The Megaliths of Nabta Playa

7/28/2019 The Megaliths of Nabta Playa

1/6

Egypts South Western Desert, one of the driest areas on Earth, encompasses a bigportion of the Eastern Sahara. In spite of its in-hospitable climate and terrain, this area hascaptured humans imagination since timesimmemorial. Ancient Egyptian priests, pha-

raohs, soldiers and merchants have all de-monstrated interest in this vast emptiness,which presented enormous challenges to tra-

velers even after the introduction of the camelin the time of the New Kingdom. This is an areawhere armies were lost, slave merchants traf-ficked their goods northward, clever spiesfound a safe haven, and archaeologists were

a rare sight indeed. It was only in 1972 thatthe Combined Prehistoric Expedition begansystematic excavations of human settlementsat remote corners of this barrenness, a placewhere lost worlds of human history lie sub-merged in hot desert soils.

Yet the barren badlands of the South We-stern Desert were not always so inhospi-table. During times of global warming, whenthe ice sheets of the continental glaciersmelted, the monsoon rains would move hund-reds of kilometers north to form savannas,

rivers and perennial lakes with crocodiles,fish and water fowl. But such was the land-scape that would have greeted travelers some330, 230 or 130 thousand years ago.

Countless years later, when the glaciershad receded from continental Europe, the mon-soon rains moved north again and reached

10

Mysteries of the South Western Desert

Focuson A r c h e o l o g y

ACADEMA

N o

. 1 ( 1 ) 2 0 0 4

The Megaliths of Nabta Playa

The megaliths of Nabta Playaare an expression of an elaborateLate and Final Neolithic ceremonialismunprecedented in Africa. The ceremonialcenter of Nabta Playa supplies evidencethat at least some of the rootsof Ancient Egyptian beliefs, magicand religion lie buried in the sandsof the South Western Desert

ROMUALD SCHILD

Institute of Archeology and Ethnology, WarsawPolish Academy of [email protected] WENDORF

Institute of Earth and Man, Dallas, TexasSouthern Methodist [email protected] in the desert

Professors Schild(right) and Wendorf

have found andexplored hundreds

of prehistoric sites

The herd of African

cattle in the NorthernDarfur (Sudan)

R o m u a

l d S c

h i l d


2/6

the South Western Desert some 11 thousandyears ago. This time, however, things werenot so pleasant: there was no more savanna,

just a little grass af ter the rains in the sum-mer, and temporary water in closed basinsthat had been carved in the rocks by desertwinds. Game was meager, essentially a smalltype of gazelle and hare, and competition forwater and grass fierce. Yet this was enoughfor people to come. And come they did, toge-ther with their barely domesticated cattle,a kind of walking tin can packed full of blood,milk and meat. It was cattle that madepeopling the Eastern Sahara possible. Fromthat point onwards, cattle would always con-

trol the lives and beliefs of the desert dwel-lers that is, until the collapse of their worldabout 5,350 years ago, when the desert de-scended upon the Eastern Sahara again, thistime to stay.

The Eastern Sahara saw many ups anddowns between 11,000 and 5,400 years ago.The climate was not stable. Time and timeagain, numerous hyperarid short spells cha-sed people and animals to the south and/oreast, to the Nile Valley. A kind of miserableparadise sprang to life between 9,000 and

8,000 years ago, when mediocre grasslandscovered the area and waterfowl reappearedto enjoy summer frolics in huge seasonal la-kes. Almost every wet period in the SouthWestern Desert was different. People had toadapt their lifestyles, subsistence and socialorganization to the changing resources.

Only the history of the two last wet periodsin the South Western Desert is important forour narrative here. The first began around7,400 years ago. This was the time of the LateNeolithic Cattle Herders, or Ruat El Baqarpeople. The second commenced about 6,600years ago and ended nearly 5,400 years ago.This was the age of the Final Neolithic Mega-lith Builders, or Ruat El Ansam people.

Valley of the sacrificesIn 1973, a casual rest stop on the way from

Bir Sahara East, located deep in the desert,to Abu Simbel in the Nile Valley led to oneof the most important discoveries in the histo-ry of prehistoric archaeology in the Sahara:the discovery of Nabta Playa, a huge paleola-ke basin with hundreds of Stone Age camps,

tumuli, groups of megalithic structures andalignments of stelae.

