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Some Notes about an Early African Pool of Cultures from which Emerged the Egyptian Civilisation

Some Notes about an Early African Pool of Cultures from which Emerged the Egyptian Civilisation

Alain Anselin (Université des Antilles-Guyane)

Egypt in its African Context: Proceedings of the conference held at The Manchester Museum,University of Manchester, 2-4 October 2009, Oxford: Archaeopress, BAR (2011)

Abstract

Using primarily linguistic evidence, and taking into account recent archaeology at sites such as Hierakonpolis/Nekhen, as well as the symbolic meaningof objects such as sceptres and headrests in Ancient Egyptian and contemporary African cultures, this paper traces the geographical location and movements of early peoples in and around the Nile Valley. It is possible from this overview of the data to conclude that the limited conceptual vocabulary shared by the ancestors of contemporary Chadic-speakers (therefore also contemporary Cushitic-speakers), contemporary Nilotic-speakers and Ancient Egyptian-speakers suggests that the earliest speakers of the Egyptian language could belocated to the south of Upper Egypt or, earlier, in the Sahara.



The marked grammatical and lexicographic affinities of Ancient Egyptian with Chadic are well-known, and consistent Nilotic cultural, religious and political patterns are detectable in the formation of the first Egyptian kingships. The question these data raise is the articulation between the languages and the cultural patterns of this pool of ancient African societies from which emerged Predynastic Egypt.

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