The Golden Scarab Necklace by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi

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1

 

I return

from a language that knows me,

the mother tongue,

although our mother is no longer the same

... .... ...

I am learning the silence of your vulgar dagger

You will never recognise my face

even though you knew me by the sound of my voice when I was your brother

Our father’s inheritance is no longer enough to mediate between us

Now, nothing is left save the trace of a raven

..... .....

 

I take my leave

cloaked in the enigma of the language of Meroe,

with the force and clarity of a river in spate

Bad blood lies between us –

The strife and lies of corruption

 

2

 

Like Meroe, Kurdofal* has many temples

Fazoghli grants incense

Al‘Ais proudly guards the sacrificial feast

Stone glows

Pottery shines with the proud blood of prophecy

 

... ....

 

The boy fathered a sultanate

from the bloodline that fathered ancient sultanates

The glory of his ancestral banners

is that boy who fathered the ancient sultanates: kingdoms both impossible

and possible

 

3

 

The king in his pomp wallows in his bath

A mirror glints on the wall of miracles

reflecting a virgin, her perfumed lust, her desire

...... ...

To please my stud I dyed my hair with gold

I anointed his bed with incense and sandalwood

 

This is his night:

I take the scull of my pampered king

for my goblet –

for I am the golden scarab of this kingdom!

 

 

 

Blue and black faience and red carnelian beads, with shells pierced for stringing. The materials are typical of both Sudanese and Egyptian production, but the treatment, range and forms are typical especially for nomadic groups in the eastern Nubian desert. Placed with two Nubian pottery vessels in the burial of a woman, north of Qau in Middle Egypt (see ‘Traces of an Unknown Woman’). 1800–1600 bc. uc26013

 

 

* Now a monumental archaeological site, the ancient city of Meroe, near Begrawiya in central Sudan, was the centre of the vast kingdom that ruled central and northern Sudan about 300 bc to ad 200. Kordofan is one area of that realm, in central Sudan, poised in more recent centuries between the Funj Sultans of Sennar to the east, and the Sultans of Darfur to the west. In the Sennar Sultanate, Fazoghli formed the southern border region on the Upper Blue Nile towards Ethiopia and the sources of incense. Al‘Ais evokes al ‘Ais, on the White Nile at the western approach to Jebel Moya, a site to the southwest of Sennar, exca- vated for Henry Wellcome. Jebel Moya finds in the Petrie Museum include the jewellery buried with an elder woman, from the first millennium bc. As well as the Nile, overland routes such as the Darb al-Arbain (see Traces of an Unknown Woman) linked these southern lands to the Saharan oases and Egypt. These desert roads encouraged seasonal migration and trade connections between distant peoples, immortalised in the burial of a woman with Nubian pottery and beads at the mouth of a desert valley north of Qau in Middle Egypt.