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From the Green Sahara to Kushite Pharaohs
The topic
Egyptologists have for a long time seen Egypt as isolated along the Nile and a “civilizing” force that drove developments in Nubia. But the archaeological evidence for the “green Sahara” (c. 12,000-3500 BCE) has led to an increasing realization that ancient Nubia and Egypt have common origins.
Those two great African traditions, Nubian and Egyptian, began to differentiate with the formation of the pharaonic and early Kushite states as the rains marched southward into the Sahel, but Nubians and Egyptians remained in constant contact, sometimes as rivals, sometimes as partners or allies.
The entanglements and mutual influence deepened during the Egypt’s New Kingdom empire, and in its aftermath with the rise of the Kushite dynasty.
This presentation will discuss the changing picture of Nubian and Egyptian origins and long history of intercultural exchange using new evidence from archaeological work at Tombos and other sites at the third and fourth cataracts.
Email us at arce.dc.news at gmail dot com for a link to register for this event.
Hathor lotus figurine
The speaker
Dr. Tyson Smith is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Smith’s research centers on the civilizations of ancient Egypt and Nubia, with a theoretical focus on the social and ethnic dynamics of colonial encounters and the origins of the Napatan Kushite state, whose rulers became Pharaohs of Egypt’s 25th Dynasty.
He has participated in and led archeological expeditions to Egypt, and since 1997 to Sudanese Nubia, where he co-directs the UCSB-Purdue University Tombos expedition to the third cataract of the Nile with bioarchaeologist Michele Buzon and professor Mohamed Faroug Ali of Africa International University, Khartoum.
In addition to fieldwork, he is also engaged in a long-term study and write-up of the UCLA excavations conducted by the late Alexander Badawy at the fortress of Askut in Sudanese Nubia.
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