Talk:Blemmyes

History and mythlogy

The keep on AfD was a good result, but the AfD nom is understandable bcz of a fundamental problem: the term is much better known in its mythological/superstitious sense, but it is also a proper historical term. There is a need for disambiguation: there should be two articles, and the degree of confusion exemplified by treating the history buried within the mythology suggests to me that both articles should carry suffixed titles (equal Dab'n), rather than

1. have a supposedly primary topic lk'd by editors who aren't aware of a second meaning, and thus accept the blue lk Blemmyes or Blemmyae or Blemmys or Blemmy as an indication that the needed article is in place, and
2. have editors who have become familiar with the existing article count on it to cover whichever sense they are using, not realizing they are instead pointing readers to whichever topic gets designated as primary (the mythological one, i imagine) and in effect hoping those readers to pay attention to the HatNote Dab, when we could assure their getting the more thoro and visible assistance of a Dab page.

Does anyone object to proceeding with this plan?
--Jerzy•t 20:25, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Needs more Beja. The German wiki has a list of their known kings. This article has much more. -LlywelynII (talk) 08:45, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

It's arguable that this name should redirect to the Beja page, since it refers to those people. The information it contains about the mythological creatures can be included in the page on that subject. The disambiguation page probably needs to be updated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by O.M. Nash (talk • contribs) 20:10, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Reliable Reference Needed

The reference section is links to the mythological creature. There should be some source listed for information on the historical Blemmyes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.229.247.48 (talk) 20:02, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Merging Blemyah

A duplicate Blemyah article was found to exist.
I have been moving content here piecewise, attributed credit to user:Elledani777 in Edit Summary.
Ready now to make Blemyah a redirect. --Kiyoweap (talk) 09:11, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

 Done Blemyah has been changed to a redirect to Blemmyes (legendary creatures)→ Headless men --Kiyoweap (talk) 09:27, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

kingdom not an ethnic group

The blemmyes had various royal oficials who seemed to be arranged in a hiararchy with kings, tribal chiefs, sub chiefs,court officials and scribes.The blemmyes kings had the power to levy taxes and grant exemptions as well as authority over the territory. By late antiquity the blemmyes were no longer stateless nomands of the type described in Agatharchides but a peaple with a state organisation.

The blemmyes were not unskilled nomadic barbarians, for centuries they had been under the influence of Egyptian and the Hellenistic Ptolemies both of which were reflected in their culture and administration. At the head of the Blemmyes were kings and below them Phylarchs who were chiefs of separate tribes. They also appeared to have had a navy consisting mainly of sewn ships or boats which was placed under an Admiral. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:442:101:5120:E8C4:9D3D:6B67:8E84 (talk) 15:47, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

It seems to me that what's going on right now is either the first stages of or a recipe for an edit war. I'd like to make a couple of suggestions:

1. This page is just titled Blemmyes… I don't think it follows from that that this is specifically a page for a Blemmyes kingdom. I think it makes sense to discuss on the Talk page how best to move forward rather than effectively reverting edits.
2. Tentatively: I propose that this page should be a general page on the use of the term Blemmyes in historical sources. There's actually very little information on a possible Blemmyes kingdom; thus, I think it makes the most sense to include that as a section of this page. I'm very open to other possibilities. Regardless, I think we should discuss them.
3. The most recent edit removed sourced information. I'm going to roll back that edit, then attempt to incorporate the material introduced in that edit. My intention with that is not to continue an edit war, but to preserve all information that has recently been on the page: I'm guided by the principle that good-faith additions should remain in an article (WP:CRV). We can hopefully work out what belongs where through conversation here.
4. As a general rule, I think that drawing solely on what one's able to glean from Google Books is really not a best practice: It's often difficult to follow the entirety of an argument, or to see what evidence supports a claim. In the particular case, the two works listed in the previous comment are not by specialists on Eastern Desert history. There's actually a good amount of work available for free on-line in, for example, FHN, or work by Hans Barnard, Julien Cooper, Jitse Dijkstra, & Timothy Power. I think that work by specialist historians & archæologists really should be the heart of this article. Hans Barnard's table of documentary instances of the term Blemmyes is probably our best starting point.
5. It would be helpful for conversation if editors to this page were to log into named accounts so that we could address one another more easily.

Pathawi (talk) 15:01, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I mostly agree with Pathawi. I disagree that this article should be about a term. In this case, there is more than enough information about the people referred to by the term. Since terms like Medjay, Blemmyae and Beja are mostly non-overlapping, we can have separate articles that make clear the possible linkages between them. Srnec (talk) 15:21, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that there's no reason to merge these three articles; I didn't realise that had been proposed.

