On the Priestly origin of the Napatan kings.

Text, context, and intertextuality.

Robert Morkot

Department of Lifelong Learning, University of Exeter.

My apologies for presenting what should be seen very much as a draft paper, rather than as a finalised study. Such a final paper would fill many gaps in the overview of the literature which time and other pressures have left incomplete. Neverthless, the principal issues are, I hope, quite clear.

NB. There is no intention to impute racism to any of the authors discussed. A number of late 19th and early 20th century Egyptologists have been described as "racist": it is an easy, and perhaps not very useful, tactic to employ. W.Y.Adams (1977) made the more pertinent comment that the ideas condemn the age more than the men (the growth of institutionalised academic racism is also an issue discussed in Bernal 1987). More recently, there may have been racist Egyptologists and archaeologists (there may still be), but it is difficult to distinguish individual racism from the more general attitudes, both social and academic, of the period (ie 19th-mid-20th centuries).

Note on terminology: the period under discussion here is the beginning of the 25th Egyptian Dynasty (very broadly 750 BCE onwards) and its origins in the preceding (in Egyptian terms) Third Intermediate Period (TIP). In Nubian studies this phase has become known as the Kingdom of Kush, the Kurru Kingdom (advocated by Timothy Kendall), or the Napatan period/kingdom. The last, Napatan, is the term preferred in the older literature (along with the now obsolete "Ethiopian"), hence its usage here.

Introduction.

Since 1990, the origins (genealogical, political, and cultural) of the "25th Dynasty" have again become a centre of controversy amongst a few "Nubiologists". In the discussions, at times heated, there has been an attempt to revive, in a considerably modified form, the idea of Theban priestly influence on the early Kushite kingdom. Although the idea found in some older literature, that the Kushite royal house was lineally descended from Theban priests appears to have been abandoned, the germ of the idea has been adapted, and archaeological evidence invoked to support it. This paper considers a number of issues rising from this "revised model", particularly the transmission and adaptation of ideas within our discipline, and what that reveals about the attitudes of Egyptologists towards Nubia, and Egypt itself, notably about what is "African" about these cultures, societies and states; also issues of the "Africanness" of Nubia contrasted with non-Africanness of Egypt.

The context: (1) historiography and general histories of Egypt and Nubia.

There have been relatively few general histories of Nubia. The first, by George Hoskins (1838) was based largely on classical sources and the monumental record that he observed in his travels. The next major work was that of E.A.Wallis Budge (1907), which came in the wake of British imperial expansion into "our" Sudan. A.J.Arkell’s (1955) history followed the first phases of archaeology, and succeeding studies have increasingly adopted an archaeological, rather than text-based, perspective (Emery 1965; Shinnie 1967; Trigger 1976; Adams 1977; Shinnie 1996; Welsby 1996).

The way in which Nubian studies has developed, and the nature of much of the material, means that it is virtually inseparable from Egyptology. There are, however, many working in the field who are not from a primarily Egyptological background. This is, in many ways, an asset. However, it seems to me to lie at the root of the problem under consideration: the transmission of older ideas and their adaptation.

A brief survey of literature and the development of European ideas about Nubia in the 19th and 20th centuries can be found in Morkot 2000, Chapters 2-3. A discussion of some specific issues in the mid-19th century will appear in Morkot and Quirke in press. Aspects of this period and its treatment are literature are discussed in Morkot in press.

The more general academic trends that influenced the development of the disciplines of Ancient History, Egyptology, and archaeology in the 19th century were discussed by Martin Bernal (1987) in his highly controversial Black Athena. In the subsequent debate (notably Lefkowitz and Rogers 1996, and see also the papers by Bernal and John North in this session), there has been a generally sympathetic attitude to his general thrust, if not to aspects of his methodology and conclusions. Bernal’s study is more about Greece than Egypt, and not about Nubia at all. The many issues raised by it are, however, fundamental to any analysis of writing on Egyptian and Nubian history.

The context: (2) the current debate on the origins of the ‘Napatan’ state.

