Genesis of the Pharaohs: Dramatic New Discoveries Rewrite the Origins of Ancient Egypt

by Toby Wilkinson

For generations, tourists, scholars, and armchair travelers have been
intrigued by the puzzle of the ancient Egyptians' origins. Was civilization brought to the Nile Valley by invaders from other lands, even refugees from Atlantis? Or did civilization develop, over a long period, within Egypt itself? Most archaeologists favor the latter theory, yet nagging doubts have always remained because many of ancient Egypt's most distinctive elements seem to have appeared quite suddenly, as if from nowhere.



Now the quest for the elusive "missing link" is finally over, and, in the light of dramatic new discoveries, the genesis of the pharaohs is coming into focus. Ancient Egypt, it seems, did not begin by the banks of the Nile but in a much harsher environment. The ancestors of the pyramid-builders were not village-dwelling farmers but wandering cattle-herders, and pharaonic civilization was forged in a remote region, one of the most forbidding places on earth. These are the startling conclusions of Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson, based on his own discoveries in the heart of the Eastern Desert, between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea. Here, the pharaohs' distant ancestors left a stunning legacy that has remained hidden for 6,000 years: hundreds of intricate rock carvings that tell us about their lifestyle and their deepest beliefs. Pharaonic imagery such as the afterlife journey by boat, royal hunting, and the iconography of gods and kings all find their origins in this inhospitable terrain.


Genesis of the Pharaohs traces the discovery of these ancient records, dates them, and identifies the artists who made them. As the story unfolds, we travel back in time to a remarkable early period of human creativity and discover the answer to the question of where, when, and how ancient Egypt began.

Genres: History, Egypt, Egyptology, Archaeology, Africa, Nonfiction, Ancient History

208 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2003

About the author

Dr Toby Wilkinson joined the International Strategy Office in July 2011, working with the Pro Vice Chancellor (Jennifer Barnes) to support the schools, faculties and departments in their international engagements, and to develop the University's international strategy, particularly with regard to research collaborations and relationships with the EU, US, India and China. Prior to this, Dr Wilkinson was the Development Director at Clare College as well as Chairman of Cambridge Colleges Development Group.

As an acknowledged expert on ancient Egyptian civilisation and one of the leading Egyptologists of his generation, Toby Wilkinson has lectured around the world. He has excavated at the Egyptian sites of Buto and Memphis. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Egyptian History and has broadcast on radio and television in the UK and abroad, including BBC’s Horizon and Channel 4’s Private Lives of the Pharaohs, and was the consultant for the BBC’s award-winning documentary on the building of the Great Pyramid.

Upon graduating from the University of Cambridge he received the University’s Thomas Mulvey Prize and was elected to the prestigious Lady Wallis Budge Junior Research Fellowship in Egyptology. He is a Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge and an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Durham.

Reviews

[Bob Offer-Westort · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of the book is unfortunate: Egyptology has been subjected to so much pseudoscience that it can be difficult for an amateur to sort the seed from the chaff. Wilkinson is a well-respected Egyptologist who teaches at Cambridge. That doesn't make his readings of ancient Egyptian culture correct, but it does mean that he cares about things like peer review. Genesis of the Pharaohs is sound archæology & history: neither New Age speculation or nationalist ideology.

Wilkinson lays out the curious problems posed by neolithic rock art from Egypt's Eastern Desert, & explores it within the archæological record & later Egyptian ideological art. Wilkinson is able to show, convincingly, the roots of pharaonic culture—politically, religiously, & artistically—in Badarian & Nagada semi-pastoral culture. The evidence is beautifully marshaled, & it's hard to doubt Wilkinson's claims.

The writing is lucid, & I found Wilkinson easy to follow even when half-distracted. There are two notable moments of weakness in the writing in the book: In the first chapter, he writes a considerable amount about his first two explorations of the Eastern Desert. It goes on longer than necessary, & is rather personal. I believe that Wilkinson is trying to make his readers feel present in the location, but I did not find this effective. Later, at the end of chapter 4, Wilkinson writes a fictionalised biography of a Nagadan named Sen. This, too, feels unnecessary & a little awkward. These are minor "off" points in an otherwise clear & concise argument.

