War! Huh! Good
God, y’all! What is it good for?! Absolutely nothin’, except maybe getting me
to go back to blogging (a word easily changed to ‘writing’ if this thing gets
converted to one of those blog-to-book/internet-to-paper/my-amusing-string-of-memes-about-cats
deals.
Why war? Well, I’ve always been a huge history nerd, and history is all about dates and places and wars. Now I know Jodi Picoult is quoted as saying, “History isn’t about dates and places and wars. It’s about people.” Which is correct, if by that she means it’s about people in certain places on certain dates waging wars. Who are you going to trust, me or a person who is responsible for four Lifetime Original Movies? FOUR!
History is full of wars; just lousy with them. According to Wikipedia at the moment I write this, there are 54 ongoing wars in the world, most of which you’ve probably never heard of. This leads me to reason number two for war to be the subject of this blog; it’s a seemingly inexhaustible subject source. If humanity were a business our business would be war, and cousin, business is a-boomin’; constantly, and since we invented gunpowder, literally.
So, it seems only reasonable to start this blog at the beginning, with the first war. But how do we determine that? Without a doubt humankind has been engaging in what could be called warfare since we’ve been able to organize into groups, hit other people with sticks, stones, zebra-jaws and whatnot, and desire other peoples’ stuff. What criteria do we use? Well, like a famous person once said, “Pics or it didn’t happen.” Fortunately for the Ancient Egyptians, they were pretty much the first people to write stuff down, and the earliest system of hieroglyphs were pretty much just ‘pics’. Going by this, we can determine that the Ancient Egyptians were the first people, as far as we know for sure, to engage in warfare.
According to Wikipedia’s List of Wars (Yes, Wikipedia again) the War for the Unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, circa 3100 BC is the first war, which could be right, or it could have been a war waged by Upper Egypt against the Nubians. This is complicated, so let me explain.
Why war? Well, I’ve always been a huge history nerd, and history is all about dates and places and wars. Now I know Jodi Picoult is quoted as saying, “History isn’t about dates and places and wars. It’s about people.” Which is correct, if by that she means it’s about people in certain places on certain dates waging wars. Who are you going to trust, me or a person who is responsible for four Lifetime Original Movies? FOUR!
History is full of wars; just lousy with them. According to Wikipedia at the moment I write this, there are 54 ongoing wars in the world, most of which you’ve probably never heard of. This leads me to reason number two for war to be the subject of this blog; it’s a seemingly inexhaustible subject source. If humanity were a business our business would be war, and cousin, business is a-boomin’; constantly, and since we invented gunpowder, literally.
So, it seems only reasonable to start this blog at the beginning, with the first war. But how do we determine that? Without a doubt humankind has been engaging in what could be called warfare since we’ve been able to organize into groups, hit other people with sticks, stones, zebra-jaws and whatnot, and desire other peoples’ stuff. What criteria do we use? Well, like a famous person once said, “Pics or it didn’t happen.” Fortunately for the Ancient Egyptians, they were pretty much the first people to write stuff down, and the earliest system of hieroglyphs were pretty much just ‘pics’. Going by this, we can determine that the Ancient Egyptians were the first people, as far as we know for sure, to engage in warfare.
According to Wikipedia’s List of Wars (Yes, Wikipedia again) the War for the Unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, circa 3100 BC is the first war, which could be right, or it could have been a war waged by Upper Egypt against the Nubians. This is complicated, so let me explain.
Nobody is
sure of the identity of the first pharaoh, who unified Egypt. Consensus is that
he was this dude named Narmer. But then there was this other dude named Menes,
who many think was just another name for Narmer. Now throw into that mix a guy
named King Scorpion II, as portrayed in a little documentary called The Scorpion
King, starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. See, they may have all been the same
guy with different names being used to describe him. Or it could have been any
combination of these, also throwing in the fact that Scorpion II could have
also been another pre-dynastic king known as Ka. No one is really sure.
The majority opinion is that King Scorpion II was distinct, and a predecessor to Narmer. He was also ruler of Upper Egypt, which is the southern part of Egypt -- it’s upper because it’s UP the Nile River. Get it? We know Scorpion II was king of Upper Egypt because he is depicted wearing the White Crown of Upper Egypt, on the Scorpion Macehead, which is the carved limestone head of a mace -- an instrument for bashing peoples’ heads in. So undoubtedly, at some point, whether he united Upper and Lower Egypt or not, or whether he was Narmer, Menes, Ka or whatever, he was the king of Upper Egypt.
You’d think at this point I’m going to tell you that King Scorpion II is depicted on the Scorpion Macehead doing awesome stuff like using a mace to bash some dude’s head in, because holy hell, the man’s name was King Scorpion II, but he’s not. Also, that would be way too meta.
