6000–3100 BCE: (African Crops Spreading North to Egypt Alongside Middle Eastern Grains — While the Diffusion of Grain Crops of Ultimately Middle Eastern Orig…

6000–3100 BCE: (African Crops Spreading North to Egypt Alongside Middle Eastern Grains — While the Diffusion of Grain Crops of Ultimately Middle Eastern Origin Southward to Middle Egypt Is Well Known, What Is Not as Well Recognized Is That During the Same Eras Other Crops Were Already Spreading North from Sudan and the Horn of Africa to Egypt, Including Melons Gourds Cowpeas and the Castor-Oil Plant): The diffusion southward during this time of grain crops, ultimately of Middle Eastern origin, to Middle Egypt is well known. What is not as well recognized is something encountered earlier in Ehret’s account: that during the same eras other crops were already spreading north from Sudan and the Horn of Africa to Egypt — melons, gourds, cowpeas (black-eyed peas), and the castor-oil plant are among the notable such items. The exchange was bidirectional, but the standard narrative acknowledges only one direction. Every textbook mentions the arrival of wheat and barley in Egypt from the Levant. Almost none mention the simultaneous arrival of watermelons, gourds, and cowpeas from the south. The reason for this asymmetry is not evidentiary — the evidence for both flows is robust. The reason is ideological: the narrative of civilization flowing from the Near East into Africa is comfortable; the narrative of African crops flowing northward into Egypt is not. But the linguistic evidence is unambiguous. The Egyptian word for watermelon is a Nilo-Saharan loanword. The crop and the word for it both came from the south. Egypt was not merely a recipient of Levantine agriculture. It was simultaneously a recipient of Sudanese and Horn of African agriculture, and the crops that came from the south were no less important to the diet and economy of the emerging civilization than those that came from the north.