Guliyam and The Forty Maidens were a band of teenage fighters, sworn to protect their kingdom. They meet another band of rebels who fall in love with them but these girls don’t have time for that- they’ve got a war to win. This week’s guest is the legendary history-maker, Dr. Solange Ashby. *TRIGGER WARNING* This episode contains sounds of war. You may hear rapid gunfire, weeping, explosions, intense gore, general violence, screaming, babies crying, blood gushing, and/ or sirens.
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SHOW INFO
This podcast was created and hosted by ChelseaDee
This podcast was executive produced by ChelseaDee and Neruda Williams.
This episode features the vocal performances by ChelseaDee and Neruda Williams
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SSN1_GuliyamEpisodevocal
Fri, 3/19 12:39PM • 1:03:54
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
temple, egypt, inscriptions, people, studying, women, nubian, graffiti, goddess, gods, called, nubia, invaders, egyptian, ancient, egyptologist, maidens, history, ritual, language, Meroitic language
SPEAKERS
Guliam, Narrator, Speaker
Narrator 00:46
you can hear the wind here like no place else, after people make their pilgrimage and leave their offerings to remember the 40 maidens. This place is beautiful.
01:00
You can feel the strength that rests here. Do you know the story of Goliath and her 40 maidens?
01:08
Oh, it's
01:10
a good one. I first heard this story in a song. Just any song, an epic song, a song so big and so deep that it carried the history of a people. A car, a car park people sometimes come here just to sit and think on things. Sometimes I come here to listen. Listen to the maidens, and remember their legacy.
01:48
Daughter, you are 16 now, the time has come for you to decide what to do with your life. To help you make your decision. I give you this gift, an entire island. Here, you can do as you wish. So what do you wish to do?
02:09
A 16 year old just received an island as a gift. Wonder what she'll choose to do next? The time has come for me to give my life to defending our people. I want to defend our fortress against any who wish to invade. Her father always believed in her. This gave her confidence. But was she mighty enough to defend the fortress alone.
02:47
Live? Well that is a mighty wish for a mighty girl.
02:53
But, Father
Guliam 02:56
I know I cannot do this alone. I will need to bring together some of the bravest fighters in our village to come with me. We will train and prepare together.
03:07
And who will you find to help you? All the men are already soldiers in my army.
Guliam 03:15
Don't you worry father. I know other fighters.
03:26
daughters.
Guliam 03:28
I come to you today because I'm looking for the bravest. And the fiercest fighters who else is as brave as us daughter's. Look at yourself. You are a fighter. You don't have to know how to fight today. But you have to be ready to learn. Ready to learn how to ride, train for war grow your own food. I know that if we banded together, we could keep our family safe for generations. Who's with me? Who's ready? And with that 40 maidens all unmarried teenage girls banded together and became sisters in arms. That love but one night after a long time away training, the lion and the girls returned home only to discover
04:31
we have been invaded.
04:36
Gone.
04:39
Tire village is gone.
04:42
Our homes are burned to the ground. Our horses stolen and our crops are destroyed.
04:49
Brothers fathers uncles and cousins have been massacred scattered around us and left for dead
04:58
Where are our little sister for mothers, aunts, grandmothers, taken, they were all taken and forced into slavery. This will not stand. We have failed our people once and we will not fail again. We will bring justice for our last ones and bring home all those who have been taken. Who's with me? Who's ready,
Narrator 05:33
rode out to find the invaders. But along the way, the maidens met a band of rebels.
05:43
in my wildest dreams I have dreamed of meeting a group of girls like you, girls who write as fast and shoot his father. I'm sure all of my men have dreamed the same dream as well. Please, you Heavenly Creatures, marry us, make us some of the happiest man alive
Guliam 06:03
rebels. We cannot accept your invitation of marriage. There is no time for romance. We are on a campaign against a tyrant who has taken our people prisoner. Besides more fighters, we need nothing from you. If you want a moment of our time, then join us in battle. Only after we are victorious. Can we talk about love, daughters attack. The rebels and the meetings fought the invaders and they fought hard. They all had something to fight for. And they utterly defeated the enemy. But Goliath wasn't done yet. You invader. You will take us to our people. And we will watch you freedom from captivity. And she wasn't done
07:04
yet.
Guliam 07:11
invaders will pay for what you have done to pay for every life lost and every home burned. You will pay until you have nothing left to give.
