CHAPTER 5 The Destruction of Matriarchal Cultures and the War Against Indigenous Peoples
CHAPTER 5 The Destruction of Matriarchal Cultures and the War Against Indigenous Peoples
From the content:
– The Overthrow: From Matriarchy to Patriarchy
– The Sumerians
– The First Residence of the Conquerors: Nekhen/Hierakonpolis
– The Painted Tomb No. 100: An Irritating Testimony
– With Boats from the Red Sea to the Nile Valley
– They Arrived with a Whole Armada
– The Indo-European God-Bark
– The brutal Consequences of the Invasion
– The ›Hacking up of the Nubian Land‹
– The Massacres of the Population of Lower Egypt
– The Decapitation of the ›Rechit‹
– The So-Called ›Unification of the Two Countries‹
– ›The Slaying of the Enemies‹
– The White Crown of Upper Egypt is not Egyptian
– ›Nar-mer‹ reveals once more the secret of his identity and origin
– The Mace – Homicide and Domination Symbol of the Conquerors
– 5000 Years of Nightmarish Patriarchy
The Overthrow: From Matriarchy to Patriarchy
›Uncultured‹ versus ›civilized‹ societies
The transition from matriarchy to patriarchy, from the peaceful Neolithic period to the so-called ›High-Culture‹, an expression of patriarchal science of history, was nowhere, and – certainly not in Egypt – a peaceful change. »Among matriarchal primitive races, the change to patriarchy is everywhere taking place before our eyes, under the influence of European contacts. « (Robert Briffault 1959, p. 73) After having seen the pictures of the conquests of the Iranian city of Susa and the Mesopotamian Uruk (see Iconographies of M. P. Amiet in Chapter 4), we can imagine the brutal overthrow from the matriarchal era of the ruling queens to the era of the patriarchal kings. They show brutal assaults, capture and kidnapping of the queen, murder and massacre.
According to archaeological research, all cultures of the Neolithic,
overwhelmed by the Indo-Europeans, were without exception dominion-free,
egalitarian and peace-loving societies that, unarmed and unfortified,
became easy prey to the conquerors.
Under the title ›The status of Women in Uncultured Societies‹, Briffault writes: »»It used to be asserted that the more civilized a society the higher the status of women in it. It was held that in uncivilized societies their position was one of outrageous oppression … In point of fact, the exact reverse is the case. In the great majority of so called ›uncultured societies‹ women enjoy a position of independence and of equality with the men, and exercise an influence which would appear startling even in the most feministic of modern societies. « (Briffault 1950, p. 70)
»General characteristics for civilizations (civil = bourgeois) are the formation of states, hierarchical social structures, a high degree of urbanization and a very extensive specialization and division of labor. « (Wikipedia) Therefore, let us have another look at the definitions of ›civilized‹ and ›uncivilized‹ or ›primitive‹. Cormac Russel of the ABCD institute writes: »The term primitive carries extremely negative connotations, while the term civilized tends to be seen wholly positively, often as the high watermark of human potential. Primitive means the primordial or original ones or stateless people governed solely by customs and kinship, while civilized refers to those who live their lives within states and governed by laws. After expansive phases of Western upheaval those terms dichotomized, exemplified in the words of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, in his political treatise Leviathan (1651), in which he described the lot of humans before state formation, the introduction of the rule of law and the influence of formal education as ›solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short‹. « (Cormac Russel) It is noteworthy, that historians retained the discriminating connotation. It served as a justification for the rapacious colonizers to invade foreign lands, enslave and exploit the people and steal their land, belongings and property.
The Sumerians
Based on the history of Mesopotamia und Egypt, the radical change from matriarchy to patriarchy can be clearly recognized. Let’s start with the Sumerians. The question of whether the Sumerians were the original people of Mesopotamia or whether they were preceded by other ethnic groups was a controversial topic by historians and archaeologists. However, the deeper Archeologists dug in prehistoric soil, the clearer it becomes, according to archaeological criteria, that there were two completely different periods: the oldest layer, the Obeid period, whose remains were found immediately above the virgin soil, and the Uruk period whose residues are located above the layers of the Obeid period (Samuel Noah Kramer 1959, p. 162). The Uruk period is followed by the so-called Djemdet-Nasr-period. It is coinciding with the colonization of Egypt in the second half of the 4th millennium. Scientists attributed a decisive artistic influence in Egypt from this period. Alexander Scharff speaks of a »morphological connection« between the end of Egypt’s predynastic period (late Nagada II – early 1st Dynasty) and an »indisputable temporal link« with the Mesopotamian Djemdet-Nasr culture »which, by no means, should be torn apart« (Scharff 1950, p. 17). »Material for comparison is so abundant that it is difficult to select examples« (Stephen Herbert Langdon 1921, p. 146). Samuel N. Kramer, one of the world’s leading Assyriologists and a world-renowned expert in Sumerian history and Sumerian language, assumes: Sumerian warrior hordes, »this primitive and probably nomadic people, who may have come either from Transcaucasia or from the Trans-Caspian regions«, in the second half of the fourth millennium would have invaded in Mesopotamia: »They subjugated the prior population, whose culture was far more advanced than that of the Sumerians. « (Samuel N. Kramer 1959, p. 165)
»The Aryans came into contact with highly civilized and ancient forms
of a well-organized society, against which they were pure barbarians. «
(Giuseppe Sormani)
Evidence of the destructive invasions from the north was found among others in the northern Mesopotamian Tepe Gawra. In the reconstructed village of Tepe Gawra were found pear-shaped maces, the typical homicide cudgels of the Indo-Europeans, »probably one of the oldest weapons used in combat« (Roaf 1991, p. 66). The settlement level of the pre-Sumerian El-Obeid-Era was destroyed by a huge fire. Archaeologist M.E.L. Mallowan observed the same procedure in northeastern Syria: »The ›Halaf‹ period ended in violent destruction as a result of the Sumerian invasion. « (Quoted by Sibylle von Reden 1992, p. 40). The invasion of the Sumerians was followed by »a period of stagnation, regression, and the collapse of earlier advanced cultures«, writes Kramer (1959, p. 163), and continues: »In these centuries, culminating in the Sumerian heroic age, it was the culturally immature and psychologically unstable Sumerian warlords, with their individualistic and rapacious predisposition, who ruled the plundered cities and burned villages of the defeated Mesopotamian empire. «
In the history of antiquity, we hear again and again of raids of the Indo-European cattle-breeder, mountain and steppe nomads on the peaceful urban and farming communities in the south. Most of the time they conquer these territories and establish themselves as foreign rulers over the subjugated peoples. Orientalist Manfried Dietrich remarks that it is a »simple fact that according to written statements and archaeological reconstructions at the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 3rd millennium, the basis for the structure of power and the hierarchical system of the ancient Orient lies in the urban culture of southern Mesopotamia. « (Manfried Dietrich 1989, p. 131)
Also, other regions were invaded by the Indo-Europeans. Examples inter alia are the Indus culture and northwestern India. Indologist Maurizio Taddei noted that the Indus culture »did not disappear suddenly, even though the last death blow was by force of arms and the invasion of some groups of Aryans was the last act of the tragedy, and thus the end, of the great centers of the Indus Valley« (Taddei 1970, p. 41 f). »The final destruction of the Indus valley culture by the Indo-Aryan invaders« probably was between 1750 and 1700 BC. (Albright/Lambdin 1970, p. 155) The anthropologist E. O. James reports that before the excavations, they were unaware that the Indo-Aryan tribes invading the Indus Valley and India, were not meeting a primitive indigenous population, but a highly developed urban civilization, which was superior to their own relatively simple way of life, as it appears in the Rig Veda (quoted by Merlin Stone 1988, p. 109).
Successively, the unarmed matriarchal countries of the Fertile Crescent were subjugated, from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean and from the Persian Gulf to Egypt. The dynastic empire was based on war, destruction, and murder. Evidences of massacres of thousands of people testify to that period of bloody colonization in the second half of the 4th and the beginning of the 3rd millennium. On a fragment of the so-called ›City Palette‹ from the Egyptian Abydos, the enemy attack of the conquerors on the cities is represented symbolically. Bulls – consistently symbolic figures of the early cattle breeder conquerors and their chieftains – destroy the city’s protective walls. Hierakonpolis and the other cities at the trading hubs were occupied by them.
Egyptian Egyptologist Fekri A. Hassan contributed to illuminating history at the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy. In his work: ›Primeval Goddess to Divine King – The Mythogenesis of Power in the Early Egyptian State‹ he discusses »the mythogenetic process by which the sacred powers of female deities were absorbed by male leaders in the formative period leading up to the Egyptian state«. (Lana Troy). He emphasizes the divinity of the (patriarchal) royalty and argues, that
»The doctrines, myths, and rituals linked with sacred kingship were an extension
and transformation of myths and rituals developed in Predynastic times.
