A-Group culture

Early hubs of this civilization included Kubaniyya in the north and Buhen in the south, with Aswan, Sayala, Toshka and Qustul in between.

[1] A substantial A-Group settlement is at the site of Afyeh in Lower Nubia, where the remains of houses with stone foundation slabs have also been found.

[8] A-Group Nubians were semi-nomadic herders and rudimentary agriculturalists who also practised extensive fishing, hunting and gathering.

[6] Ceramic decorative motifs conserved among the A-Group and the settlement at Kadero, located northeast of Khartoum, suggests that the two groups were influenced by one another, whether directly or indirectly through trade with Egypt.

[12] The two main types of pottery created during the A-Group period were eggshell ceramics[13] and black-topped red ware.

He based his reasoning on Cemetery L from three archaeological finds: the size of the tombs, their expensive contents, and royal iconography (such as pottery vessels and stone censers),[17] however, further research established the antecedence of the predynastic Egyptian regalia: The earliest known examples of Egyptian royal iconography, such as, e.g., the representation of the Red Crown on a late Naqada I (c. 3500 BC) pottery vessel from Abydos or the triumphal scenes in the painting from Hierakonpolis Tomb 100 (c. 3400-3300 BC) are much older than the Qustul censer.

Gatto argued that Bruce Williams explicitly denied making such a sweeping claim, saying that he was only trying to raise the possibility that dynastic Egypt originated near Qustul, and Nubia facilitated that process.

He states that the large tombs and their contents provide evidence for a stratified society, one that archaeologists previously had not envisioned in the A-group period.

[21] According to a study of Nubian dental affinities by Joel Irish in 2005, traits characterizing Late Paleolithic samples from Nubia are common in recent populations south of the Sahara, whereas traits shared by Final Neolithic and later Nubians more closely emulate those found among groups originating to the north, i.e. in Egypt and, to a diminishing degree, greater North Africa, West Asia, and Europe.

[27] According to David Wengrow, the A-Group polity of the late 4th millenninum BC is poorly understood since most of the archaeological remains are submerged underneath Lake Nasser.

[28] Frank Yurco stated that depictions of pharonic iconography such as the royal crowns, Horus falcons and victory scenes were concentrated in the Upper Egyptian Naqada culture and A-Group Nubia.

He further elaborated that:"Egyptian writing arose in Naqadan Upper Egypt and A-Group Nubia, and not in the Delta cultures, where the direct Western Asian contact was made, further vititates the Mesopotamian-influence argument".

According to him, chiefs of the same cultural level as Upper Egyptian powers existed in Lower Nubia and exhibited pharaonic iconography before the unification of Egypt.

[30] It was originally determined by Reisner that the A-Group culture came to an end around 3100 BC, when it was destroyed by the First Dynasty rulers of Egypt.