Narrator 07:30
She just about bankrupted these invaders and put them to shame for their trouble. And she still wasn't done.
Guliam 07:47
You rebels you fought pretty bravely. You've all proven yourself worthy of my maidens and i i will allow you to join with us in marriage and we will protect our people together. What say you, rebel leader? Will you join us in love and war?
08:11
I am with you. Are you ready?
Narrator 08:31
their armies combined and their tribes united. Though they were a blend of different people from different places, they became much stronger when united. In fact, they became so strong together that their unity brought peace and security to their land for generations. Just like Guliam wanted
08:55
09:09
brave people, gals guys and everybody in between how are you doing? Have you checked in with yourself today? What is making you Bloom? Welcome to another episode of Vanguard of the Viragoes where we revisit the heroines of human history to learn from this hidden archive of treasures. I'm your hostess with the most best selfie D I'm currently in Washington DC and I want to uplift that I am on the ancestral lands of the necochea tank and Anna causton and piscataway peoples. I want to also uplift the hands and lives of those whose names we do not know, but whose devotion and commitment have kept us all alive. I thank you for your contribution as a slight extra Disability check in. I'm doing doing really well today here in Washington DC, the COVID. Death total is growing. And so that is weighing heavy on my heart. But hopefully this conversation will be a bit of sunshine for you, wherever you are. And this is the portion of the show where I chat with a special guest. I like to tell stories, because I'm a creative who is addicted to diverse representation and storytelling, or the stories we tell mold the people we become. But my guests on this show are folks who are actively studying preserving, excavating and making history. These are the real heroes, in my opinion. And today's hero is Dr. Salaam Ashby. Thank you for joining.
10:57
It's my pleasure to be here, Chelsea.
11:01
I am so jazzed to have you on today. I was just telling you before we started recording, just looking at your work. And what you have, have researched in the images that you've brought back from where you've gone is like I could write 10 plays, I could write so many plays and characters just inspired by what you're doing out in the world. So thank you for your work. And thank you for being here.
11:29
My pleasure. My pleasure. And then we got to get you to Egypt and Sudan at some point.
11:35
Oh, claiming back claiming that! How are you doing? How are you doing?
11:42
I'm doing well. I'm doing well. I'm busy doing a lot of writing, teaching, reading, you know, it's the learning never stops. But there's something about this quarantine stuck at home period, which also makes me able to attend and give a lot of online lectures. So I'll just be grateful for that for now. Yes, yes,
12:07
absolutely. Totally. All right. Well, let's dig in. Let's begin. So please share with us a little bit or as much as you want, really, about what it is that you study. And what drew you to this area of research? Sure. It's
12:26
it's good to clarify at the outset that me being an Egyptologist means that I specifically study ancient languages. And so the ancient language of Egypt, which is different from the Arabic bed spoken there now has a textual history of about 4000 years. So there's a lot to study, I think five phases of the language for different scripts. And so I just did my entire doctoral studies, work working to learn these various phases of the language. And so that's different than being an Egyptian archaeologist who goes and digs in the ground. I'm more that person who's reading ancient text, hieroglyphs on temple walls, instead, inscribed pottery, that type of thing. And so I'm just a language learner. I'm always I've always been passionate about learning language. Growing up in New York City, I was mistaken for Dominican. And so people spoke Spanish to me, I learned Spanish. And then as I got older, I started to travel the world. And I have tried as much as possible to learn some of the local language. And so I just have a facility for languages and but it was not until, you know, probably in my late 20s, that I started studying ancient languages, because I went to a very small college and they just there was no ancient studies of any sort. And so I remember walking in the French Quarter in New Orleans and saw in a bookstore window, Martin, Bernard was black, Athena, and I literally did a double take on the window because black, and then the name of the goddess Greek goddess Athena together, I thought, Oh, I have to go see what that's about. And so I got that book, I just devoured the entire book and became really passionate to know who were these ancient Egyptians. I had been really interested in Greek and Roman mythology, that was all I knew of in terms of the ancient world. But when I realized that Africa also had an ancient culture, and that it was that 1000s of years more ancient than the Greeks and Romans that I was studying. And that there was this incredibly complicated script to write a really complicated language. I just I was hooked. And so I've been doing that since 2000. I guess it's 21 years now that I've been studying Egypt and really specifically the languages of Egypt.
