Traces of a royal image: Chaos, Cargo, and Captives

While the self-depiction of the late fourth millennium BCE paints a stark contrast between insiders and outsiders, the international situation in those days was (insofar as we can reconstruct it) one where "otherness" was a matter of degrees.

In close proximity to the territory of any supra-local ruler were the other supra-local rulers. They'd worship different gods, or the same gods by different names. They would vy for control of the same trade routes upstream, downstream, or across the desert. While not insiders in the strict sense, the workers in those parts would be politically, socially, and economically compatible with the communities that buried their dead around the ancestral tombes of the ruler's family.

Just a little further apart are the raiding nomads on the edge of the vegetated world and to the south. They are the pastoralists still clinging to the old ways. Their funerals seem, to their sttled counterparts, poor imitations of their own sumptuous sepulchres. Occasionally, raids are attempted, and these nomads can manifest themselves as a force of chaos. When the trade routes break down, the ensuing worsening of the economy is often exacerbated by a raid; and break-downs in trade have the potential to ideologically undermine the local élite. But when the trade routes are functioning well, these nomads can be "bought off" with a share of the trade cargo, or even engaged to help subdue a settled neighbour. Supra-local lords and ladies have an ambivalent relationship with these nomads: somewhere between an estranged kinsman and a necessary evil.

To the north are agricultural civilisations of a different kind. They are worshipping different gods, but the main difference is in the way they have been constituted. These civilisations have had far less influence from pastoralists: their population is a merger of mostly farmers and the megalithic Beaker Culture. They have less propensity for political unification. The villages and small towns are inhabited by people who cannot and will not accept the need for closer cohesion. Trade routes pass through their farm lands, but they have little interest in luxury items. As such, most of their trade is local: wheat for diary. Culturally, these civilisation are drifting further apart from the Lake Djouff proto-states than the raiding and trading nomads. They may have been the venture point for agriculture in this part of the world, but by their fiercely local focus, they are becoming an anachronism just before the start of the third millennium BCE.

This is an especially urgent matter: being situated at the estuary of the (alternative course of) the river Niger, this anachronism is the choke point for trade overseas - especially to the estuary of the Nile. There is a compelling reason to bring these civilisations under control, to maintain connection to maritime trade routes. It is telling that the region around the Shot Djerit is called, in the oldest sources, "Akal-n-Agh-n-Aton": the land of the she-ass's milk. While asses' milk was a prized luxury item in later times, in pre-dynastic times it seems to have had a pejorative meaning: these barbarians don't milk cattle, but beasts of burden.

The proto-states around Lake Djouff seem to be perfectly positioned to take advantage of all their neighbours, who are suffering from the dialectics of leading (the handicap of a head start, either in pastoralism or in agriculture). The disunity, the funerary rituals' fluidity, the competition over the trade routes, the quick social-economic rises and falls: even if their immediate effect is a plethora of uncertainty, they are neatly creating the conditions for the law of stimulative arrears.

The creativity engendered by these arrears, combined with the existing division of labours, saw both the élite women and the élite men redefine their roles in a way that upped the scale of operations. This is reflected in their sepulchral tombs. From around 3200 BCE, we see ever the same figurative scene appear: a woman giving birth, and a warrior. They are surrounded by circles of people and groups of cattle. Nineteenth century archaeologists usually dubbed them: father and mother with their wealth represented through livestock and children. But this heteronormative interpretation of an idealised family is belied by the more elaborative reproductions of this scene, found in tombs from around the beginning of the third millennium. Here, the birthing woman and the warrior are shown as the centre of two demi-circles: one consists of smaller warriors and groups of cattle, as well as a large group of cattle without a warrior, while the other consists of smaller circles of women, all doing whatever the birthing female figure is doing, all centred around smaller birthing women.

At last, we have images that we can compare to the (albeit very limited) written sources of the time. We find references to Mother, Brother, and Daughter. Ideologically speaking, the central woman would be the mother of mothers, the arch-matriarch. The other mothers are an extension of her powers, including the life-giving power of birth. The Mother is the Unifying Monarch, the Daughters are the heads of the local nobilities, exercising their “mother’s“ powers and authority in loco parentis.

Whether all these local leadies were actual daughters of the matriarchal monarch is doubtful. But there seems to have been a ritual for the accession of a Mother, and one for the accession of a Daughter; and we can imagine the women’s quarters at the central palace being stocked with fertile girls to supplement (= extend) the birthing powers of the Mother. It is very telling that while the houses of all matriarchs were called “House of the Mother” (Ihananna) or “House of the Daughter” (Ehenesh), only one was “Abode of the Womb” (Tarahafamt / Darhafemt). Women had monopolised the realm of Life, and centred it around a greatly mystified female ruler. While succession from mother to daughter cannot be excluded, it seems likelier that a new female ruler was chosen by and from the women in the Abode of the Womb. Bloodline daughters not present at the time of succession would not be eligible to succeed.

The men, meanwhile, have monopolised the realm of Death. They complement the women’s domain by overcoming Death, bringing back from their ventures into the realm of chaos: spoils of war, animal trophees, precious stones and metals, rare hides, and captives. Parading captured enemies before the peasants of the women’s realms was an essential part of showing their ability to subdue the powers of chaos. Which is precisely why the occasional raid served them ideologically: a rare manifestation of the forces of “The Others” underlined the need for the men to venture into that realm and subdue it. Human sacrifice at the funerals of high-ranking individuals further underlined their power to give or take Life, overcome or distribute Death.

The warrior figure besides the female monarch was designated her Brother. This title does not imply a first degree kinship. While it was indeed possible for the Brother to be the actual brother of the Mother, he could equally well be her father, her husband, or her son. More distant relations cannot be excluded, but it is doubtful that they often occurred, if at all. The first female ruler we know by name, Tin Hinan, seems to have had more than one brother, and given her long years on the throne, may well have had her husband succeeded by one of her sons. Another long-lived early monarch, Imuhanna, can with certainty be said to have shared power with four successive Brothers: first her father, then her husband, then her actual brother, then one of her sons.

In a parallel movement, we can sometimes see one Brother have more than one Mother: maybe the first was his wife, and the second their daughter, or indeed: a second wife? The designations of Mother, Brother, and Daughter were fluid ones, reflective of someone’s authority within the central palace, or the extended authority they represented locally. Age and kinship were not implied, and certainly don’t seem to have been conditions for attaining to any of these positions. The titles were developed as easy to understand relations, tapping into very basic realities of familial powers, to develop a unified governmental system where there was none.

In this system, the women called the shots at home, while the men controlled the entire outside world. In the next chapter, we will look at the women who created this system, and how they may have managed to integrate the religions around Lake Djouff into a pluriform religious platform. We will also look at the undoing of this system, a mere two centuries later.

We will also, from this time, refer to the unified state by the name it bears even today: Djuff.