"Seven sarcophagi, some dating back more than 6,000 years, have been discovered at a site on the edge of the pyramid complex in Saqqara, south of the Egyptian capital, archaeology officials announced Saturday." Source: AFP.
"...Three of the tombs had been used for cats ... while one of four other sarcophagi discovered at the site belonged to Khufu-Imhat, overseer of the buildings in the royal palace."
According to Ahram Online, "...that the [archaeological] mission uncovered three plain New Kingdom tombs that had been used during the Late Period as a cat necropolis, along with four other Old Kingdom tombs, the most important of which belongs to Khufu-Imhat, the overseer of the buildings in the royal palace."
A French-British archaeological mission from the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology and the UK's Liverpool University have discovered ancient engravings alabaster quarries in Tel El-Amarna that could help reveal how ancient Egyptians managed to move stone blocks from alabaster quarries during the Khufu period" Source: Ahram Online.
Note: This short notice in Ahram Online doesn't provide any specific details about the engraving.
"The Amarna Period was an era of Egyptian history during the later half of the Eighteenth Dynasty when the royal residence of the pharaoh and his queen was shifted to Akhetaten ('Horizon of the Aten') in what is now Amarna. It was marked by the reign of Amenhotep IV [aka the 'Heretic King'], who changed his name to Akhenaten (1353–1336 BC) in order to reflect the dramatic change of Egypt's polytheistic religion into one where the sun disc Aten was worshipped over all other gods. Aten was not solely worshipped (the religion was not monotheistic), but the other gods were worshipped to a significantly lesser degree. The Egyptian pantheon of the equality of all gods and goddesses was restored under Akhenaten's successor, Tutankhamun." Source: Wikipedia.
"Most students of ancient Egyptian are aware that the Artwork composed during the Amarna Period under Akhenaten differs markedly from that of other periods in Egyptian history, One of the most visible changes in the art of this period was the manner in which human figures were depicted, specifically their proportions and at its most extreme in that of the king." Source: Tour Egypt.
King Tut's father, Amenhotep IV, was a mystic and religious revolutionary who turned his back on the traditional Egyptian gods -- not to mention the powerful priesthood associated with them -- and decreed that Aten, the sun god, was the only god who could be worshipped in the country. Known as the "heretic pharoah," Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten and built a new capitol city at Amarna north of Thebes, forcibly relocating the population of Thebes to populate his new city.
Akhenaten dedicated Armana to the worship of the deified disk of the sun and set himself up as the leader of the new monotheistic cult, living in splendid isolation and basically ignoring the defense and administration of Egypt. His neglect (and later persecution) of the other gods created a lot of enemies. Cities like Thebes--and the priests who controlled them--owed their wealth and political power to their temples, which attracted both private and official benefactions. Akhenaten's revolution wasn't just religious, but also political and economic. My impression is that he was oblivious to the disastrous effects his revolution--and his isolation--had on the rest of his country.
Akhenaten's neglect of the ordinary affairs of Egypt led to its decline and threatened its security. Near the end of his reign, other empires like the Hittites were encroaching on Egyptian territory. When Akhenaten died around 1330 BC, his city at Amarna was destroyed and depopulated and the new rulers began a comprehensive program to restore the traditional gods and their sacred cities.
The moral of the story, if there is one, is that religious fanatics, idealists and true believers, no matter how inspired, make bad leaders. Akhenaten is a classic example.
Back in 2016, Smithsonian Magazine ran a story about the discovery of a "brutal massacre" that may be the "earliest evidence of war." Before this discovery was made, the experts apparently believed that "the first armed conflicts were fought more than 10,000 years ago by prehistoric city-states in present day Syria, Jordan and Iraq." Source: Military History (2014). The timeframe (10,000 years) is about the same in either case, however, so it appears that humans were waging war on each other whether they lived in Near Eastern city states or in tribes of hunter-gatherers in Africa.
In the case described by Smithsonian Magazine, the gruesome finds were made in Africa and date back to the Stone Age:
"Skulls smashed by blunt force, bodies pin-cushioned by projectile points and hapless victims—including a pregnant woman—abused with their hands bound before receiving the fatal coup de grâce.
"This violent tableau resembles something from the darker side of modern warfare. But it instead describes the grizzly demise of a group of African hunter-gatherers some 10,000 years ago. They are the victims of the earliest scientifically dated evidence for human group conflict—a precursor to what we now know as war."
This find seems to confirm the idea that humans are violent by nature. According to this view, our tendency to violence has deep evolutionary roots (the so-called Deep Roots Theory of War). "Humans inherited a propensity for violence from our primate ancestors," according to a National Geographic report.