The issue of Theban priestly influence on the nascent Kushite kingdom was revived by Timothy Kendall in his Hauptreferat at the 7th International Meroitic Conference in 1992. Kendall presented a reassessment of archaeological material from el-Kurru. Some of this had not been fully published in the formal account of the excavations (Dunham 1955). Kendall supplemented his presentation of the archaeological material with an historical interpretation of its significance. The published version of the paper (Kendall 1999) is a completed and considerably more elaborated paper than that actually circulated before, and delivered at, the conference. The contributing papers presented at the Conference (by Burstein, Dafalla, Lewczuk, Morkot, Török 1999a) responded to Kendall's original circulated paper, not that published.

At the same conference the present writer's Hauptreferat "Kingship and Kinship in the Empire of Kush" (Morkot 1999) discussed the inscriptional and genealogical material and theories of succession. It did not address the theory of a Theban priestly origin: the author presumably did not consider it an issue worth resurrecting. One issue which was raised in the paper, and which has some broader relevance to the issues under consideration here, is that of matrilineal and ‘brother’ succession. Of the contributing papers, only that of Török (1999b) has any bearing on the issues raised here.

Normally the subjects selected for main papers at Meroitic and Nubian Conferences vanish into oblivion until the next generation chooses to reconsider them, but rather remarkably the "origin of the Napatan state" immediately reappeared as a main session at the Nubian Conference in Lille in 1994. This could be seen as the discipline recognising its importance, and acknowledging an inconclusive or incomplete debate in Berlin. Knowing nothing of the meetings of the committee involved, I can only speculate, but would suspect that political and personal factors probably played a more significant role than academic altruism.

At the Lille conference, the main paper was presented by László Török (1995a), who had been on the receiving end of an intemperate attack by Kendall in Berlin (see Kendall 1999: 165). Török sought contributions from Janice Yellin (1995) and Karola Zibelius-Chen, and a further response was provided by the present writer (Morkot 1995). Kendall was not invited to contribute a paper.

Török's paper (and its expanded version, Török 1995b, a work with considerable subtext) discusses the archaeology of el-Kurru and devotes itself even more to the ideology of the state. Török works primarily with the textual, archaeological, and iconographic, material. He discusses the ideas of some (selected) recent writers, but largely avoids reference to older sources (except, for archaeological reasons, Reisner) and historiography. I think that it would be fair to say that Török regards himself as an empiricist and, perhaps, a positivist.

The Text.

The text under discussion forms a small, but significant, part of the conclusion of Kendall's Berlin Hauptreferat.

Kendall supports George Reisner's chronology of the el-Kurru cemetery, with a few, relatively minor, revisions (the minutiae of which have no relevance to the theme of this paper). Reisner's estimated date for the beginning of the cemetery, in the early-mid 9th century BCE, was based on allocation of the graves to six or seven generations, at 20/30 years per generation, and calculated back from the "known" dates of the 25th-dynasty kings. Reisner's reconstruction totally ignored the objects associated with the graves as a possible dating criterion. Kendall re-examined and published many objects from the graves, and Lisa Heidorn made a study of the pottery (Heidorn 1994). Kendall attributed significant numbers of objects to the late New Kingdom, but interpreted them as "heirloom". There was less precision in dating the pottery, and Heidorn's published analysis generally prefers to follow the lower possible dates within the ranges for various types. Despite the apparently early objects, Kendall (1999: 50) proposes lowering Reisner's date for the earliest graves by half-a-century, stating that:

"Evaluation of the evidence in light of contemporary Egyptian history may actually suggest that the cemetery was founded as late as 850-830 B.C."

Kendall (1999: 57) proceeds to revise the dating of the cemetery, not on archaeological grounds, but by a proposed association of the earliest rulers with events following the appointment of Crown Prince Osorkon as High Priest of Amun at Thebes, which is dated by most Egyptologists to the period ca 839 or 827/822 BCE. The Crown Prince Osorkon was faced with a series of "rebellions" in Thebes, which were suppressed. Kendall states:

"It is of the greatest interest that these events seem almost exactly to coincide in our chronology with the sudden infusion of Egyptian ritual influences at Kurru during Generations A through C. One is thus drawn to the highly intriguing possibility, over eighty years ago proposed by Breasted (1905: 538), that the Kurru rulers had received a band - or intermittent bands - of Theban priestly personnel who had fled to Nubia in order to escape persecution from the royal faction."

