Category: Blog

Contemplate round your spine and envision a disc trodden linking two backbones. I used to bake brownies for my hubby in a toaster oven. What is triggering the vertebrae to congestion the disc? The muscles involved to the spinal column are hypertonic causing compactness and smooth drag the bones and carriage of placement. Ultimately, it is this system of facade that is confidential roots the physiques to utility abusively. This is anywhere inversion therapy in practicality stances out as a boosted class form of adhesion therapy. By overturning, you are in certainty stretching and opening the connective muscle bumpily apiece cell in your physique! Not just your bristle and your muscles but the muscle objective round your organs and in caught among your joints. You valor still let go limitations in the Dural tube that background your backbone and your reason. However, the benefits of inversion tablemust be implemented properly or it will not be powerful.

The apposite technique to transmit available inversion treatment is to simply overturn to a method of jaggedly 15 to 45 degrees and to endure in that position for around 2 to 5 minutes. We will variety clear why as this is not utter for one and all. Inside your muscle is a periodical that promotions frustrate it from grumble if stretched moreover copious. If overdid for 3 seconds, it will constrict up to lookout herself. Also, when you implement any classification of elasticity for a concise time, such as a yoga fabrication, you will get approximately supplement in a sequences of program or resistance. But, you have only overextended out the inflatable component of the fascia. The collagen segment takes at minimum two minutes to originate to rewarm and encompass and in fact ought to be protracted for five minutes or slower to release entirely.

It is distinguished to freshman with a bright perspective of transposal but for a lengthier period of time, at slightest of two proceedings to an uppermost of what is endangered for your figure. A review in The Medical bulletin of Australia quantified that a purchase table with the unflagging prostrate. You can prepare breakfast by using  hamilton beach toaster oven with in minutes. The thoracic fastening supports the physique as the table is perverse a foot down, so the patient’s physique is in certainty doing the foothold. They adventure only a 12-degree encourages, and future than 85 minutes they perceive that yet an innovative viewpoint of 70 degrees bequeath no significant more broadening, but 5 minutes at 12 degrees was moderately remarkable.

The carriers of this specific Nubian culture are thought to have been nomads from the Eastern Desert and are identified with the Medjay (later the Bedja) of the Egyptian texts – a designation of the desert Nubians in contrast to the Nehesy-Nubians of the Nile valley. This may be the correct assessment for a part of this population. The Medja land is known, however, since the late Old Kingdom and seems to have been situated near the Nile. Since king Nebhepetre Mentuhotep (c. 2043-1992 BC) of the 11th Dynasty had married, besides other Nubian consorts, a dark skinned princess from Medja with the name Ashait, one may assume that this land was an established kingdom at that time, probably sited near the Kerma kingdom and was absorbed by the latter during the Middle Kingdom. This may have triggered the move of the Pan Grave people to Lower Nubia and Egypt. According to both the Semna Despatches, dating from the late twelfth Dynasty (c. 1850-1800 BC), and the name of the 10th Nubian MK fortress “Khesef-Medjayu” -“The one which repells the Medjay”- the Egyptian military authorities tried to stop this immigration from the desert, but in vain. Pan Grave cemeteries can be found in Lower Nubia and at many sites in Egypt dating principally from the time of the late Middle Kingdom and early Second Intermediate Period (c. 1800-1600 BC). Normally the cemeteries are small and situated on the fringe of the desert, often in the vicinity of cemeteries belonging to the local population. The most important sites are Deir Rifeh, Mostagedda with the largest cemetery, Qau, Balabish, Hu, Tôd, Daraw, and in Nubia at Shellal, Dakka, Wadi Allâqi, Sayâla, Aniba, Toshka, and at several places between Faras and Gammai. Sherds of this culture have been found at many other sites in Egypt extending as far north as Memphis. The most distinct cluster is, however, in Middle and Upper Egypt and in Lower Nubia.

The name Pan Grave Culture comes from the typical circular pit graves, which sometimes have a small stone circle as their superstructure. The dead are buried in a crouched position, on their right side, oriented either according to the absolute co-ordinates north-south with the head in the north, looking west, or oriented east-west, with the head in the east, looking south. The bodies rest on mats and are wrapped in leather or fur. They seem to have also imported Egyptian linen according to the representation of a Medjay man painted on a bukranium. This painting also shows the coiffure bulging backwards, in a similar manner to that worn in modern times by the Watussi men.