The book is beautifully illustrated with two maps, twenty-five beautiful full-colour photographic plates, & sixty line drawings & black-&-white photos. The choices for which photographs get full colour treatment & which are reproduced in black & white are thoughtful, based on colour & contrast. The illustrations are not arbitrary—they're not just there to gussy up the text: Instead, they are integrated with the text to illustrate Wilkinson's arguments about the prehistory of pharaonic Egypt.

That's it for praise & minor qualms. I have only two more serious complaints:

First, the typesetting for this book is terrible. Spacing between words is erratic & distracting. The book is otherwise beautifully designed, but this failing is unfortunate.

Second, Wilkinson makes one unnecessary speculative leap: In chapter 6, he writes:

It was not just cattle that were accorded special status in Nabta society. To survive in this precarious and stressful environment, the prehistoric inhabitants needed a structured society, one in which rôles were clearly understood. They also needed wise individuals who could make the critical decisions upon which the entire community's welfare depended. In other words, they needed experienced rulers.

There are a couple problems here. One is interpretive: While it seems extremely probable that certain individuals were accorded greater veneration in burial than were others, & that the elaborate nature of these burials required organised labour from a broader community, it is not necessarily true that these individuals were rulers in the sense in which we tend to use the term. Think of the monumental burials for latterday saints, gurus, bodhisattvas… We do not know the precise rôle of the elaborately buried individuals in Nabta society. Further, we know of numerous significant later construction projects that were not the product of authority, but rather of collective decision. Wilkinson may very well be correct, but his hypothesis is, I think, open to critique, & is not necessary for the remainder of his argument.

The second problem is one of causality: Even if Wilkinson is right to interpret Nabta society as hierarchical (& while I think it's not given that he's correct, I think it's quite likely), we do not need to believe that the herding decisions made by Nabta society required a hierarchy. In fact, this causality might be backward. It seems that—in addition to the greater archæological work that Wilkinson quite rightly calls for—this area of exploration of the development of Egyptian society might benefit from some comparative exploration of other East & North African pastoral societies—especially Bedouin & Sudanese cultures.

That said, Wilkinson's hypothesis provides a really fascinating (tho, for this anarchist, depressing) alternative to prior mainstream theories of state formation in the ancient Near East. Probably the most mainstream explanation of state formation has been that the state comes from forces essentially prefigurative of market capitalism. Agriculture was selected by certain societies for stability, & agriculture led to surpluses. Those who accumulated surpluses were able to turn that into purchasing power, which eventually became political power. The purpose of early states was to ensure trade routes. We have seen numerous evidentiary problems with this thesis in recent years, but it's remained one of the better theses out there. Wilkinson's notion that hierarchy came not from horticultural but from pastoral societies, & developed not as a product of stability but instead as a response to change, is a fascinating alternative, & in some ways reflects difficulties that modern anarchists have had in figuring out how to make rapid decisions in crises.

[Paulabp · Rating 4 out of 5]

No es una historia sobre el Antiguo Egipto y los faraones que quizá se pueda esperar por el título, pero muestra el inicio de forma amena y rigurosa.

[Banole · Rating 2 out of 5]

Toby Wilkinson's "dramatic new discoveries" that were supposed to "rewrite the origins of Ancient Egypt" quickly morphs into a pathetic variation of the tired, worn out race-based "Egyptology" of the past, an Egyptology that forces all archaeological, ethnological, linguistics, ancient Egyptian written documents-all scientific evidence -into a rigid intellectual paradigm . The UNSTATED premise of this rigid paradigm was that ancient Egypt was not a black African creation.
On pages 21-22, Wilkinson writes of Winkler's "obsession" : was the great civilization of "ancient Egypt" the "creation, not of "savage Africans", but of enlightened invaders from the "Aryan world of the east."
This was not only Winkler's obsession-it remains the obsession of Toby Wilkinson and most Euro-centric writers and thinkers. They simply never state the premise! But they respect it! They adhere to it!

