Blemmyes

thumb|Location of the Blemmyes in Late Antiquity The Blemmyes ( or Βλέμυες, Blémues , Latin: Blemmyae) were an Eastern Desert people who appeared in written sources from the 7th century BC until the 8th century AD. By the late 4th century, they had occupied Lower Nubia and established a kingdom. From inscriptions in the temple of Isis at Philae, a considerable amount is known about the structure of the Blemmyan state.

The Blemmyes are usually identified as one of the components of the archaeological X-Group culture that flourished in Late Antiquity. Their identification with the Beja people who have inhabited the same region since the Middle Ages is generally accepted. ==Origins== Around 1000 BC a group of people, referred to by archeologists as C-group, migrated from Lower Nubia (the area between present-day Aswan and Wadi Halfa) and settled in Upper Nubia (the Nile Valley north of Dongola in Sudan), where they developed the kingdom of Napata from about 750 BC. For some time this kingdom controlled Egypt too, supplying its 25th Dynasty. Contemporary with them are the archaeological remains of another cultural group, the "pan-grave people." They have been identified with the Medjay of written sources. Sites related to them have been found at Khor Arba'at and Erkowit in the heartland of present-day Beja. The evidence suggests that only a minority of "the pan-grave people" lived in the Nile Valley, where they existed in small enclave communities among the Egyptians and C-group populations, being periodically used as desert scouts, warriors or mine workers. The majority were probably desert nomads, breeding donkeys, sheep and goats. After 600 BC, the Napatan, C-group dynasty lost control over Egypt as well as the then-rather desolate Lower Nubia. The latter area subsequently remained more or less without permanent settlements for four centuries. The main explanation for the hiatus of sedentary population in Lower Nubia has been the drying up of this part of the world, making river valley agriculture difficult. Due to climatic change, the level of the Nile had been lowered to a degree which could only be compensated for at the beginning of the first century AD, when the saqiyah waterwheel was developed. Until then, the area was only sparsely populated by desert nomads. Politically, it was "a sort of no-man's land where caravans, unless they were provided with considerable escort, were delivered to brigands".