I'm not sure that we're talking about different things when it comes to what the article should be about. To clarify what I mean: There is no clear variability in the reference of the term Blemmyes with regard to what set of people it refers to. However, it seems very clear that kingdom is not a consistently correct descriptor, and it is possible that ethnicity as a general descriptor is misleading. I am not proposing that this be a philological article, but that the article should reflect both the breadth of historical usage (that is, that it shouldn't be limited to kingdom even if in some documents it refers to a kingdom), and current scholarly research focused on some people labelled Blemmyes. Pathawi (talk) 16:52, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree with pathawi as well and thanks for rolling back my edits on the page. Also, can I add I think there should be a new (infobox country) some possible editions might include the capital city of kalabsha the state religion centered on the worship of Isis and the territory in which they inhabited and ruled from as well --107.2.90.123 (talk) 20:46, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Cool. It would make conversation easier, by the way, if you'd sign in to a named account!

There are reputable scholars who identify Kalabsha as the capital of the Blemmyes, usually with a little hedging—e.g., László Török in Between Two Worlds & Claude Rilly in "Language and Ethnicity in Ancient Sudan." I'm a little hesitant here as I don't think there's actually very good evidence for this. (I know! Wikipedia isn't the place for independent scholarship. But my skepticism makes me want to capture the published scholars' hedging.) Apparently later letters from Qasr Ibrim identify Nubt (not Naqadah, but a Nubt in present day Sudan) as the "capital" of the Blemmyes. (This comes from unpublished Coptic letters from Qasr Ibrim that were part of Joost Hagen's doctoral dissertation. I haven't been able to locate that document, but it's referenced by a couple tertiary sources.) Do we know of an ancient source that identifies Kalabsha as a capital? All I'm aware of is the appearance of the names of "kings" on the temple.

Then as to the matter of state religion: There's no doubt that Isis had a role in Blemmye religion, but I'm not sure we can conclude from that that Isis-worship tout court was the state religion. We also know about Blemmye deities Abene, Amati, Chopan, and Mander (= Mandulis). (This is from Török's Between Two Worlds.)

Finally, I don't think we can make solid claims about the establishment or disestablishment of a Blemmyes kingdom. That 7th c BCE date is just the earliest that we have Egyptians referring to Brhjw, right? So if that's cognate with Blemmyes, it doesn't actually follow that a kingdom (if there was a kingdom) was yet established. Even if it refers to a kingdom, it doesn't follow that this was the time of establishment: It's just the earliest point at which it appears in the historical record. We have the same problem on the opposite side of the timeline: The Coptic letters I cited above mention a Blemmye capital ca 790 CE, but the absence of later documents doesn't actually mean that a Blemmyes state disappeared after 790. It may be that the Arab travellers who wrote about a Beja capital ("Hajar") in the ninth and tenth centuries were writing about the same polity. To be clear: I'm not saying that this page should say 'Maybe Nubt was Hajar & maybe the Blemmyes kingdom continued on into the tenth century & later.' I'm saying that these maybes are some reasons that we shouldn't assume that the latest recorded date was actually an end date.

Infoboxes are designed to give straightforward data quickly. I don't know how to capture the complexity of the available information in the format of a country infobox. Pathawi (talk) 21:10, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree. The infobox should be removed. Can you point me to a source that mentions these Coptic letters from c. 790? When I edited the article, I was not aware of a later attestation than that of 707 mentioned by Christides. Srnec (talk) 22:34, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Two papers from the 2008 conference The History of the Peoples of the Eastern Desert mention Hagen's work on the letters & identify Nubt or Nupt as a Blemmye capital: Knut Krzywinski's "The Eastern Desert Tombs and Cultural Continuity" & Gábor Lassányi's "On the Archaeology of the Native Population of the Eastern Desert in the First–Seventh Centuries CE". The proceedings were edited by Hans Barnard and Kim Duistermaat & published by UCLA in 2012. I have not been able to find a copy of Hagen's dissertation in which these letters were supposed to be published. Lassányi identifies the year of the letter that identifies Nupt as the Blemmye capital as 758–759 CE. Hagen, in a 2009 article in Sudan & Nubia identifies the Coptic letters as coming from June–July 760 (758 is the date of an Arabic letter from the same collection). I now can't find the 790 date, & I suspect I carelessly misread that 6 as a 9. Here are some direct links:

• Krzywinski: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281390601_The_eastern_desert_Tombs_and_cultural_continuity
• Lassányi: https://www.academia.edu/2396816/On_the_archaeology_of_the_native_population_of_the_Eastern_Desert_in_the_first-seventh_centuries_CE
• Hagen: https://issuu.com/sudarchrs/docs/s_n13_hagen