In this book Mr. Wilkinson engages in an orgy of speculation to support his hypotheses.
It is a web of speculation deliberately contrived to mislead the general reader and to spread euro-centric myths in place of known facts.
Mr. Wilkinson writes on page 14, this astonishingly, euro-centric, ethnocentric, false and misleading assertion: "To European archeologists, as to the ancient Egyptians themselves, Nubia was a strange and exotic place, not quite part of pharaonic Egypt." To imply that "European archeologist" and "ancient Egyptians" held similar opinions about Nubia is nonsense .
In the texts from the tombs of Seti I, Merenptah, and from Ramses III(Book Of Gates) we find indisputable evidence written by the ancient Egyptians themselves which demonstrates that they considered themselves to be profoundly related to the peoples of Nubia. "The Semites(3mou), Sekhmet has transformed them,it is She that hammers their souls. You are those(Egyptians) that strike against them (Semites) for me. I am happy for the multitude that I gave birth to(or who came from me)among your name(those of the Egyptians) destined for the Nubian-Sudanese(nehasu),who are born with the favor of Horus. It is he who protects their souls." The passage is repeated with tamahou(Indo-Europeans) replacing 3mou(Semites/Asiatic).

We know that etymologically the ancient Egyptian terms for Europeans and Asians are extremely pejorative, indicating a animal-like human, with a qualifying sign indicating something that walks on four paws like an animal. Any one familiar with the language would know this.

The word for Nubian (nehase) does not have any racial connotation whatsoever in the ancient Egyptian language. To translate the word nehase as black or Negro is a deliberate mistranslation. It seems to be the ethnic name of some group of ancient African people just as people from the regions of Yam and WaWat were names related to other African peoples.
Toby Wilkinson stumbles along attempting to create some kind of Apartheid Wall between these two ancient African peoples.

Wilkinson often remarks about the use of hippopotamus figures in ancient Egyptian culture. Toby Wilkinson again attempts to separate, in the minds of his readers, ancient Africans from ancient Egyptians (p.64). He writes how the lumbering bulk and small ears of hippos amused the ancient Egyptians... "inspired wry amusement" in those who drew them. On the other hand he writes, "....to African people, hippos are not always figures of fun: they are dangerous wild animals that pose a threat to humans".

If Mr. Wilkinson dared step outside his eurocentric intellectual prison; he would have been able to tell his readers that the hippo is inextricably connected to African cultures. For example, the river valley civilizations of Africa could shade much needed light on the customs of ancient Egypt. Among the Pulaar people who live along the Senegal River there is a Diba clan, which has the Hippo as a totem for fishermen. We know there are several words for hippo in ancient Egyptian:h3b,db and dib, each term is followed by a hippo determinative.

So we have the diba clan or hippo clan among African people today(De L'orgine Egyptienne Des Peuls, by Dr.Aboubacry M. Lam p.211).

In the country of Mali the Hippo is still associated with mythology and clans.
We could cite many, many, many more examples from throughout Africa from culture, language and religion. So again Mr. Wilkinson clearly shows that his work is far from scholarly, and that he remains willingly captive to the tyrannical Euro centric paradigm.

