East Africa & The Sea In Antiquity: Eastern South Africa And Mozambique

The dangers of the seas off parts of east Africa facing the Indian Ocean arte noted elsewhere. The most dangerous are the waters on the shores of the most southerly section of eastern South Africa facing the Erythraean Sea (= western Indian Ocean and are such that it would appear that no-one ever sailed on these coasts.

This becomes relevant in the light of what is said about such peoples as the Thonga (of northeast Africa & southeast Mozambique) by Henri Junod (The Life of a South African Tribe 1926) and by Mr & Mrs Culwick (Tanganyika Notes & Records [= TNR 1933]) of the Turu (of what now mid-Tanzania). They are amongst those recorded as having traditions of sea-going rafts.

The Thonga are the subject of an interesting article by Iraj Bashiri (Muslims or Shamans: Blacks on the Persian Gulf online). He offers two possible horizons for how Africans got to the Gulf. Out-of-Africa move(s) towards the Indian Ocean Region (= IOR) is one (& see below), the other is that Thonga plus others taken as slaves. Bashiri (ib.) goes for the latter at ca. 1450.There is a surprisingly consistent pattern of African shamanism that various writers described as having spread to other places at somewhere between 4000/3500 years Before Common Era (= BCE) or circa (= ca.) 2000/1500 BCE. With this test of the reputation of African shamans (= witch-doctors/medicine-men) in mind, those of east Africa described by Bashiri (ib.) probably belong here too.

The notion that Africans can only ever have been on the high seas as slaves is very far from being a new one. Those said to have reached parts of Africa in late prehistory include Indians; the variously named Nusantarans, Austronesians, “Indonesians”, Indo/Malays and other labels; Phoenicians plus their descendants from Carthage (= Carthaginians [= Punics]); American Indians (= Amerinds); Arabs; Persians. In the case of west Africa, the Vivaldo brothers from Italy supposedly went round all Africa in the 13^th c. plus merchants from Dieppe (France) in the 14^th c. reached the Gulf of Guinea in west Africa, Chinese rounded Africa in the 15^th c. This all happened before the Portuguese explorations down the west coast of Africa of mainly the mid/late 15^th c.

This tells us that virtually everybody reached Africa and yet we are supposed to believe was ever inspired to go to sea by these events. Making this even more unbelievable are the series of trade-marts that writers from Tallboys Wheeler (The Geography of Herodotus 1854) to Dennis Montgomery (African Eve & Seashore 2006) suggest are traceable from northeast South Africa up to Mozambique and Tanzania, It is argued that this where east Africans and Phoenico/Punics interacted as at the natural harbours of Durban (Sth. Af.), Inhambane (Moz), Vilanculos (Moz), etc.

Making this more interesting is Ophir-as-Sofala and Havilah-as-Zimbabwe being added to this list. This is the Ophir of the Old Testament tied to the story of Solomon of Israel but that this was being doubted as far back as the 17^th c. is shown in the long epic poem called “Paradise Lost” by John Milton (17^th c. Eng.) writing “Ophir thought to be Sofala”.

What lies behind lies behind the name of Mozambique also has significance. One suggestion is that it the name of a one-time local chief. Another is that it contains the locative of mo (= place) from a language of the Bantu group combined with that of an Indian Ocean ship-type called a zambuk. This gives a compound mo-zambuk but there are others.

Robert Graves (White Goddess [1999 edition]) wrote that such islands as Bombay and Ogygia came to name very much larger territories. Bombay came to name a much larger area that is now called Mumbai. Ogygia was the name of an island in the Nile but went on to become one of the lesser-known names for all of Egypt.

Graves (ib.) does not touch on Mozambique but an island named Mosambuco/Mozambuco (= Place of Boats) probably giving the state-name Mozambique would accord with this. It will also be seen that this is by no means the only example somewhere with a name meaning Place of Boats in a part of Africa. Nor is it the only example of an island playing a part in the naming of an African nation.

Madagascar & the Comoros
The Indian musum-baza (= monsoon-boat) offers another possibility for the origin of the state-name according to Cyril Hromnik (Indo-Africa 1980). Reinforcing this would be an Indian Ocean. Fitting here too would be the Indian teaching Europe how to utilise the monsoons to directly cross the Indian Ocean. Fitting here too would be the Indian word of dvipa/dipa (= island) used to as far west as east Africa in the altered form of dipa/diba for the Bajun Islands (Somalia).

India could also be shown by such small rodents as black rats plus house mouse that had stowed away on sea-craft reaching Madagascar. So too the Group-A blood-group that Hromnik (ib.) says typified the Hova who are the basic population of Madagascar. Malagasy tradition has it that the earliest colonists of Madagascar came via the northeast of the island. However, the dominant vessels there appear not to be any of those Austronesians (= ANs) from Island Southeast Asia (= ISEA).

Vessels of the ANs were turned east towards the west Pacific where they were the main ancestors of the An-speaking Polynesians who then colonised most of the rest of the islands of the vast Pacific. Those that turned west turned ANs across the Indian Ocean where they became the major component of the Malagasy of the island of Madagascar. This rests rather more on linguistics and genetics than archaeology. Bringing them to Madagascar is beyond doubt but if we need to know what AN-ruled east Africa would have looked like, we look at Madagascar. This is because there is nary any hint of them among the Bantu of east Africa.

A good summation of the ANs reaching Madagascar is in “The Phantom Voyagers” by Robert Dick-Read (2005). More of the same comes with such as “Ethnographic evidence for long-distance contacts between Oceania & East Africa” (in The Indian Ocean in Antiquity ed. Julian Reade 1996), “New palaeozoogeographical evidence for the settlement of Madagascar” (Azania 2007), etc. The last two are among the many works by Roger Blench on this subject. They tell us ANs pigs were so important for Austronesian culture that ANs took them certainly to as far as Micronesia/Polynesia or Oceania in the west Pacific.

This means the pig seen to have been so integral for ANs culture that their transport over very long distances seems not to have been difficult. Therefore, it is a surprise that Blench plus others indicate the pig seems not to have come with the ANs to Madagascar. The pigs they kept were so large that the word of lambo for ANs small cattle seems to have applied to them. AN/Malagasy pigs originated in the African bush-pig.

Another surprise is that of poultry generally accepted as having been domesticated by ANs in ISEA. Their Polynesian descendants took chickens to even so distant and tiny speck of land in the vast Pacific as Easter Island. So like the pig, the chicken would be expected to have come west with the ANs to Madagascar and yet do not appear to have done so. Pierre Verin (Azania 1976) tells us it is the Bantu-derived akoho that became the Malagasy word for chicken.

The guinea-fowl is one of the few species that can be given a definite African domestication. According to Roger Blench and Kevin MacDonald (The Origin & Development of African livestock: Archaeology, Genetics, Linguistics & Ethnography 2000) the point of domestication was in west Africa.

Clearly, the distance of 4000/4500 miles between ISEA/Indonesia and Madagascar is much greater than that of Mozambiquan/Tanzanian parts of east Africa and Madagascar. However, it should have further interest that Verin (ib.) points to Niger/Congo (=N/C)/Bantu word of akanga (= guinea-fowl) occurring in Malagasy.

Blench (2006) cites messrs. Burney et al noting Pre-AN humans on Madagascar shown by butchered hippo-bones at ca. 1300 BCE. There is a change in vegetation apparently due to the human population in Madagascar. In accord is “Madagascar & the Malayo/Polynesian Myths” by Keith Taylor (in Exploration in Early Southeast Asian History edd. messrs. Hall & Whitmore 1976). Taylor (ib.) shows that even Malagasy folklore tells for this Pre-AN population of Madagascar.

Bantu farmers from east Africa further brought with them the kivinja (= casuaria) that Verin (ib.) notes as marking good farmland and giving timber very useful for water-craft, furniture, planks for building, etc. This same wood was used for heavy doors in the parts of east occupied by the sea-going Bantu called the Swahili. Their frequent ornament of breasts plus birds also reached Madagascar. As did the Bantu cultural hallmarks of cattle showing wealth, cattle with nicked ears, silos as grain-stores, spinning of cotton, wearing of long robes, discs on the forehead, filed-teeth dentition, circumcision, forms of shield plus spear, etc.