Unfortunately, this argument cannot be simply dismissed, as it surely deserves on methodological, if no other, grounds. Kendall's interpretation of the el-Kurru cemetery has acquired institutional acceptance, and his papers are supported in more "popular" literature (eg Welsby 1996). Török (1999a) addresses the archaeological reconstruction, but fails to respond to Kendall's historical context.

Of the host of methodological issues arising from this extraordinary process I note only:

  1. The obvious danger of trying to attach imprecisely dateable archaeology to equally imprecisely dated historical events. The equation of destruction levels in western Asiatic tells (e.g. Lachish) to textually documented attacks on the same city is an understandable element of archaeological interpretation. However, changes in types of funerary practice associated with an entirely hypothetical, and undocumented, result of an imprecisely dated historical event in a neighbouring country, seem to be without parallel, even in the more eccentric fringes of archaeological interpretation.
  2. The cavalier attitude to archaeological artefacts as dating criteria. The majority of objects dated by Kendall to the "late New Kingdom" (generally late 18th-20th Dynasties) is dismissed as either heirloom, pillage from earlier graves, or objects manufactured in an antique style specifically for a Nubian market. One key group of objects at the centre of Kendall's theory (and also important in Török's arguments) is a type of pottery vessel with painted decoration. These vessels were ritually broken at the funerary ceremonies, perhaps after a funerary banquet (Kendall 1999: 22, and footnote 28 with bibliography). Many of the vessels (recognised as very similar to New Kingdom types) were decorated with strikingly late New Kingdom Egyptian funerary images in white. Kendall associates this with the Egyptian ritual of "killing the red pots," also noted at the Lower Nubian site of Debeira. The ritual continues until Kurru 13 (and possibly Kurru 11), but probably stops then (there is some uncertainty as to which is the latest burial to have broken pots). Both Kendall and Török attempt to explain away the ritual as an indigenous custom and not the well-documented Egyptian rite, Kendall attributing it to the appearance of his Theban emigré priests at "Napata." They are both forced into this explanation as an indigenous, even if Egyptian-inspired, ritual on chronological grounds because, in Egypt, the ritual is not attested after the New Kingdom! A classic piece of circular argument, since the dating of the graves is the product of the hopelessly flawed methodology. Kendall actually follows a standard approach to the archaeological material (also employed, notably, by Reisner) in which a "cultural lag" is regarded as typical of Nubia (see further below).

Theban émigré priests from Brugsch to Breasted.

Kendall has consciously chosen to revive Breasted's idea in a slightly modified form. This revival comes after three decades in which direct lineal descent, or external influence, had generally been discredited as factors in the emergence of the Kushite kingdom.

Breasted’s theory essentially developed an idea of Heinrich Brugsch’s, which had been accepted by Rawlinson (1881) and a majority of other late 19th and early 20th century writers.

The general histories of Egypt written by Brugsch and Breasted were essentially text-based, and mark a new phase in the writing of Egyptian history, in the ideal 18th-19th century narrative chronicle form. This chronicle style only became possible at this date because of the enormous advances made in the understanding of Egyptian language, and the publication of "historical" "texts", in the preceding decades (the concept of both historicity and "text" in this context can be debated). The narrative chronicle largely superseded the key early works on Egypt, notably Rosellini’s (1833/41), which combined the classical and biblical sources, with the Egyptian monumental record. Rosellini’s approach was, however, followed by Wiedemann (1884), and by Petrie (1905). Petrie’s volumes actually take a step further towards the empirical studies of specific reigns that have appeared more recently (eg Bryan 1991). Petrie largely rejected the classical and biblical sources, cataloguing the monumental record, using texts and presenting an historical conclusion with hardly any theory: "Facts are what we alone consider in this History, without giving weight to the opinions that may have been based on those facts" as Petrie (1905 III: 283) himself rather optimistically puts it.

