The Beja of old

I saw this one yesterday but was flat too exhausted - I blame altitude sickness - to post anything of it. So I'll try tonight.

These are mass graves in the strip of Sahara east of the Nile, 4000-3000 BCE extending into the third millennium, so overlapping the upper-Egyptian kingdom... in time (we'll get to space and people). The report comes from Atbai in modern Sudan. This abuts the southeast Egyptian coast. I expect similar ruins exist in that side of Egypt as well.

That region was Blemmyes in antiquity; the reaches of the Cushitic language Beja today. Since Browne in 2003 most scholars believe Beja - which is simply "Beduin" adapted to the language - evolved from Blemmyan. The Nubians seem not to have mingled with them much by contrast with Egyptians and, lately, Arabs.

The Red/Erythraean sea maintained links with the Egypt of the Pyramids, of "Red Sea Scrolls" fame. I don't know that any Beja vocabulary appears in those scrolls. It may be too far north for our purpose. There's talk the Egyptians first took note of the Blemmyes in the later Ramesside era or under Sheshonq, because - as with Qeheq - someone then uses a Beja word to open a prayer. The earlier Egyptian pharaohs cared about Nubia, who owned a viable state of their own; but ignored the nomads, who did not and do not.

The article notes that the old desert herdsmen, who assuredly behaved there like the Beja behave today, evolved an elite class. But was it a Cushitic or a Nubian class?