IN THE Sahara, a little water goes a long way. About 12 000 years ago, the monsoons of tropical Africa shifted northward and the parched border between present-day Egypt and Sudan began receiving a small amount of summer rain. Vegetation flourished, sheltering hares, gazelles and foxes. Humans soon followed, building huts by the shores of broad, shallow playas which collected the rains. These cattle herders migrated between the playas and the wetter southern regions, following the seasonal rhythms. But the rains were fickle, and by 5500 years ago they had retreated for good. The grasses died, the playas filled with sand, and the people disappeared. But they left behind a monumental legacy that researchers now believe holds clues to understanding how the great Egyptian dynasties were born.
Thousands of years after the rains departed-in 1990, to be precise-Fred Wendorf, an anthropologist at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, stood among the remains of Neolithic settlements along the western bank of Nabta Playa. Wendorf had been fascinated by the site ever since 1973, when he stumbled upon it while crossing southern Egypt. In his subsequent surveys of the playa bed, which lies 100 miles west of the great temple at Abu Simbel, he鈥檇 ignored the odd stone outcroppings jutting from the sand. 鈥淚 thought they were bedrock,鈥� he shrugs. 鈥淲e鈥檇 conditioned ourselves that these people had been simple, egalitarian cattle herders. So we didn鈥檛 look for any complex structures-and you have a tendency to find what you鈥檙e looking for.鈥�
But it dawned on Wendorf that the megaliths were at a rather odd angle for bedrock. He began to dig. Sure enough, the sandstone slabs-which were up to three metres tall-had been erected in the ancient lake bed鈥檚 sediments. There were 11 in all, in a staggered line that stretched northeast for 900 metres. 鈥淭hey didn鈥檛 float there,鈥� says Wendorf. Indeed, the stones had been quarried from deposits nearby and installed in the playa between 6500 and 5500 years ago.
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The find was the springboard for a major discovery. In the years that followed, Wendorf鈥檚 team unearthed 13 more megaliths and a stone circle that could be the world鈥檚 first solar observatory. They also found a series of cattle burials and a huge primitive sculpture. Clearly, Nabta was not your average watering hole. The western shore of the lake-now a dry, amoeba-shaped basin covering some 70 square kilometres-seems to have served as both ceremonial centre and astronomical monument. The sand-blown ruins also raised an intriguing question: did the culture of Nabta Playa influence the civilisations that arose along the Nile soon after the rains retreated?
Many of the finds at Nabta anticipate the habits of later civilisations. To the north of the megaliths, Wendorf鈥檚 team excavated eight stone-covered mounds, each containing the bones of cows. One concealed a fully articulated skeleton-evidence that the nomads were cattle worshippers, just like the Pharaohs. 鈥淎mong the ancient Egyptians, cattle were deified and regarded as earthly representatives of the gods,鈥� Wendorf says. Another slab-covered vault contained a four-tonne stone, primitively hewn, which may be Egypt鈥檚 first sculpture. 鈥淚t vaguely resembles a cow,鈥� Wendorf says. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a projection on one end that looks like the head, with horns.鈥�
The team also discovered several astronomical structures. Close to the largest megalith, one of Wendorf鈥檚 students found a calendar circle: a ring 4 metres across, with stones arranged in pairs like a miniature Stonehenge (think Spinal Tap). One pair of stones forms a north-facing gate. Another would have perfectly framed the rising Sun on the summer solstice 6000 years ago. The nomads may well have celebrated the solstice, as it marked the arrival of the monsoon rains.
By 1998, Wendorf鈥檚 team had found megaliths scattered right across the western edge of the playa. Hoping to fathom what the nomads were up to, Wendorf invited University of Colorado astronomer Kim Malville to Nabta. Malville confirmed that the stones formed a series of stellar alignments, radiating like spokes from the site of the cow sculpture.
One of the alignments points to the belt of Orion, a constellation that appears in late Spring. Three more indicate the rising points of Dubhe, the brightest star in Ursa Major, which the Pharaohs saw as the leg of a cow. Most intriguing, though, is the parade of six megaliths marking the rising position of Sirius-the brightest star in the sky-as it would have appeared 6800 years ago. By that time, says Wendorf, the rains would have started their gradual retreat, and the alignments may have been an attempt to seek help from supernatural forces.
To Malville, this seemed an incredible coincidence. Sirius was also of great importance to the civilisations of the Nile, which worshipped it as Sothis. The earliest known Egyptian calendars were calibrated to Sothis鈥檚 appearance as a morning star, when the days were longest and monsoon rains flooded the crop fields along the Nile. Sothis was depicted as a cow with a young plant between her horns. To later dynasties, Sothis was known as Hathor-mother of the Pharaohs.
What鈥檚 more, Nabta鈥檚 dry-out coincided with the emergence of civilisations further north. 鈥淎bout the time the rains were falling off in the desert,鈥� Wendorf observes, 鈥渢he people in the Nile Valley suddenly started taking an interest in cows, building things with big stones, and getting interested in star worship and solar observatories.鈥� Is it possible that the Nabta nomads migrated up the Nile, influencing the great Egyptian dynasties?
If there is a connection, it鈥檚 unlikely to be genetic. Joel Irish, a physical anthropologist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, recently analysed human skulls found in the Nabta digs. Teeth differ between different ethnic groups: the ancient Egyptians had European-like dental patterns, as do the people of north Africa and southwest Asia. Sub-Saharan Africans, on the other hand, have a markedly different dental profile. Irish determined that the Nabta bones were clearly sub-Saharan, suggesting that Tutankhamen and Akhenaten were not the direct descendants of the Nabta nomads.
That doesn鈥檛 rule out a cultural bond, of course. Wendorf is currently excavating a new set of burial sites in a nearby basin, about 20 miles from Nabta (he won鈥檛 say in which direction). There are three groups of burials, with more than a dozen human skeletons. The bodies were arrayed with rich goods-including fine pottery and necklaces made of shells from the Red Sea. Was there an elite class of Nabta nomads who, like the Egyptian royalty interred in the Valley of the Kings, were laid to rest in a special place? Perhaps this is another telling link between Nabta鈥檚 Stone Age nomads and the architects of eternal Egypt.
