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Re the Cushitic peoples page
You recently edited the Cushitic peoples page to include the phrase "may have" in the place describing the Nilo-saharan hypothesis of Kerma:, changing it to state: "...suggests that the people of the Kerma culture (in southern Nubia) may have spoken Nilo-Saharan languages of the Eastern Sudanic branch." the addition of "may have" seems to me unnecessary and not in the sources. The addition of "may have" also seems to be somewhat non-neutral, as it is not used in the preceding sentence mentioning the Cushitic Kerma hypothesis, and would seem to indicate/express a greater tentativeness to the Nilo-Saharan than to the Cushitic hypothesis, which seems unjustified based on the sources. I reverted this edit (so that it now reads "...suggests that the people of the Kerma culture (in southern Nubia) spoke Nilo-Saharan languages). I have attempted to explain why in the notes and will attempts to do so explain in more detail here: The phrase that you added does not seem to be in the sources (Cooper for Rilly) including in the several places where Cooper suggests that the peoples of "Kush" (a term used for Kerma, see below), (as well as those of "Sai" and "Irem", places just to the north and south respectively of Kush/Kerma) spoke Nilo-Saharan languages (Can you provide a page number and quote?). Claude Rilly (in the sources cited) also suggests that the Kerma culture spoke a Nilo-Sahrana language of the Eastern Sudan branch. (And Cooper also suggests that Cushitic languages were spoken in Northern/Lower Nubia, in places such as Wawat, Medjay, Punt, and Wetenet, all to the north of Kerma/Kush and Sai). Cooper additionally cites Rilly's similar hypothesis (that the language spoken at Kerma was Nilo-Saharan and ancestral to Meroitic, which he also believes was Nilo-Saharan). Cooper argues that "Upper" (i.e. southern) Nubia (which includes Kerma/"Kush") spoke Nilo-Saharan languages, and that "Lower" (i.e. Northern) Nubia spoke Afro-Asiatic (Cushitic) languages. Quotes from Cooper below: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7d8a387b-f850-4d56-8105-f84a30bf121a/download_file?file_format=pdf&safe_filename=Cooper%252C%2BToponymic%2BStrata%2Bin%2BAncient%2BNubian%2BPlacenames%252C%2BDotawo%2B4.pdf&type_of_work=Journal+article

Some excerpts from Cooper:

Middle Kingdom texts witness to the arrival of the ubiquitous toponym “Kush,” a term which came to designate the Nubian polity centred at Kerma." (page 201)

"Given the similarity between the archeological material at Kerma and Sai in Kerma moyen and Kerma classique, it is plausible that the polity of 5Aa.t, rst mentioned in the Middle Kingdom, was also dominated by speakers of a Meroitic-like language. This places most of the Nile Valley south of Sai firmly in the sphere of North-Eastern Sudanic languages, with a very uncertain southern boundary. Lower Nubia still belonged to a different linguistic group, with the boundary probably being within the Batn el-Hajar. The African corpus of the Execration Texts deal, as far as we can ascertain, with the region of the Middle Nile and the Eastern and Western Deserts of Egypt and Sudan. The majority of the place names in this corpus are given to represent centers along the river, although a good deal of place names designates polities in the Eastern Desert such as AwSq and WbAt-spt. The personal and place names in the corpus have been subjected to a linguistic study by Rilly, who has shown the roughly similar phonetic inventories of Sai (5Aa.t) and Kush (KS).16 The toponyms and personal names according to Kush and Sai lack any of the extensive pharyngeal consonants so common in Afroasiatic languages, and it is therefore likely that we are dealing with North-Eastern Sudanic languages, quite likely a pre-Meroitic tongue, although any number of North-Eastern Sudanic languages is possible." (page 202)

"Like the earlier Execration Texts, the Kush-list of place names in the New Kingdom lists presented a somewhat homogenous unit of place names with typical North-Eastern Sudanic phonemic repertoire (e.g., many stop consonants, lack of pharyngeals). The Irem-list also provides a similar inventory to Kush, placing this firmly in an Eastern Sudanic zone. These Irem/Kush-lists are distinctive from the Wawat, Medjay, Punt, and Wetenet-lists, which provide sounds typical to Afroasiatic languages." (page 204)