He’s actually just holding a hoe, which I guess is his way of showing his softer side. It’s like he’s saying, “Hey, even though I have a badass name like King Scorpion II, and regularly bash peoples’ heads in with a mace, I’m just a regular dude who likes to engage in a little small-scale urban farming. You know, stuff I can sell at my booth at the farmer’s market where I also sell CDs of my bluegrass band’s music? Want to see my banjo?! I made it myself out of a cigar box and an old shipping pallet!”
Now this is where the rubber hits the road on the whole ‘which was the first war’ question. A rock carving at Gebel Sheikh Suliman, in Sudan, depicts a large scorpion walking over a bunch of dead guys who we’re pretty sure are Nubians, the people I previously mentioned, who lived in the lands further up the Nile. We know they are Nubians because they’re shown with bows and ostrich feathers, which is totally classic Nubian. Just ask any Ancient Egyptian. In later depictions, where paint still remains some Nubians are shown as having darker skin than the Eqyptians, but that’s a point for later. Beside the scorpion on the carving is a figure wearing a false beard and carrying a knife, leading a bunch of Nubian captives by a rope. This carving is interpreted to show King Scorpion II’s victory over the Nubians.
So, if King Scorpion II was only ever the king of Upper Egypt -- which he would be if Narmer, who united Upper and Lower Egypt, was a totally different dude -- it stands to reason that the war against the Nubians, waged by King Scorpion II -- again, because we have pictures of it -- came before Narmer’s War for the Unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. Like I said, ‘maybe’. If not, and Narmer WAS King Scorpion II, it was possibly the second war. Again, ‘maybe’. Close enough.
Whichever it was, it’s interesting to note that the Egyptians didn’t refer to it as war. According to them it was a ‘smiting’. They were very big on smiting, the Egyptians. They even named years after their smitings, like the Year of the Smiting of Ta-Sety, a.k.a. Nubia in the reign of the Pharaoh Hor-Aha. They were also apparently very big on smiting the Nubians.
Now I know what you’re thinking at this point. “Nubians? So, hey, was this some kind of race war?” To which I would say with surety “almost definitely yes.” Not in the modern sense though.
I’m not going to get into the whole debate over whether the Ancient Egyptians were black or white. The evidence I’ve seen says they were most likely what we would check off on the census box as ‘mixed race’ and then go on to check some other boxes. You know, what your racist nana calls “mulatto” when she wants you to come visit her more often.
Am I right? Who the hell knows? It doesn’t even matter. The only thing that’s important was that to the Ancient Egyptians, race was just as much of a social construct as it is for us, and was defined by culture. According to them there were four races: the Reth, who were the Egyptians, the Aamu, who lived in the deserts of the Sinai Peninsula to the northeast, the Themehu, who were the Libyans, who lived to the west, and the Nehesu, who were the Nubians. We know this because that’s what is depicted in the video for Katy Perry’s Dark Horse, featuring Juicy J, and I get all my Ancient Egyptian facts from Katy Perry videos, movies starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, and Wikipedia.
No, seriously, it’s what is depicted on a frequently occurring tomb painting called the Table of Nations. Although, those paintings are from about 2000 years after the time of King Scorpion II, so who really knows what those Pre-Dynastic and First Dynasty knuckleheads thought about race.
But it’s probably pretty safe to say that everybody who wasn’t Egyptian was, to them, of a different race. Thus, every war the Egyptians waged against anybody who wasn’t Egyptian was a race war. Thankfully, we’ve invented different social constructs, and questions of race have become irrelevant in relation to the conflicts of the modern world.
Our conclusion: the end result to the War Between the Egyptians (Possibly of Just Upper Egypt) Against the Nubians; what may possibly be the first war that we know almost nothing about? According to the Egyptians: a successful smiting. Egypt 1/ Nubia 0. And so it would go for quite a few Dynasties, at least until the reign of Nubian king Kashta of the Kushite Dynasty. That’s called foreshadowing.
So until next week, or whenever I get around to writing more, just remember:
The majority opinion is that King Scorpion II was distinct, and a predecessor to Narmer. He was also ruler of Upper Egypt, which is the southern part of Egypt -- it’s upper because it’s UP the Nile River. Get it? We know Scorpion II was king of Upper Egypt because he is depicted wearing the White Crown of Upper Egypt, on the Scorpion Macehead, which is the carved limestone head of a mace -- an instrument for bashing peoples’ heads in. So undoubtedly, at some point, whether he united Upper and Lower Egypt or not, or whether he was Narmer, Menes, Ka or whatever, he was the king of Upper Egypt.