Perhaps Toby Wilkinson personifies the dilemma of the modern Eurocentric scholar who knows very well what happened to the late Sir E. A. Wallis Budge Scholar of Christ's College, Cambridge,Tyrwhitt Hebrew Scholar, Keeper of The Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, British Museum.
Even knighthood could not save Budge from the vicious and endless slander that was heaped upon him and all of his work after he wrote in V.1 of Osiris& The Egyptian Resurrection, Dover1971,(p.xvii,Preface)the following about the study of the Ancient Egyptians: "The modern Sudani beliefs are identical with those of ancient Egypt, because the Egyptians were Africans and the modern peoples of the Sudan are Africans".
At first Budge thought that the language of ancient Egypt was genetically related to the so-called "Afro-Asiatic/Hamito-Semitic" family (Greenberg}. Later he reversed himself and wrote that the language of ancient Egypt was an African language.Budge went so far as to urge the study of modern African languages to help under stand many of points of Egyptian grammar that are still very unclear. Budge also saw the use of dance in ancient Egypt as essentially African, the mythology and religion of old Egypt merged with that of Nubia and other parts of black Africa.
In this instance Budge seems to have risen above the anti- African bigotry of his time.
The Egyptians and the Nubians were followers of the God Horus. This was not true of Asians and Indo Europeans. No amount of dogma, speculation or academic rhetoric can change that fact!

They had some of the same ancient holy sites: the holy mountain of Amen(Napata) in Nubia is just one of literally thousands.
We could expound for sometime on these undeniable cultural connections between ancient Africa and ancient Kmet(Egypt)!.

By the time Budge had finished, all hell broke loose and Budge's works were condemned and ridiculed-finally they were ignored. Budge became an academic "nonperson".

Sadly instead of "Dramatic New Discoveries to Rewrite the origins of Ancient Egypt", Mr. Wilkinson gives us an orgy of" mainstream" Euro-centric speculations, suggestions and assertions about African rock art from the Eastern desert. Again, all interpretations of the rock art is forced into the race-based Euro-centric paradigm.
Wilkinson does not tell his readers that all the periods and categories of rock art are found only in Africa.
Western scholars are ruthlessly whipped back in line if they dare follow the evidence of Egyptian(ancient African) history, culture and archaeology. The evidence leads to the heart of Africa-not Asia.

The Senegalese Egyptologist Dr. Aboubacry Moussa Lam wrote:".....Il etait devenue imppossible de continuer a rattacher la civilisation egyptienne a l'Asie alors que l'archeologie saharienne et nilotique fournit constamment des donnees prouvant le contraire".( It has become impossible to continue to attache Egyptian civilization to Asia when archaeological findings from the Sahara and the Nilotic constantly proves the contrary)See: "p.29 Les Chemins Du Nil, PRESENCE AFRICAINE, Aboubacry Moussa Lam.

Poor Toby Wilkinson remains locked in his Euro-centric Cambridge-built intellectual prison. He has the key to unlock the door. But what he does not seem to have is the intellectual courage to use that key to unlock that door and step out into the bright sunshine of intellectual freedom.
Maybe Toby Wilkinson lacks the necessary intellectual honesty and courage...?

[Roger Pluma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tot i que crec que l'autor podria anar més enllà en l'exercici de reconstruïr els orígens de la societat dels faraons, és un treball excelent. No tant sols argumenta per què sembla que l'origen el podem trobar al desert oriental, sinó que també explica què va portar a desenvolupar hipòtesis diferents i per quines raons són refutades a dia d'avui. Si us interessa la prèhistoria i Egipte, molt recomanable.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This makes a very plausible case for the indigenous origins of high Egyptian culture in the semi-nomadic Badarian and Naqada I cultures that both farmed and hunted in the Nile Valley and herded and hunted in the savannah before desertification started to take hold.

Based on his own research into the rock art of the Eastern savannah, Wilkinson easily knocks down the Aunt Sally of 'alien invasion' from Mesopotamia (not that he needed to) but also establishes the very long continuity of Egyptian ideas about divinity, kingship and the afterlife.

From this perspective, the book is almost a must-read for anyone interested in the origins of Egyptian civilisation. The motifs of the royal tombs certainly now look as if they are drawn from a complex cattle-herding culture with one foot in the Nile and one in the mountains.

Where he overstates his case (possibly because he is rather enthusiastic about getting funding diverted for the protection of the rock art and for more expeditions) is in giving the lead role to the savannah rather than emphasising the essential symbiosis involved.