15:21
Oh, wow. I mean, something that I, when I was when I was researching you, and I came across, you know, your, your bio on Wikipedia, which, you know, I don't know how wonderfully accurate Wikipedia is about everything. But they have you listed on Google as, as of 2020, the only black Egyptologist and new biologist, I believe, in the in the field or in the US, is it in the field or in the US in the US?
15:56
A woman in France, and then of course, the suit needs archaeologists, they're all African. But in the United States, it's me, there's a man named Andreas wood, who got his PhD several years before I did, but he is no longer working in the field. So I guess, more precisely, I could say, I'm the one black American woman to have a PhD in Egyptology.
16:25
Oh, wow. Wow. Have you faced any obstacles in in studying these things? Or? Or has it just been a natural organic progression for you that, you know, has evolved into history, you know, making, you know, making history or, you know, have you had to develop? My mom describes it, as you know, develop a code of armor to in order to, you know, make your way through an environment that mindblowingly even though it does have the, you know, your your legacy of asterisk, ancestry has not traditionally been open, or even if it appears, it has not been open, you know what I mean? Because, obviously,
17:08
and the appearance is His truth. It has been, you know, a club of wealthy white men just to be really honest, who could even afford to dabble in archaeology started starting, you know, from the late 18th century, when Napoleon went down into Egypt and took all of that stuff, but also brought his scholars to, to begin studying the Antiquities in Egypt as he conquered the contrary. But it has remained something that is a pursuit of the elite, because it's a massive investment of time. It is not guaranteed that there's going to be work in the field, there are very few jobs. When some person who just contacted me out of the blue and said, I have been doing my own sort of amateur, if you will, non professional research about ancient Egypt, and I believe you are the only black American Egyptologist, I was like, get out of here. I never once considered that as a possibility. And she kept insisting and then I asked a friend, who is another black American woman who is now writing her dissertation, so she will be joining me shortly. Yeah. And she confirmed? Yes, it's true. I think so watch that you are. So it's a kind of a weird honor to have, which is an indictment on the field that it has just not been open to a diverse group of scholars. But I think with all of this so called racial reckoning that we're doing yet again here in the States, that that the discipline of Egyptology is having to sort of wrestle with its links with European colonization in Africa. The racism that is there sort of interwoven into the field from the very beginning. So you know, I see my fellow scholars trying to grapple with these issues. What it means for me is that all of a sudden now I'm just getting so many invitations to give talks, as all of a sudden folks are like, Yeah, we got to diversify. And we have to also talk about new obeah because this is another issue where the focus I love this from Christopher Eric from UCLA said he Egyptian exceptionalism, he said we have to put aside Egyptian exceptionalism because it is but one of the amazing ancient cultures from Africa. And so I chose to focus on another one being Nubia and then also moving into Ethiopia as well. And so all of a sudden, the discipline of Egyptology now realizes that Nubia exist and that we should be also talking about Nubia.
20:31
It's such an incredible way to really on Earth, all of the contributions that that Africa has made to the development of, as someone said, said the other night during the interview civilization with a big sea, like we we are claiming, you know, reclaiming claiming that which which has always been, what if you are working on something that will be the first of its kind? And it's called a monograph? Is that correct?
21:04
Yes. And so I wanted to say that is just like a fancy pants term for a standalone book, as opposed to an article, I remember doing exactly the same thing when the librarian at this archives at Chicago said, Oh, I believe we have a monograph on the subject. And I'm like, What's that? It's just a fancy way of saying a standalone book. But the point is, and that's why I use that term to make clear that although there are many, many are there are some articles written about these kushite queens. The one stand alone book that I'm aware of is written in German. And I'm so thankful that the author on gallica Lavasa, came and spoke to my class at Barnard. But that book is obviously not accessible to my undergraduate students or to the public at large. And this is information that I think everyone should know about not only women, but also men. But really, really particularly black women should know this history. Because it turns everything, white supremacy and massage money on its head, if we can look back to a time where there were women who ruled in their own right, and were portrayed and all of their voluptuous, buxom ness. So we don't have to try to stick to this European aesthetic of a very svelte and thin, almost boyish like body, like these queens showed their power and their female power through their ample voluptuous bodies. And I just love that.