This conclusion is still controversial, however. I'm not sure what the consensus is right now -- if there is one -- but another study appeared in 2013 which contradicts the Deep Roots Theory:
"When did war begin? Does war have deep roots, or is it a modern invention? A new analysis of ancient human remains by anthropologists Jonathan Haas and Matthew Piscitelli of Chicago's Field Museum provides strong evidence for the latter view." Source: Scientific American (2013).
Many other articles have appeared over the years attacking the idea that humans are inherently violent. Studies of chimp violence, violence in foraging societies and so on have all argued vehemently against the Deep Roots Theory, but I think the argument here is really over the fundamental nature of Man. Are humans basically good or bad? Are we driven by aggression or cooperation? At its root, the debate seems to reflect the current divide between liberal and conservative worldviews. As such, there's nothing scientific about it at all.
One common theme to all these arguments is that even if humans are genetically predisposed to violence, "war is not inevitable," but that's such a generalized truism that it's basically meaningless. In the real world, "war' isn't an abstraction. Wars are always specific events fought for specific reasons. People don't just run around slaughtering each other because they inherited some violence genes from their primate ancestors. The question isn't whether war is inevitable, but whether this or that particular war is or was inevitable.
Ultimately, though, the whole debate is irrelevant because it ignores the evidence. Are humans prone to violence? Of course we are. Just look at our history. Despite what some of the opponents of the Deep Roots Theory would have you believe, warfare isn't a recent development. People have been butchering each other since the Stone Age and there's no reason to think that this mayhem is ever going to end. As to the question of whether human violence has deep evolutionary roots, that seems obvious to me. Everything about us -- from our physical makeup to our psychological characteristics -- has deep roots in the evolution of our species.
"[The Carthaginian general Hannibal] was born in 247 BC, the eldest son of Hamilcar Barca. After making Hannibal swear an oath never to be a friend of Rome, Hamilcar took him to Spain in 237, where he stayed during the commands of both his father and his brother-in-law Hasdrubal(1), marrying a Spaniard from Castulo." Source: Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised).
(1) The OCD describes Hasdrubal as Hannibal's brother-in-law while Wikipedia calls him Hannibal's brother. As it turns out, there were at least four different Hasdrubals in Spain at the time. One of them was Hamilcar's son-in-law; the other Hamilcar's son.
Rome's expansion brought it into conflict with Carthage, the other great Mediterranean power of the time. Both Hamilcar and Hasdrubal (Hasdrubal the Fair) were leaders during the First Punic War (264-241 BC). Apparently Hasdrubal [the brother-in-law] assumed the supreme command in Spain after Hamilcar's death and Hannibal took over after Hasdrubal died, reverting to his father's policy of attacking various tribes to the north. According to the OCD, Hannibal started the Second Punic War by attacking and eventually defeating a Roman city called Saguntum located on the eastern coast of Spain:
"Regarding Rome's alliance with Saguntum (Sagunto) as a threat to Carthage's position in Spain, he [Hannibal] decided to defy her, and put pressure on Saguntum. He rejected a Roman protest, and after consulting Carthage began the siege of Saguntum in spring 219, knowing that war with Rome would result, and took the city eight months later." (OCD)
Hannibal decided to invade Italy without bothering to wait for the Romans to declare war. His goal, apparently, was to weaken Rome by stripping away its allies, rather than to destroy it outright. According to the OCD, "he left his capital, Carthago Nova (modern Cartagena) in May 218, with a professional army of 90,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry (Iberians, Libyans and Numidians) and [40?] elephants, leaving his brother Hasdrubal to hold Spain... [emphasis added]"
Hannibal's famous crossing of the Alps took around 15 days and no one is sure which route he took, though new evidence surfaced a few years ago which may clear up the matter. Carthage was eventually defeated at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC by the Roman general Scipio Africanus., aka Scipio the Great, "one of the greatest generals and military strategists of all time," according to Wikipedia and every other source I've read. An excellent overview of the complex series of Punic Wars can be found at the Ancient History Encyclopedia.
Note: This AP report from April, 2018, is the most recent video I could find of Sabratha. No English captions are available, but the report shows some of the damage to the site. An English translation of the report can be found in the video's description on YouTube.
"Perched on the edge of Libya's Mediterranean coast, the ancient city of Sabratha remains an awe-inspiring spectacle, the pink columns of its amphitheatre towering above turquoise waters ... But the world heritage site is classed as 'endangered' by UNESCO, its majestic structures pockmarked by mortar and small arms fire." Source: France 24.
"Shell casings and bullets still litter the surrounding earth, a year after clashes between rival armed groups."
