All About History History of Africa

No single book could ever cover the history of Africa in its entirety. Even the great libraries of Timbuktu would be hard pushed to sum up the long, complex, sometimes brutal history of the continent that holds both humanity’s oldest home and the world’s youngest country. Africa’s history is ancient, nuanced and complicated. This book, then, is by way of an introduction. You’ll notice that some events you might be expecting aren’t present – the Boer Wars for example. While this book does address the beginnings of and the ongoing legacy of colonialism, it prioritises shining a light on the histories of Black heroes and civilisations from antiquity and medieval history, and how their modern-day descendents are working to decolonialise their continent and help Africa to once again become the…

On the mid-eastern coast of the African continent, a peninsula juts out into the sea. The Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden separate it from the Middle Eastern countries of Saudi Arabia and Yemen, while thousands of miles eastwards across the ocean lies India. Behind it to the west, the vast width of the African continent stretches towards the South Atlantic. Here, in a landscape of mountains and plains, where the weather can vary between monsoon rains and dry trade winds, where the lowland heat can hit 50C (122F) in places but the plateaus can offer sunny green climes, is the crucible in which humanity was formed. It’s thought that homo sapiens, modern humans, evolved in the Horn of Africa region between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago. Some of…

“Ancient Egypt became an epicentre for culture and religion” For 3,000 years the Ancient Egyptian empire endured. It emerged, like so many other independent kingdoms, from the ruins of warring and fragmented fiefdoms and grew into a nation that shook North Africa and the surrounding world to its core. It became an epicentre for culture and religion, where science and magic were intertwined as one. But those golden ages, those heights of human achievement that challenged even those of Greece and Rome at their peaks, were not achieved in a day. Before the Assyrians came, before the Persians invaded, before the Greeks conquered and the Romans annexed, the Egyptians rose and fell all by themselves. While darker periods would form between them (three in fact, known as the Intermediate Periods),…

Prior to the Old Kingdom, in an era known as the Predynastic, Prehistoric or Protodynastic Period, Egypt was going through something of a transformation. The nation was divided into colonies, each with their own lords and rulers. The north and south of the country were also distinct in both practices and culture, with Hierakonpolis the capital of the south and Bes the capital of the north. Excavations over the last century have radically changed the way we view Egypt prior to the Old Kingdom, including the fact that the First Dynasty and the rise of Narmer was not an overnight process. Upper Egypt, the more affluent of the two states, had three main cities – Thinis, Nekhen and Naqada. One by one, these states conquered one another or merged, and…

The Old Kingdom Djoser c. 2670 BCE Of all the kings that ruled Egypt in the infant years of the Old Kingdom, the pharaoh Djoser is perhaps the most influential. He may not have been the man who united Egypt as one in Narmer, but he typified two characteristics that would go on to define Ancient Egypt. He conducted military campaigns that solidified and expanded the borders of the empire while nurturing the growth of his nation’s culture. He also commissioned the first pyramid on Egyptian soil; the Step Pyramid at Sakkara was the blueprint for pharaonic splendour and inspired future generations to build even greater examples. The Middle Kingdom Mentuhotep II 2061 BCE – 2010 BCE The kingdom splintered after the prosperity and expansion of the Old Kingdom. This…

The Old Kingdom was the first true age of prosperity and progress for Egypt, but it would have been nothing without the two dynasties that came before it and the man who founded the pharaonic line to begin with. That man was Narmer and, much like many of the leaders and radicals who changed history in the post-neolithic world, he is a man steeped in myth, legend and mystery. Nevertheless, his actions and decisions at the beginning of the First Dynasty set the precedent for the 29 others that would follow. Narmer ruled sometime during the 31st century BCE and became the first man to unite the states of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. Of course, for an event that happened so far back in prehistory, most of the information…