c. 3600 BC The Upper Egypt - The White House

(((Prehistoric Egypt is also known as predynastic Egypt. The kingdom of Upper Egypt was then formed along the Nile's downstream flow into Africa before and after Aswan, and was a unification of many small & medium sized cities. The kingdom was symbolized by the term - the White House -. During his reign in Upper Egypt, King Narmer defeated his enemies on the delta and became sole ruler of the two lands of Upper and Lower Egypt, a sovereignty which endured throughout Dynastic Egypt.)))

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Upper Egypt (Arabic: صعيد مصر Ṣaʿīd Miṣr, shortened to الصعيد, Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [es.sˤe.ˈʕiːd], locally: [es.sˤɑ.ˈʕiːd]) is the southern portion of Egypt and is composed of the Nile River valley south of the delta and the 30th parallel North. It thus starts at Beni Suef and stretches down to Lake Nasser (formed by the Aswan High Dam).[1]

Name

In ancient Egypt, Upper Egypt was known as tꜣ šmꜣw,[2] literally "the Land of Reeds" or "the Sedgeland", named for the sedges that grow there.[3]

In Arabic, the region is called Sa'id or Sahid, from صعيد meaning "uplands", from the root صعد meaning to go up, ascend, or rise. Inhabitants of Upper Egypt are known as Sa'idis and they generally speak Sa'idi Egyptian Arabic.

In Biblical Hebrew it was known as פַּתְרוֹס‎ Paṯrôs and in Akkadian it was known as Patúrisi.[4] Both names originate from the Egyptian pꜣ-tꜣ-rsj, meaning "the southern land".[5]

Geography

Main articles: Northeast Africa, Lower Nubia, North Africa, and Nile

Upper Egypt is between the Cataracts of the Nile beyond modern-day Aswan, downriver (northward) to the area of El-Ayait,[6] which places modern-day Cairo in Lower Egypt. The northern (downriver) part of Upper Egypt, between Sohag and El-Ayait, is also known as Middle Egypt.

History

Upper Egypt
Hedjet
Capital Thinis
Common languages Ancient Egyptian
Religion Ancient Egyptian religion
Government Monarchy
King• c. 3400 BC Scorpion I (first)
• c. 3150 BC Narmer (last)
Preceded by Succeeded by
Prehistoric Egypt
Early Dynastic Period (Egypt)
Today part of Egypt

It is believed to have been united by the rulers of the supposed Thinite Confederacy who absorbed their rival city states during the Naqada III period (c. 3200–3000 BC), and its subsequent unification with Lower Egypt ushered in the Early Dynastic period.[7] Upper and Lower Egypt became intertwined in the symbolism of pharaonic sovereignty such as the Pschent double crown.[8] Upper Egypt remained as a historical region even after the classical period.

Predynastic Egypt

The main city of prehistoric Upper Egypt was Nekhen.[9] The patron deity was the goddess Nekhbet, depicted as a vulture.[10]

By approximately 3600 BC, Neolithic Egyptian societies along the Nile based their culture on the raising of crops and the domestication of animals.[11] Shortly thereafter, Egypt began to grow and increase in complexity.[12] A new and distinctive pottery appeared, related to the Levantine ceramics, and copper implements and ornaments became common.[12] Mesopotamian building techniques became popular, using sun-dried adobe bricks in arches and decorative recessed walls.[12]

These cultural advances paralleled the political unification of towns of the upper Nile River, or Upper Egypt, while the same occurred in the societies of the Nile Delta, or Lower Egypt.[12] This led to warfare between the two new kingdoms.[12] During his reign in Upper Egypt, King Narmer defeated his enemies on the delta and became sole ruler of the two lands of Upper and Lower Egypt,[13] a sovereignty which endured throughout Dynastic Egypt.

Dynastic Egypt

In royal symbolism, Upper Egypt was represented by the tall White Crown Hedjet, the flowering lotus, and the sedge. Its patron deity, Nekhbet, was depicted by the vulture. After unification, the patron deities of Upper and Lower Egypt were represented together as the Two Ladies, to protect all of the ancient Egyptians, just as the two crowns were combined into a single pharaonic diadem.

