Thanuny the Scribe and the #BlackHistoryMonthChallenge
Day 5: Who's Your Favorite Black historian?
“History” can be a slippery word. Its popular definition is simply “the study of past events, particularly in human affairs”, but in anthropology and archaeology circles, things get more complicated. There are many ways to reconstruct past events, all of them useful—cultural anthropology gives us access to oral histories, archaeology gives us physical evidence of the past, and when we review texts, we divide them into categories of usefulness by saying whether they are primary, secondary or tertiary sources. Primary sources are first-hand contemporary accounts of a human experience; secondary sources are histories that report or reproduce what others have said; tertiary sources are compendiums of previous accounts.
As a student in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at UBC, I learned a great deal about the earliest evidence of writing in North Africa and the Near East. Two competing systems, the hieroglyphs of Egypt and the proto-cuneiform symbols of ancient Sumer, are typically identified as the earliest written languages in the world. The earliest evidence of proto-writing shows up in 3400-3100 BCE. The first “texts” worthy of the name that we have been able to recover date to 900-500 years later, around 2600 BCE.
These early texts are certainly useful for those who want to construct a narrative of the past. The Palette of Narmer, dating from 3100 BCE, is sometimes called the “first historical document in the world” because it depicts the Egyptian king Narmer defeating a kneeling enemy. Elsewhere on the siltstone slab, Narmer has collected the severed heads and genitals of ten defeated enemies, and he wears the crowns of both Upper and Lower Egypt on either side of the shield.
Some scholars argue that all the art and symbols on the palette taken together must represent a historical event, the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under a single ruler. Others claim that it should be interpreted more as religious propaganda, a depiction of this particular king as an all-powerful warrior who could defeat foes both foreign and domestic.
Since this series of essays is just about my personal perspective, however, I will simply say that I do not take the earliest “historical documents”, including the Palette of Narmer, too seriously as reconstructions of the past. For many centuries, it was common in both Egypt and the Near East to create texts that entwined all sorts historical details, including real names and places, with mythic claims that are completely implausible.
The famous Sumerian Kings List begins with seven kings who ruled “before the Flood”…and had reigns lasting from 43,200 and 28,800 years. The list includes several monarchs that appear to have been real, but it also includes at least one Mesopotamian god, Dumuzid/Tammuz. The easy relationship between kings and gods and the frequent personal interaction between kings and gods in these old texts is precisely the reason I tend to put them into the category of “literature” or “fiction” rather than labeling them “history”.
For my money, the first historian worthy of the name was a Black man, an Egyptian scribe named “Thanuny” (there are several other versions of his name extant, since this is being translated from hieroglyphics—a possibly incomplete list is in the references section). He was a scribe of the 15th century BCE, the private secretary and companion of the pharaoh Thutmose III, as well as a general of his army.
Thanuny traveled with Thutmose III for decades as he built the Egyptian Empire of the New Kingdom. This warrior pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty is sometimes called “the Napoleon of Egypt” by modern scholars, because over the course of his reign he launched eighteen military campaigns, conquering the cities and nations of the Levant and Near East to create the largest geographic territory ever ruled by Egyptian kings.
It’s impossible to overstate his significance to his successor kings nor to the people of Egypt as a whole. His military conquests made him a legend, equivalent to Charlemagne or Arthur in Europe: Thutmose III was revered to such an extent that the scarabs bearing hieroglyphic seal representing his name were still being made and used as protective amulets in Egypt and the Near East a thousand years after his death.
Thanuny was with Thutmose III every step of the way, keeping a journal and notes on his campaigns. In his leather scroll he maintained a detailed record of the king at war. His most famous historical document is his account of the Battle of Megiddo, which describes how Thutmose III defeated a coalition of Canaanite rebels led by the King of Kadesh.
The reason Thanuny’s achievement is worth noting is that he created the first accounts of any battle that include reliable details. Gone are the ridiculous kings that rule for 28,000 years and socialize with divine beings: instead we have precise dates, detailed descriptions of armies on the move, plausible troop counts and exact tallies of battlefield losses and plunder taken after a victory, scenes of planning and debate among the king’s military commanders, and quotes that capture the king’s own voice as he takes in the available information, determines how to divide and direct his forces, and makes the call that wins the day.
The king was so appreciative of Thanuny’s work that he had the scribe’s personal journal interred in a place of honor in the temple of his patron deity. And although the physical scroll is long dust, the contents of that scroll were inscribed onto the walls of the Hall of Annals at Karnak, which is why we have access to relatively complete versions of those texts today.
Thutmose III was interested in recording other facts about his travels, as well. In various inscriptions and the tomb of one his generals, we have a story of a famous elephant hunt in Syria. There is also a wall that depicts the exotic plants and animals he encountered abroad—living things that were unknown in Egypt.
Thanuny’s scrolls were also used as a reference for royal propaganda steles which were erected here and there throughout the region that Thutmose III ruled. Some of these have been recovered, notably a Victory Stele from Jebel Barkal.
Neither Thutmose III nor Thanuny as we know them today were fictional characters. Archaeologists excavated the tomb of Thutmoses III, KV 34, in 1898, and they recovered his inner coffin, coffin texts, and a reasonably intact mummy from the hidden cache at Deir el-Bahri the same year. As for Thanuny, he was buried in Theban Tomb 74, excavated between 1905 - 1910—we don’t have his mummy, but his tomb was decorated with colorful murals, including this famous and very detailed of the Egyptian army from the period of his service to the king.
References:
10 Surprising Facts About Thutmose III
Thanuny - Tjanuny - Tjaeni - Tjeneny
The Battle of Megiddo inscription
Wikipedia: The Battle of Megiddo
Egyptian Emporium: The Mummy of Thutmose III