It is reasonable to suppose that a tribe of a few interconnected families would play all the resources available within a 30-, then a 50- and then a 100-mile radius to ensure survival and there was a clock-like regularity about inundation that encouraged flexibility.

Nevertheless, this professional bias notwithstanding, the book is a relatively easy non-academic and well illustrated read that will help contextualise key themes underlying Egyptian iconography and show how the First Dynasty did not 'come out of the blue' but grew out of its environment.

[DAJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is hyperbolic about its subject, and it's not just the title or the jacket copy. Wilkinson dubs the Eastern Desert the cradle of Egyptian civilization, even though he's really arguing that Predynastic Egyptian society developed out of a close interrelationship between the desert and the Nile Valley. The idea that nomads outside the Nile Valley contributed to the development of Predynastic society is hardly new, and Egyptologists have known since 1907 that the Eastern Desert contained Predynastic petroglyphs. Why did Wilkinson decide to play them up so much in 2003?

Partly it's because of expeditions in the 1990s and 2000s that more thoroughly documented the petroglyphs than any before them and discovered several new sites. Wilkinson participated in those expeditions and is naturally excited about them. And partly it's because of close similarities between the Eastern Desert art and the art of the Badarian and Naqada I periods in the Nile Valley.

Earlier hypotheses about the nomads suggested that they moved into the valley as climate changes turned their savanna into desert, driving up the population along the river and creating Badarian society. Wilkinson argues that this hypothesis doesn't entirely work because the climate change took place several centuries later than the beginning of the Badarian period. Instead, the peoples in the western savanna interacted with and influenced Nile society but were distinct from it, whereas the eastern nomads and the Nile inhabitants were in fact the same people, moving seasonally between the river and the grasslands. Whereas dynastic Egyptians recorded their religious ideas in great temples and tombs, their Predynastic ancestors, lacking the tradition of monument-building, expressed their religion in the spectacular natural setting of the deep, rocky wadis.

I'm skeptical that it's possible to draw such a sharp distinction between the east and west, especially because climate changes can be hard to date precisely (a second wave of desertification, somewhere around the time of the Old Kingdom, has been given significantly different dates even though the era it took place in is much better understood). The Eastern Desert rock art does contain motifs strongly reminiscent of dynastic Egyptian art, but the petroglyphs are very hard to date and interpret. Wilkinson discusses how flawed different dating methods are, but the one he considers most reliable (stylistic similarity to datable artifacts) has more problems than he admits. Likewise, Wilkinson often cautions that we can't be sure what petroglyphs meant to the people who drew them, but when a glyph is reminiscent of an idea from later Egyptian religion, he can't resist the temptation to connect the two. Two of the glyphs he is most excited about fall down for these reasons. One is pretty certainly a crude drawing of the god Min. Wilkinson dates it to the Naqada II period, which would make it the oldest known image of an Egyptian god, but he does so on very shaky grounds. Another is a glyph he says is an image of the Red Crown, but recent reexamination shows it probably isn't the Red Crown at all.

At the end Wilkinson says that many Predynastic artifacts are undoubtedly buried in the desert, and future investigations should move their focus away from the petroglyphs toward these other sources of evidence. He has succeeded in showing the Eastern Desert is important and needs more study, but his conclusions should be treated with caution.

[Rasheed Abdullah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is written purely from an archaeologist’s point of view, meaning that it has a scientific and historian read to it. It’s not overly scientific or overly history book style (aka names, dates, places and events). The author does make an attempt to make the book interesting. He is an archaeologist after all.

I would assume that archaeologists are the most qualified to comment upon the history of a place, but then again, it was an archaeologist that came up with the “Eastern Invader” “Master Race” theory about the civilization of Egypt. Archaeologists are the collectors and classifiers, but sometimes a scientist of a different field may have a better insight on the hows, whys and whats.

I’m not saying author, Toby Wilkinson, is wrong in his commentary on prehistoric Egypt, just that his work should be looked at alongside other work.

