A Nomadic State? The ‘Blemmyean-Beja’ Polity of the Ancient Eastern Desert
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8978183 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Julien Cooper (0000-0002-8621-9315, Beijing Normal University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 61 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 383-407 |
| Publication date | 2020-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of African History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0021853720000602 |
| OpenAlex | W3128687922 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 18 |
| References cited | 12 |
Ancient nomadic peoples in Northeast Africa, being in the shadow of urban regimes of Egypt, Kush, and Aksum as well as the Graeco-Roman and Arab worlds, have been generally relegated to the historiographical model of the frontier ‘barbarian’. In this view, little political importance is attached to indigenous political organisation, with desert nomads being considered an amorphous mass of unsettled people beyond the frontiers of established states. However, in the Eastern Desert of Sudan and Egypt, a pastoralist nomadic people ancestrally related to the modern Beja dominated the deserts for millennia. Though generally considered as a group of politically divided tribes sharing only language and a pastoralist economy, ancient Beja society and its elites created complex political arrangements in their desert. When Egyptian, Greek, Coptic, and Arab sources are combined and analysed, it is evident that nomads formed a large confederate ‘nomadic state’ throughout late antiquity and the early medieval period — a vital cog in the political engine of Northeast Africa
Ancient history · Archaeology · Desert (philosophy · Ethnology · Geography · Indigenous · Pastoralism · Political science · Politics · Polity · State (computer science · State formation · African history and culture analysis · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History · Law
Ritual Patterns and Material Practice
Between the Nile and the Red Sea
Beyond the Nile
Petrogliphs of Umm-Agaib (Hukab-Karar) recorded by the Nubian archaeological expedition of the academy of sciences of USSR. Part 1. Tribal brands
Unités et diversités des sociétés nomades au fil du temps
Berenike of Blemmyes
Wandering fig trees
Atbai Enclosure Burials
Traditions of Equality
A question of burial chronology
Egyptian Geography of the Southern Red Sea
A Multifaceted Spatial Analysis of Tomb Distribution in Blemmyan Berenike (Eastern Desert of Egypt)
Complexity Without Monumentality in Biblical Times
Rise of the Nomad Kings—Pastoral Polities in the Horn of Africa ( a.d. 650–1000)
The End of the Egyptian New Kingdom in Colonial Nubia
Pastoralists, travellers, and miners in the Atbai Desert (Sudan)
Dying in the Mines
A Falcon Shrine at the Port of Berenike (Red Sea Coast, Egypt)
Pathways to complexity
An Eighth-Century Arabic Letter to the King of Nubia
Alternative Complexities
Ein Rechnungsbuch des königlichen Hofes aus der 13. Dynastie
Meroe and the Sudanic Kingdoms
From stone to metal
A Visit to the Northern Sudan
What's in a Concept? The Kinetic Empire of the Comanches
Beyond Chiefdoms
| Unique citing works | 18 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3,6 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 18 |