It's no exaggeration to say that Hillary Clinton is directly responsible for creating the disaster which now threatens to destroy Western Europe. The damage to Sabratha is just a side-effect of the damage she caused as Secretary of State.
"The Periplus Maris Erythraei (or ‘Voyage around the Erythraean Sea’ [the modern Red Sea]) is an anonymous work from around the middle of the first century CE written by a Greek speaking Egyptian merchant." (Source: Washington University) The document describes "the maritime trade-routes following the north-south axis from Egypt down the coast of East Africa as far as modern day Tanzania" and "the routes of the east-west axis running from Egypt, around the Arabian Peninsula and past the Persian Gulf on the west coast of India." The complete translation of this fascinating resource on the ancient sea trade can be found here. A detailed map of the Erythraean Sea in the 1st Century can be found here.
Note: "Papyrus was first manufactured in Egypt as far back as the fourth millennium BCE. The earliest archaeological evidence of papyrus was excavated in 2012 and 2013 at Wadi al-Jarf, an ancient Egyptian harbor located on the Red Sea coast. These documents date from c. 2560–2550 BCE (end of the reign of Khufu). The papyrus rolls describe the last years of building the Great Pyramid of Giza. In the first centuries BCE and CE, papyrus scrolls gained a rival as a writing surface in the form of parchment, which was prepared from animal skins." Source: Wikipedia.
"Egyptian archaeologists have discovered a statue of a sphinx while draining water from the pharaonic temple of Kom Ombo near the southern city of Aswan." Source: BBC.
The Deep Roots Theory Of War
Back in 2016, Smithsonian Magazine ran a story about the discovery of a "brutal massacre" that may be the "earliest evidence of war." Before this discovery was made, the experts apparently believed that "the first armed conflicts were fought more than 10,000 years ago by prehistoric city-states in present day Syria, Jordan and Iraq." Source: Military History (2014). The timeframe (10,000 years) is about the same in either case, however, so it appears that humans were waging war on each other whether they lived in Near Eastern city states or in tribes of hunter-gatherers in Africa.
In the case described by Smithsonian Magazine, the gruesome finds were made in Africa and date back to the Stone Age:
"Skulls smashed by blunt force, bodies pin-cushioned by projectile points and hapless victims—including a pregnant woman—abused with their hands bound before receiving the fatal coup de grâce.
"This violent tableau resembles something from the darker side of modern warfare. But it instead describes the grizzly demise of a group of African hunter-gatherers some 10,000 years ago. They are the victims of the earliest scientifically dated evidence for human group conflict—a precursor to what we now know as war."
This find seems to confirm the idea that humans are violent by nature. According to this view, our tendency to violence has deep evolutionary roots (the so-called Deep Roots Theory of War). "Humans inherited a propensity for violence from our primate ancestors," according to a National Geographic report.
This conclusion is still controversial, however. I'm not sure what the consensus is right now -- if there is one -- but another study appeared in 2013 which contradicts the Deep Roots Theory:
"When did war begin? Does war have deep roots, or is it a modern invention? A new analysis of ancient human remains by anthropologists Jonathan Haas and Matthew Piscitelli of Chicago's Field Museum provides strong evidence for the latter view." Source: Scientific American (2013).
Many other articles have appeared over the years attacking the idea that humans are inherently violent. Studies of chimp violence, violence in foraging societies and so on have all argued vehemently against the Deep Roots Theory, but I think the argument here is really over the fundamental nature of Man. Are humans basically good or bad? Are we driven by aggression or cooperation? At its root, the debate seems to reflect the current divide between liberal and conservative worldviews. As such, there's nothing scientific about it at all.
One common theme to all these arguments is that even if humans are genetically predisposed to violence, "war is not inevitable," but that's such a generalized truism that it's basically meaningless. In the real world, "war' isn't an abstraction. Wars are always specific events fought for specific reasons. People don't just run around slaughtering each other because they inherited some violence genes from their primate ancestors. The question isn't whether war is inevitable, but whether this or that particular war is or was inevitable.
Ultimately, though, the whole debate is irrelevant because it ignores the evidence. Are humans prone to violence? Of course we are. Just look at our history. Despite what some of the opponents of the Deep Roots Theory would have you believe, warfare isn't a recent development. People have been butchering each other since the Stone Age and there's no reason to think that this mayhem is ever going to end. As to the question of whether human violence has deep evolutionary roots, that seems obvious to me. Everything about us -- from our physical makeup to our psychological characteristics -- has deep roots in the evolution of our species.
Posted at 06:00 AM in Ancient Africa, Ancient Warfare, Commentary, Culture, Evolution, Prehistory, Videos | Permalink