The ancient Egyptians tended to consider both their immediate and
more
remote neighbours either as excellent sources of luxury trade items and
slaves, at times of political power and strength, or as uncivilized forces
threatening to destroy and overwhelm the Egyptian Nile Valley. This was
true not only of cultures within Africa; those in the Aegean, the Levant,
Cyprus and Mesopotamia also were viewed from one or the other perspective,
occasionally both at the same time. All these, together with Nubia and
Libya,
have received much scholarly attention and, whilst we probably will never
fully understand their ancient relationship to Egypt, we have a fairly
good
idea, ‘hearing’ the story from both sides when surviving evidence
allows,
what their attitudes towards each other were at various times in their
history.This article deals with what is surely the least investigated aspect
of
ancient Egyptian relations with its neighbours, simply because we know
comparatively little about the two major successive cultures concerned
–
Punt and Aksum – in the ancient world.
The island town of Suakin (Ott. Sevvakin) was one of the major Red Sea ports and, for a short period, the capital of the Ottoman eyelet of Habes. It lies 60 kilometres south of present-day Port Sudan, and has recently been the subject of a Sudanese-British collaborative archaeological project focusing on three main areas of research: archaeological study of the development of the settlement, architectural study of the ruins, and the future protection of the place as a cultural site. This chapter summarises the aspects of the project reflecting Suakin's Ottoman history. The study identifies material confirming the activities that led to this prosperity, namely trade. The archaeological evidence recovered in the recent excavations does support the existence of a wide-ranging trade network into which Suakin was linked from the earlier Ottoman period, covering neighbouring areas but also extending to east and south-east Asia.
The Islarnicperiod is the least studied in Nubian archaeology and its ceramics the least understood, although this is beginning to change with an increasing interest in study of the period in the Sudan its& Ertually no excavation orpublication ofpost-Christian sites hasyet been conducted, nor any publication ofpost-Christian ceramics even for the usualputpose of dating the site and its limited stratigraphhy. No hlamicpottery deveLopment-forms,fabrics, decoration, orgeogaphical distribution anddelimitation -has been considered. John Alexander? major$cw of interest has always been the Ishmicpm'od, ofin in defiance ofmajority scholarh$cus on earlierpm'od, and itseemjtting that this very tentative introduction to the hhmicpottery recovered in the upper halfof the Third and Fourth Cataracts, during the Southern Dongola Reach Survey in 1997-2000, should be directed toward apublication in his honour.
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