The megaliths of Nabta were not recogni-zed or identified for a long time. We beganto realize their significance only in 1992,and we are still learning about their role inthe spiritual and religious life of the Neoli-thic pastoralists of the South Western Desert.

Our intimate relationship with the megalithsof Nabta Playa has brought us to the stagewhere we may say that we have, at least par-tially, unveiled their signif icance.

The megaliths of Nabta Playa stretch forabout 2,500 meters, in an approximatelynorth-south direction, with a slight devia-tion toward the west. There are several sepa-rate groups of megaliths. Beginning fromthe north, there is a group of about ten pre-served tumuli built of broken sandstoneblocks, placed along the rocky west bank of a shallow wadi valley entering the basinfrom the north. This wadi ends in a smallcromlech a stone circle that has beenidentified as a calendar, placed on top of a small sandy knoll.

The tumuli included offerings of largearticulating pieces of butchered cattle, goats,sheep and perhaps also humans. The largestand conceivably oldest tumulus contained anentire young cow the most precious offe-ring a herder could make placed in an ela-borate chamber covered by a tamarisk roof.This sacrificial cow was laid to rest here some

7,400 years ago. Because of the tumulis clearlysacrificial function, we named this shallow

A C A D E M I A

F o c u s o n A r c h e o l o

g y

11N

o .1

( 1 ) 2

0 0 4

Western shoresof the Nabta PlayaBasin, South

Western Desert,map of MegalithicStructures (drawnby M. Puszkarski)


3/6

wadi the Valley of Sacrifices. It was this very valley that brought water to the basin afterthe first rains. This was an ideal place to bribethe gods and beg for rains.

The stone ring at the mouth of the Valleyof Sacrifices contains two lines of stonesights, consisting of pairs of narrow, uprightslabs aiming approximately toward the north,and toward the position where the sun roseat the summer solstice (the beginning of the rainy season) about 6,000 years ago.This paleoastronomical date situates the lastuse of the devise in time, like a broken wrist-watch pointing to a murder victims time of death. According to the dates and associated

archaeological artifacts, it was the RuatEl Baqar people who erected the Valley of

Sacrifices tumuli. The Valley is the earliestceremonial center in Africa, marking the dawnof complex societies.

Stone structures of Megalith BuildersTo the south of Valley of the Sacrifices is

a low elongated hill, and beyond it are twosimilar, but smaller, parallel rises. These knollswere carved in the ancient lake clays bythe desert winds of the hyperarid phasethat immediately preceded the wet period of the Cattle Herders. All the hills are flat-toppedand contain Megalithic structures erected bythe Ruat El Ansam, or Megalith Builders.

A 600 m long alignment of originally

upright megaliths, or menhirs, extends alongthe northern hill. These sandstone blocks,some of them several tons in weight, todayappear as clusters of broken rocks. Only twoblocks remain partially embedded in the clays,albeit at a tilt. Most of them if not all havebeen shaped by knapping into sub-rectangu-lar plates with rounded, ogival or shoulde-red tops and flat or rounded bases. All werefacing the northern heavens. The paleoastro-nomer J. McKim Malville determined thatthe line of megaliths was in fact compo-

sed of three sub-lines that were aimed atthe point where the brightest star of the BigDipper, Ursa Majoris , rose between ca. 6,700and 6,000 years ago.

Several other lines of upright menhirs have been recognized and mapped in the areasouth of the first line. So far, the best pale-oastronomical associations have been identi-fied for two of these alignments. The first isa 250 m long double alignment of blocks po-inting toward the point where the brighteststars in the belt of Orion, Orionis and Orionis , rose between around 6,170 and5,800 years ago. The second line, slightlyshorter but quite distant from the two previo-us ones, points toward the position of Sirius, Canis Majoris , around 6,800 years ago.

Further beyond the long alignment of menhirs are two groups of megalithic sand-stone block clusters placed over two neigh-boring flat clay rises, termed the Westernand the Eastern Group of Megalithic Struc-tures. Both groups are composed of concen-trations of whole and broken, horizontal,flattish sandstone blocks of various sizes,

some several tons in weight. At the southernend of the largest, western group, a big sand-

12

Mysteries of the South Western Desert


ACADEMA

N o

. 1 ( 1 ) 2 0 0 4

Skeleton of a young cow in the chamber under a tumulus

R o m u a

l d S c h

i l d


4/6

stone quarry is still visible. This is the placewhere the blocks were extracted.