For most of Egypt's ancient history, Thebes was the administrative center of Upper Egypt. After its devastation by the Assyrians, the importance of Egypt declined. Under the dynasty of the Ptolemies, Ptolemais Hermiou took over the role of the capital city of Upper Egypt.[14]

Medieval Egypt

In the eleventh century, large numbers of pastoralists, known as Hilalians, fled Upper Egypt and moved westward into Libya and as far as Tunis.[15] It is believed that degraded grazing conditions in Upper Egypt, associated with the beginning of the Medieval Warm Period, were the root cause of the migration.[16]

20th-century Egypt

In the twentieth-century Egypt, the title Prince of the Sa'id (meaning Prince of Upper Egypt) was used by the heir apparent to the Egyptian throne.[Note 1]

Although the Kingdom of Egypt was abolished after the Egyptian revolution of 1952, the title continues to be used by Muhammad Ali, Prince of the Sa'id.

Peopling of upper Egypt.

In Upper Egypt, the predynastic Badari culture was followed by the Naqada culture (Amratian),[18] being closely related to the Lower Nubian;[19][20][21][22] with some affinities with other northeast African populations,[23] coastal communities from the Maghreb,[24][25] some tropical African groups,[26] and possibly inhabitants of the Middle East.[27]

Mainstream scholars have situated the ethnicity and the origins of predynastic, southern Egypt as a foundational community primarily in northeast Africa which included the Sudan, tropical Africa and the Sahara whilst recognising the population variability that became characteristic of the pharaonic period.[28][29][30][31] Pharaonic Egypt featured a physical gradation across the regional populations, with Upper Egyptians having shared more biological affinities with Sudanese and southernly African populations, whereas Lower Egyptians had closer genetic links with Levantine and Mediterranean populations.[32][33][34].

