ResearchGate: Beja and Cushitic Languages in Middle Egyptian Texts. Nile Cushitic is East Cushitic

[Araabi]

1.2 Nile Cushitic

"Confusing the picture for language contact with Egyptian, some linguists have also pos-tulated the existence of what is sometimes called ‘Nile Cushitic’, an extinct branch of Cushitic once spoken on the Sudanese Nile as far north as Lower Nubia and the border of Egypt. This thesis rests on a perceived Cushitic substrate in Nobiin and Nile Nubian languages, especially in regard to livestock terminology. Some ‘African’ loanwords in Egyptian texts from the Old Kingdom such as dAng ‘pygmy, dwarf’, mswq ‘type of grain’, and sAt ‘grain’ might also be attributable to this tongue – although in truth we cannot be entirely certain as to the vectors or regions from which these loanwords arrived in Egyp-tian. Based on the limited evidence, confined almost entirely to the Cushitic substrate words in Nile Nubian and some toponyms, there is no sure way of ascertaining what branch of Cushitic this ‘Nile Cushitic’ was, but the study of Bechhaus-Gerst found more afinities to the ‘Highland East Cushitic’ branch than more proximal Cushitic languages of Beja and Agaw. For now, no follow up studies have been 1) able to certainly and ac-curately identify Cushitic toponymy on the Middle Nile or 2) be certain of the geographic extent of this Cushitic language."

Source:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355939872_Beja_and_Cushitic_Languages_in_Middle_Egyptian_Texts_The_Etymologies_of_Queen_Aashayet_and_Her_Retainers

 

[Shimbiris]

I have a feeling Meroitic may very well have been Nile/East Cushitic. The few Meroitic words we have that have been deciphered are the titles of ruling elites and they appear to be Cushitic in origin. One that always spooked me—and Somali linguists like Mohamed Dirye Abdullahi noticed a long time ago—is a word for a ruler that was "Qore" like our own "Boqor". It was so uncanny when I first saw it until all this East-Cushitic substratum in Egyptian and Nobiin info came out I used to just ignore it as a strange coincidence but now...

Also, it's interesting how this possibly Cushitic Queen and her retainers are depicted somewhat more dark-skinned than the normal Egyptian motif but with the same West-Eurasianoid facial features, possibly implying they were admixed people like modern Cushites and NS speaking Nubians:

 

[Xareen]

I have a feeling Meroitic may very well have been Nile/East Cushitic. The few Meroitic words we have that have been deciphered are the titles of ruling elites and they appear to be Cushitic in origin. One that always spooked me—and Somali linguists like Mohamed Dirye Abdullahi noticed a long time ago—is a word for a ruler that was "Qore" like our own "Boqor". It was so uncanny when I first saw it until all this East-Cushitic substratum in Egyptian and Nobiin info came out I used to just ignore it as a strange coincidence but now...

Also, it's interesting how this possibly Cushitic Queen and her retainers are depicted somewhat more dark-skinned than the normal Egyptian motif but with the same West-Eurasianoid facial features, possibly implying they were admixed people like modern Cushites and NS speaking Nubians:

I very much doubt that Meroitic was Cushitic. Not because of any real scholarship done on Meroitic or anything done on the languages of Nubia, but because Cushitic substrata in Nobiin would be extend past unremarkable similarities in words pertaining to pastoralism that some (really just Rilly) have straight up chalked up to chance correspondence. If there did exist a 1st-6th-cataract-spanning Cushitic language, it would have been spoken at and fell out of favour at a much earlier date. Some of the familial terms in Meroitic compared to other NS languages is just the cherry on top.

The scholarship on Nubian languages is kinda all over the place, man. Don't get me wrong, I'm no linguist - it very well might just be a *me* issue - but if you do read some of the work on earlier scholars (Behrens, Bechaus-Gerst) it feels like you're going somewhere. Nile Cushitic seems to be real, cool.

And then you finally get around to reading the preeminent Nubio-linguist who is quoted quite literally everywhere, Claude Rilly. He's even being quoted talking Kerman osteology on Wikipedia so he must know what he's talking about. It soon dawns on you that yeah, maybe those similar words were just all coincidences - or, get this, the transmission of technology was the other way around. He uses pretty strong language and seems pretty sure of himself so it's kinda convincing. But then you realise that in critiquing the proponents of Nile Cushitic, he's doing the exact same thing he accuses them of doing (using multiple languages to increase chance of correspondence). You shrug it off, probably some context you're missing.