And a quote from Cooper's Conclusion below. It says that Lower (i.e. Northern) Nubia (originally) spoke Afro-Asiatic languages but that the south and West of Nubia/Upper (Southern) Nubia (the region including Kerma) spoke Nilo-Saharan languages (Eastern Sudanic), i.e. "early-Meroitic", which later encroached northward to Lower Nubia from Upper Nubia. The three linguistic blocs (originally present in Nubia) identified by Cooper are: a branch Afro-Asiatic (likely a branch of Cushitic) in Lower Nubia, an Eastern Sudanic-speaking (Nilo-Saharan) region in South/Upper Nubia, and another Afro-Asiatic region in the Eastern desert (east of the Nile, where another kind of Cushitic language likely related to Beja was spoken). So though two regions of Nubia are thought (by Cooper) to have been Afro-Asiatic-speaking (until later), the region from where the Kerma culture originated and where it was based (Upper Nubia) is thought by Cooper to have been Nilo-Saharan-speaking (both earlier and later on).

"The toponymic data in Egyptian texts has broadly identified at least three linguistic blocs in the Middle Nile region of the second and first millennium BCE, each of which probably exhibited a great degree of internal variation. In Lower Nubia there was an Afroasiatic language, likely a branch of Cushitic. By the end of the first millennium CE this region had been encroached upon and replaced by Eastern Sudanic speakers arriving from the south and west, to be identified first with Meroitic and later migrations attributable to Nubian speakers. Further south in the Middle Nile, with a northern border in the Batn el-Hajar, there was a sphere dominated by Eastern Sudanic speakers, certainly Meroitic speakers but also likely other branches of Eastern Sudanic. In the Eastern Desert, and possibly parts of Lower Nubia, the Beja language was dominant." (pages 208-209)

Rilly also proposes that a Nilo-Saharan language was spoken at Kerma (ancestral to Meroitic, which he believes was also Nilo-Saharan) and one of several spoken in the general Central Sudan region (all according to him, likely belonging to the North Eastern Sudaic branch of the Nilo-Saharan family). He proposes that Nilo-Saharan languages had been spoken in the general region (including around Wadi Howar) since the neolithic period and that the language of Kerma ("Kushite") was one (of more than one) descendant(s) of early Nilo-Saharan languages (of the North Eastern Sudan branch) spoken in that region. http://www.ityopis.org/Issues-1_files/ITYOPIS-I-Rilly.pdf

"Early scholars thought it [Meroitic] appeared in the Nile Valley at the time of the first rulers of Napata, around 850 BCE. However, I have presented elsewhere (Rilly 2007) evidence that traces of Proto-Meroitic personal names could be found in Egyptian texts dated to the end of the Kingdom of Kerma." (pages 18 of link above)

"The original splitting into three main branches (Eastern, Taman, Nyima) might have occurred at the beginning of the third millenium BCE. The Eastern branch was probably settled in the eastern parts of the riverbed that were still hospitable at this time, namely the Middle Wadi Howar. As aridity increased, this branch splitted into three groups: Kushites, Proto-Nara and Proto- Nubians. Kushites (the ancestors of Meroites) headed to the Nile banks where they took part in the founding of the Kingdom of Kerma (2500 – 1500 BCE)." (page 19 of above)

"What can be deduced from the history of Proto-NES [North Eastern Sudanic] fits perfectly with these archaeological and palaeoclimatic data. The crystallisation of the proto-language possibly occurred when cattle-tenders settled together along the Wadi Howar around 4000 BCE" (page 19 of above)

Rilly (in the below source) also argues against/reviews the hypotheses (of Behrens and Bechhaus-Gerst) that certain words in the modern Nobiin language are evidence of Afro-Asiatic substrata and that earlier Afro-Asiatic languages were spoken at Kerma (pages 219-222 of below link), criticising/reviewing the Cushitic substratum hypothesis of Bechhaus-Gerst on pages 220-221 (below). https://www.academia.edu/36487671/Claude_Rilly_ENEMY_BROTHERS._KINSHIP_AND_RELATIONSHIP_BETWEEN_MEROITES_AND_NUBIANS_NOBA Skllagyook (talk) 15:33, 18 November 2019 (UTC)