23:02
There's so much I think what actually got me so obsessed with like ancient warrior queens and ancient queens and wanting to find people who are doing research on this was just this idea that there were ways and looking at femininity and feminine power. That to me felt more advanced, like the understanding of gender or movement advancement, more nuanced understandings of gender in ancient times, then, I feel today, you know, it feels like today, there's a kind of stringency, and like inflexibility rigidity around what is considered fam what is considered powerful, and how these two things live together. So what have you learned about the feminine presence in these ancient kingdoms and civilizations? How do people see the feminine, you know?
23:56
Yeah, it's sort of at all levels. So from the divine,
24:01
to
24:03
royalty, to mothers within families. And so at all levels, the powerful female is there, and she's not there alone, and sort of domineering everyone, but she's there as an integral part of a complimentary pair, so that the male and the female are two energies that come together to to bring forth life and make creation and this happens in the divine sphere. And so we have very powerful goddesses, mood and ISIS and then a very specific Nubian goddess called Alma semi, and they are matched with male Gods but they also have their own realms and their own powers. And act very much independently. And the same is echoed then in in kushite royalty. And so we have a male and a female ruler. Almost always until we get to this late period, the mera Wittek period where sometimes their sole ruling queens but she's still, interestingly is always portrayed as having a prince he's called so a male who is her partner somehow or present with her, but she's clearly the person in charge. And that was really okay. They were really alright with the woman being the leader in this role. But then it also comes down into the individual family and I love to just say this, like nubians are not just historical people, they're still alive. They live their lands, traditional lands have been divided by the European colonial borders between Egypt and Sudan. So Nubia is in southern Egypt and northern Sudan, do do a bunch of political turmoil, they're also living outside of those lands. For example, in in the DC area, you know, there's a fairly large Nubian community in Northern Virginia. And so once I get used to seeing this modern face, I see Sudanese nubians, at the gas station, or, you know, working at the movie theater. And it's always such a great connecting point, when I say, Are you Sudanese, and just a huge smile, like, wow, you're an American, and you recognize, you know, you see me. But I say all that to say, even in this modern living, culture, the the woman, the mother is still the center of the way the society is organized. So kinship terms are talking about who you are in relation to the mother. And men will still even in nominally or or, in fact, Muslim society will refer to themselves in reference to their mother, so say their name and say who their mother is, as a way to identify themselves. And so I love that this female power, this sort of female centrality, comes all the way down through history at all the levels from divinity royalty to just society, normal people.
27:48
I mean, even just hearing you describe them, like, that is so not the way that, you know, growing up in the US at this time, you would never think to refer to yourself through the legacy of the maitre lineal line, you know,
28:05
but you know, what's so interesting I so Barnard College is a women's college, but I have two men in my class, I have not yet asked them, maybe their Columbia students, but one of them is a young man from South Africa. And he's joining via zoom like we all are. And I love his commentary because I think he's, I think from Zulu background, if I'm not mistaken. And every time when I'm talking about these roles of the Queen's he will bring in 10, historicals, Zulu queen or talk about how women are revered in the culture. And the same is true of a birth worker woman who I met. She's Shona from Zimbabwe. And when she's talking about the sort of rituals around birth and how everyone comes together to support the mother, it's just such a beautiful emphasis emphasis on the importance of the woman and African culture. And I think this is something that we are so cut off from, in many ways in the diaspora, and I feel a little bit like a proselytizer that I'm telling this history because I would really like for us to do that same cofa move and go back and and resurrect that reverence for the feminine.
29:28
Oh, me too. I'm with you. I'm with you. Okay, so let's talk about the temple of fees. And your your time there. I want to talk about ancient graffiti. But I also I want to start with just talking about the landscape before we started recording. I was telling you about how you know in the in the in DC right next door in a part of Maryland is the is the birthplace of Harriet Tubman. And how I would take trips because of quarantine, I think I could go on these road trips and go and stop at these historic sites. So you don't have to interact with anybody. It's just like an old house, on a street or something. Or just sometimes it's just a hill, or a patch of grass or something that was so important to the history. Anyways, I was talking about how I would go to these places, and the landscapes started to become a real character in the story of Harriet Tubman for me in a way that I had never really thought about what a sunset for her must have looked like, or what being near these bodies of water, what it what it meant to her story and her development. So I really just what was it like being there being on these ancient waterways?