Pathawi (talk) 23:06, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

I disagree if anything we should improve the infobox not "delete" and the reason why I added kingdom as a governing structure was because it was one of the governing methods the Blemmyes used your free to add any other governing structures and if the Blemmyes didn't just worship isis you can add more religions on to the infobox as well also pathawi we don't need a complex infobox just an infobox with as many details as possible --107.2.90.123 (talk) 14:24, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

I have two questions, & I hope you'll address both:

1. What is the value that you think an infobox adds? My concern is that I think that literally none of the categories in a country infobox are things that we can answer both simply & confidently. To take your religion example: Was the Isis cult really a state religion? It's not clear to me that the "Isis cult" is even a religion in itself—it was one form of devotion within a broad set of religious practices employed by various people of different "ethnic" communities who usually worshipped other deities, & those sets of deities varied greatly from community to community. We know that Isis was important to some portion of Blemmye leadership for a significant time, but we also know of these other deities. We have particular information about the Blemmye relationship to Isis because it led to significant interactions with better documented societies (Egyptian, Roman); we don't actually know that Isis was more central to Blemmye spiritual/ritual/whatever life than was, eg, Amati. We know that certain kings were involved in Isis worship, but we don't actually know that it had any kind of official status in Blemmye society, or even if "official status" is a meaningful concept for talking about Blemmye society. It appears that at least some Blemmyes became Christian in or by the sixth century CE (see the Gebelen letters FHN 331–343), including possible some kings. So, we know that at various times some Blemmyes worshipped: Isis, Mander (Mandulis), Abene, Amati, Chopan, & Jesus/the Christian God. (I can't remember any sources that mention Osiris, but he seems likely too…) The situation is thus complex. & I think similar problems apply for every one of these categories. Thus, I think an infobox that appears straightforward will actually be misleading.
2. Why won't you sign in with a user name?

Pathawi (talk) 16:34, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Pathawi I haven't disagreed with any of the suggestions you made to improve the page I just disagree with removing an infobox which can help summarise the page most historic people countries have infoboxes as well I don't see why this page cant especially since it has many of the requirements for one ie territory, capital, religion map of a territory in which they inhabited and ruled as a kingdom which we agreed to have in one page.

we can simply improve the infobox and add the listed religions to the infobox and improve it Isis, Mander (Mandulis), Abene, Amati, Chopan, & Christianity

we can also add the capital cities you mentioned Nubt and Kalabsha which is mentioned as a capital by historians Ilkka Syvänne and Hans Barnard,

I will just improve the infobox using your suggestions --2601:442:101:5120:100D:16BC:19BF:917A (talk) 10:21, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

sorry for not creating an account because i didn't know how to but now i have pathawi --Jino0037 (talk) 11:40, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

messed up history - 25th Dynasty

Egypt's 25th Dynasty originated from the Kingdom of Kush, in its Napatan period. See the respective article for ample details. This article here, not acknowledging any of that, reads a lot like alternative history. Wefa (talk) 05:55, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

That's true. So why didn't you edit it? Pathawi (talk) 06:28, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. This article is about the Blemmyes. And it clearly acknowledges that "the kingdom of Napata ... for some time ... controlled Egypt too, supplying its 25th Dynasty". Srnec (talk) 19:13, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Recent additions

@Jones6668: Please discuss your additions here first, before making further unrepairable edit attempts in the main page. You are introducing multiple errors and misrepresentation of the sources which you cite. Consider these:

• during late Antiquity Blemmyes was believed to be part of the X Cultural Group Phase. – The X Group was identified by George Andrew Reisner in the first half of 20th century. So people in the "late Antiquity" could hardly beleive that the Blemmyes belonged to a concept not known to them.
• So according to Greek and Egyptian sources the Blemmyes were a former Beja civilisation. – The source actually says: For a long time it had been believed that the Blemmyes, already mentioned by the Egyptians and the Greeks, were the ancestors of the Beja. "For a long time" refers to modern scholarship, not to "Greek and Egyptian sources"; the latter just are sources for the existence of the Blemmyes
• However the Beja are also identified as A Cushitic Ethnicity. Cushitic is a language family. We only can say that Blemmyes/Beja spoke/speak a Cushitic language (most probably the same language at different stages). "Cushitic" does not mean anything else. Cushitic is not a label for an ethnicity or a material culture. If it were so, scholars wouldn't grope so much in dark about the potential Cushitic affiliation of the A-, Kerma- and C-cultures; they would look at the sherds and say "hey, these look Cushitic".

So please, discuss first, before making another bold edit (WP:BRD). –Austronesier (talk) 10:31, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your help I will look into to it more. I have really learnt a lot from you. Jones6668 (talk) 22:34, 11 February 2021 (UTC)