Although Brugsch claimed to have written his History "directly from the monuments," this is transparently not the case, and he was clearly influenced by more general academic theories about race, language, and culture. A mass of material published in the 1860s and 1870s, including the stelae found at Gebel Barkal in 1862 and the Assyrian annals and archives, had radically rewritten the history of the 25th Dynasty. Brugsch's History brought this in a digested, synthesised form into the public sphere. However, alongside his undoubted achievements, Brugsch's History shows the Egyptological reaction to the classical, and perhaps to a lesser extent biblical, sources which had formed the backbone to Rosellini's synthesis and the very positive views of 'Ethiopia' in the first history of Nubia written by George Hoskins (1835). These are also filtered through the 19th century theories of race which Martin Bernal has discussed.

Brugsch argues the priestly origin for 25th Dynasty as direct lineal descendants of Herihor and Paiankh. So, after the death of the last Ramesses:

The whole South ... recovered its freedom, and the Ethiopians began to enjoy a state of independence. Meanwhile, if the power of Egypt was no longer felt, Egyptian civilisation had survived. All that was wanting was a leader. Nothing could have appeared as more opportune for the priests of Amen than this state of things in Nubia and Ethiopia where the minds of an imperfectly developed people must needs, under skilful guidance, soon show themselves pliable and submissive to the dominant priestly caste.

This is clearly the product of northern Europe in its imperial heyday. Brugsch’s views of racial differences between Egyptians and Nubians have already been made clear at the beginning of his work (discussed in Morkot 2000: 21).

Brugsch's History (1875; 1877) was undoubtedly one of the most widely translated, available and influential of the early general histories of Egypt. Translated into English by H.Seymour in 1879, a new edition, condensed and translated by Mary Brodrick appeared in 1891 and another in 1902.

Breasted had studied at Berlin with Erman, and his own A History of Egypt from the earliest times to the Persian conquest follows Brugsch's model in many ways, particularly the basis on text, and later editions were referenced to Breasted's own important series of volumes, Ancient records of Egypt (1906-07). Breasted's History has certainly been one of the most influential in the genre, in the English language. First published in 1905, with a second revised edition in 1924, it continued to be translated and reprinted until 1948. The context of Breasted's émigré theory (from the second edition, 1924,) is an interpretation based on texts. The notes, which I have omitted from the following extract, are all brief references to Breasted's Ancient records of Egypt. There is no reference in text or notes to the excavations of George Reisner at Barkal or Kurru, and the historical reconstructions based upon them. In this section, Breasted's edition is not, therefore, "fully revised" and, in fact, little different from the first edition of twenty years earlier.

... after the Theban hierarchy had been maintaining a strong hold upon Nubia for over a hundred years from the end of the thirteenth century, their control had strengthened into full possession for two hundred and fifty years more. When we recollect that the Tanites of the Twenty First Dynasty had banished to the oases the turbulent families of Thebes, who had opposed their suzerainty; and that they were later obliged to recall the exiles; when we remember the long and dangerous revolt of Thebes under Takelot II, and the pardon of the rebellious city by oracle of Amon, it will be evident that under such conditions the priestly families at Thebes may easily have been obliged on some occasion to flee from the vengeance of the northern dynasty and seek safety among the remote Nubian cataracts, which would effectively cut off pursuit. Such a flight would not be likely to find record, and hence we have no direct documentary evidence that it took place; but by the middle of the eighth century B.C. a fully developed Nubian kingdom emerges upon our view, with its seat of government at Napata, just below the fourth cataract. Napata had been an Egyptian frontier station from the days of Amenhotep II, seven hundred earlier; and long before it was held by Egypt, it had doubtless been an important trading station on the route between Egypt and the Sudan. It was, moreover, the remotest point in Egyptian Nubia, and hence safe from attack from the North.

