Blemmyes

The desert between the Nile and the Red Sea, south of Egypt, was home in antiquity to the Blemmyes, a nomadic people who appear in written sources from the seventh century BCE to the eighth century CE. In late antiquity they raided Roman Egypt, took over part of Lower Nubia and ruled it from Kalabsha. Most scholars regard them as forerunners of the Beja, who still live in the same region.

A possible first mention comes in the late seventh century BCE, on an enthronement stela of the Kushite king Anlamani from Kawa, which names a people Bwrꜣhꜣyw. The Greek name appears in the third century BCE, in a poem of Theocritus and in the geographer Eratosthenes, who located them in the desert north of Meroë, east of the Nile. Strabo described them as nomadic raiders rather than a warlike nation. Roman writers such as Pliny the Elder later turned them into a fable of headless men with faces on their chests. One proposed origin for the name links it to a Beja word for a desert dweller or nomad.

Their strength grew in the Roman period. In 193 CE Pescennius Niger, contesting the throne with Septimius Severus, reportedly asked a Blemmye king for help. Roman forces fought Blemmye invasions of the Thebaid, Upper Egypt, under Decius around 250 and again in 253 and 265, and the Blemmyes are said to have sided with Palmyra in 273. Probus broke a Blemmye occupation of the Thebaid in 279–280. In 298 Diocletian pulled the frontier back to Philae and agreed to pay the Blemmyes and the Nobatae an annual subsidy in gold.

By the late fourth century the Blemmyes held part of Lower Nubia, with Kalabsha as their main centre. Greek inscriptions by their own rulers use words for kings and mention tribal chiefs called phylarchs, court officials and scribes, and show kings levying taxes and granting exemptions; several royal names, such as Phonen around 450, are known. The historian László Török doubted that one centralised kingdom ever existed, suggesting instead a group of tribal states moving towards unity. Archaeologists usually connect the Blemmyes with part of the X-Group culture of the period.

Their worship centred on two temples: Kalabsha, home of the solar, lion-like god Mandulis, and the great Isis sanctuary at Philae, a pilgrimage site where Blemmye inscriptions survive. Procopius claimed they also honoured Osiris and Priapus and offered human sacrifices to the sun, claims that come from a writer outside their society. Letters from Gebelein suggest some Blemmyes had become Christian by the early sixth century.

Probably in the fifth century the Nubian king Silko of Nobatia defeated the Blemmyes and, by his own inscription at Kalabsha, drove them back into the Eastern Desert. They remain in written sources until the eighth century. Their language, known from a few texts and names, is widely accepted as an early form of Beja; the archaeologist Claude Rilly considers it probably just an early dialect of that language. The Beja people, Cushitic-speaking pastoralists of eastern Sudan, Egypt and Eritrea, are therefore generally seen as their descendants.

Our maps draw the Blemmyes from 500 BCE to 700 CE, an approximate outline in the Eastern Desert beside Egypt and the Kingdom of Kush. On the later maps their neighbours include Makuria along the Nile.