A scholar of two worlds looks at the marchland between Egypt and Kush.

• Author: Williams, Bruce
• Position: Essay

The provocative thinking and prodigious scholarship of one of Nubian studies' brightest beacons is fully on display in a large-scale and systematic reconsideration of northern Nubia's special place in ancient history. He examines the problem in considerable, often exhaustive, detail, and he presents various points of view, a most useful practice in this case, for Torok is entirely willing to advance controversial opinions and to explicitly change his mind. The remarks below can do little justice to a work of this sweep, scale, and detail. I will, instead, deal with open issues and perspectives differing from those of the author, thoughts often provoked by the author himself.

As scholars, especially Laszlo Torok, in the last half century have developed an appreciation of Nubia's self-awareness and cultural integrity, the region between the great centers of Egypt and Sudan has become something of a problem. Approaches to northern (Lower) Nubia have ranged from using it to stand for Africa in Egyptology generally, to seeing it as an aberration within Nubia and almost irrelevant. Torok is not necessarily working to strike a balance, but to give fuller consideration to a wider range of sources in appraising the role of this region. Some relatively recent developments encourage this effort, since the archaeology of Sudan is now much better known than it was a generation or so ago, important phases of Lower Nubian culture are illuminated more brightly, and especially because the major written documents have now been assembled into a compact library of source materials, in large part by the author. (1) He considers the problem in some broad phases, Neolithic, with A-Group and the emerging Egyptian State, the phases after A-Group but before the Egyptian New Kingdom, Egyptian control during the New Kingdom, and the Kushite Empire of Napata and Meroe and its aftermath.

Torok summarizes a large and growing body of literature dealing with the rise of the Neolithic through the A-Group, covering the substantive discoveries in much of the area and most of the current discussions. A rather fluctuating picture of climate and the establishment of cultures in the desert and the vicinity of the Nile (pp. 26-27) would have been enhanced by considering the more recent large-scale research program of the Acacia project in the Western Desert, which has confirmed a long northward extension of human activity during the Holocene, its contraction toward the Nile (and oases) after 5000 B.c., and an early use of cattle. (2)

Once permanent settlement became the norm along the Nile itself, strongly differentiated cultural groups appeared that raised the possibility of a marchland between them, a frontera of mixing, ambiguity, and conflict. The two main actors were the emerging Egyptian culture of the Naqada Period from Hierakonpolis northward and the Sudanese Late Neolithic, essentially from the Third Cataract southward. After 4000 B.C., the A-Group emerged in the area between them, lasting to the early First Dynasty. (3) Impressively rich from the first, Egyptian objects in a Nubian setting indicate that wealth was available on a scale equal to any in Egypt or Sudan, and the mix already foreshadows A-Group's career. Although probably supported by an African mixed domestic economy, trade apparently drove a cultural elaboration that culminated in an Egyptian-styled dynasty at Qustul. This was not a matter of long-distance contact, but a continuous and intensive relationship witnessed by rock art. (4) The picture is not so simple, however, for A-Group culture, influence, and contact spread far into what is now desert and as far north as Hierakonpolis, as Torok recounts (p. 40).

As the first Nubian culture to acquire complex pharaonic religious culture and express it unequivocally in art, A-Group has caused considerable difficulty for Egyptologists and Nubiologists alike. Torok (pp. 41-42) takes note of various positions without subjecting them to detailed examination, although he accepts the assumption that the Qustul Dynasty was presented as originating everything pharaonic and not as a participant (p. 43). He also gives the cemetery at Qustul a late date, clustering it as a unit (p. 43) rather than treating each tomb as a separate event, each with its own specific correlations, as he does later for el-Kurru (pp. 298-304). Points that might change the course of the discussion and alter the conclusions are the facts that A-Group symbolic art developed a distinct style (5) and that the Qustul tombs had no peers in Nubia despite the impressive, but accidentally preserved, wealth in a tomb at Sayala. (6)

The sparseness of archaeological findings in Lower Nubia after A-Group, from the early First to the late Fifth Dynasty, could hardly be coincidental. (7) Between a post at Buhen that could best be called a factory (pp. 53-58) (8) and the heavily fortified town of Elephantine there were only scattered burials, and possibly some pottery near Kuban. Thus, the still rather shadowy Pre-Kerma culture must have been at once the object of the campaigns of Khasekhemwy and Sneferu and the source of anxiety that led to the maintenance of a great fortress at Elephantine. That Old Kingdom Egypt got what it wanted from Nubia without a strong, permanent presence is instructive.

Around the time of the end of the Fifth Dynasty a large-scale resettlement took place. In Lower Nubia this is known as C-Group, and upstream, especially above the Third Cataract as far as the Fourth Cataract, it is referred to as Early Kerma (Kerma ancien or KA) or Old Kush I. The new settlement differed socially from earlier cultures. Torok notes the dessication of the eastern Sahara and the Wadi Howar as likely driving factors in this resettlement, but the change was swift and dramatic and the resulting population of Nubians was also swiftly recruited by the Egyptians--not just for labor, but also for large-scale military operations in...