The state which arose here was, in accordance with our explanation of its origin, a reproduction of the Amonite theocracy at Thebes. The state god was Amon, and he continually intervened directly in the affairs of government by specific oracles. [Breasted follows with a summary of kingship as it appears in Hellenistic sources on Meroe]

In this passage Breasted appears to reject the idea of direct lineal descent from the High Priest Piankh which is found in the History of Heinrich Brugsch, although he acknowledges an important Theban model, and perhaps presence of Theban priests. Nor do we find any of the overt racial comments which Brugsch uses to explain the formation of the state.

In the middle of the 20th century, the idea of direct influence from Thebes and lineal descent from Theban priests, essentially in Breasted’s rather than Brugsch’s, formulation, was still widely accepted. [Hall 1925 **] For Helene von Zeissl (1941: 10), citing the 1936 German translation of Breasted and Drioton (19**: 512f.), the idea that the Napatan state was the result of Theban influence was "generally accepted." Later, Hermann Kees (1953: 264, 265), incorporating some of Reisner’s arguments, acknowledged both Theban and Libyan background.

Although by the late 1950s and early 1960s some Egyptologists and Sudanese archaeologists were beginning to argue against the old idea of a priestly origin of, or stimulus to, the nascent Napatan state, there were still some who favoured it: both Anthony Arkell (1955) and Bryan Emery (1965), maintained the ideas of a priestly 'government in exile' as a stimulus to the Napatan kingdom.

The "noble savage" and the "frontier barbarian."

The general histories of Egypt which succeeded Breasted's in the middle of the 20th century reveal a new prejudice against the later periods. John Wilson's The Culture of Ancient Egypt, originally published as The burden of Egypt, dismisses the thousand years of post-New Kingdom Egypt along with any Egyptian cultural legacy in 29 pages (less than one-tenth of his entire work), the 500 years from the Persian conquest receiving two paragraphs. Wilson therefore has little space to account for the origin of the Napatan state. He does, however, comment.

[Piye(Pi-ankhi)'s] culture was a provincial imitation of earlier Egypt, fanatical in its retention of religious form... The story of Pi-ankhi's conquest of Egypt is an extraordinarily interesting human document, particularly in the contrast between this backwater puritan and the effete and sophisticated Egyptians.

Wilson then recounts the installation of the God's Wife of Amun and concludes:

Thus Egypt fell under the nominal rule of an Ethiopian from the despised provinces and the effectual rule of a woman.

Reduced to such appalling circumstances we can hardly blame Wilson for wishing to wash his hands of the country!

In the 1950s and 1960s, the theory that the Napatan kingdom owed its origins to direct external stimulus was gradually rejected in favour of an indigenous origin, and perhaps direct relationship with the powerful kingdom of Kerma. This view received some support in the most influential English-language general history since Breasted (and dedicated to his memory), that of Sir Alan Gardiner. Gardiner was rather more generous to the whole of the TIP and Late Period (two chapters, about one sixth of the text) than Wilson, and devotes several enthusiastic pages to the narrative of the Victory Stela of Piye. Gardiner begins by noting the importance of Napata and Gebel Barkal from the time of Thutmose III, and continues:

... we may be sure that Egyptian culture persisted there in a dormant condition coupled with a passionate devotion to Amen-Re, the god of the mother-city Thebes. It was probably that devotion which actuated Piankhy's sudden incursion into the troubled land of his Libyan adversaries...

Gardiner recounts the conflict in Egypt before addressing the issue of Napatan origins (p.340) and rejecting Breasted's theories.

...behind the verbal expression we cannot fail to discern the fiery temperament of the Nubian ruler, a temperament which had also as ingredients a fanatical piety and a real generosity. His racial antecedents are obscure, the view that he came from Libyan stock resting on very slender evidence. The vigour and individuality shared with him by his successors makes it equally unlikely, however, that they were simple descendants of emigrant Theban priests, as some have supposed; their names are outlandish and non-Egyptian, and fresh blood must have come in from somewhere to give them such energy.