This older myths and rituals were concerned with birth, death and resurrection. «
Nevertheless, Hassan is wrong; ›resurrection‹ in the patriarchal sense is not the same thing as rebirth in matriarchy. ›Resurrection‹ was invented to meet the kings‘ desire to live forever. I.e. the earthly desire of the kings is religiously disguised and thus justified. On the other hand, there was no resurrection in the matriarchal religion, but it was believed in being reborn through women. One reason for the invention of the ›resurrection‹ is connected with the desire to eliminate the woman as creator, sustainer of life and society from the religion. Hassan continues: »The religious transformations were linked with organizational, social, political, economic, and military developments«. (Hassan 1992, p. 307) Patriarchal ideology invent and propagate that Kings ruled as gods or in the name of a god and could not be questioned.
»Human authority and power that demanded absolute submission
and unconditional obedience are justified by a higher, a ›divine‹ power. «
(Lewis Mumford)
»The rise of the Egyptian state was most likely not the result of a single battle, but the culmination of wars and alliances, as well as fragmentation and reunification over a period of at least 250 years; perhaps beginning with a few major kingdoms that may have emerged between 3400 and 3200 and perhaps as early as 3500 BC. These kingdoms included the kingdoms of Naqada and Hierakonpolis in Upper Egypt and petty Delta at Buto, Sais … The kings from Hierakonpolis (the ›Followers of Horus‹) apparently conquered and annexed the Kingdom of Naqada in late predynastic times. « (Hassan 1992, p. 307 f) Huge forts served as military bases for the prisoners, who were drilled for aggressions, robbery and massacres of their own people. We must assume in the Egyptian state of the early dynastic period »a considerable destructive power«, attests Egyptologist B. J. Kemp: »The complete destruction of settlements in border areas and beyond is striking. « (Kemp 1983, p. 141) The prehistorian Hermann Müller-Karpe confirms the »monumental-reporting image art that began under the first kings (Horus-Scorpion and Narmer). He informs us of an extremely cruel mode of fighting, and of triumphing with masses of slain people« (Müller-Karpe 1976, p. 152). In contrast, J. H. Breasted prefers to see in this brute transition ›The Dawn of Conscience‹. »He starts mentally at the barbaric exploitation of power practiced by such early kings as Narmer and Scorpion and his successors. He completely overlooked the peaceful, non-predatory life forms of the Neolithic village, where forbearance and mutual help dominated, as was generally the case in pre-›civilized‹ communities. « (Mumford 1974, p. 247)
It was a long and hard struggle that the patriarchal conquerors waged against the matriarchal indigenous population of Egypt. It testifies the courage, despair and perseverance of the Egyptians in the fight against the occupiers. Women had in fact ruled the country as queens for at least 1000 years before the the Shemsu-Hor conquered the land. The certainly played an important role in resistance (see Doris Wolf 2019, p. 22–85: ›Das matriarchale Königinnentum Ägyptens‹ (The Matriarchal Queenhood of Egypt)
In the Neolithic the Ceramic Art Flourishes –
and Disappears Completely in the Time of Colonization
All Neolithic, prehistoric cultures from Spain to Persia are characterized by artistically high-leveled ceramics. Pottery is sometimes the only and often authoritative indicator in the setting of chronology and dating, which is why all prehistoric researchers occupied themselves with it.
Black-topped red polished bowl from Naqada
In Egypt, Flinders Petrie, Guy Brunton, Gertrude Caton-Thompson, Elise J. Baumgartel and Helene Kantor documented the pottery from the Egyptian Neolithic. At that time, a real industry of unmistakable, high-quality ceramics flourished in Upper Egypt, which was mainly used as funerary objects. Vessels were sacred symbols of the womb and the uterus as a vessel of the embryo. Filled with cereal grains, they are like cowrie shells, due to their appearance, symbols of the vulva and were worshiped as the sacred gate of life. Egyptologists interpret cereal grains as food for the dead in the afterlife.
In their meticulous, wafer-thin design, they surpass everything later in beauty and perfection. But then after the invasions of the Indo-Europeans, we observe everywhere the decline, indeed the destruction, of the products of culture and art; which is particularly evident in the disappearance of artistic ceramics. Alexander Scharff stated, the painted pottery in Asia, which meets us most perfectly and oldest in Susa I and the oldest painted pottery of Mesopotamia, which belonged to the Obeid period, disappeared. Scharff sees it as a »strange parallel that with prehistory, since 3000, in Egypt and Mesopotamia, every painted pottery ceased«, and assumes therein a »general synchronization of cultures« (Scharff ZÄS 1935, p. 91). The prehistorian archeologist Michael Hoffman noted that at the time of the upheaval, a new, coarse pottery appeared, just before the first dynasty. The martial time left no space for the artistic; the pottery now had a strict use-character: as dining and storage utensils. »Ninety-nine percent of the pottery in sites like Abydos was coarse utilitarian ware, the fancier red polished and black-topped red wares and painted potteries accounting for the remaining one percent. This is in striking contrast to a small Amratian settlement that I tested in Hierakonpolis, where over 50 percent of the pottery consisted of finer quality ceramics. Does this suggest that the people of Hierakonpolis were richer … or that this pottery was more common in earlier times when wealth was more widespread? (Hoffman 1979, p. 152 f)
Artistically valuable ceramics can only be created in times of rest and peace;
the production disappears regularly in times of war.
In 1934 P. N. Tretjakov expounded the theory: »Handprints found on ceramic objects show that they were made by women«. (E. Morgan 1989, p. 193) The high quality of the finer Neolithic ceramics was never reached again in the later history of ancient Egypt and the Near East. Astonishingly the ruler class – glorified as ›civilized Culture-Bringer‹ – contented with less artistic ware. In fact, the so-called ›culture-bringers‹ were barbarians and culture-destroyers. They were neither interested nor used to the artistic pottery. Nomadic herdsman do not value fine ceramics; the fragile clay pottery would be inappropriate for them.
The Rich Graves of the Neolithic were Plundered
Predynastic royal tombs were found in Abydos, Hierakonpolis and Nagada. All archeologists who unearthed prehistoric burial grounds in Egypt mentioned looted graves in large numbers, but it was the German Rolf Mainz who made the full extent visible. He registered: »Around 3000 BC the Egyptian cemeteries were systematically plundered. Of the 15 ancient Egyptian cemeteries with 13,721 graves, 11,501 were robbed by barbarian conquerors shortly after the burial. « (Mainz 1992, p. 1 and 9) »Systematic, rigorous, obviously large-scale grave plundering and corpse-robbery were described (selectively) in nine large burial grounds from the Egyptian pre-and early history, which have similar characteristics and, according to archaeologists, approximately have taken place at the same time. This time is the beginning of the first dynasty around 3000 BC. The looted and destroyed cemeteries were abandoned [simultaneously with the escape from the cities] by the locals« (Mainz 1992, p. 12).
The plundering can have only one reason: some of them were rich of precious grave goods. The grave robbers did not shy away from anything during their robberies as the handling of the corpses shows. Sometimes they tore off the arms or heads to get at bracelets and necklaces. The first chiefs of the conquerors ordered the grave-robbery and put it into their own depots. In any case, they collected it personally, because, in the early graves of the officials, who accompanied the new rulers, very rarely a piece of it was found. Their graves were poor and therefore remained intact. Henry Frankfort remarked: »Egypt was robbed of all talents in favor of the royal residence. The tombs of Tjebu – a cemetery in Middle Egypt that has been in use throughout the third millennium – have the most sparse of equipment, and of the poorest craftsmanship, in the heyday of the ancient kingdom when the pyramids were built. « (Quoted by Mumford 1974, p. 248). The robbery was found in the tombs of the rulers first dynasties. In Khasekhemwy’s tomb, the last king of the 2nd dynasty, 200 of the extremely valuable hard stone vessels were part of his grave goods. The art of processing hard rock, which is attributed to the new masters as the greatest cultural achievement, has already appeared in Neolithic tombs. It must originally have found its way to Egypt on the well-known trade routes from Aratta in the southwestern Iran. No workshops have been found in Egypt that point to the manufacture of the vessels, what is therefore not surprising. In the period of upheaval, the long-distance trade seems to have collapsed, for it is noticed that the vessels »already reached their climax with the beginning of the Old Kingdom. « (Jaros-Deckert LÄ, V, 1283) As we have seen in chapter 4, the largest collection of any kind of vessels was found at the beginning of the 3rd Dynasty 28 meters below Djoser’s Step Pyramid in Saqqara.
