UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

Ancient Civilizations of Africa
immigrations from various peripheries, except in some difficult times of
intensified pressure by foreign peoples. To the west, but also to the south,
people related to one another in varying degrees were either kept within
their habitat by Egyptian frontier fortifications or were regarded as available
at will to the valley to provide food or men for its defence. Save for this
feeling of Egyptian particularity, which may have been characteristic only
of the upper classes of society and which developed gradually, it is hard to
know how the Egyptians behaved towards their immediate neighbours. The
latter - like all the other peoples with whom the Egyptians came into
contact - were regarded as obliged as a matter of course to make their
contribution in men and riches to Pharaonic civilization. Tribute, from the
outset, was one of the signs of submission of Egypt's neighbours, and nonpayment
was followed by punitive expeditions. However, the attitude of the
neighbours was not resigned and passive all the time. Egypt was not always
able to dictate to them and her relations with Africa varied with the
centuries.
Western neighbours: Saharans and Libyans 7
It is generally agreed that in the predynastic period frequent human
exchanges with the Sahara declined. Very little is known about these
exchanges and it is sometimes claimed that they did not exist. 8 In the
dynastic period it is certain that Egypt exerted an influence on the Sahara,
although again very little is known about it. 9
In fact, for the Egyptians, according to the latest research, the Saharans
during the dynastic period were mainly the Libyans who had gradually
concentrated in the north of one of the most vast and inhospitable deserts
in the world. The situation was different in the Neolithic period when the
rapid spread of the desert, which increased during the dynastic period,
forced the Libyans, shepherds and hunters, back to the periphery of their
former habitat, or led them, starving, to knock at the door of the
Nilotic paradise which had to be defended against them. Their pressure
continued unremittingly but was seldom crowned with success, except
perhaps in the western part of the Delta where the Saharan population
7. I would here express my thanks to Professor T. Gostynsky, the author of a monograph
on ancient Libya which he kindly communicated to Unesco to facilitate the drafting
of this chapter. I have drawn on it several times.
8. InseveralpassagesoftheFíHa/Af/>0r/oftheCairoSyrnposium(i974). Oneofthemost
promising current investigations is based on rock engravings and paintings 'from the
Atlantic to the Red Sea'. Although apparently concerning the prehistoric era in particular,
this study contains a wealth of precise data.
9. H.-J.Hugot, 1976, p. 73. However, note the warning (p. 82) against the hasty conclusions
of those who, for example, detect in certain themes of Saharan rock paintings (ram with sun
discs, sorcerers with zoomorphic masks, etc.) traces of an eighteenth-dynasty influence. He
says: 'This means working over-hastily and too easily overlooking the manner of applying
the scientific proof required for the validity of a hypothesis.'
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