Verin (ib.) reported the Bantu origin of such Malagasy words for manioc as mahago (in in north Mad.), manghazo (in mid. Mad.), banghazo (south Mad.), etc. Verin (ib.) further says Bantu inhanga (= date-palm) occurs as Malagasy inkoma in turn occurring in the placename Ankomany (= Place of Date-palms). The date-palm carries with it th African recognition of good farming soils and was especially useful because its abundant harvests. Blench (ib.) describes the reflux of the baobab from east Africa to Madagascar.

Mount Karthala (Comoros) is called to our attention by Dick-Read (ib.) as an important marker for sea-craft en route between east Africa on the one hand and the Comoros plus Madagascar. Chami (2009) notes Neolithic finds in the Comoros Christopher Ehret (The Civilisations of Africa 2002) says canoes attach very closely to the Niger/Congo and their Bantu descendants. Canoes in Madagascar have a construction compared by Peter & Ginger Nieman (The Marcy Voyage: Madagascan Canoes online) to those of Chesapeake Bay (US). John Vlach (The African American Tradition in the Decorative Arts 1990) gives a strong west African origin or input for the Chesapeake canoes. A question here is do we have here a now-lost tradition in African canoe-building?

The Comoro Islands are just north of Madagascar and with Madagascar are among the islands noted by Chami (see next sect.). Messrs. Ferrand (as Taylor) Taylor (ib.) felt Arabic kamrun and Chinese kunlun related etymologically. If so, it may be significant Taylor says no importance attaches to the resemblance of Comoro and Arabic kmr/qmr/komr, that the original of Comoro is Bantu and came via Greek into Arabic. Analogous may be may be the alleged non-Bantu sources of the Swahili, especially as Allen (ib.) notes supposed Persian and Arabic ancestry tended to rise and fall with that of the popularity of Persians or the Arabs in east Africa.

Put simply, the Comorians are Bantu physically, culturally, linguistically, etc. The Comoro Islands are dominated by an active volcano on Ngadzija (= Mount Karthala). Felix Chami (Zanzibar & the Swahili Coast 2009) gives a significant etymology for the placename of Comoro. He combines the Bantu locative of ko (= place) plus moro (= heat/fire) giving Comoro/Komoro (= Place of Fire). The capital of the Comoros is Moroni apparently from moro plus another Bantu term of ni.

Tanzania & Kenya
Tanzania stands at humanity’s beginning on two separate counts. The first is not strictly Biblical but is very Bible-based. It is from Milton’s “Paradise Lost”. It refers to the Fall of Man episode in the Old Testament. Milton lists Sofala, Quiloa, Mombaza, Melind, Ercoco, etc. Sofala “thought to be Ophir” may be Beira Moz.); Quiloa is Kilwa (Tanz.); Mombaza is Mombasa (Kenya); Melind is Malindi (Kenya); Ercoco is Arkiko (Eritrea).

The other ground is based on excavation. Archaeologists have found at Olduvai Gorge (Tanz.) the oldest manmade tools. Their earliest stages are shown to date 3-1 million years BCE. Olduvai-like tools are found in west Magreb (= nth. Af. west of Egypt) plus Iberia (= Spain & Portugal) for Sean McGrail (Boats of the World 2005). In “Early Mankind in Arabia”, messrs. Whalen and Pease (in Aramco World 1992 & online) add the Arabian Peninsula to this.

Robert Bednarik (First Mariners Project online) argued that an early hominid presumably related to earliest Mankind colloquially called the Hobbit and more scientifically, Homo floriensis (being from the Indonesian island of Flores) was also capable of crossing short stretches of sea on rafts. He regards this as a considerable intellectual advance and if this is so, we can recall that this considerable advance had already occurred in Africa on what has already cited.

Rafts were apparently used to cross from Indonesia to Australia at 60,000 to 50,000 years BCE. Rafts were the basis of trade between Peru/Ecuador-to-west Mexico along western coasts of the Americas akin to the Punt-to-Egypt along Red Sea coasts. The span of their dates is broadly the same; the purpose of trading is identical, so is that both were long-distance, etc. It may be relevant that rafts were reportedly the sea-craft bringing the Austronesians westwards and also that sea-going Bantu were shown above to have had sea-going rafts.

The dugout-canoe seems to be recorded in the Periplus Maris Erythraei (= PME [= Voyage on the Erythraean Sea]) on coasts of Tanzania plus Kenya facing the Erythraean Sea (= western Indian Ocean). Another form of vessel in east Africa described by the unknown writer of PME informing is the sewn-plank type touched on later but more immediate is PME telling us about somewhere us about called Rhapta. Excavations here are usefully summed up by Felix Chami (The Unity of Ancient African History 2006; Zanzibar & the Swahili Coast from 30,000 Years Ago 2009) and his colleagues. They seemingly confirm that Rhapta was somewhere in the delta of the River Rufiji (Tanzania).

Other Chami-led excavations were on the offshore islands of Mafia Island plus Zanzibar. They have found Indian pottery; Greco/Roman beads and this may connect with a Chinese text by Wei Lue (ca. 500 CE) about “Zezan” (= Azania?). Wei Lue says Zezan/Azania was under the rule of Qin (= Rome?) but Chami points out that Qin/Rome never ruled any part of what has been variously called Ausan/Awsan or Azania. The PME-author seems to connect the Arabian Ausan and African Ausan on the strength of an ancient obligation but if so, this would have to have been before ca. 700 BCE when it seems Ausan in the south of Arabia vanished at about this date.

The anomalies of the African Ausan are such that it is omitted in the translation of PME by Lionel Casson (1989). However, there what appear places attracting non-African interest possibly right round to the Cape Town/Table Bay region of western South Africa. Possibly going in the opposite direction may be shown by a line of emporia/trade-marts from KwaZulu/Natal (South Africa); Ophir/Sofala (= Beira, Moz.); Mocambique Island (Mozambique); Rhapta (in the Rufiji Delta, Tanz.); Zanzibar (Tanzania); Mombasa (Kenya); Malindi (Kenya); Opone/Hafun (Somalia), Ercoco/Arkiko (Eritrea), etc.

If correct this shows a series of probable emporia stretching from eastern South Africa up past the Horn of Africa into east Africa facing the Red Sea and this matches the vague defining of the Sea of Azania from south Sudan down to southernmost Africa. This might in turn indicate there was something of a possible unity of interest between African Ausan and Arabian Ausan. Arabian and not Arabic is to be used of this period, as it seems the Arabian Peninsula had not been arabised yet. When that happened, the Maa’fir appear to have been Arabised Arabians whose name was Grecisised as Mapharitae and whose name may be in that of Mafia Island (Tanz.) and there are also suggestions of Aamu (= Arabs in Egyptian?) occurs in Lamu (islands off Kenya).

Other may indicate there are non-Arabian/Arabic sources for the name of Mafia. The PME-author mentions somewhere called Menouthias. Most writers consider that it was a single island but Chami allows that it was more than one and in this light is the suggested Arabic monfiya (= archipelago) that may influenced the Portuguese spelling of Montifya/Mortifya. Also argued for is Arabic mafa (= waste), so would indicate somewhere of little value that does not accord with the items found during excavations by Chami on Mafia Island. The last does accord with the Bantu term of mahali pa afaya (= lovely dwelling-place). Another Bantu origin may the Bantu tribe-name of Mboya.

Mafia Island was also in contact with Phoenicians according to Peter Byrne (A Short History of Mafia online). Phoenicians are also held to have been on the island of Zanzibar. Many past writers have wanted the Phoenicians to have built Great Zimbabwe. Cheikh Anta Diop (The African Origin of Civilisation 1984) says ruins related to this structure are spread over an area the size of metropolitan France and its floruit evidently is of 1250/1400 CE. With an independent “Phoenicia” having vanished ca. 700BCE, not only would our theoretical Phoenician architect(s) have been very busy but would have been remarkably long-lived.

