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THE NUBIAN SCENE 1. As Seen in the Classical Antiquity The INTRODUCTION THE NUBIAN SCENE 1. As Seen in the Classical Antiquity Now, they relate that of all people the Aithiopians were the earliest, and say that the proofs of this are clear. That they did not arrive as immi- grants but are the natives of the country and therefore rightly are called autochthonous is almost universally accepted. That those who live in the South are likely to be the first engendered by the earth is obvious to all. For as it was the heat of the sun that dried up the earth while it was still moist, at the time when everything came into being, and caused life, they say it is probable that it was the region closest to the sun that first bore animate beings. [. .] They [i.e., the Aithiopians] say that the Egyptians are settlers from among themselves and that Osiris was the leader of the settlement. They say that the whole of what is now Egypt was not a country, but sea at the time when the world was first formed. Later, however, as the Nile, when rising, carried down the mud from Aithiopia, Egypt was little by little accumulated. [. .] The customs of the Egyptians, they say, are for the most part Aithiopian, the settlers having preserved their old traditions. For to consider the kings gods, to pay great attention to funeral rites, and many other such things, are Aithiopian practices, and also the style of their statues and the form of their writing are Aithiopian (τάς τε τϖν άγαλμάτων ἰδέας καὶ τοὺς τϖν γραμμάτων τύπους Αἰθιοπικοὺς ὑπάρχειν). The quotation is from the world history (Bibliotheke) of the first cen- tury BC author Diodorus Siculus (2.1, 3.1–4).1 Diodorus made use of 1 FHN II No. 142, trans. T. Eide.—In his paper on the Nubia-image of the Classical sources, S.M. Burstein also discusses the role played by the primacy of Aithiopian cul- ture as it occurs in Diodorus’s work in the attempts made recently in the USA at the establishment of an “Afrocentric curriculum” in the public schools: Burstein 1995b 29 f. For the background of Afrocentrism, cf. Cheikh A. Diop: Antériorité des civilisa- tions nègres. Paris 1967; M. Bernal: Black Athena 1. The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785–1985. New Brunswick 1987; id.: Black Athena 2. The Archaeological and Docu- mentary Evidence. New Brunswick 1991. Ironically, the Nubian evidence is missing from the argumentation of Bernal and other, more amateurish and still more preju- diced and/or extremist “Afrocentric” authors, cf. M.R. Lefkowitz – G.M. Rogers (eds): Black Athena Revisited. Chapel Hill – London 1996; M. Lefkowitz: Not Out of Africa. How Afrocentrism Became An Excuse to Teach Myth As History. New York 1996. 2 introduction several earlier historical and geographical writings. His description of the kingdom of Meroe derives from the lost On Affairs in Asia of the second century BC Agatharchides of Cnidus2 through the mediation of the first century BC geographical writer Artemidorus of Ephesus.3 Agatharchides had close contacts with members of the court of Ptolemy VI and seems to have had access to the royal archives in Alexandria as well. His work is considered of original value.4 As to the original information included in his discourse on Aithiopia, Diodorus makes the following remark: Agatharchides of Cnidus [. .] in Book 2 of his history of Asia, and the geographical writer Artemidorus of Ephesus in his Book 8, and some others settled in Egypt have investigated most of what I have written [. .] and have hit the mark in almost everything. For I have also myself talked to many of the priests during the time I visited Egypt,5 and came into conversation with not a few representatives6 who were present there from Aithiopia.7 Referring to a remark of Diodorus concerning his sources, viz., that “[t]he Aithiopians also relate many other things about their antiquity and their settlement of Egypt, about which there is no pressing need to write”,8 Stanley Burstein suggests that “Diodorus, or probably the source in which he found this passage and the accompanying citation of conversations with Athiopian ambassadors, claimed to be quoting the views of Aithiopians in discussing the colonization of Egypt from Nubia”.9 As transmitted by Diodorus, Agatharchides’s discourse starts with the statement that the Aithiopian dwellers of the Middle Nile Region south of Egypt were an autochthonous people, and it continues with the explanation of this fact by their closeness to the Sun. Ever since 2 W. Aly: Strabon von Amasia. Untersuchungen über Text, Aufbau und Quellen der Geographika. Bonn 1957 73 f.; J. Desanges: Diodore de Sicile et les éthiopiens d’Occident. CRAIBL 1993 525–541; cf. A. Dihle: Die Griechen und die Fremden. München 1994 86 ff. 3 Burstein 1989 22. 4 On Agatharchides, see Burstein 1989. 5 For the problems connected to the Egyptian priestly sources of the Greek writers, cf. J. Tait: The Wisdom of Egypt: Classical Views. in: P. Ucko – T. Champion (eds): The Wisdom of Egypt: Changing Visions Through the Ages.London 2003 23–37 29 ff. 6 The term πρεσβευτής used here is the word for ambassador, but it may also mean commercial agents, see T. Eide in FHN II 706 note 344. 7 Diodorus 3.11.2–3, FHN II No. 167, trans. T. Eide. 8 Diodorus 3.3.7, FHN II No. 142, trans. T. Eide. 9 Burstein 1995b 36..
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