For what it’s worth, I like the book. It’s an in depth description of Egypt’s known petroglyphs (rock carvings) and a focus on Egypt’s predynastic history. Toby also adds some pictures of the discovered petroglyphs with extensive descriptions and explanations.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in ancient Egypt and Egyptology. I would also recommend that that person collect other books as well.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hadn't looked at the petroglyphs in the eastern desert before, so this was fascinating. Towards the end I wondered if he was indeed going to go with the invader theory he had spent so long dismantling, but he simply noted that it was possible, if not probable given the archaeological evidence. As with anything in archaeology, we can't speak in absolute certainties most of the time, so this seems prudent to leave open the possibility while also asserting that it seems the Egyptian culture is native to Egypt itself. This shouldn't be controversial, but it is.

I also personally appreciated seeing more of the early examples of classic Egyptian iconography, having studied Old Kingdom icongraphy, but not the predynastic iconography.

[June Ling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book. This time this narration by Toby Wilkinson feels almost like a history book, with him guiding the reader through plausible discoveries of predynastic Egypt. I learned a lot of new things in this book and it was a very enjoyable read. However I would’ve like it even more if it went into further detail of the discoveries of the rock art and it’s symbolisms and analysis. This is a rather short book and that’s why I felt the explanations were a little cut short. But besides that an enjoyable read.

[Kayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this and felt more informed on prehistoric Egypt. I will say I thought the first chapter went a little longer than necessary in the way of personal histories of previous researchers. It did not help enlighten the interpretation of discussed petroglyphs.

More figures would have been helpful though. Especially in the last chapters, sites are referenced with no visual aid.

[Danko Herrera · Rating 5 out of 5]

entertaining, clear and potentialy revolutionary to anyone wanting to deepen their understanding of the egyptian culture

[Manuela Alvarez]

La antigua civilización egipcia fue un regalo del desierto . Puede que Egipto sea el regalo del Nilo.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Genesis of the Pharaohs is Toby Wilkinson's investigation into the origins of Ancient Egyptian civilisation, focusing on rock art found on the desert bordering onto modern day Egypt which was once, in prehistoric times, savannah. His theories solely reject the notion of an invasion from other lands, instead discussing how the Ancient Egyptian civilisation grew from the semi-nomadic peoples in the savannah to the east and west of the Nile as well as within the Nile Valley itself.

Wilkinson is a strong writer, able to create a effortlessly readable text that both informs and remains interesting. The topic of the origins of Ancient Egyptian civilisation and culture is also undoubtedly fascinating and I am well aware of Wilkinson's expertise as an Egyptologist. From reading Wilkinson's The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt: The History of a Civilisation from 3000 BC to Cleopatra , I know he is a reliable author – perhaps biased in some places, but reliable all the same.

This knowledge helps me forgive the greatest sin of the book a little. There is just so much speculation in this book that, while it may make a nice, neat story, doesn't appear to have much support. Of course, with the scarcity of archaeological evidence – and the non-existence of written records – from this time, any attempt to find answers will ultimately turn to speculation. Personally, Wilkinson offering a disclaimer on his speculation would have gone a long way to make it forgivable to me.

All up, Genesis of the Pharaohs is a strong book, more fascinating than I would have first thought. Although heavy on speculation, it is forgivable to a degree.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the desert regions bordering modern day Egypt there exist thousands of prehistoric images (Petroglyph’s) incised on stone. Through analysis of the images and following evidence at sites in parts of Egypt, Dr Wilkinson, shows that these Petroglyph’s were the work of the pre-dynastic progenitors of the ancient Egyptians.

A well presented book showing that dynastic Egyptian civilization did not just spring out of thin air and neither was it established by a 'master race' of invaders from the east. Instead we see that the genesis came from semi-nomadic and pastoral communities originating in the savannah regions bordering the Nile valley in prehistoric times.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

very interesting look at how many aspects of pharaonic Egypt appear in the petroglyphs in the eastern and western deserts 1000 years before the 1st Dynasty