Lost in the Sand

The old saying goes, "You don't know what you don't know..." And when it comes to the ancient Kush of the Southern Nile river valley, what you don't know is quite a bit. I've scoured numerous sources, other blogs, newspaper articles, books, you name it, and I've found that the common theme with their take on this once powerful political force, is how much is left to be discovered.  Here's a video that helped me gain a better understanding of this than getting lost in the text of dozens of written articles. (At least for me, an example of an advantage of oral communication over written forms)

Especially with regards to their language... Which no one can decipher. This makes not only understanding their culture through records incredibly difficult, but makes credible information on their oral traditions nearly impossible to find. I wasn't even able to find an example of the closest descendant of the Kush language, Nobiin, which is spoken sporadically in parts of the Sudan today. We do however have record that the Coptic (click the link to hear an example) language of the Egyptians came into everyday practice for much of the Kush period because they were ruled by the Egypt through a viceroy for much of their existence. Here is a brief chronology of the Kush.

Because of this disconnect in the language of Kush, virtually all of what we know about their civilization comes from archaeological findings- which are still in their infancy.There have even been pyramids uncovered here than in Egypt (while different in style than their Egyptian counterparts, they appear to serve the same purpose). Another thing we know for certain from these archaeological endeavors is that Kush was a wealthy empire. Their main export being gold, they established an extensive trade network in the region (primarily with their rival, Egypt) that moved a wide variety of goods- even elephants.

Recent discoveries regarding Kush place it as one of the oldest civilizations in human history. It is considered by many scholars to be one of the first examples of a powerful monarchical society ever, even predating ancient Egypt. This has huge implications to the development of other civilizations across the globe, so one would think that such exciting discoveries being made on the cutting edge of history would spark boundless interest and further research into this people - but in an area like The Sudan, such discoveries are at the mercy of other pressing matters. One New York Times article I read told the story of exciting new finds or ancient Kush artifacts being made near the banks of the Nile, only to explain that the reason behind the sudden explosion in archaeological activity in the area is because the construction of the Merowe dam

would soon inundate the site. This article was written in 2007, and sure enough, the dam went up and the site is gone. The dire situation of the people of The Sudan doesn't exactly afford the luxury of saving the remains of one of the cradles of civilization; the research efforts have mostly come to a halt in more recent years due to a lack of funding and good dig sites. Even the conversation online has dried up. I couldn't find a (coherent) blog post written about the Kush later than four years ago. We can only hope that the situation surrounding this important den of discovery improves so that the conversation regarding the Kush may grow and expand for generations to come, but in the mean time we can still keep the discussion going. Do you believe it is necessary to have translated language, like text or a living oral language, (as was not present in the case of the Kush) to fully understand a civilization? What do you think might be lost in the absence of this connection?