonstrates the African elements underlying major early civilizations in Asia, an overview that includes India, Iraq and Iran, Phoenicia, Palestine, the Arabian peninsula, China, Japan and Cambodia. The third section discusses the African origin of the great religions of Asia-Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. The fourth section focuses on the historical and anthropological relationship between African people and Asia's Indo-European, Mongoloid and Semitic populations. The final section deals with African bondage in Asia and provides a fascinating glimpse of the Dalitis, the Black untouchables of India. Who are the Backs of Asia? What have they done? What are they doing now? This volume seeks to answer these questions and to reunite a family too long separated.

8. EGYPT: CHILD of AFRICA
This issue seeks to answer two questions: First, whether the ancient Egyptians were predominantly African or Africoid in a physical sense during the major native dynasties before< the late invasions of the Persian, Greek, Roman and Arab foreigners. Second, whether their language, writing, vision of god and the universe, their concept of the divine kingship, ritual ceremonies and practices, administrative and architectural symbols and structures and techno-complex, were quintessentially African and not in any major particular, projected from those in Europe or Asia in that or any previous time.

9. GREAT BLACK LEADERS: Ancient and modern
Any selection of leaders, whatever the criteria, is inherently subjective, and this collection does not pretend to be comprehensive. It does establish clear criteria for inclusion, focusing on outstanding individuals from America, Africa, and the Caribbean, who are clearly of global and not solely national significance. Leaders from a number of historical epochs were selected and the editor has also included material on outstanding women leaders (Queens Tiye, Hatshepsut, Nzingha). Leaders who had captured the world's imagination (Shaka) or who had profoundly affected the modern period (Kwame Nkrumah) are also represented. With one exception (Nelson Mandela) the individuals described are no longer living, to ensure that time warrants a consensus about their significance.

10. EGYPT REVISITED
This work is divided, with students and teachers in mind, into four sections. In the first section, two distinguished historians (Davidson and Diop) present the evidence which establishes the African claim to a physical and cultural predominance in the classical Egyptian dynasties. The second section is a review of the major Black dynasties (Bruce Williams, Chandler, Rashidi, Brunson, Clegg, Hilliard, Goldman) and includes a working chronology of the dynasties. In the third section, Obenga initiates a rewriting of the beginnings of philosophy, Karenga provides a fresh study of the world's oldest treatises on social order, Finch informs us of startling medical breakthroughs in his commentary on the Edwin Smith papyrus. The book closes with a bibliography of Black Women Scholars in Egyptology (Larry Williams) a guide to readings on Egypt for children (Lumpkin) and a glossary of Egyptian terms (Rashidi & Blackburn).

11. GREAT AFRICAN THINKERS
This book reviews the life and thought of an African who has left a major impact upon the world. He was the Senegalese physicist, historian and linguist, Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop, who was born in Diourbel, Senegal on Dec. 29, 1923, and died in Dakar on Feb. 7, 1986. No figure in the field of African civilization studies has been more highly regarded in the French and English-speaking world than Diop. In 1966 the First World Festival of Arts and Culture attributed jointly to the late W.E.B. Du Bois and Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop its "Award of the Scholar who has exerted the greatest influence on Negro thought in the 20th century." The book has the finest essays by, extended interviews with, and detailed analyses of Diop.

Dr. Ivan Van Sertima's Reply to Criticism

Dr. Van Sertima website

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[sawsalimb]

thanks for the ping. Interesting article,and the following articles are likewise. I'm interested in the Nubian reference because of the location-I would have expected any African presence on the eastern coast of Mexico to have been western Afican,simply because of the shorter distances.

This is complete speculation,on my part,but-assuming that the Nubian connection pans out-could both cultures have had a presence there? I'm wondering now what if the Nubians had a trading relationship with the western Africans.Bookmarking this thread for later reading.

[SunkenCiv]

Here's another oldie but goodie topic added to GGG:

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The Black Pharaohs: Egypt's Nubian Rulers by Robert G. Morkot his website

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[RightWhale]

Thanks. I probably missed this earlier.

[SunkenCiv]

You're most welcome. Found it in the "ancient" keyword, and added it to GGG, despite its age.

[hershey]

Really interesting article. Sad that the archeologist had such a bad accident, though. You only have one back, and once you ruin it, by accident overwork, you have to live with it. Great article, though. I'm looking forward to reading about next winter's dig!

[SunkenCiv]

But it is the Nubians' written language that he finds most intriguing. Borrowing 24 signs from Egyptian hieroglyphics and using them as an alphabet, they developed their own writing system, Grzymski says. "It's the second-oldest writing system in Africa, but it has still not been deciphered." So far, 1,500 inscriptions written in the ancient Nubian language have been found, but no one knows what they mean. Grzymski and his colleagues are sure to find more as they continue excavating. While finding more palaces would make Grzymiski happy, what he would most like to find is some manner of bilingual inscription to enable scholars to unlock the messages left by the Nubian people. He says the archaeologists need something like a Rosetta Stone, the famed slab of black basalt inscribed in Greek text and Egyptian hierogs that enabled scholars in the early 1800s to decipher the Egyptian writings.

Naturally, there's a chapter about this system in the title shown below.

The resemblance of this to (Coptic) Pilak was patent, and suggested that the early Egyptian name of Philae was Pileke (or Pileqe). Eventually, Griffith came up with a Meroitic 'alphabet' in hieroglyphic and cursive that most scholars regard as essentially correct, if not absolutely reliable... There is... much less resemblance between Meroitic cursive and Egyptian demotic signs; only four are actually the same. The Meroitic 'alphabet' also apparently differs from the Egyptian in having four signs with syllabic values... Following his brilliant detective work, Griffith went on to substitute his phonetic values in all the available inscriptions. But here he came up against what has proved to be the great obstacle to a full decipherment of Meroitic: his readings could not be related to any known language; neither did the enldess Meroitic personal names yielded by his substitutions resemble known Egyptian or Greek names... Today, we know the meanings of only 26 simple words in Meroitic... Abdelgadir Abdalla of the University of Khartoum (now at the King Saud University in Riyadh), attempted his own unaided dissection of Meroitic words and analysis of their constituent parts. On the assumption that the unknown Meroitic language is agglutinative... Abdalla aimed to reverse the process... and segment Meroitic words into their constituent parts... Abdalla's approach has not attracted support from other scholars, however, because his basic assumption is unsubstantiated and his methodology, as presented, is dubious and difficult to follow. [pp 148-151]

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Lost Languages: The Enigma Of The World's Undeciphered Scripts by Andrew Robinson

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[SunkenCiv]

Quarry, Setting and Team Marks: The Carian Connection
University of Leiden (Netherlands) ^ | 1998 | (about) Sheldon Lee Gosline
Posted on 10/08/2004 3:20:42 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1239452/posts

Inscription in Carian and Greek
Anistoriton ^ | 27 Dec. 1997 | (editors)
Posted on 07/17/2004 6:20:07 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1173453/posts

Non-Attic Characters
University of California, Irvine, Thesaurus Linguae Graecae
September 7 2003 (rev 9-28-2003) | Nick Nicholas
Posted on 07/18/2004 6:43:19 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1173901/posts

[my wild guess as to the identity of the Meroitic language]

[SunkenCiv]

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see also Why I am (Probably) a Paleoconservative by Richard Poe

[SunkenCiv]

Just updating the GGG information, not sending a general distribution.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[SunkenCiv]

[SunkenCiv]

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