Istwa Nou

The borrowings can be listed. Egyptian ds, a jar, comes from early Nilo-Saharan DoS, a water pot, which fits what the pottery evidence already showed about where the styles came from. Egyptian s3, a cattle byre, comes from proto-Eastern Sahelian sar. Egyptian mrw, bulls, and mry, a fighting bull, come from proto-Sahelian mawr, an ox. Egyptian pg3, a wooden bowl or trough, comes from proto-Eastern Sahelian pookur. Egyptian bd, watermelon, and bddw, a bed of melons, come from proto-Eastern Sahelian bod. Egyptian t3, beer, comes from proto-Eastern Sahelian ter. Take the list together and it covers the pot that held the water, the shed that held the cattle, the animal that stood for royal strength, the bowl on the floor, the fruit in the garden and the drink at the feast. A pharaoh praised as a mighty bull was being praised in vocabulary that had come downriver from the south.

Wheat and barley, originally Middle Eastern crops, reached Middle Egypt from the Levant, and every account of early Egyptian agriculture says so. During the same centuries other crops were moving north into Egypt from Sudan and the Horn of Africa. Melons, gourds, cowpeas, which are the black-eyed peas of American kitchens, and the castor-oil plant are the notable ones. That half of the traffic rarely appears in print. The evidence for both flows is equally good, so the asymmetry comes from somewhere other than the record. Civilisation arriving in Africa from the Near East is a comfortable thing to describe. African crops feeding the emerging Egyptian state is an awkward one. The linguistics settles it anyway. The Egyptian word for watermelon is a Nilo-Saharan loan, so the plant and its name came downriver together. Egyptian farming was supplied from two directions, and the southern half of the diet mattered as much as the northern half.