Egypt and Nubia were geographically close to each other that’s why their cultures have become so intertwined. However, they did not always have peaceful relations. In this book, you will read about the ancient battles that transpired between Egypt and Nubia. Why did they fight, who won and what changes took place after these periods of war? This book will answer these questions and more.
The great civilization that grew up around the Nile River had sophisticated irrigation systems that held back the desert, writing and record keeping that kept track of every event in the region, and some of the greatest architects and engineers the world
In A History of Egypt, Jason Thompson has written the first one-volume work to encompass all 5,000 years of Egyptian history, highlighting the surprisingly strong connections between the ancient land of the Pharaohs and the modern-day Arab nation. No country's past can match Egypt's in antiquity, richness, and variety. However, it is rarely presented as a comprehensive panorama because scholars tend to divide it into distinct eras—prehistoric, pharaonic, Greco-Roman, Coptic, medieval Islamic, Ottoman, and modern—that are not often studied in relation to one another. In this daringly ambitious project, drawing on the most current scholarship as well as his own research, Thompson makes the case that few if any other countries have as many threads of continuity running through their entire historical experience. With its unprecedented scope and lively and readable style, A History of Egypt offers students, travelers, and general readers alike an engaging narrative of the extraordinarily long course of human history by the Nile.
Aksum and Nubia assembles and analyzes the textual and archaeological evidence of interaction between Nubia and the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum, focusing primarily on the fourth century CE. Although ancient Nubia and Ethiopia have been the subject of a growing number of studies in recent years, little attention has been given to contact between these two regions. Hatke argues that ancient Northeast Africa cannot be treated as a unified area politically, economically, or culturally. Rather, Nubia and Ethiopia developed within very different regional spheres of interaction, as a result of which the Nubian kingdom of Kush came to focus its energies on the Nile Valley, relying on this as its main route of contact with the outside world, while Aksum was oriented towards the Red Sea and Arabia. In this way Aksum and Kush coexisted in peace for most of their history, and such contact as they maintained with each other was limited to small-scale commerce. Only in the fourth century CE did Aksum take up arms against Kush, and even then the conflict seems to have been related mainly to security issues on Aksum’s western frontier. Although Aksum never managed to hold onto Kush for long, much less dealt the final death-blow to the Nubian kingdom, as is often believed, claims to Kush continued to play a role in Aksumite royal ideology as late as the sixth century. Aksum and Nubia critically examines the extent to which relations between two ancient African states were influenced by warfare, commerce, and political fictions.
For centuries the world has been misled about the original source of the Arts and Sciences; for centuries Socrates, Plato and Aristotle have been falsely idolized as models of intellectual greatness; and for centuries the African continent has been called the Dark Continent, because Europe coveted the honor of transmitting to the world, the Arts and Sciences. It is indeed surprising how, for centuries, the Greeks have been praised by the Western World for intellectual accomplishments which belong without a doubt to the Egyptians or the peoples of North Africa.
The cultures of Nubia built the earliest cities, states, and empires of inner Africa, but they remain relatively poorly known outside their modern descendants and the community of archaeologists, historians, and art historians researching them. The earliest archaeological work in Nubia was motivated by the region's role as neighbor, trade partner, and enemy of ancient Egypt. Increasingly, however, ancient Nile-based Nubian cultures are recognized in their own right as the earliest complex societies in inner Africa. As agro-pastoral cultures, Nubian settlement, economy, political organization, and religious ideologies were often organized differently from those of the urban, bureaucratic, and predominantly agricultural states of Egypt and the ancient Near East. Nubian societies are thus of great interest in comparative study, and are also recognized for their broader impact on the histories of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia brings together chapters by an international group of scholars on a wide variety of topics that relate to the history and archaeology of the region. After important introductory chapters on the history of research in Nubia and on its climate and physical environment, the largest part of the volume focuses on the sequence of cultures that lead almost to the present day. Several cross-cutting themes are woven through these chapters, including essays on desert cultures and on Nubians in Egypt. Eleven final chapters synthesize subjects across all historical phases, including gender and the body, economy and trade, landscape archaeology, iron working, and stone quarrying.
The result of years of work by scholars from all over the world, The UNESCO General History of Africa reflects how the different peoples of Africa view their civilizations and shows the historical relationships between the various parts of the continent. Historical connections with other continents demonstrate Africa's contribution to the development of human civilization. Each volume is lavishly illustrated and contains a comprehensive bibliography.
Afrocentrism has been a controversial but popular movement in schools and universities across America, as well as in black communities. But in We Can't Go Home Again, historian Clarence E. Walker puts Afrocentrism to the acid test, in a thoughtful, passionate, and often blisteringly funny analysis that melts away the pretensions of this "therapeutic mythology." As expounded by Molefi Kete Asante, Yosef Ben-Jochannan, and others, Afrocentrism encourages black Americans to discard their recent history, with its inescapable white presence, and to embrace instead an empowering vision of their African (specifically Egyptian) ancestors as the source of western civilization. Walker marshals a phalanx of serious scholarship to rout these ideas. He shows, for instance, that ancient Egyptian society was not black but a melange of ethnic groups, and questions whether, in any case, the pharaonic regime offers a model for blacks today, asking "if everybody was a King, who built the pyramids?" But for Walker, Afrocentrism is more than simply bad history--it substitutes a feel-good myth of the past for an attempt to grapple with the problems that still confront blacks in a racist society. The modern American black identity is the product of centuries of real history, as Africans and their descendants created new, hybrid cultures--mixing many African ethnic influences with native and European elements. Afrocentrism replaces this complex history with a dubious claim to distant glory. "Afrocentrism offers not an empowering understanding of black Americans' past," Walker concludes, "but a pastiche of 'alien traditions' held together by simplistic fantasies." More to the point, this specious history denies to black Americans the dignity, and power, that springs from an honest understanding of their real history.
This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Heritopia investigates the meanings of the past in the present, focusing on Abu Simbel in Egypt and other World Heritage sites. It explores and resolves a number of paradoxes: the past is impossible to preserve for eternity; all preservation implies change; preservation of one site normally means destruction of others; threats are important in the creation of heritage, but at the same time heritage may become a threat and threats can become heritage themselves; heritage stands in contrast to modernity and is at the same time part of it; both the increase and the decrease of modernity create heritage; and finally, heritage may be global and local at the same time. Heritopia will appeal to students and professionals in heritage studies and related subjects such as archaeology, history, ethnology and museology.