Gardiner, interestingly, makes no disparaging comments about "provinicials" or their culture; there are no "veneers" of Egyptian civilisation (a disparaging term still found in some current writers). He apparently accepts that a deep cultural and religious legacy lies behind an otherwise undocumented process. Yet, Gardiner's analysis is not totally devoid of broader theoretical residues. We have vestiges of the 19th century scientific theories of cultural decadence in the idea of vigorous "fresh blood" contrasted with "tired blood" (an important theme in 19th century literature), paralleling Wilson's "effete and sophisticated Egyptians." The ground is laid for the appearance of the "frontier barbarians" another 19th century decadent vision.

In the academic (as opposed to synthetic/popular) literature, a significant contribution was that of D.M.Dixon (1964) who opts for the dynasty being indigenous, and descendants of the much earlier Kerma rulers "overlaid with a rather thick veneer of Egyptian civilisation". Dixon’s discussion is, generally, fairly judicious. His summary paraphrases Gardiner (although the choice of "merely" over Gardiner's "simple" introduces a contemptuous tone):

"The vigour and individuality displayed by Pi’ankhi and, in varying degrees, by his successors, make it unlikely they were merely descendants of emigrant Theban priests."

The following discussion includes an aside that, despite the evidence of the Cairo granite head, Taharqo "may not have been as negroid as Mrs Brunton's painting suggests and culminates in the comment (p.130) that:

"the fact that Taharqa, and perhaps still more his son by some dusky southern queen, may have had a trace of negro blood is of no relevance to the question of the racial origin of the founders of the dynasty some two centuries earlier."

Well, of course, the statement is true, but somehow the way of expressing it, the unnecessary poetic adjective aside, makes me, for one, feel distinctly uneasy. The author advocates an indigenous origin; yet the comments demand a subtext: but what is it? The article is all the more insidious for being so apparently objective and academic: it lays all of the alternatives before us, it chooses the most recent and unprejudiced, but somehow manages to leave us feeling as if all were not well in the Kingdom of Kush. Or perhaps it is simply case of style and expression.

The "vigour and individuality" of Piye /Piankhi brings us to the alternative visions of Nubia which adopt the "noble savage" and "frontier barbarian" topoi. In contradistinction to inept Nubians incapable of producing a kingdom without outside help, the noble savage topos gained favour amongst a more recent generation. The image of "priest-ridden" Thebes which emerges also has late 19th-early 20th century origins (and can probably be traced back to the 18th century), notably in a volume by T.E.Peet. It relates to another important anti-clerical theme of Egyptian history writing. The hostility to the Egyptian priesthood which can be found behind much historical analysis, particularly in relation to the "Amarna" period and the TIP, surely has its roots in a Protestant tradition which has both subordinated the church and priests to the state, and retains antipathy to the Catholic hierarchy, and, it might be said, to belief in general.

Returning to the origin of the Napatan state, Bill Adams gives some of the clearest analyses of the various theories and the historiography in his articles (notably Adams 1964) and book (1977). Adams rejects the priestly theory (1977: 257) although acknowledges the importance of Egyptian religion as a legitimising force in Nubia and Egypt. Generally, Adams prefers a cool archaeological interpretation to a theoretical approach, but in this section uncharacteristically moves into a more colourful mode. It may be the language and discussion of Piye's Victory Stela which stimulate this. Adams is generally dismissive of, and very weak when disussing, textual sources. Perhaps he, like Sir Alan Gardiner, felt that for the first time, a Kushite voice really speaks to us. Adams finds the generalised historical theory of Arnold Toynbee (1933/1939) that most suited to his purpose (although extremely old-fashioned for 1977). He therefore characterises the emergent Napatan state as "a classic example of a barbarian people turning the tables on its former overlords and oppressors," the Nubians are Egypt’s "external proletariat," and finally we become witnesses to "the spectacle of an ancient civilization delivered into the hands of a barbarian upstart" (Adams 1977: 261). There is no space here to analyse Toynbee’s historical position, but once again we have shades of the 19th century decadence hovering over us. Adams’s use of this generalised theory only works within a context of presumptions (most, I believe, demonstrably wrong) about the Egyptian/Nubian relationship in the New Kingdom, and the history/archaeology of post-New Kingdom Nubbia).