The First Residence of the Conquerors:
The Neolithic City Nekhen/Hierakonpolis
»Hierakonpolis, the city of the hawk, is the most important site for understanding the foundations of Egyptian [Dynastic -] civilization«, Archeologist Renée Friedman says 2003, leading archeologist in Hierakonpolis. »Here, nearly 400 miles south of Cairo, archaeological investigation over the past century has confirmed this vast site’s central role in the transition from prehistory to history. « Early archaeologists around Flinders Petrie were persuaded that conquerors advancing from the Red Sea to the Nile valley had made the old Upper Egyptian city of Nekhen (later called Hierakonpolis by the Greeks, Falcons-City by the invaders and today Kom el-Ahmar) to their residence. The extraordinary importance of the Upper-Egyptian capital, already existing in the Neolithic, is emphasized by Michael A. Hoffman: »We should remember«, he admonishes, »that the study of the rise of an upper-class in Nekhen is of general importance to Egyptian history and to the theory of state-foundation. The archaeological discoveries in Nekhen support the claim that the rise of the pharaohs began in this region« (Hoffman et al., 1982, p. 59). Here were found the most important testimonies of the invasion that led to dynastic Egypt. This includes the famous Narmer Palette, a golden falcon head in perfected goldsmithing, as known in Aratta, which though was not possible in Egypt. In addition, pear-shaped maces were found in large numbers (Petrie 1921, p. 22). We have already encountered this weapon in the northern Mesopotamian Tepe Gawra. For 3000 years the mace remains the barbarian dominion-symbol of the kings of Egypt.
In the second half of the 4th millennium striking changes take place. In cemeteries separate from the oval pits of the natives, tombs in an unusual rectangular construction of clay bricks were uncovered with deads who were laying on their back. In early Sumerian Mesopotamia, was found the same distinct change at the tombs. (see ›Neolithic tombs show evidence‹ in Chapter 3) The early Settlement of Nekhen date back 8000 Years. In the second half of the 4th millennium Hierakonpolis exploded within a few centuries to an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 inhabitants. Around 3300 the city was protected by a strong wall.
From the time of the first dynasties, the remains of a huge military fortress stand out; it is believed that this is the first of further military installations that have emerged. To bring the Upper Egyptian and Nubian people under Egyptian control, seventeen huge fortresses were built along the lower Nubia. Walter Emery assumes that the first Egyptian chiefs had properly organized combat troops, and that the forts of Hierakonpolis and the later of Abydos were clearly built on military defense principles that offered maximum protection (Emery 1961, p. 116).
The Painted Tomb No. 100: An Irritating Testimony
»In the winter of 1897–8 James Edward Quibell, assisted by Frederick Wastie Green, excavated the Temple Enclosure and other sites in the area of the ancient Hierakonpolis for the Egyptian Research Account. Green led a second expedition in 1898–9 when the so called decorated or ›Painted Tomb‹, a rectangular brick-lined and plastered pit with painted walls and brick partitions, was discovered. The paintings were removed and transported to the Cairo Museum. « (Case and Payne JEA 48, 1962) At that time, it was difficult to understand the sense of the irritating wall painting and to incorporate into the general picture of the then known culture. So it seems that the solution to treat it was »to diminish the outstanding finding in one way or another«, noticed Werner Kaiser already 1958. (MDAIK 16, 1958, p. 187 f) His comment was confirmed and found its summit in the article of Case and Payne in 1962. What Kaiser did not know at that time, that the importance of the picture has never been recognized and later on the picture was unvalued and forgotten.
Fortunately F. W. Green painted a watercolor of the about 5.85 x 2.85 m wall glued together from many pieces of diverse paper. Greens full-size paintings are preserved in the Griffith Institute, Oxford. Meanwhile, the ›tomb‹, if it really was one, can no longer be found, and only a severely damaged part of the original piece of the wall is preserved in the Cairo Museum.
My search of the forgotten picture of Hierakonpolis, Greens painting was finally found on the occasion of my visit to the Griffith Institute in Oxford in 1990: Convoluted, the treasure trove lay unprotected high on a cupboard, probably since more than 30 years. The director was amazed, she had no idea about the meaning of the picture and saw it for the first time after 12 years of service. The valuable document, which had obviously been dismissed as worthless and uninteresting, had been forgotten. Nobody had an idea that this was an invaluable testimony and part of the stock of the Institute. In the adjoining Ashmolean Museum, only a strongly reduced print of F. W. Green’s watercolor is exhibited in the entrance hall.
The spectacular tomb caused not only unrest because of its dating to the time of upheaval and the construction in Mesopotamian brick structure; »even more exciting than the unusual size and solid mud-brick construction of tomb 100 were the lively scenes painted on its walls«, whose motives were typical of »Iranian and Mesopotamian art of that time« (Hoffman 1979, p. 133). The Assyriologist Stephen Langdon noticed: »If the prehistoric tomb-paintings faithfully represent the physical appearance of the first inhabitants of the Nile Valley, there can be no doubt concerning the racial connection of these with the Sumerians and the prehistoric Elamites. The bird-like heads of the human figures in the tomb of Hierakonpolis are practically identical with the representation of the heads of Sumerians on seal-cylinder and bas-reliefs of the early period. The long bird-like nose is only an exaggeration of one of the most salient features of the two peoples. « (Langdon 1921, p. 147)
The picture is without doubt the representation of a group of white invaders in the region Nekhen/Hierakonpolis. Astonishingly in the glossy books of German Egyptologists, it is rarely shown, and its descriptions are erroneous und repetitive. If it is still mentioned in the thousands of books and essays, it is usually interpreted as a harmless accumulation of incoherent and trivial everyday scenes. The excavator of the picture, J. E. Quibell, saw in the scenes, above all, hunting depictions (1902, II, p. 21). This view was never questioned, indiscriminately accepted until today und parroted: ›The Egyptian world of hunters, ranchers and skippers; pictures of female dancers and idols‹. ›Large ship pictures, hunting and battle scenes‹, ›depictions of boats, animals, and humans‹. ›All in all, in the eyes of the hunter, the ideal of a happy existence, a paradise beyond compare‹. An ›unconnected, chaotically billowy world event‹, etc. Karlheinz Schüssler shows a small part of the picture and comments it more detailed. »We see the man in the hunt, as trapper and hunting assistant. « Then Schüssler describes scenes that do not really fit for animal hunting, but a manhunt: »In the lower left corner of the painting, we recognize a great warrior who, with a pear-shaped mace, hits three black men, who are bound together with a rope. He grabs the nearest crouching man by the hair. Attention also deserves that small group on the right of this knock-down-scene: There, a warrior fights at the same time with two lions, [rather big dogs] jumping at him on both sides. This type of presentation seems to have its origin in Babylonian space; even the ships with many rudders on Nekhen’s wall painting are strongly reminiscent of Mesopotamian influence. « (Schüssler 1988, p. 20 f) Despite the brutality of the scenes, Schüssler simply refers to »cultural and economic relations to that area«.
Hierakonpolis picture No. 100
French archaeologist Jacques Vandier, as well as later Michael A. Hoffman, were convinced that the picture could be a valuable contribution to the clarification of the beginning of Egyptian history. Nautical specialist Charles Boreux already pointed out in 1924/25 that the earliest pictured ships were those of the successors of the Horitic kings who conquered Egypt at the beginning of the historical time (quoted by Vandier 1952, p. 839). According to Boreux the fresco must be one of the oldest episodes of the struggle that the Horitic conquerors waged against the people of Egypt (Vandier 1952, p. 605 ff). But these theses were not considered by later Egyptologists.
If we look at the picture as a condensed representation of a single event, we cannot oversee, that here terrible scenes of a hostile attack are documented. Humphrey Case and Joan Crowfoot Payne, then directors of the Griffith Institute in Oxford, published a detailed study of the painting in 1962 (›Tomb 100: The Decorated Tomb at Hierakonpolis‹, JEA 1962, pp. 5-18). The authors distinguish rightly between people of different skin color – red and white (which means white and black) – they do recognize alike in the whites »aggressors of Asian descent« and identify the chief of them a »conqueror«. They want to see him as the »king« of the invaders, in front of whom the captive locals are »kneeling subordinates in a submissive stance«. They admit that the picture shows an invasion of whites who are massacring black people, but – and this is astonishing – they do not realize the explosiveness of what they see. They do realize that many of the representations are indeed very aggressive, but they play them down as »conflict scenes«. After all, the authors perceive that the dangerous-looking aggressors bear the stamp of foreign influence and differ in their physical appearance from the dark natives. And they see, that »the painted tomb shows similar aggressors of Asiatic affiliation intruding far into the south of Upper Egypt. What impelled them? A combination of trade and brigandage may be a reasonable explanation: elephant-ivory, skins, timber, and possibly spices of Nubian origin were sought for the offer of technical and ideological innovation. « (p.17) So far so good. But when the authors comment, their interpretations are far from being good and here starts the problem, they refuse to see the truth and avoid the correct analysis.
A white man, armed with two sticks, threatens a black man kneeling on the ground.
(Excerpt from the original picture in Oxford)
The writers’ comment: »The figure kneeling before the priest [!] is surely offering a skin rather than defending himself with a shield, and his overthrow may be an amusing illustration of magic. «
Three black men bound together in a row are beaten or killed by a white man with a mace.