References

Citations

1. "Upper Egypt". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 5 January 2023.
2. Ermann & Grapow 1982, Wb 5, 227.4-14.
3. Ermann & Grapow (1982), Wb 4, 477.9-11
4. Leichty, Erle (2011). The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680-669 BC) (PDF). Vol. 4. Eisenbrauns. p. 135. doi:10.1515/9781575066462. ISBN 978-1-57506-646-2. JSTOR 10.5325/j.ctv1bxh5jz: pa-tú-ri-si.
5. אחיטוב, שמואל (2003). "ירמיהו במצרים" [Jeremiah in Egypt]. Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies. 27: 36. JSTOR 23629799.
6. See list of nomes. Maten (Knife land) is the northernmost nome in Upper Egypt on the right bank, while Atef-Pehu (Northern Sycamore land) is the northernmost on the left bank. Brugsch, Heinrich Karl (2015). A History of Egypt under the Pharaohs. Vol. 1. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 487., originally published in 1876 in German.
7. Brink, Edwin C. M. van den (1992). "The Nile Delta in Transition: 4th.-3rd. Millennium B.C." Proceedings of the Seminar Held in Cairo, 21.-24. October 1990, at the Netherlands Institute of Archaeology and Arabic Studies. E.C.M. van den Brink. ISBN 978-965-221-015-9.
8. Griffith, Francis Llewellyn, A Collection of Hieroglyphs: A Contribution to the History of Egyptian Writing, the Egypt Exploration Fund 1898, p. 56
9. Bard & Shubert (1999), p. 371
10. David (1975), p. 149
11. Roebuck (1966), p. 51
12. Roebuck (1966), pp. 52–53
13. Roebuck (1966), p. 53
14. Chauveau (2000), p. 68
15. Ballais (2000), p. 133
16. Ballais (2000), p. 134
17. Brice (1981), p. 299
18. Brace, 1993. Clines and clusters
19. Zakrzewski, Sonia R. (April 2007). "Population continuity or population change: Formation of the ancient Egyptian state". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 132 (4): 501–509. Bibcode:2007AJPA..132..501Z. doi:10.1002/ajpa.20569. PMID 17295300. When Mahalanobis D2 was used, the Naqadan and Badarian Predynastic samples exhibited more similarity to Nubian, Tigrean, and some more southern series than to some mid- to late Dynasticseries from northern Egypt (Mukherjee et al., 1955). The Badarian have been found to be very similar to a Kerma sample (Kushite Sudanese), using both the Penrose statistic (Nutter, 1958) and DFA of males alone (Keita,1990). Furthermore, Keita considered that Badarian males had a southern modal phenotype, and that together with a Naqada sample, they formed a southern Egyptian cluster as tropical variants together with a sample from Kerma
20. Tracy L. Prowse, Nancy C. Lovell. "Concordance of cranial and dental morphological traits and evidence for endogamy in ancient Egypt", American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Vol. 101, Issue 2, October 1996, pp. 237-246
21. Godde, Kane. "A biological perspective of the relationship between Egypt, Nubia, and the Near East during the Predynastic period (2020)". Retrieved 16 March 2022.
22. Mokhtar, Gamal, ed. (1981). Ancient Civilizations of Africa. UNESCO International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa; Heinemann Educational Books; University of California Press. pp. 20–21, 148. ISBN 978-0-520-03913-1. The difference in behaviour between two populations of similar ethnic composition throws significant light on an apparently abnormal fact: one of them adopted and perhaps even invented, a system of writing, while the other, which was aware of that writing, disdained it
23. Ehret, Christopher (20 June 2023). Ancient Africa: A Global History, to 300 CE. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 84–85. ISBN 978-0-691-24409-9.
24. Keita, S. O. Y. (September 1990). "Studies of ancient crania from northern Africa". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 83 (1): 35–48. Bibcode:1990AJPA...83...35K. doi:10.1002/ajpa.1330830105. ISSN 0002-9483. PMID 2221029.
25. Strohaul, Eugene. "Anthropology of the Egyptian Nubian Men - Strouhal - 2007 - ANTHROPOLOGIE" (PDF). Puvodni.MZM.cz: 115.
26. Keita, S. O. Y. (November 2005). "Early Nile Valley Farmers From El-Badari: Aboriginals or 'European' AgroNostratic Immigrants? Craniometric Affinities Considered with Other Data". Journal of Black Studies. 36 (2): 191–208. doi:10.1177/0021934704265912. ISSN 0021-9347. S2CID 144482802.
27. Keita, Shomarka. "Analysis of Naqada Predynastic Crania: a brief report (1996)" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2022-12-05. Retrieved 2022-02-22.
28. "There is now a sufficient body of evidence from modern studies of skeletal remains to indicate that the ancient Egyptians, especially southern Egyptians, exhibited physical characteristics that are within the range of variation for ancient and modern indigenous peoples of the Sahara and tropical Africa. The distribution of population characteristics seems to follow a clinal pattern from south to north, which may be explained by natural selection as well as gene flow between neighboring populations. In general, the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and Nubia had the greatest biological affinity to people of the Sahara and more southerly areas."Lovell, Nancy C. (1999). "Egyptians, physical anthropology of". In Bard, Kathryn A.; Shubert, Steven Blake (eds.). Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. London: Routledge. pp. 328–331. ISBN 0415185890.