Another favourite in the long queue claimed of non-African builders of Great Zimbabwe are the Portuguese. Their having firearms offset the numerical advantage of Africans but the early Portuguese were always were always very few. What is never explained is where the military resources from the to the Portuguese came from to be able to land on the coast, march inland, conquer a large chunk of central-east Africa and build some sort of capital and hold their territory. In any case, the dates for the floruit of the Zimbabwe Culture means it antedates the Portuguese rounding the southern point of southern tip of Africa and their landing in any part of east Africa. The Karanga phase of the Pre-Shona is more likely to be where the ancestry of what led to the fruition of the Zimbabwe Culture lies.

It is in this Karanga phase that Frank McCosh (African Skies online) would appear to place some of the earlier stages of the astronomy reported to be seen later at Great Zimbabwe. This also parallels the astronomy reported by Chami (i.) and that noted as being displayed by the Namoratunga (Kenya) stone rings and these circles also relate to the calendar of the Oromo (Ethiopia) plus the Borana of north Kenya/south Somalia. They would join with other structures as tumuli, hut-rings, earthworks, terracing, etc, that once marked what George Huntingford (Antiquity 1933) defined as the Azanian Culture.

Chami (ib.) was remarking on works by such ancient Greeks as Euhemerus (ca. 300 BCE), Iambulus (ca. 250 BCE), Eudoxus (ca. 150 BCE), etc. He traced their hints of astronomy out from the coast to islands that Chami felt included Pemba, Zanzibar, Mafia, the Comoros, Madagascar and it may be possible to add the Lamu and Bajun (Somali) Islands. If correct, this is also the spread of the Bantu seafarers called the Swahili/Shirazi/Zanj.

Innumerable writers have seized on such as Idrissi (12^th c. Arab) plus Strabo (1^st c. BCE Greeks) making what would appear to have been statements denying indirectly that there any ships in east Africa. This includes east Africa facing the Erythraean Sea (= e/Af. below or south the Horn of Af.) plus east Africa through the Gulf of Aden/Mandeb Straits/Red Sea stretch (= e/Af. above or north of the Horn).

Above-Horn east Africa is dealt with elsewhere but for Sub-Horn east Africa there is Allen (ib.) citing PME (ca. 1^st c. CE Egypto/Greek) plus Masudi (9^th c. CE Iraqi) as countering remarks denying Sub-Horn Africans had no ships. The Persian origin of the Shirazi claimed on the basis of the similarity of the town-name of Shiraz (Persia/Iran) and the term of Shirazi for some east Africans should be noted. It falls on Chami ((Southern Africa & the Swahili World 2002) convincingly showing that Shirazi arises from the Bantu words of chi/shi (= land), ra/la (= shore) plus za/zi (= people) to give Shirazi (= Swahili) and a general meaning of people of land by the sea.

Equally to the point is the two parts of the name of Tanzania from a compound of Tanganyika plus Zanzibar. It was already shown that several places had/have islands that have played a part in naming adjacent major territories. In the case of the small island of Zanzibar, it came to provide the –zan part of Tanzania. Adrian Room (African Placenames 1994) has discussed various suggestions of what lies behind the name of Tanganyika. He thought the most likely was tanga (= to sail/ to navigate under sail) plus nyika (= place/shore). The compounded word is Tanganyika as a place to sail to or to navigate to accord completely with the considerable reputation of the Swahili/Shirazi as mariners.

Somalia & Djibouti
The Horn of Africa was shown above as the median point marking east Africa south of the Horn (= Sub-Horn east Africa) and east Africa north of the Horn of Africa (= Above-Horn east Africa). The western equivalent would be west Africa south of a Malabo (capital of Equatorial Guinea) to Monrovia (capital of Liberia) line that is more or less the southern edge of the Bulge. South of the Malabo/Monrovia Line is taken as Sub-Bulge west Africa and north of that line is taken as Above-Bulge west Africa.

The Horn is in Somalia and south of it are probably the two most famous of Somali cities, Mogadishu (capital of Somalia) and Hafun (= ancient Opone). Mogadishu has a number of suggestions as to derivation. Mwhu Wa (= last northern city) may indicate a Bantu/Swahili garbling leading to the placename of Mogadishu. This in turn does something to indicate that it was one of the Swahili city-states apparently to such as PME. This relates to the name of Mogadishu and to that of Madagascar, so may indicate that alongside a possible Bantu sources for Mogadishu there may be a Bantu origin for Madagascar,

This would remove the need for still accepting the curious attribution of the name of Madagascar to Marco Polo (13^th c. Italian). On the other hand, this merely rules out one suggestion but does not put a certainty in its place and the uncertainties of the antecedents of both Mogadishu plus that Madagascar still remain.

The Somali as one branch of peoples speaking a language of the type called Cushitic probably relate to the tall slender people Madagascar called the Bara plus the Aweera of Pate Island (in the Lamu Islands of Kenya). This will mean speakers of Cushitic tongues had good maritime links. The act of piracy and its consequences are not to be admired but the almost suicidal distances in tiny boats that Somali pirates are prepared to undertake in order to achieve their piratical aims can be.

Long distances out to sea in simple vessels are hardly unique to modern times, as this happened frequently in antiquity. As there is a fuller discussion of such matters in such as “Ancient India, West Africa & the Sea” (online), “East Africans & Navigation” (online), etc, there is no real need to repeat in detail here what is written there. So only a brief recap that is given here and consists of material culled from various online plus other sources.

It has long been known that the Inuit/Eskimos regularly crossed between east Siberia and Alaskan/northwestern Canadian parts of North America. They also crossed from east Canada Greenland and occasionally ended up in British waters. Their vessels were either umiaks or of the better known kaiaks/kayaks. Even more famous is the crossing of the Atlantic by the skin-boat of the currach class called the Brendan. To the Brendan is another skin-boat of the Irish currach-form called the Colmcille recorded as having sailed from Ireland to Iberia. In doing so, the crew took it over what is probably the most dangerous stretch of sea off west Europe, the Bay of Biscay (off northwest Iberia).

The Indian masula has already been referred to as occurring in the parts of

Madagascar that Malagasy tradition would most closely associate with AN-speaking Indo-Malays arriving in northeast Madagascar. This presumably means the masulas were more than the merely the surf-boats they are usually seen as. The Indian terms of kattu-maran (= tied-logs) and sangada/sangara (= logs tied together) clearly refer to forms of log-raft that not only made it across the Indian Ocean but are matched in west Africa and the Indian term of jangada/sangada occurs as a term for sea-craft of the Amerinds of East-coast Americas.

On the current models being put forward, groups left mainland southeast Asia for Island Southeast Asia (= ISEA)/Austronesia. On the Haddon/Hornell (The Canoes of Oceania 1936-8) argument, Austronesians then left ISEA for Micronesia in the west Pacific on rafts first/ canoes next. From the numerous papers detailing the Austronesians on the Indian Ocean by Roger Blench plus others, it seems that this can be applied to Austronesians heading westwards to such as Madagascar. Even more to point is that the dates for this are close to those for ISEA traits in west Africa.

The Phoenicians founded cities at Carthage (nr. Tunis), GDR/Gadir (= Gades [in Latin] = Cadiz, Iberia/Spain), Lixos/Lixus (Morocco), etc. Each colony continued to use the vessel-type called the hippos for inshore plus harbour duties. Those used by Gaditanians (= Phoens. settled at Gadir/Cadiz) sailed for days at a time to reach and exploit the rich tunny-grounds of the Lixitae (= Phoens. at Lixos, Morocco). Here they spent days fishing for tunny in the conditions of the Atlantic. One of these Gaditanian or Lixitanian hippoi (plural of hippos) made it all the way round Africa to Cape Prason (= Cape Delgado?) on the Mozambique/ Tanzania border.

The point to be borne in mind here is that these are deemed to be simple forms. George Rawlinson (The History of Phoenicia 1889) saw Phoenico/Punic ships in general as tiny and frail and Strabo described the hippos as a very poor kind of sea-craft. Yet these sea-craft could survive days in Atlantic conditions and could be recorded as having gone round Africa both ways. This circumnavigating of Africa was also seen to have been suggested for Indian plus Indonesian sea-craft. The surprise is that this has not yet prompted the vitriolic ridicule touched on elsewhere poured on other argued-for forms of diffusionism.