Then you get around to his working theory on the dissemination of this theoretical language family (Meroitic, Kerma both part of it) from their homeland in the Libyan Desert and it's... quite something. As evidence of not only this language's presence in Nubia but its antiquity in the region, he quotes a king's list from the 12th dynasty (iirc; done all of this quite a while ago and didn't exactly document my gripes) and notes how the names for Kushite kings and queens didn't have glottal stops and or pharyngeal consonants so couldn't be Afroasiatic (AA). Again, I'm no linguist mannnn, but I do know enough to see how this is super misleading.

First: glottal stops are present in the very Meroitic you're arguing is non-AA. And on pharyngeal consonants - while it's true they're super common in Afroasiatic languages, that becomes less true for Cushitic languages. Outside of Somali, Beja and Afar (maybe a few others idk) they're almost non-existent. It's to the point that people have theorised that we all adopted those sounds from proximous Semitic/Egyptian speakers. It's especially damning when argument being made for Nile Cushitic has it down as being closest to Highland East Cushitic when to my knowledge they don't have pharyngeal consonants. A strawman, almost.

I personally have this Nile Cushitic going extinct in Upper Nubia by Kerma classique, and in Lower Nubia, if ever, with Egypt's colonisation. The toponymic arguments made by Julien Cooper are hard to disagree with. Either way, with the scholarship on Nubian osteology available to us from the A-Group to the Kermans to the Meroites, they would've been genetically closest to AA-speaking East Africans. That is kinda like evidence in itself if you ask me, especially considering the ~30% Cushitic-like modern Nubians carry (closer to 50% in Kulubnarti) and the infamous Kadruka man.

What I mean to say is if it's a matter of 'claiming' Nubia on a meta-ethnicity level, yeah go ahead tbh.

 

[Shimbiris]

I very much doubt that Meroitic was Cushitic. Not because of any real scholarship done on Meroitic or anything done on the languages of Nubia, but because Cushitic substrata in Nobiin would be extend past unremarkable similarities in words pertaining to pastoralism that some (really just Rilly) have straight up chalked up to chance correspondence. If there did exist a 1st-6th-cataract-spanning Cushitic language, it would have been spoken at and fell out of favour at a much earlier date. Some of the familial terms in Meroitic compared to other NS languages is just the cherry on top.

The scholarship on Nubian languages is kinda all over the place, man. Don't get me wrong, I'm no linguist - it very well might just be a *me* issue - but if you do read some of the work on earlier scholars (Behrens, Bechaus-Gerst) it feels like you're going somewhere. Nile Cushitic seems to be real, cool.

And then you finally get around to reading the preeminent Nubio-linguist who is quoted quite literally everywhere, Claude Rilly. He's even being quoted talking Kerman osteology on Wikipedia so he must know what he's talking about. It soon dawns on you that yeah, maybe those similar words were just all coincidences - or, get this, the transmission of technology was the other way around. He uses pretty strong language and seems pretty sure of himself so it's kinda convincing. But then you realise that in critiquing the proponents of Nile Cushitic, he's doing the exact same thing he accuses them of doing (using multiple languages to increase chance of correspondence). You shrug it off, probably some context you're missing.

Then you get around to his working theory on the dissemination of this theoretical language family (Meroitic, Kerma both part of it) from their homeland in the Libyan Desert and it's... quite something. As evidence of not only this language's presence in Nubia but its antiquity in the region, he quotes a king's list from the 12th dynasty (iirc; done all of this quite a while ago and didn't exactly document my gripes) and notes how the names for Kushite kings and queens didn't have glottal stops and or pharyngeal consonants so couldn't be Afroasiatic (AA). Again, I'm no linguist mannnn, but I do know enough to see how this is super misleading.

First: glottal stops are present in the very Meroitic you're arguing is non-AA. And on pharyngeal consonants - while it's true they're super common in Afroasiatic languages, that becomes less true for Cushitic languages. Outside of Somali, Beja and Afar (maybe a few others idk) they're almost non-existent. It's to the point that people have theorised that we all adopted those sounds from proximous Semitic/Egyptian speakers. It's especially damning when argument being made for Nile Cushitic has it down as being closest to Highland East Cushitic when to my knowledge they don't have pharyngeal consonants. A strawman, almost.

