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Sudan History Links |
Almahadeya |
The British Colony |
The Moslem Sudan |
The Nubian Civilisation |
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Bead Necklaces.
Anibeh and Buhen. 100 B.C.- A.D. 300 |
Upper Nubia: The Khartum Neolithic In the fifth millennium BC, the Khartum Mesolithic of Upper Nubia was superseded by a more technologically advanced culture now termed the Khartum Neolithic. The burials of this culture revert to the Qadan style with the corpse on its side and in a fetal position. However, for the first time in Nubia, the burials include objects and possessions of the deceased (personal adornments, pottery, tools, shells, etc.). By the fourth millennium, as indicated by the site of el-Kadada, these Upper Nubians had formulated customs of human sacrifice and multiple interment as part of their burial traditions. Such practices would indicate by this time in Upper Nubia the development of social stratification and non-egalitarian society. Sacrifice by inhumation (i.e., burying servants and attendants alive with the ruler) was practiced by the Upper Nubians through much of their history (except in periods when they adopted Egyptian burial customs), occurring as late as the Ballana Kingdom of the fourth century AD.
Lower Nubia: The A-Group Culture Origins of the A-Group. The people of the A-Group emerged in Lower Nubia in the early fourth millennium (ca. 3800 BC). The earliest burials of the A-Group culture are found at Khor Bahan on the east bank of the Nile south of modern Aswan. There the artifacts, burial customs, and other cultural remains are hardly distinguishable from the Amratian culture of Upper Egypt (i.e., Nagada I). The Amratian had been thriving in Upper and Middle Egypt about 500 years before the emergence of the A- Group. Some archaeologists argue that Khor Bahan might reflect an Amratian colony that either ultimately evolved into the A- Group people or which came into contact with indigenous Nubian hunter-gatherers and influenced their development into the A- Group. Thus, the first appearance of the Nubian A-Group would seem to be a cultural outgrowth of Egyptian Amratian culture. On the other hand, other archaeologists argue that the A-Group was a single developing culture that evolved independently of Egypt. Any Amratian characteristics in their settlements reflect only intense trade and contact between the two groups.
Contemporary with the
A-Group in Nubia were other cultures which appear to have been
off-shoots of the Upper Nubian Khartum Neolithic. Of these, the Abkan
culture occupied the region around the Second Cataract until ca. 3500
BC. The Abkan may also have influenced the A-Group in its development
where the two came into contact with each other. The center of A-Group
culture was originally in the area of Qustul and the Wadi Allaqi.
However, in the Late Gerzean Period (ca. 3300 BC), the center
apparently moved south to the region of the Second Cataract, at which
time it adopted certain cult> |
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