30:52
Yes, so let me just set the scene and I will encourage your listeners to just google Temple of Philea, it is gorgeous. It is on an island that set in the middle of the Nile River. You if you weren't so I should add that denial flows from south to north, this is really important. So it's bringing rich black soil down out of the highlands of Ethiopia, and then even further south in Rwanda. But as a boat would be approaching fee lay on the river, there's a bend in the river. And so you can only imagine these new beings arriving at the temple by boat and coming around the bend. And all of a sudden there is this temple situated on an island in the middle of the river that that confronts them. And it's very interesting that unlike most Egypt's in temples that are facing east toward the rising sun, and this is all part of the religious theology, this particular temple faces south and so it seems to have been constructed with interaction with the new Viens in mind. So I arrive, always, as does everyone by boat, it's a glorious way to arrive at the temple, you have to haggle at the dock with the newbie and boatman to get the price. And I'm always trying to get like the local price, not the tourists price. It's I spent some time chatting with the guys, we boat up. And so we're approaching from the north, but have to circle around the island to the south to dock the boat and then walk through this for court lined with columns on either side and approach the monumental gateway in front of the temple. Um, but my experience being there, as I was sharing with you before recording is that because I wasn't going with the tour group, but I was just sort of haggling with some guy who had his his, oh, that I would just say, yeah, I'm gonna get here at 10 in the morning, if you can come back for me at four or five, that would be great. And I'm gonna pay you that same amount of money. So we would. So that meant that unlike the tourists who are sort of herded in there as a group of 30, or 40, people spend an hour or two and then leave, I could be there for four to six hours. And in between these waves of tourists. I might be the only person in the temple which was so powerful to be in this space with the soaring columns, every inch of the wall decorated with larger than life size scenes of Gods and Goddesses and then the king making offerings to them. And then every available space that did not have an image was covered with hieroglyphic text. And I was of course reading these texts, but more specifically looking for the small, smaller engraved prayer inscriptions left by everybody Egyptians, Greek visitors, Roman visitors, but I was there very specifically looking for the inscriptions left by the Nubian visitors. And because I've spent so much time at this temple and so much time studying these people, I feel like I know them and so it's interesting to stand in front of areas that I figured out and described were sort of focal points for Nubian piety, too two or three specific areas of the temple just to stand in that space and think why akia A stood here to give his prayers Before the goddess Isis, his son, who are not the OTF, the second also stood here to record his prayers. This one particular wall in the the pro naos. It's called the front part of the main temple dedicated to ISIS has inscriptions from eight generations of a particular new Bian priestly family. And so it's very powerful to stay on there. And to know that they were at this spot conducting rites, there probably was a divine statue that they came and and gilded coated over with gold every single year. And then they would take this divine statue in procession over to the neighboring island to visit the temple that was associated with the burial site of Oh, Cyrus, the husband of ISIS. And so it was very cool to hear
36:05
you talk about coding This, this, you know, divine statue and gold every year. And that's such a beautiful image, you know, are there any other practices that you can share that stood that stand out to you? Yeah.
36:20
So about gilding the statute, the Egypt, one phrase that these Nubian priests used when they're writing their inscriptions was to make new and we just understand that to be gilding the statue and isn't that powerful, because gold was considered to be the skin color of the gods, it was associated with him mortality. And so to gild, this statue was literally in the Egyptian demotic, expressed as to make new and so they say, we come every year to make new the goddess Isis, I do that. Then two other things, the more Egyptians general practice that I love comes from the term duat. And that means to worship or to revere. And the hand gesture that goes with it is sort of bending the forearm, raising the hands and holding the palms toward the revered object. And so actually, I don't share this often amongst Egyptologist, but I am an early riser and I wait for the sunrise every morning. And this is very traditional Egyptian practice, do what means to revere to worship but it is also a reference to the eastern horizon where the sun is understood to be birthed from the body of a goddess. I raised my hands and I, I revere the sun as it's rising every morning, and this is Egypt, in practice. And I love that I've also heard from folks who've been in Ethiopia, I have not yet that that's when Ethiopian churches are full, in the middle of the day, they might be sitting empty, but before dawn, the practice is for Ethiopian orthodox worshipers to arrive and make their prayers before the sun rises. So I just love that. And then so back to the more specific Nubian, right, and I I am making this assertion I don't think anyone else has studied it closely enough to either have made this assertion or yet to argue back with me but I claim that this right of the milk libation, although we see it depicted on the walls of the les temple, and it is Ptolemaic Greek kings who are performing the right. I argue that this tradition this ritual was introduced into the temples of Nubia from the kushite from further south. Because the first depiction that we have of it was a mirror Wittek king called ARCA money. The second who shows himself performing this rite of pouring milk libations in a temple called Dhaka about 80 miles south of fee lay so deeper into new BIA and that is also forms a really important right for the rebirth, the regeneration of the deceased marrow Wittek ruler and so inside of their funerary chapels. There's always a woman often bare breasted who is shown pouring out a milk libation, as an offering to the deceased. As part of the mechanism by which he or she will be reborn into an eternal afterlife.