I personally have this Nile Cushitic going extinct in Upper Nubia by Kerma classique, and in Lower Nubia, if ever, with Egypt's colonisation. The toponymic arguments made by Julien Cooper are hard to disagree with. Either way, with the scholarship on Nubian osteology available to us from the A-Group to the Kermans to the Meroites, they would've been genetically closest to AA-speaking East Africans. That is kinda like evidence in itself if you ask me, especially considering the ~30% Cushitic-like modern Nubians carry (closer to 50% in Kulubnarti) and the infamous Kadruka man.

What I mean to say is if it's a matter of 'claiming' Nubia on a meta-ethnicity level, yeah go ahead tbh.

I think something to consider for us Lowland East Cushites is that at least by around 200 BCE or so we were most likely already in Somaliweyn. The evidence for this being T-BY182320 with a TMRCA of 2,200ybp with that Asir sample and the fact that we have evidence of loanwords from Old South Arabian in Af-Soomaali which probably was roughly contemporaneous with this genetic South Arabian contact that likely brought things like the camel, asiatic admixture in our caprines & bovines among other things.

T-BY182320 YTree

www.yfull.com

2013 Strata in Semitic loanwords in Northern Somali

2013 Strata in Semitic loanwords in Northern Somali

www.academia.edu

Let's be generous and say LE Cushites needed at least a few hundred years before this to disperse into the Horn and diversify as well then find themselves in a deep part of it like the Somali peninsula so 500-1000 BCE? That puts EC presence in Nubia seemingly before 1000 BCE most likely but based on our E-Z813 and all the strange cultural links that date roughly to 2300-1900 BCE (even FGM) ECs were seemingly at least there after 3500 BCE and around the Kerman and C-Group periods.

But on the subject of Meroitic I think you're being a little too dismissive in that it is pretty much a completely undeciphered language and coincidentally the only deciphered words (royal titles) seem Cushitic, and not just that but appear similar to East-Cushitic? Then the language immediately following it in Upper Nubia has what looks like a HEC substratum even if this mainly manifests in livestock terminology?

 

[Xareen]

I think something to consider for us Lowland East Cushites is that at least by around 200 BCE or so we were most likely already in Somaliweyn. The evidence for this being T-BY182320 with a TMRCA of 2,200ybp with that Asir sample and the fact that we have evidence of loanwords from Old South Arabian in Af-Soomaali which probably was roughly contemporaneous with this genetic South Arabian contact that likely brought things like the camel, asiatic admixture in our caprines & bovines among other things.

T-BY182320 YTree

www.yfull.com

2013 Strata in Semitic loanwords in Northern Somali

2013 Strata in Semitic loanwords in Northern Somali

www.academia.edu

Let's be generous and say LE Cushites needed at least a few hundred years before this to disperse into the Horn and diversify as well then find themselves in a deep part of it like the Somali peninsula so 500-1000 BCE? That puts EC presence in Nubia seemingly before 1000 BCE most likely but based on our E-Z813 and all the strange cultural links that date roughly to 2300-1900 BCE (even FGM) ECs were seemingly at least there after 3500 BCE and around the Kerman and C-Group periods.

I've pretty much come to the same conclusion independently, though with NC being a separate, highly divergent branch of EC with our branch mostly being confined to the eastern periphery of Nubia. No real reason why, mostly due to as you said our E-Z813 mixed in with a little retrospective distortion.

But on the subject of Meroitic I think you're being a little too dismissive in that it is pretty much a completely undeciphered language and coincidentally the only deciphered words (royal titles) seem Cushitic, and not just that but appear similar to East-Cushitic? Then the language immediately following it in Upper Nubia has what looks like a HEC substratum even if this mainly manifests in livestock terminology?

I'll have to get back to you on this when I eventually do read up on it again but iirc familial terms in Meroitic too were deciphered and they were awful similar to the same words in other nearby NS tongues. Familial terms being, from what I've seen in Indo-European languages at least, the most resistant to change kinda drove the point home for me.

I'm not familiar with the royal titles you speak of tbh, mind sharing? And even still, it's equally likely that the NC words for royal titles were preserved instead of Meroitic itself being a Cushitic language. Maybe I am being too dismissive idk it just seems like with something spoken so recently there would be way more evidence. That Old Nubian isn't ancestral to Nobiin sure does complicate things but I wonder if there is a better studied, contemporary language replacement so that we could compare... maybe something like French and the Gaullic tongues of France idk.

