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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2004-04 > 1081876502


From: "Chris Bennett" <>
Subject: Re: POSSIBLE GATEWAY: FROM AFRICA TO EUROPE
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:15:04 GMT
References: <c57e4f24.0403141731.5b931209@posting.google.com> <00f601c40aee$508f9da0$9b0d0043@hppav> <010401c40af0$dd3b5b20$9b0d0043@hppav> <7004aa4b.0403161328.2409e930@posting.google.com> <40582A2C.1070409@interfold.com> <7004aa4b.0403171315.e1450fe@posting.google.com> <40591FC1.6080000@interfold.com> <ac1a3786.0404051920.56e6a1f6@posting.google.com> <0Lzcc.47119$Hg2.43344@newssvr25.news.prodigy.com> <ac1a3786.0404130833.536f5b8c@posting.google.com>


"Jared Linn Olar" <> wrote in message
news:...
> "Chris Bennett" <> wrote in message
news:<0Lzcc.47119$>...
> > Unfortunately, the version of the kinglist that this comes from is
reported
> > by a career British diplomat who obtained it by making a request to the
> > government of Ras Tafari (later Haile Selassie I). It's provenance is
> > otherwise unknown. Given the date and circumstance, it probably
represents
> > the best of Ethiopian scholarship of the 1920s, which no doubt drew in
turn
> > on the latest European scholarship available to it. In other words, its
> > useless.
>
> I suppose you're referring to the kinglist in C. F. Rey's "In the
> Country of the Blue Nile" (1927)? Because that's the one I mean.

Yes, that's the one. I first came across this because someone was arguing
that it contained references to D21 High Priests of Amun.

> Since I don't know when European scholars discovered the Nubian kings
> Kashta and Piye/Piankhiy, I couldn't say whether Rey's kinglist was
> contaminated by European scholars.

About the mid 19th century. Rey's account of how he got this list certainly
suggests it was written up for him in the 1920s, and its surely likely that
an educated Ethiopian historian would have been aware of European research
into Nubian history.

<snip>

> So, this kinglist of Rey's is different from earlier versions of the
> Ethiopian kinglist, with the Nubian kings having been shown to be
> interpolations?

I don't know, I'm not an Ethiopian specialist. But you're putting the
burden of proof in the wrong place. In order to claim that this list is an
independent tradition, it really would be necessary to show the presence of
such names in Ethiopian kinglists which antedate the discovery of these
Nubian kings. Its quite possible that the Ethipioans were aware of these
discoveries very early. One of the hostages held by the emperor Theodore at
the time of the British invasion of 1868(?) was Hormuz Rassam, an
Assyriologist who was certainly aware of the name "Urdamane".

Chris


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