40:10
There's just so many astounding images like the precession of the ISIS statue, but the I wonder, like, what was the what were the fabrics? Like, what what was the? was their music? What was their food? I mean, just what it must have been like to be a part of these practices. It's like, oh, it just sparks that imagination so much. I think you mentioned ancient graffiti. Is that, uh, where did you see that in the temple? Is it? Was it kind of low to the ground? or How did you know it was refeeding? And not official? text?
40:53
Good question. So I credit my dissertation advisor Janet Johnson, still at University of Chicago, amazing scholar of this script called demotic that I've also specialized in with, nudging me gently as her way to move away from graffiti and more to prayer inscription. Because graffiti gives the impression from our modern context, that it's illegitimate that it's superficial, illegal. And this is this is not that at all. They are more precisely called prayer inscriptions. And so the way that you can tell that they're not part of the original decoration of the temple is that all of this script, or the texts that decorate the temple walls, and literally every inch of the walls is either covered with larger than life images, or hieroglyphic texts. And that's the clue everything monumental is to be written in the hieroglyphics script. But these priests wrote their inscriptions in demotic. And so you see the really big hieroglyphic texts. And then sort of right in front of the face of an image of ISIS, you'll see written from right to left a really beautifully inscribed prayer in in demotic. And they did place them intentionally so right by the mouth or the face of the god or goddess, really specifically focusing on Isis and Osiris, even though all kinds of other gods are depicted there. And right around the image of the offerings being made to these gods, that was a long answer to your question.
42:51
And it's a great, it's a great delineation, because I think about like, I think about the history of graffiti, and its associations. And yet, as if you if you're really paying attention, that you really have an appreciation for the aesthetic, you understand it to be art, you know, you understand it to be something that requires a artists and a craftsman level of skill, and precision. And it's expressing, it's expressing something from a population, you know, that if we have biases against the population, we're not going to recognize the beauty of what is the what is being seen in front of us. So I love that that's, that's a part of what your, your work is bringing forward this like this, this is representing this is just if you look at graffiti and just go, Okay, this is just scribbling on the side of a building or words, it's not supposed to be here, it's not welcome here, you would miss the whole history of hip hop the whole history of you know what I mean? Like, there'll be so much that will be left out. So
43:55
I'll read off what you just said, Chelsea, because that's right. I mean, there I don't mean to demean graffiti, because so much of the imagery is gorgeous, and even the way the letters of the text is, is formed. And there is a similarity with what I see my newbie and priests doing and with modern graffiti, which is laying claim to a space, by tagging up there by leaving your image there. You are claiming that space that you have a right to be in that space and that this is your, your neighborhood, your street or just a sacred space where maybe a comrade has fallen. So that in that way, it is kind of similar to graffiti.