 

[Midas]

I very much doubt that Meroitic was Cushitic. Not because of any real scholarship done on Meroitic or anything done on the languages of Nubia, but because Cushitic substrata in Nobiin would be extend past unremarkable similarities in words pertaining to pastoralism that some (really just Rilly) have straight up chalked up to chance correspondence. If there did exist a 1st-6th-cataract-spanning Cushitic language, it would have been spoken at and fell out of favour at a much earlier date. Some of the familial terms in Meroitic compared to other NS languages is just the cherry on top.

The scholarship on Nubian languages is kinda all over the place, man. Don't get me wrong, I'm no linguist - it very well might just be a *me* issue - but if you do read some of the work on earlier scholars (Behrens, Bechaus-Gerst) it feels like you're going somewhere. Nile Cushitic seems to be real, cool.

And then you finally get around to reading the preeminent Nubio-linguist who is quoted quite literally everywhere, Claude Rilly. He's even being quoted talking Kerman osteology on Wikipedia so he must know what he's talking about. It soon dawns on you that yeah, maybe those similar words were just all coincidences - or, get this, the transmission of technology was the other way around. He uses pretty strong language and seems pretty sure of himself so it's kinda convincing. But then you realise that in critiquing the proponents of Nile Cushitic, he's doing the exact same thing he accuses them of doing (using multiple languages to increase chance of correspondence). You shrug it off, probably some context you're missing.

Then you get around to his working theory on the dissemination of this theoretical language family (Meroitic, Kerma both part of it) from their homeland in the Libyan Desert and it's... quite something. As evidence of not only this language's presence in Nubia but its antiquity in the region, he quotes a king's list from the 12th dynasty (iirc; done all of this quite a while ago and didn't exactly document my gripes) and notes how the names for Kushite kings and queens didn't have glottal stops and or pharyngeal consonants so couldn't be Afroasiatic (AA). Again, I'm no linguist mannnn, but I do know enough to see how this is super misleading.

First: glottal stops are present in the very Meroitic you're arguing is non-AA. And on pharyngeal consonants - while it's true they're super common in Afroasiatic languages, that becomes less true for Cushitic languages. Outside of Somali, Beja and Afar (maybe a few others idk) they're almost non-existent. It's to the point that people have theorised that we all adopted those sounds from proximous Semitic/Egyptian speakers. It's especially damning when argument being made for Nile Cushitic has it down as being closest to Highland East Cushitic when to my knowledge they don't have pharyngeal consonants. A strawman, almost.

I personally have this Nile Cushitic going extinct in Upper Nubia by Kerma classique, and in Lower Nubia, if ever, with Egypt's colonisation. The toponymic arguments made by Julien Cooper are hard to disagree with. Either way, with the scholarship on Nubian osteology available to us from the A-Group to the Kermans to the Meroites, they would've been genetically closest to AA-speaking East Africans. That is kinda like evidence in itself if you ask me, especially considering the ~30% Cushitic-like modern Nubians carry (closer to 50% in Kulubnarti) and the infamous Kadruka man.

What I mean to say is if it's a matter of 'claiming' Nubia on a meta-ethnicity level, yeah go ahead tbh.

Sudan has honestly been an engima to me for many years. Especially the sharp contrast it presents with eygpt which even though it's been invaded more than a dozen times the pouplation has maintained its genetic continuity with even the eygptian lanaguges final phase only dying out in the last few hundred years.

The biggest mystery to me is why no sudanese idneity emerged. Aloadia the sudanese state that kast from the 600s to the 1500s even developed old nubian as the language of administration and other stuff. There capital soba is right next to sudan. The funj sultanate who's capital was in sennar is only 180 miles away from the former capital. Yet there seems seems to be no continuity whatsoever. Same with merotic which is attest from 300 b.c to 400 a.d . Thats 700 years of merotic and 800 years of old nubian. Yet there doesn't seem to have been any of this in the funj sultnate . It almost feels like the pouplations kept getting replaced.

 

[Shimbiris]

I've pretty much come to the same conclusion independently, though with NC being a separate, highly divergent branch of EC with our branch mostly being confined to the eastern periphery of Nubia. No real reason why, mostly due to as you said our E-Z813 mixed in with a little retrospective distortion.

