Blemmyes

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Land of the Blemmyes in hieroglyphics
New kingdom
G29 Z1 Z4
D21 		Z1 O4 G1 M17 Z7 T14 N25

Bleha / Blehi
Brhj Land of the Blemmyes

The Blemmyer ( Greek : Βλέμμυες or Βλέμυες; ancient Egyptian : brhm ; Bohairisches Koptisch Ⲃⲁⲗ ϩ ⲙⲱⲟⲩ) were an ancient nomadic tribe in Nubia .

swell

The ancient sources about the Blemmyes are sparse. You may already be in the time of Ramses IX. mentioned. They are only definitely tangible from the point in time when Egypt became a Roman province (30 BC). Among the Greek authors they mention Strabo and Claudius Ptolemaeus, among others .

During excavations in Qaṣr Ibrîm , letters relating to the Blemmyes were found, such as a letter from the Roman governor of Egypt to the king of Nubia and a letter from Phonen , king of the Blemmyes , to Aburni , king of the Nobates . The latter is written in bad Greek and dates from the middle of the 5th century AD. A victory inscription by Silko from Talmis (Kalabsha) tells of three victorious campaigns against the Blemmyes. The Eastern Roman envoy Olympiodorus visited the Blemmyes around 423 AD and reports in his historical work that they occupied five cities: Phoinikon ( el-Laqeita ), Khiris (not yet identified), Thapis (Taifa), Talmis ( Kalabsha ) and Great ( Qirta ). At that time they were at least partially settled and formed their own state. The report of the Priskos von Panion (around 475) with news about the Blemmyes is handed down in two excerpts for the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII from the 10th century ( Excerpta de legationibus Romanorum and Excerpta de legationibus gentium ). Only a few fragments of an anonymous Blemyomachia have survived .

homeland

After Strabon the Blemmyes were Transhumant (17, 53) and stayed at the right Nile shore, below Meroe against the Nubians and were the Aithiopiern subject, while the troglodytes on the coast of the Red Sea were established (17.2). They were located east of Lake Tana by Ptolemy .

The Blemmyer are difficult to understand archaeologically. The well-documented X group in Lower Nubia, also called the Ballana culture after the place where it was found , is mostly associated with the land of Nobatia . It has been suggested that it is in the Blemmyes the time of their States foundation acted by only a small ruling group.

history

Antiquity

Up to the middle of the 3rd century AD, the Blemmyes appear in Greek sources primarily as robbers and looters who endangered the Roman province of Egypt , the kingdom of Meroe and the trade routes there, temporarily as allies of Palmyra (see Imperial Crisis of 3rd century ). A large role in the rise of Blemmyes a political power in Nubia has dromedary played, which took the Blemmyes to operations in the desert.

During the time of Emperor Probus , they temporarily conquered Coptus and Ptolemais Hermeiou in Upper Egypt before they were defeated by Roman troops in 279. The fact that Emperor Diocletian paid them annual dues did not prevent them from further raids. In the end Diocletian was even forced to give up parts of the threatened province; the border was moved back to the first cataract and additionally secured by fortresses, and a special military command was soon created. The Dodekaschoinos region was taken over by the Blemmyans and the Nobates, who had also undertaken raids.

Probably AD 336, the Roman officer Abinnaeus brought a group of Blemmy refugees to Constantinople to see Emperor Constantine . Their presence there is also attested by Eusebius of Caesarea (Vita Constantini 4.7.1). On the orders of the emperor, he brought her back to her country and spent three years there himself. The episode sounds like a local power struggle, which was decided through Roman intervention in favor of the originally defeated party. The abode of Abinnaeus, which the emperor made ducenarius. had appointed, probably served to secure the new order and to familiarize oneself with the conditions there. The Blemmyes were ultimately the most important power on the southern Red Sea , where the Romans controlled the profitable trade with India in the ports of Myos Hormos and Berenike Troglodytica .

Throughout late antiquity up to the time of Justinian , the Blemmyes repeatedly posed a threat to the southern border of the province of Egypt. In 449, Emperor Theodosius II divided the province of Thebais and placed the military and civil administration under one person, probably because of the attacks by the Blemmyes and Nobadae. At the same time Nestorius , the patriarch of Constantinople exiled to Achmim , reports on attacks by the Blemmyes and Nobadae. A little later, however, there seems to have been a dispute between the Blemmyans under King Ezana and the Nobates.

The Roman dux Florus was finally able to defeat the Blemmyes in 451 (during the reign of Emperor Markian ). A peace treaty was signed, according to which the Blemmyes were given access to the famous Isis Temple on the Nile island of Philae . After the death of the negotiator Maximinus, however, the tribal chiefs ( Basiliskoi ) revoked the alliance and started fighting again. Nevertheless, Philae remained in the following decades as before an important contact point between the Romans and Blemmyern; the temple was now the only officially tolerated pagan sanctuary in the Christian Roman Empire . In the time of Justinian, however, the pagan cult on Philae was stopped in 537 and the island of 577 was fortified.