44:49
Hopefully, it's a shocking to me talking to people who studies such such a deep past of humanity and yet the striking similarities what's really fascinating you right now. And it could be something that you're you're working on or could just also be a question in general about, you know, where the study of the humanities is going study of language. You know, what's really what's inspiring you right now? Or what's haunting you? It's,
45:17
it's like this jumble of things. I think the overarching theme is always new obeah. But I am really fascinated with what were the women doing and what were their roles? How were they interacting in these ritual practices. Because the corpus of inscriptions that I studied for my dissertation, it took me quite a long while to just have it dawned on me, Oh, these are only men. Only men ever wrote these prayer inscriptions, there are two or three, maybe four inscriptions in a temple of Hathor also on the island of felines that were written by women, but they seem not to belong to the group of nubians that I was studying. And so then I got a bit obsessed with Well, what were the women doing because the inscription say, I'm here, I'm performing the rights before my eldest daughter, or I'm praying for the safety of my mother, may we make the journey to marry away together, or I'm here together with all of my people. And so it's clear that the nubians are not coming as sort of lone ambassadors on behalf of the marijuana King, although such people did come, they're not coming only as really high ranking priests who could also conduct rites and read the the sacred prayer scrolls at the temple, but they're coming as extended families, which is the sort of the thing that I'm the most interested in this very different way of being that is kind of less hierarchical and more about extended family kinship groups. And so I'm really interested to know, what are women doing and, and what are the roles in, they seem to be the pivot point around which this entire society functions. So I'm looking at words from the marawood ik language that are kinship terms, there's a specific one called yet medavie, that we can't quite translate, but it seems to be talking about people who are related to the person leaving the inscription probably through the maternal line, and sort of sketching out a network of social interactions for that particular person. It seems to be so so important in this nouvion context, that sometimes they don't even say their own name. You know, like, they're just, they say, almost always, first My mother was and they use a verb that means I was born of so i would say i Solange born of Carlin using my mother's name, and then sired by a different verb, or monde. And so this is the way that you sort of start saying who I am, but then I would say yet medeo, I am yet medeo to this person, probably using like a ritual title, or a political title to just sort of place me in, in the social context. So I'm really interested in exploring these kinship terms, in looking at gender in this African kingdom. And and, and then learning more about the ways that this is expressed elsewhere on the African continent. And so this is where my education continues, because I was educated in a very typical Egypt illogical way where the department where I studied was Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. You gotta let that go. But all of the focus was towards the Mediterranean, the lavonne. And so I'm, I'm always trying to continue looking south. So I'm reading a lot about African queenship. There, there's a book I can't remember the name of the author, but it's called the invention of woman. So a way of understanding
49:40
femaleness in in the African culture, and then a lot about sort of body studies because these people in New obeah in the very earliest period were cattle pass. list and so a lot of the focus for them was less on building monumental buildings or having empires and more on what can we carry on our bodies, meaning therefore body decoration like beads and cowrie, shell belts, and piercings, earrings, the men and women wore earrings, tattooing. Don't get me started. I won't go on too long. But it's this kind of stuff that I'm really interested in.
50:40
So if there's something about your study of African queenship, that you can share, that's like a nugget of, I don't know, wisdom or something, you know, is there anything?
50:52
Yeah. And what I should admit, once again, is that I, as I said, I'm just starting to move out of the Nile Valley. And so, you know, I'm at the beginning of these studies, but what I see as a commonality is an acceptance or even an expectation that women will be strong. And that and being really All right, with a strong woman as a queen, who is either ruling on her own or, or more often as a central complement to a strong male, and that these two work together for even an even greater strength, having lived in a society that frankly, hates and despises black people and hates and despises women, as black women, I am just amazed and in all of the ways that we continue to dry off, and that's not anything new I we are drawing on this lineage, even if we don't know that it exists, because it just is in our DNA.
52:12
Mm hmm.
52:17
I told you, I was proselytizing.
52:22
And then to see, you know, the work that you're doing is going to lay out in in, in book form and all these different forms. This is what this looks like, this is where we have been this is the evidence of such and so the expectation in the new, you know, in the coming time, you know, I hope it, I hope that we can, we can explicitly be moving into a time of feminine strength, strength coming from the fan body is not an unnatural thing. You know,
52:55
I feel like that we're just seeing it like this last presidential election. We just saw that everywhere with Stacey Abrams doing in Georgia. But I also work in, you know, birth and maternal care. And so I see the black women who are out there serving other women as they birth their children trying to mitigate this terrible maternal maternal mortality rate that we have in the black community. And so I just, it is happening. And I think with my book and my academic work, I'm just sort of going to put a bow on it and say, This is a thing,
53:37
this is who we are, this is what we come from. So it's around us off, who is some bburago from history or contemporary times, or from history you want to bring to contemporary times you want to hang out with
53:53
