The Cushites: Ancient Nubia in Sudan and Jews Along The Egyptian Nile River and an Archaeological and a Biological Find

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

                                 Could that be bagels on the platter that Nubians are carrying?  

Cush was the son of Ham;  brother of Mizraim-who was Egypt, Put who was Libya and Morocco , and Canaan. (Gen.10:6).  Cush was a region south of Egypt called Nubia, Ethiopia in Hebrew and other ancient languages.  It extended south from Elephantine, the island in the Nile Rver  and Syene, which is the modern Assouan.).  So the Nubians were also the Cushites.   

Nubia is traditionally divided into two regions. The southern portion, which extended north to the southern end of the second cataract of the Nile was known as Upper Nubia; this was called Kush (Cush) under the 18th-dynasty pharaohs of ancient Egypt and was called Ethiopia by the ancient Greeks.

  So:   Cush=Nubia=Ethiopia                             

        A silent unheard voice in the Old Testament: The Cushite woman whom Moses married in Numbers 12:1-10:  Moses had been rescued from the Nile River by the Pharoah's daughter and raised as a prince.  Then at age 80 he returned to Egypt from Midian and with his brother, Aaron, got the Jews freed from bondage.  Miriam, the sister of Moses while on the Exodus, slandered Moses about his Cushite wife, Zipporah, who was with him, because he had to be ritually pure at all times since G-d was speaking to him and this was an expectation; no sex.  Miriam was punished for this, and this is why Jews are so against slandering; it was a hard lesson.  

  Zipporah was the daughter of Jethro, a priest of Midian.  Midian was a Beduin tribe related to Abraham who traveled in caravans of incense from Gilead to Egypt, and later to other countries.  They were closely connected with the Israelites.  

Zipporah had traveled to Egypt with Moses, and saved her son's life by circumcising him (Exod. 4:24-6).  then she returned to her father with her 2 sons, Gershom and Eliezer, who rejoined Moses at Mount Sinai (Exod.18:1).  Moses had fled from Pharaoh to Midian and had married Zipporah.  From 2nd Temple Times, the Land of Midian was thought to be located in NW Arabia.  The 2 sons of Moses and Zipporah die in their teens connected with the Ark of the Covenant.                                                                    

       "Elephantine is an island in the Nile River, to the west of Aswan (on the eastern bank of the Nile). In ancient times, the island has been the southern-most city of Egypt. South of Elephantine, for a distance of approximately 223 km, extends the Nubian Desert where even the Nile banks are inhospitable. Beyond this distance lie the lands of Sudan, homeland of the Nubian civilization, which to ancient Egypt represented a prominent military threat. Trade relations between Egypt and Nubia continued active throughout history and Elephantine was the point where trade routes from Nubia met. Hence, to the ancient Egyptians, the city represented the 'door to the South'".

"A Jewish garrison community that was already settled in the island by the fifth century B.C.E, played an essential role in the interaction between Nubia and Egypt. The task of the Jewish garrison in Elephantine was to protect the Egyptian border with Nubia (Kush)(Cush).  

Nubians are an ethno-linguistic group of people who are indigenous to the region which is now present-day Northern Sudan and southern Egypt. They originate from the early inhabitants of the central Nile valley, believed to be one of the earliest cradles of civilization.                            

       Nubians of ancient Egypt-The best defined images of Nubians are probably these tiles, and this drawing of a Nubian from the Belzoni illustration of the tomb of Seti (the original sadly very damaged by moisture). 

Early Neolithic settlements have been found in the central Nubian region dating back to 7000 BCE, with Wadi Halfa believed to be the oldest settlement in the central Nile valley.   Parts of Nubia, particularly Lower Nubia, were at times a part of ancient Pharaonic Egypt and at other times a rival state representing parts of Meroë or the Kingdom of Kush. By the Twenty-fifth Dynasty (744 BC–656 BCE), all of Egypt was united with Nubia, extending down to what is now Khartoum. However, In 656 BCE the native Twenty-sixth Dynasty regained control of Egypt. As warriors, the ancient Nubians were famous for their skill and precision with the bow and arrow.  Nubia was not fully dominated by the Romans, but in Augustan times there was possibly a "client state" of Rome in northern Nubia.