Books by Jack Forbes (Africans & Native Americans 1993: The American Discovery of Europe 2007) attest the very real possibility of inhabitants of Middle plus North America reached Europe. In “The intertwined history of the silk-cotton and baobab”, Roger Blench (in Fields of change: Progress in African archaeobotany ed. Rene Cappers 2007) discussed the silk-cotton (Ceiba petranda). He shows petranda was not originally an African tree and that it originates in Meso/Middle America. Blench (2007) wrote that it was intentionally brought across the Atlantic to somewhere in the Senegal/Mali region of west Africa. Also that its spread across Africa was tied to the ancestral spread of Niger/Congo (=N/C) becoming the Bantu tongues of most of southern Africa.

Blench (ib.) described too that the close relationship of the African and American oil-palms indicates a plant taken across the Atlantic from west Africa to the Americas. It must have significance that Malians had the foreknowledge of knowing there was something on the far side that they wanted to more about and in case of what we might call the “Returned Captain” knew enough to be able to return home after having encountered “the fierce stream under the ocean”. Of further significance is that if the Dufuna (Nigeria) canoe of African mahogany stands for African norms, then of saliency must be that it seems petranda was also seen to be on the way to becoming an African standard at about same time as the N/C spread.

The African dugout-canoe was capable of long-distance commerce along west Africa according to Pieter de Marees (Description … of Guinea 1602) plus of crossing the Atlantic according to Hannes Lindemann (Alone at Sea 1958). In “Kitab Aja’ib al-Hind” (= Wonders of India) by Buzurg ben Shariyar (10^th c. Persian), a distinction is made between the dunj (= dinghy) and mityal (= canoe). The PME-author wrote of “vessels of single log” that are part of the trading along east African coasts. To these single-log vessels/dugout-canoes, he adds ploiarion rhapton (= sewn vessels) as the vessel of choice in this trading along the east African seaboard.

Adriaan Prins (TNR 1959; Paideuma 1982) denied the link made from the days of Richard Burton (Zanzibar & Two Months in East Africa 1858) between the ploiarion and the mtepe. Neville Chittick (International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 1980) went further in dismissing the tying of these types plus the Great Lakes canoes. A more extreme denial is that of James Hornell (Man 1941) who though linking the canoes with the mitepe (= plural of mtepe), denying any African origin for any of these types because Negroes were too feeble intellectually and physically to have devised anything of their own.

Despite these denials, from Burton (ib.) on, the linking of the ploiarion of PME, the mtepe of the Indian Ocean plus the canoes of the Great Lakes has been constant. For messrs. Lydecker (Man 1919) and Hornell (Mariner’s Mirror = MM 1928; Water Transport 1946), there is an Indian Ocean origin for the mtepe. They plus others tell us that this attaches to the Indian word of dvipa (= island) in the Austronesian form of diba. This came via the Dvipa Lakshad (= Laccadives) and/or the Dvipa Mal (= Maldives?) and the Lydecker story was that a wrecked vessel of proto-mtepe form spread the type to the mtepe to the Bajun Islands (off Somalia). The islanders rescued the wrecked crew who as the Wadiba gratefully taught mtepe-building to the islanders and it spread to the rest of Sub-Horn east Africa.

Chittick went looking for the Maldivian sewn-plank ancestors of the mtepe and found the only comparisons purported ancestors and the mtepe was that both had square sails and sewn planks. Prins (ib.) went seeking the Lydecker (ib.) story in the Bajun Islands and came up with a complete blank. Allen (ib.) showed that the benign nature of the Diba/Wadiba indicated in the Lydecker account just not jell with the rather malign repute of the Wadiba that is consistent in the east African tradition cited by Allen (ib.).

Messrs. Worthington (MM 1933), Huntingford (Man 1937), Allen (ib.), Wicker (Egypt & the Mountains of the Moon 1991) take this further. Worthington (ib.) sought a local sequence for the canoes of the Great Lakes. In this same way, we would look for skin-boats of the bowl-like coracle tending to spin when taken to sea evolved into more boat-like currach. However, Hornell (Water Transport 1946) did not look for such an evolution but saw a planked-boat ancestry for the currach. However, Worthington (ib.) does look for a purely local development for the east African canoes in the same way that Chittick (ib.) does for the mitepe.

Besides arguments for purely African sources, other points are held in common between the canoes and the mitepe. One is the small size indicated by the Greek terms of ploin/ploiarion. Other Greek terms used of things African include the Great Sphinx as a witch-type fantasy; Pyramids named from looking like a puramos (= cake; enormous pillars described as obeloi (= roasting-spits); elephant from elephas (stag); hippopotamus from hippos (= horse) and potamos (= water), so water-horse; ostrich coming from strouthos (= sparrow); crocodile from krokodeilos (= lizard). There is some suggestion this represents Greek humanising of very large things but it is also difficult to escape a feeling of ridicule at work.

The small size suggested by the Greek term of ploiarion brings it into line with the mtepe according to Allen (ib.). The so-called “tassel” of a Great Lakes canoe pictured by messrs Stanley and Smith (Man 1928) is shared with the mtepe. Hornell (1946) compared specific details of the sewn-plank construction of mitepe and some Egyptian ships. Wicker (ib.) wrote of several Great Lakes canoe-traits being known in Egypt. A list of terms compiled by Hornell (Man 1928) was looked at by Huntingford (ib.). Huntingford says the Bantu banga (= forward thwarts) and Bantu gamma (thwarts in general) appear in the Nilotic tongues of Luo, Dinka, etc, as bang plus gamma respectively and occur in Egyptian.

There is yet another linkage of Sub-Horn east Africa with Egypt. It comes with Shungwaya plus Ta-Neter see just below). Allen (ib.) suggests a further tying of Sub-Horn east Africa and Egypt on the ancient name of Misri (= Egypt) naming a revived cloth-trade between the two but we may be certain the connection is very considerably older than this.

Djibouti also continued the wooden vessels of sewn-plank construction northwards. What lies behind a string of placenames also carries on up to Djibouti. Examples include Mocambique (= place of boats), Rhapta (linked to rhapton itself a Grecisised [?] form of the Arabic muddarra’at [= tied with palm fibre]); Tanganyika from tanga (= place to sail to/ place to navigate to) combining with nyika (= shore/place) to give the sense of somewhere to sail and/or navigate towards; Kilwa from Qiloa (= place of fishing); Mombasa (= place of boats?); Shirazi (people of the shore?); Zanj (another name for the Swahili/Shirazi?); Swahili (another name for the Zanj/Shirazi); Djibouti (= place of boats.).

It seems that Djibouti figures in the Pwenet/Punt debate. Pwenet is but one of the innumerable forms of the word better known in the spelling of Punt. Pwenet (= Bantu for coast) seemingly equates with “Azania”/Sub-Horn east Africa but Punt is from Old-Egyptian. Shungwaya is both the Somalia homeland of Bantu and their gods but Punt equates with Ta-neter that in turn was the Somali/Djibouti/Eritrea homeland of the Egyptians plus their gods.

Djibouti stands opposite the Yemen in west Arabia across what the Greeks evidently called the Straits of Deire (= Straits of the Neck [= the Narrow Straits?]). Robert Graves (The Greek Myths 1960 says the Greeks named them as the Indian Bosphoros (on the model of the Bosphoros linking the Black and Marmara Seas). They are now known in Arabic as Bab el-Mandeb (= Gate of Tears). Stanley Balanda (The So-Called “Mine of Punt” & its Location [Journal of the American Research Centre in Egypt 2005]) points to an inscription at Deir el-Bahri (Eg.) noting tents on both sides of the Red Sea. Balanda (ib.) regards the description as fitting Djibouti facing west Yemen very accurately. This turn probably means Yemen has some small role in showing where Punt was.

After that we come to the Red Sea. Here too groups were practicing an economy of the type the labelled as Ichthyophagi (= Fish-eaters) but are also known under several other names. The Greeks apparently supposed the millennia-old gathering and eating of fish stranded on beaches when tides had receded continued. This can be seriously doubted and possibly results from hearsay due to only part of the process having been observed. Alan Villiers (The Sons of Sinbad) reports what probably really happened. He describes crews of ships placing fish on the sands to bake in the blazing sun.