29. "The data clearly suggests that the population in southern Egypt became more diverse as the society more complex (Keita 1992). Egyptian society seems never to have been "closed", and it is hard to believe that the modal phenotype could have remain unchanged, especially if social and sexual collection were operating. However, it is important to emphasize that, while the biology changed with increasing local social complexity, the ethnicity of Niloto-Saharo-Sudanese origins did not change. The cultural morays, ritual formulae, and symbols used in writing, as far as can be ascertained, remained true to their southern origins".Keita, S. O. Y. (1993). "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships". History in Africa. 20: 129–154. doi:10.2307/3171969. ISSN 0361-5413. JSTOR 3171969. S2CID 162330365.
30. p.85–"The physical anthropological findings from the major burial sites of those founding locales of ancient Egypt in the millennium BCE, notably El-Badari as well as Naqada, show no demographic indebtedness to the Levant. They reveal instead a population with cranial and dental features with closest parallels of those of other longtime populations of the surrounding areas of northeastern Africa, such as Nubia and the northern Horn of Africa. Members of this population did not come from somewhere else but were descendants of the long-term inhabitants of these portions of Africa going back many millennia."Ehret, Christopher (20 June 2023). Ancient Africa: A Global History, to 300 CE. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 83–86, 97, 167–169. ISBN 978-0-691-24409-9. Archived from the original on 22 March 2023. Retrieved 20 March 2023.
31. p.355 - "The importance of iconographic sources was emphasized in the main. Säve-Söderbergh and Leclant stressed that the links indicated by cave paintings between the vast expanses of the Sahara and the banks of the Nile nodded to a migration of peoples of the Sahara and groups from the South to the valley –something confirmed by research over the last thirty years. Diop set out to return Egypt to its southern African hinterland by systematically using Pharaonic statues and art to support his point of view. Although a debate on the north-south orientation of a 'civilizing' wave of peoples in the valley had prevailed up to that point, the avalanche of new data now made this idea redundant, suggesting instead the image of a growing and unifying political movement in the valley from south to north that repositioned its starting point back in time: in Upper Egypt, digs at the Uj tomb of King Scorpion at the Abydos necropolis push back the origin of the first Horus back to circa 3250 BCE, and the resumption of excavations at Nekhen led to the exhumation of the famous 'Elephant Kings' of Hierakonpolis (Nekhen) which have no inscriptions and date back even further to circa 3700 BCE."
    p.356 - "It quantified the key impact of sub-Saharan populations and found a clear link between the Siwi and the peoples of North-East Africa. We could continue with work by Zakrzewski on the predynastic population of Nekhen, investigations by Crubezy which traced the boundaries of the ancient Khoisan settlement to Upper Egypt, where its faint traces remain identifiable, and Keita's work, as the most groundbreaking."'
    p.356 - "Hence the work by Cerny's team highlighting the close links between the peoples of Upper Egypt, North Cameroon and Ethiopia – the Cameroon people living in the Mandara mountains speaking Chadic languages, and the Ethiopians speaking Kushitic languages, prior to Ge'ez being spread throughout the region during the Aksumite period. This broadens the linguistic debate to include language families that had been little studied or used in comparisons that have long focused on the East." Anselin, Alain. "Review of Ancient Civilizations of Africa: General History of Africa Volume II " in (General history of Africa, IX: General history of Africa revisited. pp. 355–75.
32. Zakrzewski, Sonia R. (April 2007). "Population continuity or population change: Formation of the ancient Egyptian state". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 132 (4): 501–509. Bibcode:2007AJPA..132..501Z. doi:10.1002/ajpa.20569. PMID 17295300. When Mahalanobis D2 was used, the Naqadan and Badarian Predynastic samples exhibited more similarity to Nubian, Tigrean, and some more southern series than to some mid- to late Dynasticseries from northern Egypt (Mukherjee et al., 1955). The Badarian have been found to be very similar to a Kerma sample (Kushite Sudanese), using both the Penrose statistic (Nutter, 1958) and DFA of males alone (Keita,1990). Furthermore, Keita considered that Badarian males had a southern modal phenotype, and that together with a Naqada sample, they formed a southern Egyptian cluster as tropical variants together with a sample from Kerma
33. "Southern Egypt and Nubia are geographically co-extensive, with populations grading into each other. The absorption of Qustul's people would have reinforced this. There is biological overlap of these populations in origin, but ongoing admixture is also apparent."Keita, S. O. Y. (September 2022). "Ideas about "Race" in Nile Valley Histories: A Consideration of "Racial" Paradigms in Recent Presentations on Nile Valley Africa, from "Black Pharaohs" to Mummy Genomest". Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections.
34. Hassan, Fekri (20 May 2021). "The African Dimension of Egyptian Origins (May 2021)".

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