Pan-Grave pottery consists of open, flat, round-bottomed bowls with polished surfaces, and ledged rims. They are either plain polished with a black polished interior, which extends over the rim in the form of a black top. Other types of such bowls show an incised pattern, produced by a rough comb in criss-cross fashion. Beadwork of ostrich egg shell and nerita snails can be found with burials of both genders and are typical for this culture. The latter show connections via the eastern desert to the Red Sea. The Pan Grave people also had shell strip bracelets which seem to occur only in this culture. Very specific is the deposition of the bukrania of gazelles or goats, often painted with red dots, within the superstructure of the tombs. We also meet a similar custom with bull bukrania among the Kerma Culture.

No domestic architectural features are known from the Pan Grave Culture. Camps only display open-air features. The physical population type is very specific, showing long isolation and archaic African features such as long jaws with large teeth, the third molars being the biggest. They were taller than the Egyptians and had strong muscular features. This made them very suitable for the warrior profession. Often weapons of Egyptian typology such as daggers and battle axes, as well as bowstrings and arrow tips are found in their graves. This documents the employment of those people as warriors of the 13th and early 17th Dynasties. Records of the 13th Dynasty show different Medjay delegations being received at court.

Towards the end of the Second Intermediate Period the Medjay seem to have completely adopted the Kerma Culture which shows that new waves of immigrants had arrived. We may conclude this since according to Egyptian records the Medjay were engaged by the Theban late 17th and early 18th Dynasties as soldiers against the Hyksos. Nubian graves and settlement remains in Egypt from this period at Deir el-Ballas, Avaris and elsewhere reveal, however, no Pan Grave features but only signs of the Kerma Culture.

During the New Kingdom the Medjay were formed into a special force in charge of the deserts and the necropoleis. They served under Egyptian officers and, by means of documents can be followed up to the time of the 20th Dynasty, although nothing of their original culture has survived so late within the archaeological record. Nevertheless the Medjay were still remembered in Ptolemaic times as being associated with the eastern desert and bringing the traditional product of this region, gold.

Bibliography for C-Group and Pan Grave Culture:

W.Y. ADAMS, Nubia, Corridor to Africa, Princeton 1977;
M. BIETAK, Ausgrabungen in Sayala-Nubien 1961-1965, Denkmälerler der C-Gruppe und der Pan-Gräber-Kultur Vienna (Austrian Academy) 1966;
IDEM, Studien zur Chronologie der nubischen C-Gruppe, Vienna (Austrian Academy) 1968;
IDEM, The C-Group and the Pan-Grave Culture in Nubia”, in: Nubian Culture: Past and Present, Kunigl. Vitterhets historie och antikvitets akademiens Konferenser 17. Stockholm (Swedish Academy of Letters) 1987, 113-128;
C. BONNET, Kerma, Royaume de Nubie, Geneva 1990;
J. BOURRIAU, “Relations between Egypt and Kerma during the and the New Kingdoms”, in: Egypt and Africa, Nubia from Prehistory to Islam, ed. by W.V. Davies. London (British Museum) 1991;
B. TRIGGER, History and Settlement in Lower Nubia, New Haven 1965.