Since the 1970s, Nubian studies has largely followed the path, also preferred by Egyptology, of rejecting narrative history. Unlike some other areas of Ancient History, or Classics, theoretical approaches have found relatively little favour (this is, of course, an over-generalisation, and there have been significant contributions influenced by Trigger, Kemp, O’Connor, Baines, S.T.Smith, Quirke, and Montserra,t to name but a few). The approach generally preferred is the development of the empirical Petrie method, with an emphasis on the description of archaeological phenomena.

One writer who has adopted broader, anthropological, approaches to ancient is Bruce Trigger. Trigger’s (1976) popular account of Nubia rejects the idea of a priestly origin for the Napatan kings, but highlights the possibility of a "residue" of Egyptian culture. Trigger also rejects the association with, or descent from, the Kerma kingdom argued by Thabit and advocated by Dixon. He prefers to address the origin of the Napatan state through the archaeology of el-Kurru (at the time of writing still dependent on Reisner’s and Dunham's analyses), pointing out the similarities with Kerma, but also Priese's suggestion of a stimulus from the Meroe region.

Shinnie (1967), concentrating on the later Meroitic kingdom, confines himself to rejecting Reisner's theory of Libyan, in favour of indigenous, origins. In his more recent general study, Shinnie (1996: 99) focusses on the Kurru cemetery, and suggests that there may have been direct Egyptian cultural stimulus, perhaps from priests. This comment is unreferenced. Shinnie was present at the Berlin Conference, and is fully aware of the debate, and Kendall’s paper, and might be alluding to it.

The most recent popular account to deal with the issue is that of Derek Welsby (1996). Here, Kendall finds his principal support. Welsby (1996: 14) notes the "long" versus "short" chronology controversy, but favours the short as it "more adequately fits the observed facts", whatever they might be in this particular context. Welsby's discussion relies heavily on Kendall's Berlin paper (and pers. comm.) for many points, some contentious, and lends support to them.

The resurrection of Breasted’s émigré priest theory raises specific questions about the interpretation of the archaeological material, but also more fundamental ones about the transmission of ideas within the discipline, and broader ones about the sub-conscious or inherent attitudes of the discipline to cultural processes in Nubia.

Related issues arising.

Through classrooms and abbreviated works (eg encyclopaedias and dictionaries), and, perhaps even more importantly, studies such as the Cambridge Ancient History, ideas are inherited and become part of Received Knowledge (or "the accepted lies of our discpline"). Ideas are frequently modified in the light of "new evidence", but there is a tendency to revise and alter ideas rather than go right back to their origin and critically re-examine them. Gay Robins’s (1983) study of the idea that the throne passed through the female line in the 18th Dynasty, and Robert Drews’s (1993) analysis of theories around the "Sea Peoples" are fine examples of such critical examination.

A fundamental problem with Kendall’s application of Breasted’s theory is its lack of rigour. Kendall has made no attempt to understand where Breasted’s idea came from, and its 19th century background. Kendall found that the idea suited his own view of the material evidence, and then made his chronology fit the conventional date for Takeloth II. He does not address any of the issues of late Libyan chronology raised by Aston and Taylor, amongst others. Kendall also fails to note that Breasted’s idea is closely related to Brugsch’s, and the ramifications of that.

Hoskins (1835) and other early writers (such as Russell, see Morkot 2000), basing their syntheses on the classical authors, understood Aithiopia to be the source of Egyptian civilisation. Brugsch, at the beginning of his History, rejects this. He invokes the monumental record, and the newly read inscriptions, and can now categorically deny the classical tradition. At the same time, he brings in a racist note:

[the Egyptians] ascended the river to found in Ethiopia temples, cities, and fortified places, and to diffuse the blessings of a civilised state among the rude dark-coloured population.

