EGYPTIAN STELE OF A SYRIAN MERCENARY

3 days ago4 min read

The scene reflects a festive event and that the stele was placed in a house rather than inside a tomb.

A mid 2nd Millennium BCE painted limestone stele showing a Syrian mercenary drinking beer. The mercenary's name is Terura and his wife's name is Arbura. Terura drinks beer through a long curved lead tube from an amphora. The long spear behind him and the dagger in his belt suggest that he is a soldier; Syrian mercenaries were incorporated in large number in the Egyptian army during the New Kingdom.

The region of Syria known as Retjenu to the ancient Kemetyu was home to various populations. Despite the mainstream narrative it was home to many black populations such as the Kushites, Kemites, Elamites, Assyrians, and Sumerians along with various Indo-European populations such as Persians, Medes, and Hittites. The Syrian family depicted in the relief could have had roots in any of the above Black Ethnic groups or could have also been native to Retjenu.

The phenotype of the Syrian soldier is similar to that of the Elamites most known as the 10,000 Immortals the elite force of the Persian army of the Achaemenid Empire depicted in the movie 300. The Elamites were one of the various black populations of the near east. The Proto-Elamite Period, stretching from roughly 3200 to 2700 BC, is the oldest period of civilization in Elam. They spoke Susian which is a language isolate, but long theorized to be part of the Tamil language family which originated with the Black Dravidians of the Indus Valley. Located near the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the ancient Elamite Civilization was part of a process of urbanization that brought about some of the most ancient of human societies, such as Sumer and Ur. The Elomites, widely known from their depiction in the movie 300, as the 10,000 Immortals, were similar in form and feature to the Sag-giga “the Black Headed People”, and Susa served as the capital of Elam and the Achaemenid Empire.

Gaston Maspero describes the Elamites as,

"...A well knit figure with brown skin, Black hair and eyes, who belonged to the Negritic race which inhabited a considerable part of Asia in prehistoric times ." -Gaston Maspero, History of Egypt, Vol. 4, trans. M.L. McClure pp. 45-46.

French archaeologist Dieulafoy, one of the first to excavate at Susa, referred to ancient Elam as a prerogative of an Ethiopian (referring to dark complexion) dynasty.

-Marcel A. Dieulafoy, L'Acropole de Susa (Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1893) pp. 27, 44, 46, 57-86, 102-115.

The later Neo-Elamite period is characterized by a significant migration of Indo-Europeans into the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia. The Indo-European branch consisted of: Indo-Aryans, Persians, Hittite's, Greeks, Romans, Celta, Vikings, Medes and Philistines, among others.

The Assyrians were also a black skinned population. Ancient Assyria began as a city-state in Mesopotamia in the second millennium BC, then to a territorial state, and eventually an empire from the 14th century to the 7th century BC. Early Assyria was heavily influenced by the Sumerians known as the Sag-giga or “the Black Headed People”, and like the Sumerians they were what historians describe as a non-Indo European, non-Semitic population. This would change around 750 BC when they would adopt Akkadian which belongs to the Semitic language family and later to Indo-European with the invasions of the Persians in 550 BC.

Perisans, Medes, Hittites and other various Indo-European populations were largely regarded as vassals of the Neo-Assyrian Empire until the late 7th century. Historically, the Amorites were an ethnic group of nomads based in western Mesopotamia or Arabia who migrated south and east through the Levant, the Near East, and into Africa. Their migration supplanted the original Sumerian culture and kingdoms established in the region before the third millennium BC. The ruling Elamites were eventually absorbed into Amorite culture, becoming the Babylonians and marking the end of the Sumerians as a distinctive Black population from the rest of Mesopotamia.

Assyrian sources beginning around 800 BC distinguished Indo-Europeans from the Sumerian, Chaldean and Elamite ethnic populations. These Indo-European populations such as the Hittites, Scythians, Parthians, and Sagartians were similar in form and feature to each other and were distinguished from the original Sumerians or “Black Headsd People” who were the original progenitors of Sumerian civilization.

Kush sometimes spelled Cush was a powerful nation in antiquity. Nimrod, the Biblical King of Shinar and Son of Cush known in the Bible as the world's first builder and builder of the Tower of Babylon, is none other than Sargon of Akkad. Also known as Sargon the Great, he was the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire, known for his conquests of the Sumerian city-states in the 24th to 23rd centuries BC. He is sometimes identified as the first person in recorded history to rule over an empire. He was the founder of the "Sargonic" or "Old Akkadian'' dynasty, which ruled for about a century after his death until the Gutian conquest of Sumer. His empire is thought to have included most of Mesopotamia, parts of the Levant, besides incursions into Hurrian and Elamite territory, ruling from his capital, Akkad.

Cush is a Hebrew name that is possibly derived from Kash, the Kemetic (Egyptian) name of Upper Kush and later of the Nubian kingdom at Napata, known as the Kingdom of Kush. In Biblical lore the nation of Kush is represented by Cush.

Josephus gives an account of the nation of Cush, son of Ham and grandson of Noah: "For of the four sons of Ham, time has not at all hurt the name of Cush; for the Ethiopians, over whom he reigned, are even at this day, both by themselves and by all men in Asia, called Cushites" (Antiquities of the Jews 1.6).