Hmm, if anything it's looking more to me like ECs were the ones mainly along the Nile early on. All the substrate influences in Ancient Egyptian and Nobiin (Nile dwelling languages) appear EC and not NC whereas our E-Z813 doesn't appear--for now-- in groups like Eastern desert Bejas but rather an Upper Egyptian and Nablusi who probably descends from a Nile valley Egyptian.

I'll have to get back to you on this when I eventually do read up on it again but iirc familial terms in Meroitic too were deciphered and they were awful similar to the same words in other nearby NS tongues. Familial terms being, from what I've seen in Indo-European languages at least, the most resistant to change kinda drove the point home for me.

I'm not familiar with the royal titles you speak of tbh, mind sharing? And even still, it's equally likely that the NC words for royal titles were preserved instead of Meroitic itself being a Cushitic language. Maybe I am being too dismissive idk it just seems like with something spoken so recently there would be way more evidence. That Old Nubian isn't ancestral to Nobiin sure does complicate things but I wonder if there is a better studied, contemporary language replacement so that we could compare... maybe something like French and the Gaullic tongues of France idk.

Could you link where you've read these claims of NS familial terms? As far as I know, Meroitic is highly undeciphered. Beyond a handful of royal titles and maybe a couple of other words everything appears to be purely speculative, if I'm not mistaken.

About to sleep now but will do some digging for you later. For now to quicky illustrate my point with GPT:

Yes, while Meroitic remains largely undeciphered, a small number of words beyond royal titles have been tentatively understood. These include:

1. Administrative and Religious Terms​

• Qore – King/Ruler (resembles Somali Boqor)
• Kandake – Queen/Mother of the King
• Pade – Priest
• Besole – Governor

2. Place Names and Ethnonyms​

• Nob – A possible reference to the Nuba people or region
• Wos – A location or ethnic group

3. Objects and Everyday Terms (Tentative Identifications)​

• Saka – Possible term for "offering" or "tribute"
• At – Water (similar to words in some Afroasiatic languages)
• Terite – Messenger/Herald

4. Numbers (Hypothetical Identifications)​

• One and two may have been deciphered, but no complete system has been confirmed.

In Meroitic, familial terms are largely speculative, and only a few have been tentatively identified. However, since Meroitic script is not fully deciphered, the following words should be taken with caution as they come from translations based on context, comparison with other languages, and occasionally bilingual texts. Most known words of this type are found in hieroglyphic inscriptions, royal titles, or names.

Tentatively Identified Familial Words:​

1. "Father"
   • Probable candidate: "Yene"
     • This is thought to be a possible cognate of the Egyptian word for father (iri), though the connection isn't certain.
2. "Mother"
   • Probable candidate: "Tere"
     • A term that some scholars believe may correspond to a familial term like "mother." Similar roots appear in Cushitic languages, suggesting a potential connection.
3. "Brother"
   • Probable candidate: "Puri"
     • A speculative term, but some translations suggest this might be the word for brother, appearing in several royal inscriptions.
4. "Sister"
   • Possible similar word identified in context:
     • Like "brother," the Meroitic term for sister is not confirmed, but "Apeti" (often thought to be a name of a female royal) might be related to the word for sister, based on contextual clues.
5. "Son" / "Daughter"
   • Identified through titles:
     • The term for "son" is not fully understood, but "Aset" (sometimes thought to be related to the title daughter of the king) could represent a connection to "daughter" or "son" in some royal texts.
     • Some royal titles mention family connections, such as the "son of the king," though these too remain speculative.

Challenges with Identifying Familial Terms:​

• Incomplete Knowledge: The structure of Meroitic society, including familial terms, is still not well understood due to the limited corpus of deciphered words.
• Cognates in Other African Languages: There may be influences from neighboring languages, including Cushitic, Nilo-Saharan, and Egyptian, but no concrete proof links familial terms specifically to East Cushitic or other language families at this stage.

Conclusion​

Meroitic familial words remain speculative and fragmented. The language is not fully deciphered, and many of the presumed familial terms come from contextual interpretation, not definitive translations. If new linguistic work is done on the Meroitic corpus, more concrete familial terms may emerge.

The only truly deciphered words, to my knowledge, are the royal titles and linguists seem to frequently tie them Cushitic languages. Everything else is pure speculation as we do not have a Rosetta stone for this language. We seriously have no idea what 99% of the words mean and can just play around about with phonology and structure.