Brugsch’s Egyptians are "a branch of the Caucasian race" and hence related, even if remotely, to the Indo-Europeans. In Brugsch’s mind (conscious or sub-conscious), Nubia, and its population, is in need of civilising. This happens when the Egyptians conquer, and again with the development of the Napatan state under the rule of émigré Theban priests. The broader 19th century academic influences on Brugsch’s are thus quite clear. His claim that he wrote history "entirely from the monuments" is also rendered deeply suspect. (I do not accuse Brugsch of fudge: he probably believed that he was writing empirically and in the confidence that the racial assumptions were true.) Breasted’s modification of the idea rids it of its overtly racist elements and provides a new historical context, the conflict in Thebes in the reign of Takeloth II. The principal, however, remains: the Nubians were incapable of creating a state without external stimulus. This idea is abandoned in the 1970s, although the problem of the origins of the state was left unresolved. Indeed, a more dramatic division opened. The end of the New Kingdom served as an appropriate chapter-break, and the archaeology of the Kurru cemetery (in the Reisner-Dunham version) as the beginning of a new phase. A ‘Dark Age’ descended on Nubia for the intervening period (James et al. 1991; Morkot 1994; 1995; 2000; in press).

Understanding the origin of the Napatan state is important because it highlights conscious and subconscious ideas about Nubia. Most writing acknowledges that there was some sort of Egyptian stimulus to the culture, if not actually a causative element in the process of state-formation. Whether this was a ‘residue’ from the period of Egyptian New Kingdom domination, or a new stimulus has been more contentious. ‘Residue’ implies a time lag, unfortunately voiced by Adams (1977) as "it took some time for the lesson of the pharaohs to sink in". The emphasis in Nubian studies over the past four decades on archaeological remains, surprisingly, neither challenged earlier assumptions, nor even pointed out the striking imbalance in our archaeological knowledge of northern and southern Nubia.

The debate about the origin of the Napatan state has highlighted many of the problems of assumption and interpretation, particularly reliance on the significance of one archaeological site. At the same time, David O’Connor (1993, notably) has made important challenges to some of the underlying attitudes to Nubia.

The following are points which are related to the above discussion on the broader level of attitudes to Nubia in literature.

  1. Diffusionism. The émigré priest theory is itself clearly a relative of "diffusionism" which played a major role in Reisner’s interpretations of Nubian history and archaeology from 1906 onwards. Arkell (1955) modified the diffusion idea, arguing that with the end of the centralised Meroitic kingdom in the 4th century AD, there had been a (largely elite) movement westward through Chad which provided the stimulus to Mediaeval African kingdoms of West Africa. A similar modification of diffusion theory seems to underlie Anta Diop’s work.
  2. Matrilineal and brother succession. The idea that the Kushite royal succession passed through the female line has been widely accepted, as has the idea of "brother succession". I have argued against both (Morkot 1999), although my colleagues seem reluctant to abandon either idea. I concluded that the idea of matrilineal succession had become important less because there was any actual evidence for it, but at least in part because matriliny was thought of as an "African" phenomenon. This in itself raises numerous [unexplored!] issues such as: was matriliny etc a 19th century colonial image of Africa (and hence related in some way to Orientalist concepts?) (is there a voluminous literature on this?); in ancient historians references to female rulers and succession in Aithiopia may relate to a classical (at least Greek) topos of powerful women as an inversion of the ideal norm. eg Amazons, Kleopatra, Kandake?. Some modern Afrocentrist writing idealises the concepts of matrilineage and the importance of women (two different, if connected, issues) as a particularly African phenomenon, contrasting with white European male-dominated aggression. My comments (Morkot 1999: 214-218) that African monarchies are as likely to have patrilineal as matrilineal, and vertical as horizontal, succession, drew little response.
  3. We all have acquired views of what Egypt and Nubia were like, how they functioned. However rigorous and empirical our approach to the material, we are not always aware of the set of expectations within which we are actually formulating our interpretations. I think that the literature about the "priestly origin of the Napatan kings" demonstrates this quite clearly.

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