We first recognized the clusters of mega-liths as being man-made structures inthe early 1990s. We saw them as represen-ting gigantic, disturbed tombs, perhaps gu-arding the buried treasures of rich chiefs of yesteryears. Several years later, we deci-ded to open three of them. Much to our cha-grin, they yielded almost nothing. All three,however, had enormous pits excavated in

the lake clays underneath the surfaceblocks. The pits led to a mushroom-likesandstone rock, a natural phenomenon for-med by the desert winds well before the de-position of the lake clays. The rocks wereslightly worked by knapping to form a my-sterious, crude, nose-like projecting pointat the northern side of the rock. After-wards, the pit was refilled with the previo-usly excavated clay. One of the pits hada piece of charcoal that radiocarbon datedbetween 5,600 and 5,500 years ago,thus situating the moment of constructionin time. The largest cluster of megaliths,centrally placed over a small hillock, conta-ined a treasure: a large block of sandstoneweighting over a ton and only slightly sha-ped and polished, with a form resemblinga cow to a very imaginative observer. Thisunusual central megalithic structure, de-signed Complex Structure A, seems to forma basal hub or the starting point of the de-scribed alignments.

We spent many years trying to find a lo-gical explanation for the mysterious groups

of horizontal megalithic structures, but allour results were unpromising. Two years

ago, unhappy with ourselves, we decided togo back to our silent megaliths. This timewe began to uncover all the structures frombeneath the desert sands and then to mapthem in detail, and we also tried to refitthe broken individual megaliths. It was stillearly on in the project when we realizedthat many, and in some instances all, of the blocks were shaped in the same fashionas the blocks of the alignments. They also

varied in size and weight, from megaliths

weighing several tons to small baby ones.A few upright, broken bases were foundstill embedded in the clays, clearly indica-ting that the megaliths had originally beenset vertically.

If we were right, studying the dispersalof the broken fragments and their positionwould lead to a reconstruction of the indivi-dual megaliths original arrangement. Indeed,we soon came to understand the kinetics of collapse and the reason for their fall. Onceagain, the responsibility lay with the pre-

vailing northerly desert winds, which hadcarved out holes in front of the megalithsand caused their collapse. That is why weknow now that all the individual stones weregenerally facing north, toward the area of the night skies occupied by circumpolarstars. The fact that so many megaliths areshaped, some into anthropomorphic shoul-dered figures, suggests that they served asstelae, commemorating the dead.

The ancient shores of Nabta Playa stillguard many startling surprises. Just a fewmonths ago a new double stone cromlech,

some 17 m in diameter, was found on a pro-minent sandstone hill located 500 meters

A C A D E M I A

F o c u s o n A r c h e o l o

g y

13N

o .1

( 1 ) 2

0 0 4

Tilted stela of northernmegalithic alignment

Reconstructed stelaeof a megalithic structure,

Western Group(by M. Puszkarski)

R o m u a

l d S c h

i l d


5/6

to the west of the Western Group of Megali-thic Structures.

Megalith Builders society and beliefsMuch organized work and effort went into

building the megaliths. This, in itself, indica-tes complex and structured societies, withdominant families whose power was inheri-ted. The discrete groups of stelae at NabtaPlaya might suggest lineages of such fami-

lies. The archaeology of the Cattle Herdersas well as the Megalith Builders shows that

both societies were nomadic pastoralistswhose economy was based, or largely de-pendant, on cattle husbandry. The erectionof the tumuli and complex megalithic struc-tures imply that both are an expression of an elaborate Late and Final Neolithic cere-monialism unprecedented in Africa. Largelysimilar, although generally much later, re-gional ceremonial centers with megalithalignments, tumuli and stone circles are re-

ported from the Sahelian and Sub-Saharanparts of the continent. Close resemblances to

14


ACADEMA

N o

. 1 ( 1 ) 2 0 0 4

Lifting a shapedsandstone block

from the pit underthe central megalithic

structure R o m u a

l d S c h

i l d


6/6

Documents

The Megaliths of Nabta Playa