 

[Shimbiris]

Sudan has honestly been an engima to me for many years. Especially the sharp contrast it presents with eygpt which even though it's been invaded more than a dozen times the pouplation has maintained its genetic continuity with even the eygptian lanaguges final phase only dying out in the last few hundred years.

The biggest mystery to me is why no sudanese idneity emerged. Aloadia the sudanese state that kast from the 600s to the 1500s even developed old nubian as the language of administration and other stuff. There capital soba is right next to sudan. The funj sultanate who's capital was in sennar is only 180 miles away from the former capital. Yet there seems seems to be no continuity whatsoever. Same with merotic which is attest from 300 b.c to 400 a.d . Thats 700 years of merotic and 800 years of old nubian. Yet there doesn't seem to have been any of this in the funj sultnate . It almost feels like the pouplations kept getting replaced.

That's literally kinda what happened, walaal. Sudan is like Iran on steroids in many ways. It's whole history is successive waves of nomads, often NS nomads, encroaching on whomever was dominant along the Nile then assimilating into the civilization. Successive waves of NS speakers, more northerly groups and more recently Arabians have been running amok since the dawn of Sudan's days. We ourselves are partly the result of this ancient tug of war.

 

[Midas]

I've pretty much come to the same conclusion independently, though with NC being a separate, highly divergent branch of EC with our branch mostly being confined to the eastern periphery of Nubia. No real reason why, mostly due to as you said our E-Z813 mixed in with a little retrospective distortion.

I'll have to get back to you on this when I eventually do read up on it again but iirc familial terms in Meroitic too were deciphered and they were awful similar to the same words in other nearby NS tongues. Familial terms being, from what I've seen in Indo-European languages at least, the most resistant to change kinda drove the point home for me.

I'm not familiar with the royal titles you speak of tbh, mind sharing? And even still, it's equally likely that the NC words for royal titles were preserved instead of Meroitic itself being a Cushitic language. Maybe I am being too dismissive idk it just seems like with something spoken so recently there would be way more evidence. That Old Nubian isn't ancestral to Nobiin sure does complicate things but I wonder if there is a better studied, contemporary language replacement so that we could compare... maybe something like French and the Gaullic tongues of France idk.

I think the fact they completely abandoned the nearly millenia old merotic literary tradition completely and a new old nubian one emerged is a sign of something strange going on. Since you would normally expect them to switch scripts (like the malay and Persians did) but not abandoned the language completely. This somehow also happens again with the funj adopting arabic. Normally this only happens when a new ethnic groups comes or foreign conquest happens.

 

[Shimbiris]

I think the fact they completely abandoned the nearly millenia old merotic literary tradition completely and a new old nubian one emerged is a sign of something strange going on. Since you would normally expect them to switch scripts (like the malay and Persians did) but not abandoned the language completely. This somehow also happens again with the funj adopting arabic. Normally this only happens when a new ethnic groups comes or foreign conquest happens.

A great many NS speaking groups, if I'm not mistaken, are traditionally pastoral nomads with a strong martial tradition like our own @Nilotic 's Dinka people. And if you go through Sudan's history enough you'll notice they were all always moving around a lot and basically engaged in tribal competition across what is now Sudan and South Sudan. Nilotic's own folk used to apparently live up in Gezira:

Gezira State - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Meroitics, the Nobiin and Funj were just successive waves of one of many of these peoples whether NS, Cushitic or later Arabic speaking who managed to get the upperhand with settling and holding Upper Nubia.

 

[Nilotic]

The Funj were a strange bunch; they were literally pushed out (by the Shilluk Chiefs) of what is now the west bank of South Sudan's Upper Nile State and founded the Funj Sultanate in Sennar a century or so later.

The Funj were the first to conceive of a National identity for Sudan and had large numbers of Dinka troops fighting for the Sultanate; and they (unfortunately) were the first to start this whole ana Arab nonsense.

When the last remnants of the Dinka left the Gezira in the 15th Century, we completed what the Shilluk had started -- removed the Funj entirely from South Sudan

 

[Midas]

That's literally kinda what happened, walaal. Sudan is like Iran on steroids in many ways. It's whole history is successive waves of nomads, often NS nomads, encroaching on whomever was dominant along the Nile then assimilating into the civilization. Successive waves of NS speakers, more northerly groups and more recently Arabians have been running amok since the dawn of Sudan's days. We ourselves are partly the result of this ancient tug of war.

