E. Upper Nubia in the late Third Millennium B.C.: the early Kerma Culture and the Kingdom of Yam.

During the Old Kingdom (ca. 2575-2134 BC), Egyptian texts speak of a land in Upper Nubia called "Yam." Besides troops from "Wawat, Irtjet, and Setju" (Lower Nubia), troops from Yam, too, were hired for service in the Egyptian army. The only source that provides any real information about Yam is a biography of an Egyptian caravan leader named Harkhuf, preserved in his tomb at Aswan. Harkhuf tells us that, on behalf of the pharaohs Merenre and Pepi II (ca. 2255-2152 BC), he led four expeditions to Yam, each of which took eight months. We also learn that Yam had its own ruler, who had a cordial relationship with Pharaoh. On each trip Harkhuf brought important gifts to the Yamite king from the Egyptian king, and in exchange, the Yamite king sent Harkhuf back to Egypt with three hundred donkey loads of merchandise. One of these gifts, on his last trip, was a pygmy "from the land of the horizon dwellers."

On his journeys to Yam from Egypt, Harkhuf followed desert routes to avoid trouble from the rulers of Wawat, Irtjet, and Setju. On his return trip, by necessity having to travel close to the river, he took back with him a strong escort of Yamite soldiers, who protected him from the same rulers until he was safely back in Egyptian territory.

No one is yet sure where the court of Yam was, but most scholars believe it was at Kerma, which in four or five centuries would become powerful as the (probable) capital of Kush. Recent excavations there by Prof. Charles Bonnet and his team from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, have revealed not only remains of a huge round palace, which date to this period (about 2300-2000 BC), but also a crude stela inscribed in Egyptian hieroglyphs with the names of two Egyptian ship captains who may have visited the town about the same time. Graves of this period from Kerma were found to contain Egyptian trade goods of the Old Kingdom; also found at the site were fragments of stone vessels....