You’d think at this point I’m going to tell you that King Scorpion II is depicted on the Scorpion Macehead doing awesome stuff like using a mace to bash some dude’s head in, because holy hell, the man’s name was King Scorpion II, but he’s not. Also, that would be way too meta.
He’s actually just holding a hoe, which I guess is his way of showing his softer side. It’s like he’s saying, “Hey, even though I have a badass name like King Scorpion II, and regularly bash peoples’ heads in with a mace, I’m just a regular dude who likes to engage in a little small-scale urban farming. You know, stuff I can sell at my booth at the farmer’s market where I also sell CDs of my bluegrass band’s music? Want to see my banjo?! I made it myself out of a cigar box and an old shipping pallet!”
Now this is where the rubber hits the road on the whole ‘which was the first war’ question. A rock carving at Gebel Sheikh Suliman, in Sudan, depicts a large scorpion walking over a bunch of dead guys who we’re pretty sure are Nubians, the people I previously mentioned, who lived in the lands further up the Nile. We know they are Nubians because they’re shown with bows and ostrich feathers, which is totally classic Nubian. Just ask any Ancient Egyptian. In later depictions, where paint still remains some Nubians are shown as having darker skin than the Eqyptians, but that’s a point for later. Beside the scorpion on the carving is a figure wearing a false beard and carrying a knife, leading a bunch of Nubian captives by a rope. This carving is interpreted to show King Scorpion II’s victory over the Nubians.
So, if King Scorpion II was only ever the king of Upper Egypt -- which he would be if Narmer, who united Upper and Lower Egypt, was a totally different dude -- it stands to reason that the war against the Nubians, waged by King Scorpion II -- again, because we have pictures of it -- came before Narmer’s War for the Unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. Like I said, ‘maybe’. If not, and Narmer WAS King Scorpion II, it was possibly the second war. Again, ‘maybe’. Close enough.
Whichever it was, it’s interesting to note that the Egyptians didn’t refer to it as war. According to them it was a ‘smiting’. They were very big on smiting, the Egyptians. They even named years after their smitings, like the Year of the Smiting of Ta-Sety, a.k.a. Nubia in the reign of the Pharaoh Hor-Aha. They were also apparently very big on smiting the Nubians.
Now I know what you’re thinking at this point. “Nubians? So, hey, was this some kind of race war?” To which I would say with surety “almost definitely yes.” Not in the modern sense though.
I’m not going to get into the whole debate over whether the Ancient Egyptians were black or white. The evidence I’ve seen says they were most likely what we would check off on the census box as ‘mixed race’ and then go on to check some other boxes. You know, what your racist nana calls “mulatto” when she wants you to come visit her more often.
Am I right? Who the hell knows? It doesn’t even matter. The only thing that’s important was that to the Ancient Egyptians, race was just as much of a social construct as it is for us, and was defined by culture. According to them there were four races: the Reth, who were the Egyptians, the Aamu, who lived in the deserts of the Sinai Peninsula to the northeast, the Themehu, who were the Libyans, who lived to the west, and the Nehesu, who were the Nubians. We know this because that’s what is depicted in the video for Katy Perry’s Dark Horse, featuring Juicy J, and I get all my Ancient Egyptian facts from Katy Perry videos, movies starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, and Wikipedia.
No, seriously, it’s what is depicted on a frequently occurring tomb painting called the Table of Nations. Although, those paintings are from about 2000 years after the time of King Scorpion II, so who really knows what those Pre-Dynastic and First Dynasty knuckleheads thought about race.
But it’s probably pretty safe to say that everybody who wasn’t Egyptian was, to them, of a different race. Thus, every war the Egyptians waged against anybody who wasn’t Egyptian was a race war. Thankfully, we’ve invented different social constructs, and questions of race have become irrelevant in relation to the conflicts of the modern world.
Our conclusion: the end result to the War Between the Egyptians (Possibly of Just Upper Egypt) Against the Nubians; what may possibly be the first war that we know almost nothing about? According to the Egyptians: a successful smiting. Egypt 1/ Nubia 0. And so it would go for quite a few Dynasties, at least until the reign of Nubian king Kashta of the Kushite Dynasty. That’s called foreshadowing.
So until next week, or whenever I get around to writing more, just remember:
“War, it ain't nothing
But a heartbreaker
Friends only to the undertaker
Ooooh, war
It's an enemy to all mankind
The point of war blows my mind”
But a heartbreaker
Friends only to the undertaker
Ooooh, war
It's an enemy to all mankind
The point of war blows my mind”
And so it should.