Djibouti was the place where the Tigris voyage of Thor Heyerdahl ended. He had had an ancient ship-type built of berdi-reeds from Iraqi marshes. It was named after the River Tigris. The Tigris sailed down the Persian Gulf, then to the south, then to the mouth of the River Indus then west towards the Red Sea with the intention of sailing along it. On reaching the Red Sea and Djibouti, They found civil war on one side and war on the other. In protest, the Tigris was torched in Djibouti Harbour.

Ethiopia & Eritrea
The war that led to the burning of the Tigris at Djibouti was between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Bolivia in South America losing its coast because of long with neighbours provides a model that parallels Ethiopia doing so to Eritrea for the same reason.

If it is correct, the Olduwan tools named by those found at Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania) are of the same date as some of the human-like skeletal material in Ethiopia/Eritrea making it a candidate for the like abroad. This is thought to be matched by Olduwan tools found in Yemen ib southern Arabia (as shown above) to attest what was also shown to have prompted comments that even these short-hop voyages represent a considerable intellectual advance.

Further is that of the earliest signs of such a short-hop passage by Homo sapiens is shown by Stephen Oppenheimer (Eden in the East 204) around Abdur (Eritrea). They are around the Gulf of Zula (an inlet of the Red Sea). The economic basis of their way of life has prompted the several tags of the trail/path of Out-of-Africa, Beachcomber, Strandlooper, Oceanic Negro, Ichthyophagi, Fish-eaters, etc. Among other traits are the phenotype remaining essentially African but the genotype attesting considerable interaction with other groups; evolution from tightly-coiled and curly to wavy then straight hair with retention of the phenotype again retained (as noted as far back as Herodotus); the distribution remains basically coastal, as further underlined by other African cultural traits.

Kushite plus Ethiopian are also constantly seen along this Beachcomber or Ichthyophagi Path/Trail. They are applied to the Mahra plus others of Yemen/south Arabia; the Sumerians of present-day south Iraq who called themselves Sa-giggi (= heads of Blacks [as do the much later Portuguese Moros & German Schwartzkop), etc. More easterly still are Kush/Kushite to be seen in Hindu Kush (= Mountains of the Blacks [= one of many suggested derivations]) plus being used of Elamites who were an early people of what today is the south Iranian province of Khuzestan (= Land of Blacks). Just to the south of Elam/Khuzestan was Gedrosia (= Land of Blacks) that seems to have been the Greek term for what today is southwest Pakistan and this is to be borne in mind for what was said about “Blacks on the Persian Gulf”

Indian terms include Sudroid/Varna/Adavasio. They apparently parallel the spread of what linguists term of Dravido/Tamil tongues across “Greater India” (= Pak./India/Sri Lanka). Vazimba, Veddoid (= Hunters), Negrito, etc, describe blacks of IOR islands such as Madagascar, Sri Lanka, the Andaman Islands, Malaysian ISEA, etc. Papuan (= Curly-heads in Malaysian), etc. Melanesia (= Islands of Blacks) for islands of the eastern IOR/southwest Pacific overlap; the more specific west African term of Guinea for the Pacific island of New Guinea; Blackfellas for those otherwise known as the Aborigines or Koori of Australia. The south Chinese seaboard is marked by the Li-min that meaning Black-hair/head seems analogous to what has been said about Sumerian Sa-giggi; Portuguese Moro; German Schwartzkop; Kunlun (= Blacks).

The primarily coastal distribution that led to the original terminology of Oceanic Negro may mean this phrase may not so redundant after all. Moreover, that coastal spread is considerably reinforced by that of similar groups proceeding by way of islands going in the same general direction. This becomes clearer with this including the Melanesians who said to have so influenced some Polynesians that the term of Melanesian-type Polynesians has arisen. Among them are those reaching New Zealand plus Hawaii.

Further is a Fijian origin-myth reported by Scott Balson (on the Balson Holdings & Family Trust site online). It tells of Africans leaving from somewhere in east Africa leaving for Melanesia that according to online sites range from South Africa to Egypt, so it could be from Eritrea but Balson (ib.) has the emphasis on Tanzania and giant canoes leaving Melanesia (esp. Fiji). When it is realised that there are also New Zealand tales telling of the ancestors of the Polynesians called Maoris also coming by way of giant canoes, we come separately to work by Graham Campbell-Dunn (African Origin of the Maoris 2007).

He argues very strongly for African sources. This becomes even more relevant in the light of what is said by Anthony Christie (“An Obscure Passage from the Periplus” [= PME] in Bulletin of the School of Oriental & African Studies 1957). He connects the Indian term of kolandiaphunta and the Chinese one of kunlun-po. They both refer to forms of large sea-craft. As east Africa became better known to the outside world so it seems knowledge of Ruwenzoris (= Mountains of the Moon) spread. Thus they were the Oros Selene (??) in Greek, Chandristan in Indian Sanskrit but named Kunlun in Chinese. If this is correct, not only did Chinese Kunlun refer to the African slaves taken to China but was also used of somewhere in Africa. In this way it is very tempting to translate kunlun-po as ship of the blacks.

This should make us wonder if Kunlun plus Li-min did not originally indicate Black seafarers on the south Chinese coast. Certainly the Li-min had a considerable nautical repute. All of this accords with Aethiopicus Oceanus used of the oceans on both sides of Africa. This passed to the Arabs as Zanj-e-Bahr (= Sea of Blacks). On the principle of the Indian Ocean being named by those recorded as its greatest users, it will be obvious that at some stage, east Africans were dominant on the sea.

Indians were seen as influencing Sub-Horn east Africa with Richard Pankhurst adding “Ethiopia across the Red Sea & Indian Ocean” (online) Frank Snowden (Blacks in Antiquity 2007) says Persian troops in central Africa are possible. Messrs Van Donzel & Huyse also note “Ethiopia & Relations with Persia” shown by superb gardens, plantations, irrigation systems. The cities of Asseb and Fors of this region are also held to belong here.

Sadly, for theories of extensive Persian influences on Ethiopia, the irrigation plus kindred features have variously sourced to Assyrians, Medes, Chaldeans, Persians, Byzantines, Beja, etc (acc. to Van Donzel/Huyse). Of them the Beja (dare we say it) are Africans and African expertise with matters hydraulic has already been touched on. The equation of Fars (Pers.) and Fors (Eth.) has no more substance to it than that of Shiraz and Shirazi (see above) and Persians in central Africa sounds like something that has escaped from a Tarzan novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Arabian elements from Yemen in Ethiopia are further claimants for building Asseb. With it also being suggested that the Arabian state-name of Ausan is echoed in east Africa, it will be no surprise something akin to this also applies to Ethiopia/Eritrea. Yemeni royal titles of Mkrb (= Mukharib = King); Mlk (= Malik = Priest-King?); Bin ha Malik (= Menelik = Son of the King), etc. Menelik is seen as the son of “Sheba” with Sheba seen as a Yemenite ruler and land. Yemenite Monumental Script is held to be the ancestor of North Ethiopian Monumental Script. Gamal Nkrumah (older than Egypt online) says the Yem. family-name of Aksumai occurs as Aksum (Eth.).

Ge’ez is but one of the Semitic-like elements from Yemen claimed for parts of east Africa but it is a language of the family severally named Afrasan, Afrasian Erythraean, Hamito/Semitic, etc. These Afrasan tongues include Omotic, Berber, Chadic, Old-Egyptian, Semitic, etc. Christopher Ehret (The Civilisations of Af. 2002) notes most of them are in decline but in giving them African sources, wrote the only language of this group known outside Africa are the Semitic tongues.

Arabian Ausan as African Ausan and/or Maa’fir as Mafia Island were seen as problems, as is the placename of Saba/Seba/Sheba. This may fit alongside what are sometimes seen as Semitic elements in Ethiopia but given what was said about Punt as possibly on both sides of the Red Sea, an answer may be just this again. Material from the D’mot/Damot (= Pre-Axumite) levels in north Ethiopia/north Eritrea matches material from southern Sudan and is very much earlier than alleged Yemenite influences that were confined to the coast anyway. Pre-Axumite levels at Axum were proven by excavations led by Stuart Munro-Hay (Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity 1991).