The writers’ comment: »A motive of a different character is the pear-shaped mace head presumably brandished by the conqueror and possibly by the lion-affronter. Such mace heads are found in Gerzean [Naqada II] graves and assumed to appear early, but are unrepresented in Gerzean art. In contrast they appear in Protodynastic art, and in definitely royal association, besides having been found at the royal monuments, Abydos, and in massive concentration at the Main Deposit, Hierakonpolis. « (p. 14f)
The authors gloss over the whole scene to the point of absurdity, do not realize that this is not about ›spices‹ and not about trade, they do not longer want to see either that these brigands and killers are the aggressors from Asian origin and the conquerors of Egypt. They judge the picture of the conquest as »an explanatory treatise that documents«, that »the painted walls of the tomb can be seen as a commentary indicating how in rapid stages the chieftainship of tribal savagery grew into the kingship of a civilized state. « (p.16) Case and Payne regret that »most writers have seen an element of narrative in the paintings, but believe, that some have exaggerated the role of warfare (e.g. Petrie ›The making of Egypt‹ 1939, p. 67).
Small-sized horses from the Central Asian steppe, as were proven in Mesopotamia and Elam
at this time. They once populated the entire Eurasian steppe said Bouman and Bouman.
Very interesting is another detail, in the upper right part of the picture, we can see astounding things: Horses. Some people claim, horses would first have come to Egypt with the Hyksos, called the »Lords of Horses«, in the 15th/16th dynasty (1640–1550), about 1500 years later. However, there are indications in this picture that horses have already been brought by the very first invaders. The African historian Joseph Ki-Zerbo writes that the horse had already come to Africa around 3500, and that we read all too often that it first had appeared in Egypt only with the Hyksos (Ki-Zerbo 1980, 1984, p. 697). It should be noted that the ships have loading flaps that can be seen between the cabins. They served primarily for the entry of the horses. Gerda Weiler had observed the amazing fact, that the king on the Narmer-Palette and on the mace head of king Scorpion had attached a bushy horsetail to his belt and did not wear one of the later common bull tails.
The authors describe this picture, in which a black man is attacked by two great mastiffs:
»The hero and lion-affronter may plausibly be taken as symbolizing authority. «
The grotesque picture description from Case and Payne is followed by an even more remarkable interpretation of the whole scenario. The authors believe that the paintings can partly be interpreted as a narrative of a Gerzean chief, showing first: resistance to aggression, shown in the figures confronting the conqueror; second: the assimilation of foreign ideology shown in the heroic attitude; third: authority over native and foreign, shown by the hero and lion-affronter imposing on black and red lions; fourth: harmonious co-existence, shown in the paired antelopes and in the peaceful passage of ships. (p. 17) (But all ships and the whole scenario takes place in the sand.) This story, invented by the authors, subsequently renders them to a fact: »A ruler, accessible to such conceptions and techniques as divine kingship, structural brickwork, the sailing ship, and ground-line composition (the basis of writing), possessed the potentiality of the kings of the First Dynasty. « (If this means the potential for violence of the ›divine kingship‹, this statement is unfortunately true.) And the authors fancy: »In short, the conclusion is that the person, who once buried in the decorated tomb, deserves consideration as one of the legendary kings of Upper Egypt. «
The white chief, his left arm casually supported in the side, watches the raid
and massacre from the roof of a cabin.
In front of the chief’s boat women with desperate courage, seem to defend themselves against captivation and being killed. Case and Pain comment: »The king, conqueror, or leader shown at enlarged scale« (p. 12). While the authors do not mention the three tied, kneeling women in the middle of the picture, they react with incomprehensible cynicism to the women in the upper part of the picture. They downplay the massacre of the white men and hype elevate the murderers to heroes in this warlike scene, but blame the women’s behavior. They write: »Finally, the controversial figures over the central boat deserve mention, since they lack the graceful gestures and emphatically feminine outline of similarly placed figures on Gerzean pots. If regarded as men, their long kilts would have important later parallels. Their gestures are not precisely matched. « (p. 15) Historiography is very happy to reprimand female behavior, while admiring male brutality and crime.
The work of Case and Payne is until today considered as THE scientifically competent image interpretation! It is annoying and absolutely incomprehensible that this important document, which is one of the most important alongside the Narmer palette which illustrates the conquest of Egypt, has still not been published in detail and has not been researched and reassessed. The reason: ›Because the conquest of Egypt cannot and must not be.‹ Truths that nobody hears and nobody wants to know exactly.
In 1999 British Egyptologist Toby A. H. Wilkinson refers to this work and writes: »The most extensive example of early royal iconography is the series of scenes painted on the internal walls of an élite tomb at Hierakonpolis … the importance lies not only in the royal nature of large part of the iconography but also in the Mesopotamian influence apparent in some of the motifs. The Predynastic rulers of Upper Egypt, when formulating a distinctive iconography of rule, seem to have borrowed various elements from contemporary Mesopotamian culture. « (1999, p. 32 f) Wilkinson recognizes the Mesopotamian part of the style, but does not question the reason for its appearance in Egypt, neither the brutality of the scenes. He has no opinion of his own, not only parrots what the authors have mistakenly propagated, but is also tempted to surpass the ignorance, the lack of criticism, the distortions, embellishments and trivializations of the previous authors. His description contains such noble values as: ›Elite Tomb‹, ›High Rank‹, ›Royal Iconography‹, ›Predynastic Rulers‹, ›Boat Procession‹, ›Hero-Figure‹, ›Royal Artifacts, ›Royal Motif‹, ›Kingship Par Excellence‹, ›Socio-Political Development‹, ›Ritual‹, ›Artistic Motives‹, ›Royal Festival‹, ›Super mundane Sphere‹, ›Characteristics of Classical Egyptian Art‹, ›Supernatural Realm‹ of the King‹ etc. What Wilkinson overlooks in his exuberance: Here, white invaders massacre dark native people.
The paradoxical, contradictory description of the picture is the overture to the glorification of the pharaohs and their time, which is exaggerated even more. The German Egyptologist Adolf Erman sees life among the pharaohs more critically than most Egyptologists do. He pointed out »that the gloomy state of affairs in ancient Egypt existed at all times. The inscriptions try to convey to us the image of a ›real ideal kingdom‹ in which a ›divine‹ ruler ›paternally cared for his country‹, who was loved and praised for it by his subjects. Nevertheless, appearances are deceptive because there were bad circumstances hidden behind the beautiful words« (Erman 1984, p. 57). Since the pharaohs were actually whites – although the Egyptologists ignore the fact that they were belligerent white conquerors -– they can be nothing more than grand, paternal, caring, just and noble for deluded and racist Egyptologists. That is why idealization, apotheosis and glorification prevail and critical distance and sober contemplation are extremely rare.
The British Egyptologist Thomas Garnet Henry James (T.G.H.) James, author of the book ›Pharaohs Volk‹ (Pharaoh’s folk) claims that Egyptologist should treat propaganda, verbiage and the vainglory of the royal inscriptions with caution. But then concludes that nonetheless a certain level of credibility has to be granted, otherwise one would have to consider the whole building of Egyptian history as an ingenious lie that has been passed down by master fraudsters for centuries« (James 1988, p. 23 f). Unfortunately, so it is. Personal, political, religious, social, gender-dependent and ideological tendencies and prejudices of the respective historians, members of the so-called elite, repeatedly produce blinding works that shed more light on themselves than on their research subject.
With Boats from the Red Sea to the Nile Valley
As we see in the picture of Hierakonpolis, ships played an important role in the conquest of Egypt. Case and Payne merely write about the two strikingly different types of ships in the famous picture: »The so-called foreign ship, probably appearing early in the Gerzean Period [Naqada II], but having overwhelming influence on Protodynastic shipping. « (p. 13 f)
»There is evidence of a well-developed shipping especially in Mesopotamia
from the fourth to the third millennium. « (Th. V. Gamkrelidze / V. V. Ivanov )
As early as 1922 English Egyptologist and historian H. R. Hall postulated that it could be considered neither impossible nor unlikely that ships, at a very early date, sailed from the Persian Gulf along the coast of Hadhramaut, and through the straits of Bab el-Mandeb to the Egyptian shores of the Red Sea (Hall 1922, p. 252). Also, the nautical specialist Joseph Majer writes that at that time already a seagoing navigation existed and the violent changes in Egypt were due to an invasion over the sea (1992, p. 227 f). The passage from the Red Sea through the Wadi Hammamat to the Nile was possible a five days‘ journey. Especially because »the area of the desert in the older days of Egyptian culture was even less dry and desolate than it is today. It was rich in wildlife, and it was even more overgrown. There were still many water points there. « (Yoyotte LdÄK, 1960, p. 305) Elephants, giraffes, gazelles and antelopes can be found on the rock paintings from this period. In addition to this way, there were other well-known routes, for example, the Wadi Barramija, the goldmine area between Edfu and Marsa Alam, which was already known in the first dynasty. Certainly, the various desert routes were long used by Mesopotamian tradesmen, so that a close knowledge of the country’s realities and wealth allowed strategic planning of the invasion. »Traces of the first Egyptian chieftains and their passage through the Arabian Desert were found on the road to the Red Sea. « (Vercoutter 1965, p. 238).