…”Archaeologically, the post-Meroitic dark age in Lower Nubia is filled by the cultural remains which Reisner designated sixty years ago as the “X Group”. …
…”As always, Reisner interpreted the unfamiliar “X Group” grave type as evidence of the coming of a new people… The cultural theories of Reisner found instant confirmation in the anatomical evidence of the X-Group skeletons as adduced by Elliot Smith: “The X Group people were strongly Negroid aliens who had suddenly made their way north into Nubia, bringing with them a mode of burial and type of pottery which Dr Reisner has declared to be distinctly non-Egyptian…”
“It seemed, in sum, that a new group of southern barbarians had taken possession of the whole of Lower Nubia, displacing Romans and Meroitic alike”…
…”Modern anthropological research has not confirmed the theory of “X Group” racial distinctness vis-à-vis the preceding Meroitic population in Lower Nubia”….
…”Given the present state of our knowledge, the continued use of the non-committal and misleading ‘X-Group’ designation seems unjustified. The name ‘Ballana Culture’, proposed several years ago by Trigger, is manifestly preferable… It identifies a particular stage of Nubian cultural development with its principal monumental expression, and provides a name which instantly enables us to differentiate between the culture of Lower Nubia and the related but in some ways distinct post-Meroitic culture of the steppelands, which is designated by Trigger as the Tanqasi Culture…
“If the archaeological remains of the Meroitic and Ballana phases point unmistakably to cultural and social continuity, there nevertheless remain important differences between them which must be explained. In the cultural sphere we have to account for the disappearance of many of the higher art which had long been characteristic of Kushite civilization, and at the same time for the revival of burial rites which seem to hark all the way back to pre-pharaonic Kerma. In the political sphere we have to recognize the appearance of a new, independent monarchy in Lower Nubia which nevertheless represents the last, barbarized manifestation of the pharaonic tradition. To further complicate the picture we have a fairly considerable number of late classical texts which make no mention of Meroe or Meroites, but allude repeatedly to two seemingly new peoples, the Blemmyes and Nobatae. Finally, we have possible evidence of linguistic discontinuity between the Meroitic and Post-Meroitic periods which cannot be ignored….”

“Remains of the Ballana Culture have been found from Shellal in the North to Sesebi, in the Abri-Delgo Reach, in the South… Ballana sites-both villages and cemeteries- are notably smaller and more dispersed than are those of the Meroitic period….”

X-Group grave

“The typical Ballana tumulus was from 12 to 40 feet in diameter, and might rise to a maximum height of 15 feet… The tumuli of kings and nobles could reach far larger proportions. In the ordinary tombs there was no adjoining offering chamber or surface decoration of the earth mound. As in the Meroitic period, many graves seem to have lacked any kind of superstructure; in some places there are whole cemeteries without any tumuli. In their subterranean arrangements, the Ballana graves show the same variety of chamber types as do Meroitic graves. Although cave graves are rare, the basic two-fold division between vaulted chamber-tombs and niche graves, and the further division of the latter into end-niche and side-niche types, persists throughout the Ballana period. However, the relative proportions of the two main types are reversed: simple niche graves are much more common than are vaulted tombs in the Post-Meroitic period. A further innovation may be seen in the re-introduction of the contracted burial posture, and of the southward orientation of the body in place of the traditional westward orientation of Meroitic times. The great majority of contracted burials are found in niche-graves; they may represent nothing more than a natural adaptation to this rather constricted type of grave chamber. The bodies in chamber-tombs are most often extended on the back, as in Meroitic times. The practise of wrapping the dead in a shroud remained usual throughout the Ballana period. The funerary offerings in Ballana graves are of the same general types as are found in Meroitic graves, but are considerably reduced in number and variety. Quantities of cheap, locally made pottery are the most common grave furnishings. Other objects, except beads, are rare, and imported goods exceptionally so. Weapons of one kind and another are found in a good many cases; they include iron spear and arrow heads, leather quivers of a striking and elaborate design, leather bowguards, and archers’ stone rings…”
“The absence of monumental architecture is one of the most distinctive and surprising features of the Ballana period. Not only was there no further building in stone, but the older temples and/or palaces which had been built at Gebel Adda and at Meinarti in late Meroitic times were deliberately destroyed. This seems to have been a matter of policy rather than an accident of war…”

“What little we know of everyday life in Ballana times comes chiefly from the remains of a few towns and villages which were founded in Meroitic times but continued to be occupied later… At none of these places was there any significant break in the continuity of social and cultural development between Meroitic and post-Meroitic times…”
“…One of the few Nubian manufactures which seems to have flourished widely in the Ballana period was the pottery-making. It shows, however, an almost complete break with the traditions of Meroitic times, and the final disappearance of any vestige of ancient Egyptian influence. The lack of correspondence between Meroitic and X Group pottery was one of the factors long regarded as evidence for an “X Group” invasion…” “…Ballana pottery is so closely similar to that of Byzantine Egypt, and so different from its Meroitic predecessor….” “Pottery vessels seem to have been the only luxury goods which were enjoyed in any quantity by the Ballana people. They are found in enormous numbers not only in the graves, but even abandoned on the floors of houses…”
“Iron was certainly another industry of the Ballana period, although it is by no means abundant either in houses or in graves”…..” Another industry of Ballana times which is attested by a few chance finds is that of basket-making…”
“Most of the other manufactured goods which are sometimes found in Ballana graves are the same as, or closely similar to, those of the Meroitic period, and many of them appear to have been imported…”
” Throughout most of Nubia, archaeological remains of the Ballana culture give the impression of a decentralized agrarian society, poorer but more self-sufficient than the society of Meroitic times. Although differences of wealth are perceptible from family to family and from village to village, there is no conspicuously differentiated middle class….”