This gives background to the tentative Pre-Axumite linkage surmised in the long introduction to the Kebra Negast (= Book of Kings) for Dabra Makeda (= City of M.) by Wallis Budge (1932). This takes us to the individual severally named the Queen of Sheba (Old Testament); the “Shulamite” (Song of Songs); the Queen of the South (New Testament); Eteye Azeb (= Queen of the South in the Ethiopian tongue of Tigrean); Nikaulis (in the Jewish Antiquities by Josephus); Bilkis/Bilqis (Koran); Makeda (Kebra); Bilikusa (Nigerian folklore).

There is evidently a long archaeological tradition here seemingly closely analogous to legends taken up into the Bible used by the Coptic Church itself known in Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. The form of the Kebra Negast as we now have it apparently dates to the 14^th c. but on what has been said, it is obvious the Kebra incorporates material very much older than this and much of it may be Pre-Christian.

The relationship of Ge’ez and Texts and those in Semitic is such that Henry Rawlinson translating the Behistoun (Persia/Iran) in the 19^th c. found Ge’ez was of great help in doing so. Inscriptions in Ge’ez on stone are in the style we saw was called North Yemenite. This calls for Ge’ez to have emerged in Yemeni parts of Arabia. However, French opinion of Jacqueline Pirenne plus Jean Doresse (cited by messrs. Mariam & Pankhurst respectively online) reverses when seeing Ge’ez as purely of Ethiopian sources. On this reverse, it will be obvious that means the scribe-style should be North Ethiopian Monumental and that there was a west/east transmission. Winters (Ancient African Kings online) would add seeing Ge’ez as the parent of the Devangari/Nagari script itself an early script in which the Sanskrit language of ancient India was written.

Clyde Winters (Atlantis in Mexico 2007) can be further cited but this time on the sea-lanes fitting with the opinion that the Niger/Congo (= N/C) to Bantu sequence occurred over very longer period than generally argued for. This will have included the seafaring Bantu we have seen were called the Swahili usually labelled as Zanj by the Arabs. When describing “The Movement of Cultivated Plants between Africa & India”, Roger Blench (online) also emphasised the Erythraean or Sabaean sea-lanes between the Red Sea and India.

This would help make more substantial the account the activities of an Ethiopian general named noted by Samuel Purchas (17th c. English) in “Greater” India (= (Pak., India, Sri Lanka & Bangladesh). This was the General Ganges that Purchas held also named the river of that same name. Placing this on a reasonably remote horizon would be the accurate depiction of an African female in bronze found at Mohenjo-daro (now in Pakistan).

Mohenjo-daro is a settlement of the Harappan Culture, so does something to confirm the suggested date. This becomes even more relevant in the light of the sea-lanes round Africa according to sources cited in other sources cited in this series. It gives some reinforcement for scenes described in the Kebra Negast. They tell a story of Queen (= “Sheba”) at the centre of a vast trade-network with the fleet under the management of Menelik (already seen as her son).

Ancient Ethiopian commerce is described by several writers for the Axumite period of Ethiopia. They include messrs. Yuri Kobanishow (Journal of African History 1965), Pankhurst (ib.), Chami (ib.), etc. Among the works of Munro-Hay (The foreign trade of the Axumite port of Adulis [Azania 1982]; …Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity 1991; Axumite overseas interests [in The Indian Ocean in Antiquity ed. Julian Reade 1996]).The kind of dates we are now dealing with is further shown in “Another Ancient Christian Presence in Sri Lanka: The Ethiopians of Axum” by Prabo Mihindukusuriya (online).

The normal interpretation of what is said by Cosmas Indicopleustes (C. the Traveller to India) about Axumite trade with other Africans is that this was with the Danakil (= Afars). The major oddity of this interpretation of what was written by Cosmas (6^th c. CE) is that this would have taken one group six months to get from one side of Ethiopia to the other. As Chami (ib. has said, this makes no sense and says for this to indicate going from Axum to somewhere called Sasu as a journey from one part of Ethiopia makes no sense. He places Sasu much further south in east Africa.

Sir Philip Grierson (The Silent Trade: A Contribution to Early History of Human Intercourse 1903) wrote a long time before Chami (ib.). He cited a number of views placing Sasu to as far apart as southern Sudan, between the Horn and Djibouti, in southeast Somalia, somewhere in what is now Tanzanian, on Zanzibar, etc. Given that these were pioneering days of research, the vagueness is perhaps pardonable. Yet the last two come close to the Chami viewpoint that Sasu was somewhere on the Tanzanian coast. Whether this can be linked to sea-going returnees is not said by Cosmas but the gold they silently bartered for was apparently sent overseas by Axum.

The Kobanischow (ib.) article bore the title of “On the problem of sea voyages of ancient Africans”. What the difficulty actually was remains unclear. Very clearly much of what pertains to the earlier period is more folklore than factual. Yet by the time of Mani (3^rd c. CE Iraqi), Axumite Ethiopia was being equated with Rome, Persia and China. Such authors as Pankhurst (ib.), Mihindukusuriya (ib.), etc, clearly prove the Ethiopian presence as considerable naval presence on the Red Sea with a lesser presence on the Indian Ocean.

Across Africa what we might call Admiral-types appear in Mali as the Hari-forma (= Chief of the Waters); in Nigeria as the Aromire (= Friend of the Waters); under various titles in Egypt; in Ethiopia as the Barnagash (= Lords of the Sea) and Marina Tolmacheva adds the Swahili Mkuuwa Pwani (= Master of the Shore). Not only did Axumite Ethiopia appoint the Barnagash but also gave a coastal people the job of regulating the sea-lanes but more especially putting down piracy.

Sudan
The position of northeast Africa is such that it received influences from several directions. This included the Mediterranean, the Magreb/Sahara plus west Asia (= Syro/Palestine). It is normal to trace suggested west Asian traits overland from Elam (= ancient southwest Persia/Iran), Mesopotamia (= Iraq) and Canaan (= Palestine, Israel, Lebanon & Syria [= Syro/Palestine).

An alternative route is best left till the sources cited in “Egypt & the Sea in Antiquity” plus other of my papers are looked at. They relate to what is written as part of the Petrie/Rohl thesis of west Asian traits came by way of the Persian Gulf, the south Arabian coast, the Gulf of Aden, Mandeb Straits, the Red Sea to Egypt thence overland to the River Nil.

The Nile is a river of Africa not just of Egypt, as it evidently stretches deep into Africa for more than 3000 of its 4000 miles lying outside Egypt. It is worth noting that what seems to be “The oldest representation of a Nile boat” noted by messrs. Udal and Salvatore (Antiquity 2007). It was depicted on a pebble revealed as part of the small finds at Salwa (Sudan) and relates to boats pictured on rocks on both sides of the Sudan/Egypt border. The comparison is not just of the general form but also on the more specific matter of the pole-mounted steering-gear. This plus the domed cabin passed to Pre-Dynastic then Dynastic Egypt.

The writers state this does much to corroborate the evidence of the use of boats suggested by the catching of larger specimens of catfish in the deeper waters of the River Nile. This in turn is confirmed by actual bones of these catfish found by the excavators at Salwa. The date of the excavations at Salwa was set by the archaeologists to the early 7^th millennium BCE.

Vessels depicted on the rocks in the wadis (= now-dry riverbeds) help to attest that rivers once flowed through these wadis. Boats of this Wadi rock-art were the subject of some pioneering studies by Hans Winkler that is cited by Paul Johnstone (The Sea-craft of Prehistory 1980). Johnstone (ib.) says Winkler was firmly of the opinion that the boats in the Wadi rock-art were of timber but it seems the general consensus is that they are most probably constructed of reeds of the papyrus type.