The first conquerors actually came to Egypt by sea. Thanks to an exemplary careful excavation into the deepest layers of Eridu, the southernmost ruin of Mesopotamia, the city that was then directly on the coast of the Persian Gulf, a clay sailboat was found in a grave from the late Ubaid period. »For us, this find is the oldest testimony to shipping – whether on the river, in the reed lagoon, near the coast or possibly even at sea, remains an open question. « (D. O. Edzard 2004, p. 19) At the end of the 4th millennium seafaring became fateful for Egypt, the existing shipping shows the possibility of conquering Egypt by sea – Egypt was conquered with an entire armada.
They Arrived with a Whole Armada
Real boats were found in different parts of Upper Egypt. David O’Connor (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University) and his team uncovered ships in Abydos most likely from the time of Aha, the 1st King of the First Dynasty, around 3000 BC: A fleet of fourteen 18–to 24-meter-long wooden ship hulls was buried in the sand.
Emery found »A First Dynasty boat grave buried beneath a Third Dynasty tomb of Sakkara« (Emery 1961, pl. 18). From the 4th Dynasty, about 300 years later, dates the famous boat of Cheops in Giza, which has the considerable dimensions of 42.3 meters long and 5.6 meters wide, a cabin 9 meters long and 2.5 meters high. It is of the same design as the wooden boats on the mural picture of Hierakonpolis. Thor Heyerdahl, who was a gifted polymath stated: »The fact that the developed Near Eastern societies were acquainted with an exceptionally advanced shipbuilding technique 5,000 years ago will not surprise us after discovering the truly stunning ship of Pharaoh Cheops. « (Thor Heyerdahl 1979, p. 31)
Egyptian boat (Gaston Maspero ›Ägypten und Syrien‹ 1891, p. 173)
Certain is, the invaders were able to disassemble their wooden boats and carry them from the Red Sea coast to the Nile valley. »The marks on each part of the ship of Cheops in Giza show that the conditions for such dismantling and assembly of ships were known. « (Wolfgang Helck 1971, p. 21) »Already in the Old Kingdom we hear of a stately cargo ship, which was put together in only 17 days. « (Adolf Erman 1984, p. 573)
In addition to the depiction of animals, boats are among the most common motifs on the rock walls of today’s dry valleys leading from the Red Sea to the Nile Valley. »Every detail of these crescent-shaped boats, the oldest works of art in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley, was geared for sailing on the ocean and through the coastal surf, not for river navigation, for which any flat raft or rigid boat was enough. « (Heyerdahl, 1979, p. 280) The ships were of a considerable size, »because 20 to 40 oarsmen were the usual and at some one sees 50 and more men-crews on deck. Many had two cabins, one on each side of the mast. Some transported horned cattle and other large animals that were tiny in proportion to the large ships on which they were carried … The seaworthiness of these predynastic boats is undisputed« (Heyerdahl 1979, p. 103 f). Heyerdahl proved that the seafaring from Mesopotamia to the Red Sea with the oldest known sailing boats is not only possible, but a certainty. In 1977 he had a replica of a watercraft made of reeds, as they were common on the Indus, the Tigris and the Nile. He sailed from the Tigris mouth through the Persian Gulf first to the mouth of the Indus in Pakistan and then crossed with his team the Indian Ocean to the African Djibouti. At the mouth of the Red Sea, the expedition took an involuntary end. A war had broken out between Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea, blocking the entrance to the Red Sea. Nevertheless, this expedition proved that it was possible to travel across the sea of Mesopotamia to Egypt in prehistoric times. It is believed that during the winter months, the Sumerians sailed off their shores and returned with their cargo when the wind turned in the summer (Heyerdahl 1979, p. 92). Even today, the monsoon winds are used. The Kaskasi brings people and goods on wooden sailing ships, the Dhows, from November to May southwest, from the Persian Gulf to Zanzibar and Mozambique. From March to November, the Kusi storms in the opposite direction and brings people and goods back to the Asian mainland.
The Indo-European God-Bark
The invasion with ships is likely to be the source of the later religious ritual in which Egyptian priests carry the so-called Sky boat with the sun god Re/Ra in processions on their shoulders: as a historical recollection of the conquest of Egypt by boat, which was carried from the Red Sea through the desert to the Nile. And it would also make clear that the ›God-Kings‹ of the Old Empire had their boats buried with themselves; as a sign of their successful conquest and as witnesses of their arrival with ships.
Egyptian priest with the shouldered sun boat (G. Maspero 1891)
Not only in Egypt but also in Sumer there are pictures of rituals in which the gods of the sun god were carried around in a boat (Wolfram von Soden 1992, p. 181 f). »Why a boat in the sky? «, asks Merlin Stone. »Perhaps because the men who had the image of a god of light actually arrived in their boats? It was said of Ra’s boat that it had emerged from the primeval waters. Similarly, it was also said that the Aryan sun god had emerged from the cosmic waters. « (Stone 1988, 135) »The conceptual symbolism that the sun god in his boat drives around in the sky is basically not unlike to the Indo-European imagery of India and Greece, where the sun god sailed across the sky in a chariot drawn by horses. « (Stone 1988, p. 133)
The brutal Consequences of the Invasion
Dramatic Changes in the Upper Egyptian Nile Valley followed the Invasion. Manetho, the Egyptian historian of the 3rd century BC, still reports after almost 3000 years »of the destruction of the two countries by the ›Followers of Horus‹, the ›Shemsu-Hor‹. Wolfgang Helck expresses the unfortunate conjecture (LÄ): »At the beginning of history for the Egyptian, members of foreign peoples were object of lustful slaughtering of the defenseless. « What a mistake! Egyptians were slaughtered by the invaders; not the other way around. We see on the pedestal of the statue of King Khasekhemwy (second dynasty), what conquerors in Upper Egypt did, with which they boasted. Khasekhem(wy), (Kha-Sekhemui, Hor-cha-Sechemui) is one of the most brutal rulers of the Horitian conquerors. The Hierakonpolis Expedition discovered numerous mutilated skeletons of his time; over 15 cut marks of ax blows were found on the neck vertebrae of a male. (Renée Friedman, ›Nekhen News‹ 11, 1999, pp. 3 and 6). In Adaïma, a body showed signs of the throat having been cut of, followed by decapitation (Toby A.H. Wilkinson 1999, p. 266). The weapons used for this purpose were found in Khasekhemwy ’s grave in Abydos, axes made of bronze; about the purpose of which there can hardly be any doubt; they were the first execution axes.
Murdered people, probably women, on the pedestal of the statue of King Khasekhemwy
The Upper Egyptian people, as we can already see on the Narmer Palette, were brutally and obviously massacred in large numbers. The most disturbing thing was what we have already seen in the pictures from Susa and Uruk: Like there, the first victims in Egypt, were women. Lewis Mumford, who studied the life of the urban civilizations of the newly established kingdoms of Mesopotamia and Egypt, reports that the exercise of power in the form of struggle, attack, domination, conquest, and bondage is the essence of these civilizations. The methods of domination of the population were rigorous, hard, yes, sadistic. The Egyptian rulers, as well as the kings of Mesopotamia, boasted on their monuments and tablets even of how they had personally mutilated, tortured and killed their most important prisoners … In Sumer and Egypt, weapons and armed men, specialists in killing, were of essential importance (Mumford 1974, p. 200).
The ›Hacking up of the Nubian Land‹
From the first military base in the Upper Egyptian Hierakonpolis the raids began on the south adjacent Gold land Nubia (Kush). Here was that available, what commodities are for today’s warlords, petroleum, and other natural resources in abundance. Nubia, with the lucrative caravan trade, was the gateway to the treasures of Inner Africa, which the conquerors seized. These included gold, ivory, frankincense, spices, cattle and exotic animals. Above all, however, Nubia served as a human reservoir for slaves and soldiers who were caught in human hunts and driven on these same trade routes to Egypt. The raids on Nubia began with Narmer. His successor Hor-Aha »extended his rule upriver to the first cataract« (Emery 1961).
Prisoners and corpses of the slain show how brutally the conquerors proceeded.
Rock inscription of Hor-Djer/Zer in Nubian Wadi Halfa (Emery 1961, p. 60)
On a sandstone block south of Wadi Halfa, an Egyptian troops writer carved the horrific picture of the devastating Nubia expedition of his master Djer/Zer/Zar (1st Dynasty): a theater of war with prisoners and a ship with a high prow which swims in the midst of corpses. Djer/Zer/Zar continued the Nubian wars of his predecessors, and his armies advanced south to the second cataract (Emery). »Rock-cut inscriptions in the vicinity of the Second Cataract seem to record punitive expeditions mounted by Egyptian rulers against Lower Nubia, leading to the extirpation of the indigenous A-Group and the demise of the Qustul kingdom by the beginning of the First Dynasty«, writes Wilkinson (1999, p. 48). The country covered with wars was devastated, people killed or deported, children kidnapped and the livestock stolen. The peaceful Nubians could not oppose the brutal activity with armed resistance.