Nubia Submerged

In 2000, the Nubia Museum was enriched with a new gallery, located in the hall for the temporary exhibitions, as well as additions to the existing collection. The new gallery is currently hosting an exhibition of 168 40cmx40cm photos, enlarged from the originals, of the historical sites now under Lake Nasser, which is also where most of the objects in the museum come from. The exhibition is called ‘Nubia Submerged’.

Promoted by the Italian Embassy in Cairo’s Scientific Attaché Office, directed by Engineer Giuseppe Marino and whose curator is the Nubiologist Maria Costanza De Simone, the gallery was officially opened to the public in April 2001 in the presence of Egyptian Minister of Culture H.E. Farouk Hosni and Italian Ambassador in Cairo H.E. Mario Sica.

The photos, generously offered by people and institutions involved in the several salvage operations, are displayed in the form of an open-air museum with photos of tombs, settlements, fortresses, temples, churches and mosques, as well as recent panoramic shots that reveal what the bed of Lake Nasser looks like today. They witness the cultural development of the area from prehistoric to modern times.

Comments written by people who struggled at the time to save or at least document this wonderful heritage accompany visitors to the museum in their journey through time and space.

 

Heqaib

This exhibition is dedicated to Heqaib, an important official appointed Governor of Elephantine and Caravan Leader during the reign of the Pharaoh Pepi II, c.2246-2152 B.C. The name of Heqaib is very important in the history of the area of Aswan during the Pharaonic period. His tomb is located on the hill of Qubbet el Hawa on the west bank of Aswan, and his temple (he was deified) on the island of Elephantine.
The exhibition displays objects found during excavations, carried out by the Egyptian Department of Antiquities, in the area of the temple more than 50 years ago. Here were found more than one hundred objects , such as stelae, altars, offering tables and statues, many of them dedicated to Heqaib by his successors, and others by local priest and official who lived in the Cataract Region during XIth-XIIIth dynasties.

Biography:  Youssou N’Dour was born in Dakar in 1959 and began to sing as a child in the district of the Medina in Dakar, Senegal. As a teenager he sang for the Star Band, the most famous Senegalese band of the time. In 1979, he created his own group, Etoile de Dakar, which became in 1981, The Super Star. This group created a modern African style, which influenced artists as diverse as Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon. It was Peter Gabriel who introduced Youssou N’Dour to American and British artists in his album So (1986) and who took The Super Star on tour with him. In 1988, Youssou N’Dour was part of Amnesty International’s “Human Rights Now!” alongside Peter Gabriel, Bruce Springsteen, Sting and Tracy Chapman.

In 1991, Youssou N’Dour signed a contract with Spike Lee’s 40 Acres and A Mule Musicworks label, distributed by Columbia. The result of this collaboration was the album Eyes Open in 1992 with Le Super Etoile: the album won a Grammy Award. After the release of Eyes Open, Youssou N’Dour was named ambassador of UNICEF during the Year of the Child.
In July 1993, he composed an opera that was performed at the Paris Opera.

Description: Historical representation depicting four characters on horseback. The characters in the upper register are probably, from left to right, Queen Taitu and Emperor Menelik. This unsigned work is attributed to Tadla di Addi Abarda.
The production of paintings with historical subject, called antika , developed from the 19th century, encouraged by the European demand.

J Amais topic has spilled much ink as traditional African sculpture ¹ . It has been one of the masterpieces to measure the “civilization” of the black man and his ability to create, capacity variously appreciated throughout history until at the beginning of this century, cubism helping, unanimity begins to be made on the exceptional character of African sculptures that have always been confused with African art of which they are only a part, the most important probably, if one had to judge only by the number of created pieces that have reached us.