Most of the research on the Wadi rock-art tends to concentrate on the examples in Egypt but as seen, this goes beyond this into the Sudan. The names of Aithiopia plus Sudan can be seen synonyms for Africa. Aithiopes/Aethiopes derives from aithios (= burnt) and opes (= face) giving Aithiopes (= Burnt-faces) for Black Africans. It sits alongside the Latinised and near-identical form of Aethiopia for all of Africa yet is still with us in the more limited version of Ethiopia. Libya may also be just north Africa or the Magreb but sources drawn on by Isidore of Seville (7^th c. CE Iberian) regard Libya and all of Africa as synonyms.

Probably the Khemet/Kemet of Old-Egyptian is the oldest known form of the term of Land of Blacks. There are innumerable suggestions that it only indicates land turned black by the mud left by Nile floods. Tales about the Melampodes, Danaus, Aegyptus, etc, are touched on in other of my papers. They tell against Kemet meaning only Blackland, especially when looking thousands of miles to the east and the names of Papua, New Guinea, Melanesia.

Papua is most frequently given as the Malay for Curly-haired but the Crawfurd (1858) “Grammar & Dictionary of the Malay Language” also adds Papua as “African, Negro”, etc, to this. Nor can it be said that what we saw in a list of black groups evidently attaching to O-o-A/Oceanic Negro migrants about Melanesia and New Guinea show that they were so named because they lived on “black” land. In passing, we can further note that trans-IOR contact/movement was hardly confined to so distant a period as the Out-of-Africa times.

Sudan is a shortened form of the Arabic Bilad es-Sudan (= Land of Sudan). At the very least it will have included part of the Nile-flooded areas seen to have prompted arguments that it can only land made black by soil left by the Nile floods. Nor do such other Arabic words for Africans such as Habasha (from whence came Abyssinia [= an older name for Ethiopia]), Zanj, Swahili, etc, indicate anything to do with black soil/land in the places that they inhabited/inhabit.

It seems Kush and/or Nubia ate to be seen as ancient for what is now called Sudan. Al-Masudi (8^th c. CE Syrian) wrote that Kushites went right (= westwards) and Nubians stayed on the side of the left on the eastern side of the Nile. He further wrote Nubians did go west but much further to the south where they apparently would have been absorbed into such as the Zanj. Here there would be contact and/or overlap with groups variously labelled as Mauri/Moors, Mellians/Malians, Nigritiae (= Negroes), Guineans and others. that as with Kushites, Nubians, Habasha, Zanj, etc, that are so often confused with each other but are seen as one and the same.

Nubians going to the east at the time of Noah is clearly intended to be indicative of great age. The two most famous attaching to the ancient Kusho/Nubian past are surely Memnon plus Taharquo but of them, the family of Memnon is given very strong Eastern links that included India. His mother was Eos (= Goddess of the Dawn) equated with Hemera (= Goddess of the Day). Another alternative is Cissia/Kissia.

Eos/Heos as connected to the dawn would naturally be given eastern links because of the sun rising in the east. The association is strengthened by Eos being identified with Cissia/Kissia as another spelling of Susia/Susa (= capital of Elam & a later capital of the Persian Empire). Further to the point is Herodotus (ca. 450 BCE Greek) describing Susia/Susa as the “city of Memnon”. Here too was built the monument that Herodotus (5^th c. BCE Greek), Strabo (1^st c. BCE Greek), Pausanias (2^nd c. CE Greek), etc, describe as the Memnonium.

Cissia was also held to mother to Memnon. Words akin to Cissia are were widespread across Africa according to Cheikh Anta Diop (The African Origin of Civilisation 1984). Cisse is common in west Africa (probably most famous in the UK from the name of the footballer, Djibril Cisse). Sisse means noble in Egyptian according to Moustaffa Gadalla (Exiled Egyptians: The Heart of Africa 1999). Sese or Ssese is also the name of islands in Lake Nyasa (= ex-Lake Victoria) that bring us back to kings and gods in that these islands were where the Kabaka (= King) of the Baganda/Buganda (naming Uganda) kept his war-fleet and this was the home of Mukasa (chief god of the Baganda).

Tithonos was the father of Memnon and was evidently seen as a Kushite or Black African by Strabo. Martin Bernal (Black Athena 1991) says some depictions attest Memnon as a white Thracian but they are easily outweighed by those showing him as not just as black but also as having the snub nose and curly hair that are standard traits when Africans are pictured. It is also to borne in mind that the oldest non-African mentions to Kush appear to be by Semitic scribes in the form of Assyria plus Israel who had good reason to know where Kush was and they consistently locate it in Africa south of Egypt.

Nor should it be overlooked there are structures titled Memnonium in that part of Africa called Egypt. Efforts to explain the contradictions between Memnon as Asian and/or African began early. We are told Dyctinnis Cretensis (= Dyctis of Crete) wrote near the date of Homer is cited by Quintus Septimius (ca. 350 CE Roman) as saying Memnon took African plus Indian troops to Troy to assist the Trojans in the war reported by Homer (in the Iliad [ca. 10^th c. BCE for Bernal ib.]) between Greeks and Trojans. An oddity is the Quintus citation is oft-said to be mythical but surely myth looms large throughout the Homeric canon. Another Quintus is surnamed Smyrnae (ca. 350 CE Greek). He wrote several lines about the nautical links of Memnon that of itself adds to the African ties of Memnon.

The African maritime connection is further shown by the story of the ships sent by Queen Hatshepsut (the Female Pharoah) to the place called Punt. It seems there is little need to alter the above-made comments about Punt being somewhere in east Africa facing the Red Sea. Having already seen there are umpteen words to describe Africans, another is Nehessy. This seems to be an Egyptian word meaning black. A man by this name commanded Hatshepsut’s fleet. This presumably indicates Nehessy was one of the many Kushites who came into Egyptian service.

It should be borne in mind that what we now call the Red Sea has been innumerable titles over the centuries. A general principle of naming bodies of water is that of their taking the name of the dominant users. If this is correct, we come to an article by Hideyomi Takahashi (in Hugoye [= Journal of Syraic Studies 2003 & online). He was writing about the Causa Causorum (8^th c. CE?) possibly written by Jacob of Edessa. Whoever wrote the Causa described the Red Sea as malono d-Kush that Takahashi (ib.) translates as the Sea of Kush.

Pliny and PME inform that it seems what is referred to the Sea of Azania is apparently to be regarded as stretching southern Sudan to something like eastern South Africa. This may receive some buttressing from the Arabic term of Zanj-e-Bahr that not only incorporates the –zan in Azania and marks the most of the southern part of this extent by this meaning Sea of the Zanj (= Erythraean Sea[ = western Indian Ocean]). Nubians coming south into east Africa fits with Kushites said to have fought off an invasion of the Horn of Africa. From the Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament, we learn of Ethiopians (= Kushites?) speeding in reed-built sea-craft along at least the Red Sea coasts part of this.

The one-time Oceanus Ai/Aethiopicus that was once used of the South Atlantic also meant Sea of Blacks. On the model suggested, this clearly indicates Black Africans were sailing on their own western coasts (see also West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity online). This underlines from what was written by Leo Frobenius (Voice of Africa 1912) to what was said above about the Ichthyophagi. The latter are not to confined to Africa but are traced all round Africa from those traced by Herodotus in Egypt; those in Sub-Horn east Africa by Mark Horton; the apparently closely related groups along the west African coast by various Greeks. They also marry closely with the spread the fleets of canoes described along most of Atlantic-facing Africa by the first Europeans arriving on these shores of west Africa.

That these vessels were found there by these Europeans clearly means they cannot be held to have European inspiration and/or also decidedly Pre-European. So too are the earliest fleets of canoes referred to by Roger Smith (Journal of African History 1970); Stewart Malloy (in Blacks in Science ed. Ivan Van Sertima 1983, etc.), Harold Lawrence (in African Presence ed. Van Sertima 1987, etc). The more so given that most have most missed tying the empire of Ouaouagadu/Wagadu (better known via the title of its ruler, the Ghana) and the coast that was Ganar (as per the Wolofs) and Gannaria (as per Ptolemy). This seemingly links the Ghana/Wagadu Empire with Gana/Ganna/Ganar. This in turn is underlain by the war-fleets of the Malian successors of the Ghana Empire.