I would expect something along those lines. But this is way beyond that . Imagine aloadia having its capital in berbera and then the funj sultanate being in zeila and the modern khartoum being right outside berbera. I would expect these NS nomads to be assimilated and the funj or other sultnate they establish to use the urban old nubian elite who write in this anicent old nubian literary/administrative language. But nope it's completely abandoned and the funj chronicle (written in the early 19th century) makes no mention of aloadia . There is basically no writing in sudan that has survived in some families collection before the 19th century. Everything else is some archeological discovery

 

[Midas]

A great many NS speaking groups, if I'm not mistaken, are traditionally pastoral nomads with a strong martial tradition like our own @Nilotic 's Dinka people. And if you go through Sudan's history enough you'll notice they were all always moving around a lot and basically engaged in tribal competition across what is now Sudan and South Sudan. Nilotic's own folk used to apparently live up in Gezira:

Gezira State - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Meroitics, the Nobiin and Funj were just successive waves of one of many of these peoples whether NS, Cushitic or later Arabic speaking who managed to get the upperhand with settling and holding Upper Nubia.

By arabic i meant the funj adopted it as a court language. The actual funj spoke some nubian language

 

[Midas]

I would expect something along those lines. But this is way beyond that . Imagine aloadia having its capital in berbera and then the funj sultanate being in zeila and the modern khartoum being right outside berbera. I would expect these NS nomads to be assimilated and the funj or other sultnate they establish to use the urban old nubian elite who write in this anicent old nubian literary/administrative language. But nope it's completely abandoned and the funj chronicle (written in the early 19th century) makes no mention of aloadia . There is basically no writing in sudan that has survived in some families collection before the 19th century. Everything else is some archeological discovery

These are the actual distances by the way . Like zeila to bebera is probably farther away then soba (aloadia capital) to sennar (funj capital)

 

[Shimbiris]

These are the actual distances by the way . Like zeila to bebera is probably farther away then soba (aloadia capital) to sennar (funj capital)

I'll have to do more research but you're right that it's weird. I remember finding it strange too when I first read about the Funj. They legit sounded kinda "foreign" when compared to the earlier Christian Nubians.

 

[Midas]

The Funj were a strange bunch; they were literally pushed out (by the Shilluk Chiefs) of what is now the west bank of South Sudan's Upper Nile State and founded the Funj Sultanate in Sennar a century or so later.

The Funj were the first to conceive of a National identity for Sudan and had large numbers of Dinka troops fighting for the Sultanate; and they (unfortunately) were the first to start this whole ana Arab nonsense.

When the last remnants of the Dinka left the Gezira in the 15th Century, we completed what the Shilluk had started -- removed the Funj entirely from South Sudan

I find them incredibly strange. It seems like they also had a much smaller state capcity . since judging by the size of the mosque in the drawing and the aqal shaped homes. The capital waa very small compared to old dongola or even soba.

But the way how accurate would you rate Wikipedias description.

 

[Nilotic]

By arabic i meant the funj adopted it as a court language. The actual funj spoke some nubian language

There is no current consensus on who the historical Funj were, but it seems that they had some Nubian influence or even partial Nubian ancestry.

The Berta are the most numerous speakers of a Funj language and are widely regarded as the descendants of the Funj, however, the Shilluk described the Funj as noticeably lighter than them, so it doesn't really gel. All pure Nilotes have the same skin tone, as groups

 

[Nilotic]

I find them incredibly strange. It seems like they also had a much smaller state capcity . since judging by the size of the mosque in the drawing and the aqal shaped homes. The capital waa very small compared to old dongola or even soba.

But the way how accurate would you rate Wikipedias description.

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That's essentially in keeping with how the Funj were regarded in what I've read about them; they were literally called pagans from the White Nile -- and this is after they had already converted to Islam

 

[Midas]

That's essentially in keeping with how the Funj were regarded in what I've read about them; they were literally called pagans from the White Nile -- and this is after they had already converted to Islam

Did they not inherit any old aloadian court tradition? The way sennar is described with this new merchant elite emerging and how welathy it is makes me wonder what the hell happned to the old aloadian elite ?

 

[Midas]

It seems like they had been declining for centuries and were then utterly destroyed.