so I said I had trouble sort of coming up with an answer and but I did sort of say off the top of my head that Harriet Tubman is an incredibly strong woman who is always on my mind and we both have sort of traveled those waterways in eastern Maryland to to see where she was doing her thing is being Queen and a warrior Queen at that. So I would love to be able to meet her I can't imagine that she will be anything less than fears. Um, but I will also say that there is a cushy woman she's a princess so a daughter of a crocheted king named Costa. Her name was Amir dis, the first we call her because there's another kushite, Princess of the same name, but she was installed as a Gods wife of a moon. So this is a ritual role of incredible power, also political power. associated with the temple of moon at carnac, which is at the city of Thebes a really powerful ritual and political center in southern Egypt. And so when her father Costa came in, to conquer Egypt and start this cushy 25th dynasty in Egypt, she was installed to be the gods wife of a moon. And she is another really powerful woman. They're just gorgeous images of her you know, life size. statues I think made from granted her funerary chapel is there on the West Bank, opposite theme. So if you if you do go to Egypt, it's worth it to visit her. And she's just depicted beautifully, very regal, she's wearing a vulture headdress, which makes reference to the Goddess mood, who was the divine partner of the gods a moon. So this Gods wife of a moon is also meant to be a partner to the God if you will, and there is ritual, there's religious significance, but what I love about Egypt and then even more, so Kush, is that sexuality, female sexuality is an inherent and very important part of the religious role. And so it really turns on the head, these monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, really making female sexuality, dirty, sinful and immoral. That is not present in Egypt or Cush. In fact, there's a very explicit sexuality and, and it is a good thing. And it's a powerful thing. And it's a creative force. And so I see all of that with almond artists, the first she's just regal, but she's also very sexual, her role was to be the sexual partner of the God and I, I love a religion that includes women as priests and priestesses. And part of their role is to bring their female sexuality there's something very empowering about that, I have to say we've, we've lost so much. And in fact, I'll go a step further and say that it is very intentional in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, that female sexuality is called sinful and, and forbidden and looked down on because these religions all came into being in a society were worshipping the goddess and these practices revering the feminine were the field. That net was religion, when Judaism, Christianity, and then Islam came into being so each of these religions is grappling with pushing down the power of the female in order to raise up their one male God and, and sort of get women out of the business of religion. And so that is very intentional.
58:46
You even talking about the partnership, that there was an understanding that there's a necessity for both. And that one, one is not needed to dominate the other, we don't need to go to a place of like, your kill all the men, you know, only the women, that there was an appreciation that it takes both. And so this is what I felt like is when I want to bring the world into is like we got to remember this so that we can get to a place of balance so that we can then move forward because it's so lopsided right now like,
59:22
and that's why we're a hot mess. That is yes. And so what you just said about balance there two opposed Egyptian terms for that mot is the balance right, where everything is in divine right order, and everything is seen as a duality. So each of all of the things in pair should be in balance and the opposite is is fed and it's not sin because the ancient Egyptians didn't talk about sin but it was chaos or disorder, or things are not right in the The world. And so you're very much talking in this kind of Egyptian theological mindset of things should be in balance, including the male and the female. It is not about women now getting revenge on men because that is more or less fit. That's more chaos and destruction. That's not what brings us to my art, which is divine right order, it's peace. It's a goddess and it is her the feather that is her symbol that is on the scale in the afterlife. When your heart and your deeds are being judged before Oh, Cyrus, your heart is placed on one side of the scale, and the very light feather of my heart is on the other. And if your heart is lighter, meaning that you have led a good life and in balance, then you get to go live forever. With Osiris in the afterworld. And if it's heavier, devoured by this terrific female creature who's like a hippopotamus with the
1:01:06
crocodile
1:01:09
gobbles up your heart and that's it for you never to be seen again.
1:01:14
I love it.
1:01:16
I mean, this is just to me evidence of the fact that like it's in us this is this is this the these ideas these principles, this ethos, this this desire for peace, you know, for something sustainable. Us it just want to name it. And I think this is the beauty of you. studying languages and things is like, you are able to see through the development of language how humans have come to name and therefore bring into being or manifest something physical, you know what I mean? It's almost like language brings us from the immaterial to the material, and you study that miraculous transformation throughout throughout the ages, which is incredible. Incredible. I'm a celebrity in my book. Oh, thank you. You will be receiving some inscriptions for me. So that's how that'll be. Thank you so much, so much for joining me in conversation. It's been edifying. elucidating all the all the things.
1:02:29
I really enjoyed it, because you You gave as much as you got. So you, I mean, you were just laying out some Egypt in theology when you're talking about speaking reality into being so Oh, wow, you are ready now. God for that,
1:02:46
Okay, I need to get into it. I can't get into it. So that's what I'm going to be spending probably the next phase of my life. Getting on getting on board with that. So thank you, too. Thank you to everyone for listening to another episode of vanguard of the Viragoes this conversation and more resources will be on the audio podcast website and all over the place. So join us because the whole world we're gonna have so much for you to dig into. So subscribe in where you see this. And always remember, we are all on the vanguard of a changing time. So be the difference lead with love.