 If Jewish mercenaries had indeed settled at Elephantine during the reign of Apreis, what role did they play in the civil war?  In 589 B.C.E, Apries succeeded Psammetichusis II as the king of Egypt.  That was when   Nebuchadnezzar marched with his troops to put down the rebels in Judeah.  Soon, the Babylonian troops captured and devastated the Holy City. On August 587 BCE, the Holy temple of Solomon, was destroyed and the first Diaspora of the Jewish people had begun. Thousands of Jews were exiled to Babylon leaving Jerusalem desolate.                                                                    

                           Today a Nubian family living in Sudan

Egypt has always been a source of refuge for the people of Judea starting from the Great Biblical Patriarch of the Bible, Abraham. After the Diaspora, Jews flooded into Egypt and established the largest Jewish communities there; perhaps, since the time of Moses. During the Persian period they were Jewish garrisons posted at Tahpanhes and Migdol.

During the sixth century B.C., 'First Isaiah' prophesized return of the Jews "from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Kush [Nubia], from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath and from the islands of the sea."Isaiah 11:11)

As indicated in the passage, Isaiah probably knew about Jews residing in Nubia at the time. 'Deutero-Isaiah' (second Isaiah), who supposedly lived during the exile in the fourth century B.C., prophesized the restoration of Israel. On one passage he mentions the return of Jews from the region of Aswan as follows:  Aswan or Syene. In any case Elephantine is and was certainly not excluded from the region of Syene.

                                                                  

    Shukbah Cave in Judean mountains in Ramallah Governorate of Judea-Samaria.  

Long held in a private collection, the newly analysed tooth of an approximately 9-year-old Neanderthal child marks the hominin’s southernmost known range. Analysis of the associated archaeological assemblage suggests Neanderthals used Nubian Levallois technology, previously thought to be restricted to Homo sapiens. 

With a high concentration of cave sites harbouring evidence of past populations and their behaviour, the Levant or Middle East is a major centre for human origins research. For over a century, archaeological excavations in the Levant have produced human fossils and stone tool assemblages that reveal landscapes inhabited by both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, making this region a potential mixing ground between populations. Distinguishing these populations by stone tool assemblages alone is difficult, but one technology, the distinct Nubian Levallois method, is argued to have been produced only by Homo sapiens.  Is this where I picked up my 2.9% of Neanderthal genes as shown on 23&Me?  

In a new study published in Scientific Reports, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History teamed up with international partners to re-examine the fossil and archaeological record of Shukbah Cave. Shuqba cave is an archaeological site near the town of Shuqba in the western Judaean Mountains  in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate of the West Bank.  Today Ramallah is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank located (10 km north) (6 miles)  of Jerusalem at an average elevation of 880 meters above sea level, adjacent to al-Bireh. It currently serves as the de facto administrative capital of the Palestinian National Authority.  While historically an Arab Christian town, Muslims constituted a majority of Ramallah's 27,902 residents by 2007, with Christians making up a significant minority.  

 In 1838 American biblical scholar Edward Robinson visited the area, noting that the inhabitants were Christian "of the Greek rite". There were 200 taxable men, which gives an estimated total population of 800–900 people. The village "belonged" to the Haram al-Sharif, Jerusalem, to which it paid an annual tax of 350 Mids of grain.

The site was briefly investigated in 1924 by Father Alexis Mallon, who suggested that the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem take responsibility for excavating the cave. This was the first time that a Natufian layer had been found as part of a stratified deposit. This layer contained charcoal traces and a previously unknown microlithic stone tool industry characterized by crescent-shaped lunates. Dorothy Garrod's team found worked bone objects. The fauna was dominated by gazelle, and also included the domestic dog. The remains of 45 human skeletons, mostly fragmentary, allowed insights into a range of distinctive mortuary practices. Recent investigations have identified what are believed to be Neanderthal remains, together with Nubian Levallois knapping tools previously thought to be specific to homo sapiens.                                                         

       During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel captured Ramallah from Jordan, imposing a military closure and conducting a census a few weeks later. Every person registered in the census was given an Israeli identity card which allowed the bearer to continue to reside there. Those who were abroad during the census lost their residency rights.   For residents of Ramallah, the situation had now been reversed. For the first time in 19 years, residents could freely visit Israel and the Gaza Strip and engage in commerce there.