Racism and contempt for human beings speak out of many descriptions of such massacres. The Egyptologist Georges Posener says: »The countries in the south of Egypt had a population with low culture, but they could be used well as soldiers. « And Posener has even the audacity to claim that the inhabitants of Nubia were »civilized« by the Egyptians (LdÄK 1060, p. 186). Emma Brunner-Traut argued: »The gold from Nubia was paid by the Egyptians for their military protection against the nomad attacks from the desert. « (1978/1988, p. 150) If there were nomadic raids, they were probably aimed at the brutal invaders rather than at their own people. And it is grotesque to say that thieves have ever paid for the stolen goods. The Egyptologist G. A. Reisner merely indicates that the province was held with an iron hand and that nothing from the income of the country escaped the Egyptian rulers. Helck equally reports the unbelievable: The »slaying of the enemies«, which belonged to the »significant activities of the rulers«, with which the king liberated himself from »chaotic emotions«, »changed only with the 3. dynasty, as labor shortage compelled a large-scale importation of imprisoned Nubians« (LÄ, II, p. 306 + LÄ, III, p. 786). Prisoners of war as slave workers in Egypt have always played an important role. Workers were captured via raids in Nubia. From the 4th Dynasty there is talk of the ›capture‹ of 17,000 Nubians. (see Seipel 1984, p. 149) From the annals of Sneferu, first king of the 4th dynasty, we learn of the so-called Palermo-Stone the »hacking up of the Nubian land«. Sneferu allegedly captured 7,000 men, women and children and 200,000 livestock. »In a biographical inscription of Pepi II Neferkare of the Sixth Dynasty, the statement is passed down: ›The majesty of my lord sent me to hack up the land of Wawat (Nubia). I acted in praise of my lord, and I brought with me a large number of prisoners for the palace‹. « (Seipel 1984, p. 150). Another commander reports just as proudly on the accomplished atrocities: »I killed a large number. The princely children and the nobles I led in large numbers to the residence. « (Torgny Save-Söderberg, Urkunden I, p. 133 f.) From the sixth Dynasty, a commander of Pepi I reports:
The army returned safely,
After they dismembered the land
of the sand dwellers …
After they knocked down the fences …
After they cut down the fig trees and grapevines
After they put fire to all residences …
After they killed many tens of thousands of troops.
Does not that seem surprisingly well known and close? »It shows the way empires have gone everywhere: the same boastful words, the same despicable deeds, the same dirty results from the earliest Egyptian stone tablet to … Vietnam. « (Mumford, 1974, p. 259) And today, we would still have to adding Iraq, Sudan, Palestine, etc., etc., where innocent peoples are ruthlessly uprooted, terrorized and murdered. The bloodletting of Nubia destroyed the magnificent Neolithic A-Culture that had existed parallel to the Upper Egyptian Nagada I culture. The craft and artistic skills of the Nubian people were destroyed. The country no longer recovered and a gradual depopulation of Nubia was the result, triggered by flight, massacre and deportation.
The Egyptologists John Baines and Jaromir Malek belittle the wars against Nubia as »activity« and believe that the reason for the destruction of Nubian culture and depopulation may be seen in the climate: »The activity of the Egyptians in the period between the 1st. and 4th. Dynasty led, perhaps accelerated by unfavorable climatic changes, to the downfall of the Nubian A-Group, which succeeded only after a temporal interruption around 2250 a population designated as C-Group. « (John Baines /Jaromir Malek 1980, p. 333)
Nubian prisoners (women?) Tied to each other with ropes around their necks,
under the feet of the colossal statue of Ramses II in Abu Simbel
At last there is a regretful comment on these excessive crimes committed against the Nubians. It has such a striking rarity that it is mentioned here. Eva Eggebrecht writes: »Even if the loot numbers are exaggerated, the raid-like assaults on the areas beyond the first cataract … have led to severe devastation. It was not until the end of the Old Kingdom that Nubia recovered from the tribulation inflicted on it by its powerful neighbor. « (1984, p. 55) And: »The harassment of the population, as stated in the Stele-text of Sesostris III. is clearly limited to the times of conquest. After the resistance of the native Nubian population was broken, the Egyptians even had to be concerned to have immediate good relations with the inhabitants, who in the long run should ensure the supply of the occupiers«, means also Eva Eggebrecht (1984, p. 64). That’s how a woman thinks, the occupiers thought otherwise. The massacres and looting of Africa by a brutally operating Egyptian military administration were repeated until the New Empire (from the 16th to the 11th century). One of the viceroys of Nubia, Usersatet, listed the tribute bearers who brought the pillage from Inner Africa to Egypt as follows: »Those who carry silver: 200 men; those who carry gold: 150 men; those loaded with carnelian: 200 men; those who are loaded with ivory: 40 men; those burdened with ebony: 1000 men, those laden with incense from the southern countries: 200 men … those leading a living panther: 10 men; those who lead dogs: 20 men; those who lead longhorn and shorthorn cattle: 200 men; Sum of Tribute Carriers: 2657. « (Reeves 2002, p. 48) A non-Egyptologist sums it up: the anthropologist Stuart Smith calls the policy of the rulers of the Old Kingdom against Nubia an »imperialistic extermination« (KMT Journal 3, 1992, p. 40).
Swiss scholar and photographer Georg Gerster laments the last act of the Nubian drama: the deportation of the Nubian population caused by the construction of the Aswan dam. But neither the nations nor the UNESCO were concerned with that. The salvation of the monuments of the deified Ramses kept the world in suspense. With a tremendous financial burden of billions of Dollars, their location was displaced, while one did even not take stock of the culture and nature of the Nubian people. He accuses the UNESCO of indifference to the national death of the Nubians. »More faithful to the letter, than to the sense of its charter, the UNESCO declared itself incompetent; it could not care for the affairs of the Member States without being asked. The chance for the last possible recording is lost. Nubia sank, like a second Atlantis, forever in the Nil-water-reservoir. « (Georg Gerster 1964, p. 221 f)
The Massacres of the Population of Lower Egypt
It was after the destruction of Nubia when the invaders conquered in bloody wars Lower Egypt, the Sinai, the Delta and the Libyan tribes on the edge of the Western Delta. At the beginning of the first dynasties, »400,000 livestock (bovines etc.) and 1.4 million livestock (sheep, goats, poultry etc.) are already registered as a total stock« (Brunner-Traut 1987, p. 34). In the fourth dynasty a maneuver to Libya brought king Sneferu 1100 captives and 13,000 head of cattle. Still, an Egyptologist asks if Sneferu, »as the only one of all the pharaohs, enjoyed the reputation of a just and compassionate man, to whom bloodshed was an abomination? Maybe! « (Montet o. J., p. 13). »Like no other king of the Old Kingdom, Sneferu is considered in the Egyptian tradition as the good ruler, who was then equated and deified with Horus in the Middle Kingdom. « (Wikipedia) About the campaign under Sahure (fifth dynasty) against the Libyans on the western edge of the delta is known that it brought ›sensational spoils of war‹ and the subjugation of the foreign princes and their families.
»Whole areas with their inhabitants were destroyed in wars. « (Erika Feucht)
The Decapitation of the ›Rechit‹
In the time of the first kings, we see the Lower-Egyptian Rechit-people stringed up as lapwings. »The agony of the lapwings is already illustrated on the little mace head of King Scorpion: Lapwings appear there with ropes at the neck hung up at standards and in the further course of the first dynasty, with their neck cut through and slain by the white Upper-Egyptian mace« – or – »after cutting their necks they were beheaded. « (Kaplony LÄ, III, p. 418) Later on, according to Helck, Lower-Egyptians were again victims of Djer/Zer: »In the fourth year of this king the beheading of the Rechits seems to have taken place« (1987, p. 207). In the 3rd Dynasty under Djoser, the lapwings with their wings crossed squat motionless at the feet of the king. The lapwings are regarded as rebels who revolted not only at the death of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, but also of their real master, the King of Lower Egypt. « (Kaplony ibid.) These ›rebels‹ evidently resisted for generations against the brutal conquerors who had made themselves lords of all Egypt.
