The founding of Kanem by Assyrian refugees ca. 600 BCE: documentary, linguistic, and archaeological evidence
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Abstract
The history of Kanem-Bornu has received relatively little attention for a number of decades,
but recent archaeological research in West Africa has renewed interest in the topic. The
unexpectedly early date of the emergence of proto-urban settlements south of Lake Chad in
the middle of the first millennium BCE is particularly striking.1 In the Western Sudan the
emergence of the city of Jenne-Jeno along the eastern arm of the Inner Niger Delta in the
third century BCE has given rise to the idea that Ghana, supposedly the oldest state in West
Africa, was founded at the same period.2 If we assume a connection between urbanism and
state-building, the foundation of Kanem in the region of Lake Chad (the early nucleus of the
Kanem-Bornu Empire) may likewise have been much earlier than hitherto supposed.
Members of the German culture historical school were convinced that states in West
Africa originated in pre-Roman times as a result of Near Eastern or Mediterranean
influences. They noted surprising similarities between the institutions of surviving traditional
states all over Africa and therefore believed in a vast movement of diffusion. However, their
historical considerations were highly unsatisfactory in that they referred to northern or
eastern origins and vague, undated streams and waves of culture.3 As a consequence of the
independence of African peoples in the 1960s, the decolonization of African history put a
stop to speculation concerning unspecified cultural influences having reached sub-Saharan
Africa from the north or the northeast. Instead, the focus of attention for finding an origin for
state development shifted to the Nile valley, where the Egyptian civilization survived in its
southern outpost Meroe until the fourth century CE. From here, pastoral migrants—reinforced... [TRUNCATED]
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African Studies Center Working Paper No. 265
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Copyright © 2011, by the author.