According to the Talmis inscription, Silko pulled three times against the Blemmyes. After the first campaign they sought, presumably through Eienei, the brother of King Phonen , for peace, which however did not last . After a second, presumably unsuccessful campaign, they defeated Silko in a third campaign, took their cities and occupied their territory.

middle Ages

Blemmyer from Schedel's World Chronicle of 1493

Already Pliny the Elder had reported in the 1st century. AD., That the Blemmyes had no head ( Blemmyes traduntur capita abesse, ore et oculis pectore adfixis "It is said that the Blemmyes have no head and that her mouth and her eyes are set in her chest ”). By Isidore of Seville handed down, which they in Libya settles, this description is of medieval authors such as John Mandeville , Sebastian Münster and Hartmann Schedel taken. Mandeville locates them in India (see Acephale (people) ). Direct contacts between the Blemmyans and Europe are not documented for the period after the Arab expansion , which ended Roman rule in Egypt in 642.

The Blemmyes were called Bedscha (Beja) by the Copts and Arabs . The Bedscha were probably the descendants of the Blemmyes. (For the following story, see there.)

In 831 Caliph Ma'mūn sent a force under 'Abdallah ibn Jiham against the Bedjah, but without resounding success. In 854 they killed miners in the Nubian desert and attacked Qena . Muhammed 'Abdullah bin Cami then struck them devastatingly at the Gebel Zabara .

Ruler

  • Phonen , middle of the 5th century, his son was the phylarch Breeitek

literature

  • Hans Barnard: Sire, il n'y a pas de Blemmyes. A Re-Evaluation of Historical and Archaeological Data. In: JCM Starkey: People of the Red Sea: Proceedings of the Red Sea Project II, held in the British Museum, October 2004. Society for Arabian Studies Monographs number 3. BAR International Series 1395. Archaeopress, Oxford 2005, p. 23– 40 (early sources on the history of the Blemmyes).
  • Timothy David Barnes: The Career of Abinnaeus. In: Phoenix. Volume 39, No. 4, 1985, pp. 368-374.
  • Étienne Bernand: Nouvelles versions de la campagne du roi Ezana contre les Bedja. In: Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy . No. 45, 1982, pp. 105-114.
  • Vassilios Christides: Ethnic movements in Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan: Blemmyes-Beja in Late Antique and Early Arab Egypt until AD 707. In: Listy Filologické. No. 103, 1980, pp. 129-143.
  • Reinhard Grieshammer : Blem (m) yes. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 2, Metzler, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-476-01472-X , Sp. 710.
  • J. Martin Plumley: An eighth-Century Arabic letter to the King of Nubia. In: Journal of Egyptian Archeology. No. 61, 1975, pp. 241-245.
  • TC Skeat: A Letter from the King of the Blemmyes to the King of the Noubades. In: Journal of Egyptian Archeology. No. 63, 1977, pp. 159-170.
  • Robert T. Updegraff: The Blemmyes I: The Rise of the Blemmyes and the Roman withdrawal from Nubia under Diocletian (with additional remarks by L. Török). In: Rise and Fall of the Roman World . Volume II.10.1, Berlin / New York 1988, pp. 44-106.
  • Manfred Weber: Blemmyer. In: Real Lexicon for Antiquity and Christianity . Supplement volume 2, delivery 9. Hiersemann, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-7772-0218-5 , Sp. 7-28.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Rainer Hannig : Large Concise Dictionary Egyptian-German: (2800–950 BC). von Zabern, Mainz 2006, ISBN 3-8053-1771-9 , p. 1136.
  2. ↑ RT Updegraff: The Blemmyes I. ... Berlin / New York 1988, p 55th
  3. ^ Strabon , Geôgraphiká 17, 2; 17, 53
  4. ↑ See discussion: William Yewdale Adams : The Ballana Kingdom and Culture: Twilight of Classical Nubia. In: Edwin M. Yamauchi (Ed.): Africa and Africans in Antiquity. Michigan State University Press, East Lansing 2001, ISBN 0-87013-507-4 , pp. 159-179.
  5. ^ TD Barnes: The Career of Abinnaeus. In: Phoenix. Vol. 39, No. 4, 1985, p. 369.
  6. ^ Brian Croke: The Context and Date of Priscus Fragment 6. In: Classical Philology. Volume 78, No. 4, 1983, pp. 297-308.
  7. ^ J. Martin Plumley: An eighth-Century Arabic letter to the King of Nubia. In: Journal of Egyptian Archeology. No. 61, 1975, p. 245.
  8. ↑ On the origin of the Bedscha from Ernst Zyhlarz: The language of the Blemmyer. In: Journal of Native Languages. No. 31, 1940-41, pp. 1ff.