Disconcerting is Helck’s remark about a »thinking magician«, a »chief thinker«, to whom the cognizance may be attributed, that the preservation of dominance over the Rechit is only ensured if the rulers demarcate and oppress the subjugated (Helck 1987, p. 207). Werner Kaiser downplayed the massacre, declaring, the killing could only be of »rebelling underlings«. But why are Egyptians declared enemies, subjects, and rebels in their own country, stringed up and beheaded? Are these insurgents not Egyptians, fighting for their freedom, natives defending themselves against the brutal invaders and the mass murder of their people? Toby Wilkinson, (*1969) goes far and writes: »In the hieroglyphic script, the lapwing represented the rhyth, the Rechit, the common people of Egypt. Hence, the symbolism of this part of the Scorpion mace head seems clear, if a little uncomfortable to the modern mind: the populace of Egypt is quite literally subject to the divine authority of the king. The significance of the scene may go further, and may illuminate an aspect of ancient Egyptian society which is only barely attested. This is its division into two separate groups, the mass of the populace (rhyt) [the Rechit] and the ruling class (p’t) [the pait] (Wilkinson 1999, p. 185, quoting Malek and Baines) Members of the upper class find this racist, unjust class/caste system completely in order (see Chapter 4: ›The Ruling Class: Indo-European ›Ari-Pait‹). Wilkinson, obviously a devotee of propagandistic ideology of ›divine kingship‹ writes: »It fell to the rulers of the Early Dynastic period to exploit this ideology for their own ends, to secure and maintain political and economic control of the country and its resources. In addition to promote kingship as the fulfilment of a divinely ordained model for society, and hence to ensure the survival of kingship as the only acceptable form of government« (Wilkinson 1999, p. 184).
›Mace-head of King Scorpion‹. In the upper part hung lapwings,
which symbolize the Lower-Egyptian Rechit tribe.
Egyptologist Emma Brunner-Traut idealizes the massacre »as the threshold over which the Old-Egyptian from the prehistory has entered history. In that moment of glory, the man of the Nile received the Charis (grace) from his fairytale connection with the primal ground of the world to ascend to the new level of consciousness marked by the myth« (1978/1988, p. 151]. The repulsive partisanship of many male and female authors for the brutal conquerors are unfortunately not uncommon and by no means an explanation for what really happened on the Nile; and because the key to understanding the ›Great Hour‹ on the Nile, the warlike invasion and the genocide of the Egyptian population are not accepted, no plausible reason for the sudden onset of bloodshed and radical upheaval has been found to this day. It is absolutely shocking that the brutal approach of the white conquerors is taken over by the authors without hesitation and without criticism. No Egyptologist is scandalized by the crying misery story of oppression, exploitation and enslavement, of poverty and hunger of the indigenous population over the 3000 years of the Dynastic era.
The So-Called ›Unification of the Two Countries‹
Wolfgang Helck writes about the bloody upbeat of Egypt: »At the beginning of history there was no need for foreign workers in Egypt; therefore, the prisoners were killed in warlike conflicts, at least the male. This ritualized slaughter as this one of 120’000 Under-Egyptians in Narmer and that one of 47’209 Under-Egyptians in the reign of Khasekhemwy… this also is commonplace in early Mesopotamia. « (LÄ, II, p. 304) Likewise disconcerting, Günther Roeder writes about the ›unification‹ and the accompanying massacres of the dwellers. Some of them »cooperated with one another in a friendly way«, while the others [who rebelled against the invaders], »resisted out of selfishness, arrogance or defiance«, had »to subordinate themselves to the common interest by violence« (Roeder 1952, p. 40). Emery describes the struggle for unity as »a long period of anarchy and bloodshed« (Emery 1961). And Thomas von der Way stated that »the material culture of Lower Egypt was extinguished« and »the future development was left only to the Upper Egyptian tradition«, which is why instead of the common term ›unification‹ this phase is called »cultural overlay« (Way 1993, p. 78); which does not make it any better. According to Jürgen von Beckerath, this does not mean that a new culture has arisen, rather, it is »a further-development of the former under inclusion of Under Egyptian and Near-Asian influences. In the gradual occupation of the north and the simultaneous extinction of the older cultures there, archaeologically the process of ›imperial unification‹ can be recognized« (Beckerath 1971, p. 12). Of course, these cultures did not simply expire, but were destroyed by brute force. Until to this day, most Egyptologists want to see in the violent subjugation and ›unification of the two countries‹ – which enabled a despotic ruler to exercise central power and plunder and enslave the population – a great act of civilization, and explain the bleeding out and subjugation of the natives without further ado as an »Act of Liberation« from prehistoric chaos. Walter Wolf trivializes the subjugation of Lower Egypt by asserting that »the end result is not about the destruction of Delta culture by an Upper Egyptian empire, but the fusion of two cultural realms«, and not the »subjugation of the North by the South, but it is the revelation of the order of creation in human society«. He cynically covers up the cruel wars as the »beneficent great-feat of the god of the worlds and the heavens«, claiming that the unification of the empire would have transformed the chaotic political conditions of the past into »a clear and firm political order« (Wolf 1977, pp. 54 and 58). An ›order‹ enforced with brutal violence.
Michael Hoffman expresses his assumptions when he writes: »The very fact that these wars and the later rise of the Egyptian state were called a unification process suggests that Henri Frankfort was partly right in claiming that the dual monarchy was a political invention. To the extent that the political consolidation of Egypt was euphemistically termed a unification rather than a conquest… there was an attempt to interject an air of righteousness to the political and military machinations of the kings of the south in their struggle for the hearts minds, an property of their neighbors. « (Hoffman 1979, p. 335). In contrast to Hoffman, most authors misjudge the conquest, dictatorship and tyranny of the conquerors, the oppression and enslavement of the indigenous Black African population, which is documented by Narmer. They spin thoughtlessly and pitilessly a yarn about ›one of the most successful societies that has blossomed‹. History is always written from the perspective of the perpetrator; the sufferings of the victims are of no interest.
›The Slaying of the Enemies‹
We find the brutal execution of a prisoner, called ›The Slaying of the Enemies‹ surprisingly already depicted on a bas-relief in far-off Iranian-Elamite Susa, whence it originated. (see Jacques de Morgan 1926, p. 282) The Scene is perhaps best known as the home of the exquisite ceremonial Narmer Palette«, writes the actual archeologist of Hierakonpolis, Renee Friedmann. »Found buried in a cache of temple furniture, the palette had been commissioned by Narmer, the first king of Egypt’s First Dynasty.
The Narmer Palette: The Document of a Brutal Subjugation
»With the beginning of the dynastic history, the representations of Asians multiply as ›strangers in Egypt‹ … The oldest evidence of a clash between Egypt and Asia in dynastic times is the Narmer Palette. « (Raphael Giveon LÄ, I, p. 462 f) The Palette – »so called the first political document in history – shows Narmer subduing an enemy ruler. « (Renée Friedman 2003) On one side – he wears the Red Crown of Upper-Egypt – is the triumphal procession of the chief depicted. In front of him lie the bodies, chained by the arms, of Lower Egyptians, with their chopped-off heads, placed between their legs. There is no doubt that Narmer’s victory was preceded by a massacre of the Egyptian population. Equally cruel are the representations on the other side of the Palette. Here we notice, that the king wears the White Crown of Lower Egypt. He holds a Lower Egyptian by the shock of hair and kills the man who has sunk before him with his mace. This brutal scene of violence becomes a permanent fixture of Egyptian royal portraits. The ›enemies‹ on both sides of the Palette who Narmer kills are not ›enemies‹ but indigene Egyptians: strangely no Egyptologist want to see this. In the contrary, Helck idealizes the scenes as »a symbol with magical power that protects the ordered world« (Helck 1971, p. 5)! And Whitney Davis sees in the depictions a visual metaphor of the king as victorious hunter at the moment, when he gives his enemies a fatal blow. We can only wonder, if this king is an Egyptian, why does he kill his own people? Joshua Mark has another interpretation for Narmer. Narmer for him is not the aggressive Killer. He writes: »The Narmer Palette, an ancient Egyptian ceremonial engraving, depicts the great king Narmer [does brutality make men great?] conquering his enemies with the support and approval of his gods. This piece, dating from c. 3200-3000 BCE, was initially thought to be an accurate historical depiction of the unification of Egypt under Narmer, the first king of the First Dynasty of Egypt. Recent revisions in scholarship, ([of whom?] however, now interpret the artifact as a symbolic rendering of this historical event and claim that Narmer (also known as Menes) may or may not have united the country by force. Nevertheless, the concept of the king as a mighty warrior was an important cultural value and so Narmer was depicted as a conqueror. « (2016)
Interestingly enough, Mark talks about ›his gods‹, but it is not a god but the Goddess Hathor who dominates both sides of the Palette. And must this not have a deep significance? The image of the goddess proves that the Indo-European were not ›always‹ patriarchal. Patriarchal priests did not invent the Goddess: Sie ging dem Patriarchat voraus. She preceded the patriarchy. First Indo-Europeans worshiped the Great Goddess and only later invented their male gods. The cow goddess HAT-HOR is the goddess of the nomadic cattle breeders, the mighty Indo-European HOR-ites, from the Eurasian steppes. Etymologically, HAT means ›big house‹. ›Hat‹ refers to the Indo-European idioms for ›house‹, ›hut‹ and ›stable‹. Male gods are a late invention of the Indo-Europeans and Aryans.
