Page 20 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 20

History

section in particular, were straight, Empire between 590 BC until AD Mali.
laid out on a grid, and crossed each 350, there are 84 pyramids in this
other at right angles. A stone gutter, city alone, many built with their own 25. Kumbi Saleh, the capital of
over half a metre wide, ran down miniature temple. In addition, there Ancient Ghana, flourished from 300
the centre of every street. are ruins of a bath house sharing to 1240 AD. Located in modern day
affinities with those of the Romans. Mauritania, archaeological excava-
15. Egyptian mansions were discov- Its central feature is a large pool tions have revealed houses, almost
ered in Kahun – each boasting 70 approached by a flight of steps with habitable today, for want of renova-
rooms, divided into four sections waterspouts decorated with lion tion and several storeys high. They
or quarters. There was a master’s heads. had underground rooms, staircases
quarter, quarters for women and 20. Bling culture has a long and and connecting halls. Some had nine
servants, quarters for offices and interesting history. Gold was used to rooms. One part of the city alone
finally, quarters for granaries, each decorate ancient Sudanese temples. is estimated to have housed 30,000
facing a central courtyard. The One writer reported that: “Recent people.
master’s quarters had an open court excavations at Meroe and Mussaw-
with a stone water tank for bathing. warat es-Sufra revealed temples with 26. West Africa had walled towns
Surrounding this was a colonnade. walls and statues covered with gold and cities in the pre-colonial peri-
leaf”. od. Winwood Reade, an English
16 The Labyrinth in the Egyptian historian visited West Africa in the
city of Hawara with its massive 21. In around 300 BC, the Sudanese nineteenth century and commented
layout, multiple courtyards, cham- invented a writing script that had that: “There are . . . thousands of
bers and halls, was the very largest twenty-three letters of which four large walled cities resembling those
building in antiquity. Boasting three were vowels and there was also a of Europe in the Middle Ages, or of
thousand rooms, 1,500 of them word divider. Hundreds of ancient ancient Greece.”
were above ground and the other texts have survived that were in this
1,500 were underground. script. Some are on display in the 27. Lord Lugard, an English official,
17. Toilets and sewerage systems British Museum. estimated in 1904 that there were
existed in ancient Egypt. One of 170 walled towns still in existence in
the pharaohs built a city now known 22. In central Nigeria, West Africa’s the whole of just the Kano province
as Amarna. An American urban oldest civilisation flourished be- of northern Nigeria.
planner noted that: “Great impor- tween 1000 BC and 300 BC. Discov-
tance was attached to cleanliness in ered in 1928, the ancient culture was 28. Cheques are not quite as new an
Amarna as in other Egyptian cities. called the Nok Civilisation, named invention as we were led to believe.
Toilets and sewers were in use to after the village in which the early In the tenth century, an Arab geog-
dispose waste. Soap was made for artefacts were discovered. Two mod- rapher, Ibn Haukal, visited a fringe
washing the body. Perfumes and ern scholars, declare that “[a]fter region of Ancient Ghana. Writing
essences were popular against body calibration, the period of Nok art in 951 AD, he told of a cheque for
odour. A solution of natron was spans from 1000 BC until 300 BC”. 42,000 golden dinars written to a
used to keep insects from houses . The site itself is much older going merchant in the city of Audoghast
. . Amarna may have been the first back as early as 4580 or 4290 BC. by his partner in Sidjilmessa.
planned ‘garden city’.”
23. West Africans built in stone 29. Ibn Haukal, writing in 951 AD,
18. Sudan has more pyramids than by 1100 BC. In the Tichitt-Walata informs us that the King of Ghana
any other country on earth – even region of Mauritania, archaeologists was “the richest king on the face of
more than Egypt. There are at least have found “large stone masonry the earth” whose pre-eminence was
223 pyramids in the Sudanese cities villages” that date back to 1100 BC. due to the quantity of gold nuggets
of Al Kurru, Nuri, Gebel Barkal The villages consisted of roughly that had been amassed by the him-
and Meroë. They are generally 20 to circular compounds connected by self and by his predecessors.
30 metres high and steep sided. “well-defined streets”.
30. The Nigerian city of Ile-Ife was
19. The Sudanese city of Meroë 24. By 250 BC, the foundations paved in 1000 AD on the orders of
is rich in surviving monuments. of West Africa’s oldest cities were a female ruler with decorations that
Becoming the capital of the Kushite established such as Old Djenné in originated in Ancient America. Nat-

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