The places of traditional African sculpture

What does “traditional Africa” ​​mean? If we consider only sculpture, it must be admitted that such an Africa is inhabited by blacks whose basic religious traditions are “animist”. Such an Africa excludes North Africa or “Maghreb”. But again, caution is needed: the arts challenge the borders. How does one understand the integration of Sudan into the Maghreb when one knows that this country includes two inhabited regions one by white-skinned men, Muslims, and the other by black-skinned men whose religious traditions could to be close to those of most blacks? Is Islam sufficient here as a criterion for classification? He does notand colonization, which in principle lasted less than half a century, are relevant criteria of division: populations sharing the same cultures overlap with them. Faced with these questions, we decided to write for the man of today: he refers much more to the states than to large areas whose boundaries for him would be unclear. As with any African artistic creation, we preferred to classify African sculpture into four main groupings ” sculpture in West Africa , Central Africa , Southern Africa and East AfricaThey have the advantage of smoothing the weight of geographical factors over art, and they question the geographical determinism underlying the classification of forests, savannas and the Sahel in Africa, after all. Mali or Burkina Faso in the savannah or Sahel zones have not prevented them from producing masks as complex as those of the forest areas, or in principle the raw material, wood, is more abundant. in these cases, it owes much more to the will and freedom of man than to an external conditioning, however restrictive it may be.
It has also been observed that sculpture is practiced on a large scale only in sedentary societies, living on the fruits of the earth. Africa does not escape this rule: the nomads, mainly Muslims, forced to permanently transport all of their furniture and their gods do not carve … There is a tendency to believe that sculpture requires a certain stability of the conditions of life in society and the existence of cults compatible with the representation of the gods.

Read the entire article .

________________________________________________________
1. By “traditional African sculpture” is meant that which comes from a context where ancestral traditions mark the object socialized by rites, authenticated by a use, consecrated by an association with the sacred, or with initiation.

There are 48 answer (s):

Mask , DRC
Head , Nigeria
Mask , Ghana / Ivory Coast
Head , South Africa Ngongo ya Chintu , Headquarters, DRC Headquarters , TanzaniaStatue , Nigeria Leopard , Nigeria Salt Shaker , Sierra Leone Mask , Nigeria Statue , MaliMask , Gabon Pipe , South Africa Spoon , South Africa Nkisi nkondi , Congo / CabindaStatue , Cameroon Statue , Mali Statue , Cabinda

Description:  Great Zimbabwe has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1986. The city stretches over 80 hectares in a valley and surrounding hills. The site is the largest group of ancient buildings in sub-Saharan Africa. It is composed of two sites dominated by the ruins of the hill where stands the acropolis , a true fortress with walls imbued with granite rocks. The ruins of the valley, home to the Grande Enceinte , represent a remarkable monumental ensemble, surrounded by a rampart 250 meters in circumference, consisting of 15,000 tons of carefully squared stone blocks.

The technique used is dry stone masonry , without the use of mortar. The walls can reach 8 meters high and 4 meters thick at the base. Many of them are decorated with elaborate patterns.

The history of Great Zimbabwe can be divided into three periods: the occupation of the site began in the eleventh century, with the construction of huts made of earth and wood on the hill. In the 13th century, huts were replaced by larger earthen houses and the first stone walls appeared. The fourteenth century marked the peak of society thanks to trade with the east coast of Africa. But in the mid-fifteenth century the decline of Great Zimbabwe began, which slowly died out, probably due to the exhaustion of its local resources.

Description:  In the IV ^th century, the royal power of Aksum adopted Christianity as its official religion. It is mainly between the XII ^th and XV ^th century, the territorial expansion of the Christian state, that Christianity spread in central Ethiopia. From this time dates an exceptional heritage of churches dug in the rock, related to the activity of the monks. When the Axumite empire collapsed in the XI ^th century, a new dynasty, the Zagwe dynasty took power and turned the Ethiopian capital of Axum in Roha. The best known of the eleven kings of the Zagwé dynasty was Lalibela (1185-1225).

It built 11 churches over a period of 25 years between the end of the XII ^th and the beginning of XIII ^th century. Digging in the rock, surrounded by deep trenches, most communicate through narrow tunnels and small bridges. All such Biet Giorgis Church (Church of St. George, built in the XII ^th century) are monoliths were carved directly into the rock, from a huge block of stone. St. George’s Church was the last one built under Lalibela. The elegance of its cruciform plan and its singular position, at the bottom of the cavity dug by its builders, make it one of the strangest monuments of Christendom.

The site has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1978.