More of the same comes with Baganda war-fleet already referred to. Even more evidence that Africans did not need Islamic or European inspiration to realise the importance of war-fleets comes from Kush. Excavations there by Charles Bonnet are mentioned by Omar Ibrahim (Kerma: The Biblical City online) plus many others. Ibrahim (ib.) also shows sea-shells/other small-finds found at Kerma attest Kushite interest in the Red Sea was not so lacking after all. Moreover, Tolmacheva (ib. shows Kushites in the south Puntite/north Horn region helping to oust invaders of the Horn of Africa at an uncertain date.

More evidence of Kushites plus Puntites as allies is shown by the el-Kab (Eg.) inscription noting a devastating defeat that was not followed up, so allowing an Egyptian counter-attack. Ibrahim (ib.) compared fortified plus funerary structures around Kerma (Kushite capital) with what is described by the Book of Yasher/Jasher about what was left behind after a Kikianus-led Kushite invasion of “Aram” (= Aramaea?) or more or less what archaeologists call Syro/Palestine.

The Book of Jasher is mentioned in the Old Testament (Joshua; 2^nd Book of Samuel). So it has a healthy antiquity behind it but as we now have it, shares with the Kebra the incorporation of very ancient material that has undergone numerous transformations but which for the Kebra reached its present form by the 13^th/14^th cs. If the Hebrew tradition of such as Jasher stands, a successful invasion of Aramaea/Syro-Palestine brings to a comment of Gilbert (Eg. Sea-Power & the Origin of Naval Forces 2008) would need substantial naval control of the Syro/Palestinian shores.

Egyptian texts of about this same time refer to Kush keshty (= wretched Kush). The classic Egyptian symbol female vaginas denoting cowardly enemies when shown at Semna (Eg.), Uronarti (Eg.), etc were aimed at Kushites. This has been taken up by modern authors reporting that later Assyrian conquerors of Egypt chased the cowardly Kushites/Nubians back to their African hidey-holes in Sudan proper.

By the time of the 12^th/Sesostrid Pharoahs, Egypt was controlling traffic from Kush into Egypt by forts at Kor, Buhen, Doginarti, Mirgissa, Dabenarti, Askut, Uronarti, Kumara, etc. They were part of an enormous complex deterring Kushites entering Egypt and that at Buhen is of such a size that it staggers the imagination to William Adams (cited by Bernal ib.). Nor were the Sesostrid Dynasty content with this, as shown by execration texts plus the much-quoted Semna Decree laying curses on Kushites plus others on entering Egypt.

Among those others were arrivals from Syro/Palestine and to control them, the barrier called the Princes Wall sufficed. Now contrast this with the sheer scale, their very number, the complex signal-system, etc of the anti-Kush forts that alone should make us wonder if there were only cowards in Kush/Nubia. Nor do “cowardly” Kushites explain why Africans from Kush were constantly recruited for Egyptian armies plus militia for millennia. It seems Kikianus plus Memnon represents the same phenomenon for Jews and Greeks respectively.

Frank Yurco (in Black Athena Revisited edd. messrs. Lefkowitz & Rogers 1996) felt able that what made sense of the strenuous Sesostrid efforts to Kush was the evidence about the formidable Kushite riverine fleet unearthed by Bonnet (ib.). This adds to what has been said that Islamic and/or European inspiration was unneeded as regards the realisation of how important fleets were.

Kushite knowledge of the Nile continued into a later era too. With the reigns of Kashta and Piye in Kush, Kushite kings were once again strong enough to invade Egypt. They were the first of the Black or Nubian Pharoahs of the 25^th Dynasty. He was followed by Shabako, Shebiktu, Taharquo, Tantamani, etc. The event that established Kushite rule in Egypt was the by Piye. As he moved north, his enemies mainly from the Nile Delta plus Libyan allies bottled themselves up in Memphis. An assessment by Piye was that the Nile-facing wall of Memphis was unguarded and on seizing all available boats, attacked it, took Memphis and ended the opposition.

Of Piye’s successors, easily the most famous has to be that known from many spellings. Among them are Tarhaqo, Taharquo, Tirhaka, Tirhakah, Tearco, Tearcon, Tearchon, Tarchu, Tarachos, Tarraco, etc. Henry Aubin (The Rescue of Jerusalem in 701 BC 2002) argued very strongly that the normal interpretation of the passage in the Old Testament pertaining to “The Deliverance of Jerusalem” was due to a plague is simply wrong.

Between them, messrs. Winning (Manual of Comparative Philology 1838); Brunton (Great Ones of Ancient Egypt 1929); Van Sertima (in African Presence in Early Europe ed. Ivan Van Sertima 1985 & 2000); Brooks-Bertram (in Egypt: Child of Africa ed. Van Sertima 2002); Aubin (ib.), etc, cover most of the points allowing us to go further with this.

Much of Winifred Brunton’s (ib.) artwork as to chocolate-boxy but Henri Frankfort wrote the text relating to Taharka. Frankfort was one of the great names of Near Eastern studies over much of the 20^th c. He described ferocious battles between Kusho/Egyptian and Assyrian armies in Egypt decimating the Assyrian troops in Egypt but eventually, Taharquo was defeated and retreated into his homeland.

What is to be especially noted is that this should remove any notions of wretched and/or cowardly Africans from Kush. Aubin (ib.) cites an interesting list compiled by Strabo (1^st c. BCE) of “Madys the Scythian, Tearco the Ethiopian, Cobus the Treran, Sesostris and Psammeticus of Egypt, Cyrus plus Xerxes of Persia. What Strabo they had in common was that all were famous generals but that their achievements had now been forgotten.

Having seen that Kush, Nubia plus Ethiopia are frequent ancient synonyms, there is the mention of the swift-plying reed-boats from Kush/Ethiopia and Israel. There is also the comparison to be made of the Egyptian reed-boats on the Nile made by Eratosthenes (ca. 250 BCE Greek) with those on the Indian Ocean. The same type of sea-craft built of papyrus-reeds taken by Thor Heyerdahl (The Ra Voyages 1971) on to and across the Atlantic Ocean.

We saw command of the Syro/Palestine coast was essential for successful control of Syro/Palestine. This included “The Way of the Sea” having a continuing importance shown by Aubin (ib.) noting it under Kushite control. This not only brought cedars of Lebanon to Kush but also a weight-system from Kushite-ruled Egypt is known in southern Syro/Palestine. Not for nothing can Peggy Brooks-Bertram (ib.) cite Bruce Trigger and Daniel Luckenbill stating Kushite kings so impressed rulers in Cyprus and Crete that they became allies.

William Winning (ib.) touched on how he thought this affected the Etruscans in north Italy. It has long been thought a combination of Post-Villanovans plus the Tyrrhenians having come by sea led to those the Greeks called the Etruscans. Winning also drew attention to Polybius (ca. 150 BCE Greek) saying there were Blacks living on the banks of the Eridanus. The Eridanus is firmly identified the River Po in north Italy by such as Peter Beresford Ellis (The Druids 1994). This fits with both stories of blacks at Ulcinj (Albania) plus the African Taharquo held by Winning (ib.) to be the Tarchu or Tarchon of the Etruscans.

This shows Winning (ib.) evidently believed Taharquo was among those leading the Etruscans that Herodotus says came to Italy by sea. Winning (ib.) also believed Taharquo went on to name the Iberian or Spanish port of Tarragona. The similarity of Tarragona and the variant of Taharquo seen as Tarraco are immediately seen. According to such as Strabo (1^st c. BCE Greek), Procopius (6^th c. CE Greek), Makkary (16^th/17^th Algerian), etc Taharquo launched successful invasions of Iberia. Van Sertima (ib.) held Taharquo is to be identified with the Batrikus of Makkary’s account. On the model of the Latin patricius (= leader/noble) becoming such as Patrick (4^th c. Brit.), this is entirely possible.

We saw Taharquo in an elite group but successful activities in Iberia puts him in an even more select band, namely Sesostris of Egypt, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, Hercules of Greece, etc. They were all regarded in antiquity as having undertaken successful activities in Iberia. This was as part of the type of sea-borne /amphibious attacks already seen on the Mediterranean.

Harry Bourne (rewritten 2010)