The White Crown of Upper Egypt is not Egyptian
As we have seen the first representation of the white crown in Egypt is on the Palette of Narmer (about 3000 BC). But it should be remembered that the oldest representation of the white Crown is to be seen on a seal from Elam, Iranian Susa and it was also worn in Sumer. We have noticed on a Pictography of Susa, that the leader on the occasion of a capture and hijacking of a high-ranking lady – probably the queen – wears the white crown (see Chapter 4). Definitely, the White Crown originated in Iran.
On the glyptic of Susa (Chapter 4), we see a tied-up woman carried away on a litter. She may be the captured queen or her daughter, the heiress to the throne, at any rate, an important woman. And there is a man who wears obviously the cone-shaped hat, which became the white crown of Egypt. G. A. Wainwright mentioned this fact as early as 1923 (JEA 1923, pp. 26–33). Three years later, Scharff refers to the publication of Wainwright in his article ›The Prehistoric of the Libyan Question‹, but, however, does not comment with any word, on this fact, which is crucial for the clarification of the origin of the kingship in Egypt. It seems that, like many others, he dislikes the reference to the Iranian high plateau. He blames Flinders Petrie, who »in his description of the Egyptian prehistory is too much dominated« by »the idea that only hostile invasions have formed and promoted the Egyptian culture, whereas we know just from the historical time, how a steady, long-established and native development, brought blessings to the land« (Scharff, ZÄS 1926, p. 20). In the blessed palaver, the white crown from Susa sinks and is tacitly shelved. But: both, the Iranian Mitras – which is a masculinized form of the Persian Goddess Mitra – as well as the vegetation god Asar/Osiris, stem from Western Asia and were identified with the White Crown. Horus is often wearing it as well. On the Narmer-Palette, the ›White Crown‹ appears in Egypt for the first time. The patriarchal conquerors and their leader Narmer brought it with them. The symbolism of the white crown is easy to recognize, it has a phallus shape in accordance with the institutionalization of patriarchy by the conquerors.
›Nar-mer‹ reveals once more the secret of his identity and origin
In Egyptology, it is assumed that the name ›Narmer‹, which is referred to with the hieroglyphs of ›nr‹ and ›mr‹ is interpreted as ›fearsome catfish‹. That seems a somewhat questionable interpretation. The search for a different interpretation seems justified, especially when considering that the name could be purely phonetic. Alan H. Gardiner, the author of the ›Egyptian Grammar‹, emphasized that often »the pictures of things, do not denote those things themselves or any cognate notions, but indicate certain other entirely different things not easily susceptible of pictorial representation, the names of which chanced to have a similar sound. « (Gardiner 1927/1988, p. 7)
Since there are references to Indo-Europeans-Aryans in Egypt already in Narmer’s time, there exists actually a name in Sanskrit for ›Nar‹, which is much more convincing: Nar in Indo-European Sanskrit is the word for man and refers to the man of higher rank (like the Hebrew word nar for chief, director, leader, guide). The Egyptian hieroglyph ›mr‹ for slave, which also has an Indo-European root, may explain what the name means: Nar-mer, the victorious conqueror, calls himself the »chief of the slaves«, that is, the defeated Egyptians.
The Mace – Homicide and Domination Symbol of the Conquerors
The mace is of Asian origin (inter alia Gordon Childe 1958, p. 72). It appears in Egypt on the Narmer Palette in action soon after the time of the conquest. Lewis Mumford writes: »It is not surprising that from the time of the political ›unification‹ of the upper and lower Nile valley, where the Egyptian kingship originated, came mass graves with an unusual amount of shattered skulls. The significance of this weapon, especially the time and place of its appearance, strangely was overlooked« (Lewis Mumford 1974, p. 202).
The first real maces were found in Mesopotamia and Iran as early as in the second half of the 4th millennium. Before they emerged in the time of the upheaval with the conquerors in Upper Egypt, they were also known in Anatolia for a longer period. The mace head is invariably pear-shaped, for it symbolizes the phallus. In the king’s hand – when placed exactly on the anatomic place, on the height of the penis, mutates into phallic exaggeration and becomes a sign of phallic killing power. The Hebrews who were in Egypt during the time of Akhenaten and fled Egypt under their Aryan leaders Moses and Aaron understood the meaning [see ›Wer war Echnaton?‹ (Who was Akhenaton?)
The mace and the penis symbolizes and marks the beginning of the patriarchal phallic cult, represented in the ithyphallic god Min. Min is the first anthropomorphic, human-shaped male god. He represents God as a man, as super-potent, godlike being. From now on the phallus, this ›interesting organ‹ (Leca) is worshiped. At the time of the conquest, in Qift appear two artistically primitive sculptures of the sex-boasting, new god Min.
5000 Years of Nightmarish Patriarchy
The most important goals of the first acts of warfare was gaining power over women – and thus land ownership and wealth – because in matriarchal cultures land and possessions were in the hands of women. Wars were institutionalized for purposes of land conquest and as a means of maintaining power. This is the beginning of »a 5,000-year-long nightmare from which it is time for this planet to awaken. « (James Joyce)
Martial raids 5000 years ago caused by Indo-European-Aryan conquerors are not only documented in the history of Mesopotamia and Egypt, the massacres went on in later time when they invaded Palestine. How this happened does not need to be speculated about, they are repeated again and again and were recorded meticulously in the Holy Bible. It says in the Book of Judges, chapter 18:
»The Danite tribe was in the process of seeking possession to settle down. Therefore, the Danites sent five battle-hardened men from their clan to roam and explore the land … The five men came to Lajish. They saw that the people lived there undisturbed, calm and secure. There was no one who did harm in the land, no conqueror and no oppression. When the men came back to their brothers, they said, ›Up, let us fight against those people. Because we have seen that, the country is very beautiful. Why do you want to hesitate? Do not be so lazy! Make your way there and take possession of the land! You find a carefree people when you get there. The country is spacious on all sides. Truly, God has given it to you. It is a place where there is nothing lacking on earth. ›Then six hundred armed men from the Danite clan set out, raiding Lajish, a quiet and peaceful people. They killed the people with a sharp sword and set the city on fire. Nobody could come to the rescue because the city was far away. The Danites rebuilt the city and lived in it. They called it Dan, after the name of her ancestor, Dan, who was once born to Israel. « (Biblical text slightly shortened)
»This text describes succinctly how we should imagine the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy, as a brutal attack by robbers and murderers on an unsuspecting people, what afterwards was celebrated as a victorious conquest in the name of God« (Lucie Stapenhorst). How the inhabitants of the city were treated, we read:
»They killed all men, children, and women, except for four hundred virgin girls, who had no intercourse with a man‹. From the Scriptures, Deuteronomy 7: 1 ff., we hear: ›If the Lord, your God, has led you into the land to take possession of it; if he will remove many peoples from your path; if he Lord, your God, delivers them to you and you strike them, then you shall consecrate them to extermination. You shall make no contract with them, spare them not and not betroth to them … otherwise, the wrath of the Lord will burn against you and destroy you immediately. Therefore, you shall proceed against them: you shall tear down their altars and burn their idols [the ›Asherah shrines›, the cult posts of the Goddess Astarte] in the fire. You shall not have pity with them. You will erase their name under the sky. No one will be able to withstand your attack until you have destroyed them‹.
»The cited passages refute the thesis of a gentle historical and spiritual evolution. They provide us with a shattering example of the patriarchal occupation of the country and of women and the merciless extermination of matriarchal cultures and their Goddess cults by the patriarchal god and his followers. There are too many red examples, which can no longer be dismissed as one-time derailment. It is not a derailment; it is the program of patriarchy. « (Stapenhorst 1993, p. 92) Erhard Zauner writes in his book ›The Unholy Scripture‹ [the Bible]: »In this ›unholy Scripture‹ »we find all despicable crimes: war, murder, human sacrifice, lies, fraud, adultery, polygamy, inbreeding, misogyny, genital mutilation, human trafficking, slavery, racism, xenophobia, idolatry, revenge, robbery and multiple genocide… If one wanted to distribute a media product with similar contents today, the voluntary self-control of the film industry would not allow this for under-16s. There would be interim injunctions for youth endangering, sexist, racist and violence glorifying contents if it were not generally declared to be incitement of the masses and not to be allowed for traffic. «
If the incredible portrayals of violence, the rape of virgin girls by the land robbers, have an effect on the soul of the people, we need not be surprised at the ever-increasing violence and child pornography. This is not, as some people want to tell us, a ›societal problem‹, that is a man-problem. Not only the violent videos and child pornography films cause the senses of adolescents and adult men to become violent and cause them to commit acts of violence; they have their role models. The Bible and the mendacious justification that all of this is done on behalf and in the name of their God, should also be critically scrutinized for its brutalizing effect.
»The question of whether patriarchy is a gigantic disease
afflicting humanity is not asked«. (Gerda Weiler)