Where did the Ancient Egyptians come from?
As often as not, attempts to provide an answer have been scuppered by the large gaps that invariably appear in the jigsaw. Unperturbed, enthusiastic and armed with fresh insight, Toby Wilkinson becomes the latest in a long line of archaeologists, scholars and adventurers to attempt to answer it, and to do so, he whisks the reader away to the inhospitable sands of that country’s Eastern Desert. Early on, Wilkinson acknowledges his debts to men like Hans Winkler and David Rohl and the pioneering work they carried out respectively during the 1930s and 1990s. He retraced their steps himself in December 2000, seeking out the 6,000-year-old rock art that might well be the precursor to the classic Egyptian art familiar to so many of us. During the expedition he was delighted to come across some 30 sites containing previously undiscovered examples of these pictures, known as petroglyphs, and the stunning colour plates that illustrate this book show some of these in all their glory. The images
” or “What race were the Ancient Egyptians?” have already been given centuries ago, by the Ancient Egyptians themselves. It isn’t a surprise, however, that such relevant information on Ancient Egypt by the Ancient Egyptians themselves, is never mentioned in contemporary books about Ancient Egypt (1). Queen Hatshepsut ruled Egypt from ca. 1503 to 1480 B.C. In contrast to the warlike temper of her dynasty, she devoted herself to administration and the encouragement of commerce. In the summer of 1493 B.C., she sent a fleet of five ships with thirty rowers each from Kosseir, on the Red Sea, to the Land of Punt, near present-day Somalia. It was primarily a trading expedition, for Punt, or God’s Land, produced myrrh, frankincense, and fragrant ointments that the Egyptians used for religious purposes and cosmetics (3). LOCATED IN THE HORN OF AFRICA, adjacent to the Arabian Peninsula, Somalia is steeped in thousands of years of history. The ancient Egyptians spoke of it as “Gods Land” (the Lan