On November 11, 2004 Arafat died at the Percy training hospital of the Armies near Paris. He was buried in the courtyard of the Mukataa on November 12, 2004. The site still serves as the Ramallah headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, as well the official West Bank office of Mahmoud Abbas. Throughout 2005, while the Disengagement Plan was underway, some US government officials suggested to the Palestinian leadership to move the provisional capital back to Gaza, where it had been when the Palestinian Authority was first established in 1994. President Abbas, however, refrained from doing so, arguing that at this point, it was important to keep the administrative center in the West Bank in order to remind the international community that the West Bank was still awaiting a territorial solution.

Only in 2005 did the population reach more than 24,000. In a PCBS projection in 2006, Ramallah had a population of 25,467 inhabitants. In the 2007 PCBS census, there were 27,460 people living in the city. Sources vary about the current Christian population in the city, ranging around 25%.

Ramlah or Ramleh is not the same town, though the names are similar.  It also has a cave, the Ayyalon Cave.     It is an Israeli town, founded by Arabs in 716 CE.  It soon became the capital of the original named by Romans in 135 as Palestine, and most inhabitants of nearby Lydda (the previous capital) moved to Ramlah.  Its population in the Middle Ages was composed of Arabs, Samaritans, and Persians.  In the 10th century, a Jewish and a Karaite community were founded.  In the 11th century, the town suffered from Bedouin attacks and was nearly destroyed by earthquakes in 1016 and 1033.  Built up again, it was taken by the Seljuk Turks and later by the Crusaders of Europe under whose rule the Jewish, Karaite, and Samaritan communities almost disappeared.  After its conquest by  the Mamelukes, and later under Turkish rule, Ramlah remained an important station on the way to Jerusalem.  In the 19th century, a Christian community began to develop.  Ramlah was taken by Israel forces in 1948 at the time of Israel's War of Independence.  About 1,000 of its Arab inhabitants remained in the town and were soon augmented by large numbers of Jewish immigrants.  The population in 1990 was 44,500 including 7,500 Arabs.   In 2019, 76% of the population were Jewish and 24% Arab.

In May 2006, a naturally sealed-off underground space now known as Ayyalon Cave was discovered near Ramla, outside Moshav Yad Rambam. The cave sustains an unusual type of ecosystem, based on bacteria that create all the energy they need chemically, from the sulfur compounds they find in the water, with no light or organic food coming in from the surface. A bulldozer working in the Nesher cement quarry on the outskirts of Ramla accidentally broke into the cavern. The finds have been attributed to the cave's isolation, which led to the evolution of a whole food chain of specially developed organisms, including several previously unknown species of invertebrates. With several large halls on different levels, it measures 2,700 metres (8,900 ft) long, making it the third-

largest limestone cave in Israel.

One of the finds was an eyeless scorpion, given the name Akrav israchanani honouring the researchers who identified it, Israel Naaman and Hanan Dimentman. All ten specimens of the blind scorpion found in the cave had been dead for several years, possibly because recent overpumping of the groundwater has led the underground lake to shrink, and with it the food supply to dwindle. Seven more species of troglobite crustaceans and springtails were discovered in "Noah's Ark Cave", as the cave has been dubbed by journalists, several of them unknown to science.

Resource:

http://www.ancientsudan.org/articles_jewish_elephantine.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubians#:~:text=Nubians%20(%2F%CB%88nu%CB%90b,the%20earliest%20cradles%20of%20civilization.

https://www.shh.mpg.de/1957277/blinkhorn-nubian-technology?fbclid=IwAR3vzoFQIjjcxTlAZTYrr6P5O5PYqEfcsW2SquDqvL2Z6UmH3qAJMqB96kA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuqba_cave

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramallah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramla