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Description
The semi-Nomadic tribes that make North Africa their home are an incredibly ancient and proud people, famous for their ferocity and untamable independent spirit. Indeed, their very name, "Amazigh", roughly translates to "the free people". You'll often see them called "Berbers" in English sources, but this is an exonym derived from the same Greek root as the English "barbarian". As the Amazigh see this as a derogatory term, I will be avoiding its use. For centuries, the Amazigh have been fighting to preserve their rights and culture even in the face of such juggernauts as the Romans, the Ottomans, and the most unbearable of them all: the French. Modern Amazigh history and social activism are deeply rooted in its complicated relationship to Islam, and while their struggle is a fascinating story that deserves to be told, it is beyond the scope of today's blurb. Today we'll be looking at their most ancient history instead, to explore the enigmatic origins of these people of the sands.

It's hard to come by an exact date for the emergence of the Amazigh culture in the archaeological record. Humans have continuously inhabited North Africa since… well, forever. The oldest modern Homo sapiens remains in the world are those unearthed in Jebel Irhoud in what is today Morocco. At 300,000 years old, these fossils are crucial in our understanding of human origins, but not really of much use to our subject today. The Amazigh language may help us narrow the timeline down a bit. Like Hebrew, Ancient Egyptian, Hausa, and many others, the Amazigh tongues belong to the Afro-Asiatic language family. This is a vast and ancient tree, though, and the oldest inscription written in the Amazigh's indigenous script, Tifinagh, doesn't appear in the archaeological record until 138 BCE, though pottery shards and rock art may exhibit even older examples dating back to the 7th century BCE. Linguistically, it seems the ancestors of the Amazigh split off from their other Afro-Asiatic cousins sometime between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, but we must be cautious not to equate this with Amazigh culture itself, rather it is simply the branch to which Amazigh belongs. For our earliest clear picture of the Amazigh peoples in history, we must turn to the records of their closest neighbors, the Egyptians.

The Amazigh first appear in the court records of Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaten, both Pharaohs of the 14th century BCE. The two most prevalent tribes who came into contact with the Egyptians were the Libu, who lend their name to the modern nation of Libya, and the Meshwesh, whose name is cognate with the modern word Amazigh. For most of their history, the Meshwesh and Libu were seen as barbaric goat-herders. I don't know about you but that sounds like exactly the kind of pompous attitude that gets your western borders raided. And oh look, the Egyptians got their western borders raided. Shocking. Indeed, many a Pharaoh made quite the career out of counter-raiding the raiders. Merneptah is the first to make a real big fuss about this, including the Libu in his big list of people he bullied into submission: the Merneptah Stele. In 1177 BCE, Ramesses III had to contend with a Meshwesh uprising in collusion with the onslaught of Sea Peoples during the Bronze Age Collapse. The Amazigh would rebound to prominence a couple centuries later, however, as a Libyan chief named Shoshenq ascended to the Pharaoh's throne in 943 BCE. This established Egypt's 22nd Dynasty, and the 23rd Dynasty would be Amazigh in origin too. Shoshenq himself is the oldest person in the Hebrew Bible for whom we have archaeological proof of his existence, though we can't say for certain if he had as close contact with King Solomon's heirs as is described in scripture.

Regarding the Amazigh tribes further west, they primarily came into contact with colonists from Phoenicia and Greece. The city of Carthage was founded by Tyrian immigrants in 814 BCE, established on a land grant from the Numidian king Iarbas… which the Carthaginians kinda cheated on. Still, while relations between neighbors were often tense, Carthage would incorporate Amazigh mercenaries into their military. The Numidian Cavalry, renowned horseback archers, would be the scourge of Rome during the Punic Wars. The Greeks meanwhile would colonize the coast of what we'd today call Libya in 631 BCE. They called it Cyrenaica, named for a spring in the area which they believed was sacred to Apollo. The Greeks actually accredited a surprising amount of their mythology to the peoples of North Africa, likely because it was seen as a land of great mystery and antiquity. Which to be fair, it is. Atlas, the Titan who held up the Earth, was traditionally said to reside in the appropriately named Atlas Mountains, a range which extends over much of modern Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Herodotus tells us that there was an Amazigh tribe in this region called the "Atlantes" because they worshiped Atlas as the god of the mountain. It's possible that this tribe was the inspiration for the setting of Plato's Atlantis narrative. We can't know that for sure, but Diodorus Siculus certainly seems to have taken it that way. His narrative describes an Amazonian warrior queen named Myrina who fought a war to liberate an African Atlantis from Medusa and her empire of Gorgons. How this has not become a popular narrative, I have absolutely no clue, but you can bet your ass I'm absorbing that into the Drake Hero Universe.

All of these foreign colonists could only really control ports on the fertile Mediterranean coast, however. The interior of Africa, with its sandswept dunes and scattered oases, were firmly in control of the indigenous population who had spent millennia learning how to cross the Sahara on their terms. The first major independent states in Amazigh territory were the kingdoms of Numidia and Mauretania. Numidia came to prominence during the Second Punic War between Carthage and Rome. The two major tribes of the region were the Massylii and Masaesyli, and they were often played against one another by the two big kahunas on the block, until a Massylii king Masinissa subjugated his rival. Thus the two tribes were united as the Kingdom of Numidia in 202 BCE, and Masinissa would serve as a powerful ally to an expanding Roman Empire. Mauretania meanwhile was founded by the the local Mauri tribe (which is where we get the English term "Moor"), at some uncertain point in the past. The first historically attested king of the Mauri was a man named Baga, who lent aid to Masinissa during the Punic Wars. However, Greco-Roman chroniclers claim that the Maurs were the successors of the same state of the semi-mythical Atlantes founded by the god-king Atlas sometime in the 17th century BCE. This is obviously unverifiable, so take that origin story with a grain of salt.

Julius Caesar defeated the Numidian king, Juba I, in battle in 46 BCE, effectively making the kingdom a client state of Rome. Juba's creatively-named son, Juba II, was later reinstalled by Augustus, and the kid even got to marry Cleopatra's daughter, making him one lucky son of a bitch. Evidently though, shagging Cleopatra's daughter eats up just about every ounce of good karma anyone can build in a single lifetime, and the Romans decided to just annex his kingdom into the province of Africa. Fun fact, the word "Africa" itself may derive from an Amazigh word, "ifri" meaning "cave-dwellers", a nod to the underground dwellings of desert towns like Tataouine, which yes, is where George Lucas got the name from. A lot of scenes set on Tatooine in Star Wars were in fact filmed in Tunisia. See, learning is hip! What was not hip, though, was the Romans plopping Juba on Mauretania's throne only to decide meh we'll take that too. In 40 CE, Juba's son Ptolemy was executed by the Romans and Mauretania was incorporated into the Empire. I'm telling ya, getting a Cleopatra in your bed eats up every bit of luck you've ever accumulated. It is so worth it though.

By the 4th century, Christianity had firmly established itself throughout the Roman Empire, and that included Africa. Indeed, the Amazigh can boast Augustine of Hippo as one of their own. Augustine was one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Christian philosophy, and is still venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church to this day. Of course, the Roman Empire was doomed to fall not long after, and their territories in Africa were mostly scooped up by the Vandal Kingdom by the 5th century. Emperor Justinian managed to reclaim the territory in 534 thanks to the elbow grease of his top military commander, Belisarius, but their hold on it would always be tenuous. Indeed, when the Muslim army of the Umayyad Caliphate came thundering into North Africa in 647, it was not the Romans who guarded the Amazigh, but the Amazigh themselves. Perhaps their most famous resistance fighter was the warrior queen al-Kahina, or Dihya. A veritable Amazigh King Arthur of sorts, Dihya's life embodies the fierce independence that the Amazigh are so famous for, and her life is so steeped in legend that it can be hard to suss out a proper biography. She did defeat the Umayyads at Meskiana in 698, but ultimately perished in battle in 703. While the door was open for the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb to be complete by 709, the locals would accept Islam on their own terms, and would never make it easy on their various rulers to assimilate this proud and fiery people. That though, is a story for another day.

Design notes, this one fell into the same category of tricky that my drawing of Achaemenid Immortals fell into. I primarily referenced ancient Egyptian depictions of Libyan tribesmen for this, but obviously the Egyptians didn't have very appropriate opinions about the Amazigh. Most of the reliefs I came across had them in chains and loincloths, pretty obviously meant to be depicted as defeated barbarian slaves and not how your average Libyan would dress. The most conclusive image which crops up a lot is a painting found in the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I, which does depict your average Libyan. No reconstructions seem to agree on how that cloak is supposed to actually work in real life though, so I kinda just settled on what I thought looked best. The more fantastical details are supplemented from more modern era Amazigh textiles and desert wear, same with their tattoos. The Amazigh are famous for their henna tattoos, though today they are mostly worn by women. The Egyptians depict Libyan men with nearly identical tattoos, though, so I figured it was still appropriate to showcase this art form which is so quintessential to the culture. These are hardly perfect, but it can be difficult to extrapolate four unique designs from such little material. I think I did a good job with what I had, at least.

Description
The semi-Nomadic tribes that make North Africa their home are an incredibly ancient and proud people, famous for their ferocity and untamable independent spirit. Indeed, their very name, "Amazigh", roughly translates to "the free people". You'll often see them called "Berbers" in English sources, but this is an exonym derived from the same Greek root as the English "barbarian". As the Amazigh see this as a derogatory term, I will be avoiding its use. For centuries, the Amazigh have been fighting to preserve their rights and culture even in the face of such juggernauts as the Romans, the Ottomans, and the most unbearable of them all: the French. Modern Amazigh history and social activism are deeply rooted in its complicated relationship to Islam, and while their struggle is a fascinating story that deserves to be told, it is beyond the scope of today's blurb. Today we'll be looking at their most ancient history instead, to explore the enigmatic origins of these people of the sands.

It's hard to come by an exact date for the emergence of the Amazigh culture in the archaeological record. Humans have continuously inhabited North Africa since… well, forever. The oldest modern Homo sapiens remains in the world are those unearthed in Jebel Irhoud in what is today Morocco. At 300,000 years old, these fossils are crucial in our understanding of human origins, but not really of much use to our subject today. The Amazigh language may help us narrow the timeline down a bit. Like Hebrew, Ancient Egyptian, Hausa, and many others, the Amazigh tongues belong to the Afro-Asiatic language family. This is a vast and ancient tree, though, and the oldest inscription written in the Amazigh's indigenous script, Tifinagh, doesn't appear in the archaeological record until 138 BCE, though pottery shards and rock art may exhibit even older examples dating back to the 7th century BCE. Linguistically, it seems the ancestors of the Amazigh split off from their other Afro-Asiatic cousins sometime between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago, but we must be cautious not to equate this with Amazigh culture itself, rather it is simply the branch to which Amazigh belongs. For our earliest clear picture of the Amazigh peoples in history, we must turn to the records of their closest neighbors, the Egyptians.

The Amazigh first appear in the court records of Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaten, both Pharaohs of the 14th century BCE. The two most prevalent tribes who came into contact with the Egyptians were the Libu, who lend their name to the modern nation of Libya, and the Meshwesh, whose name is cognate with the modern word Amazigh. For most of their history, the Meshwesh and Libu were seen as barbaric goat-herders. I don't know about you but that sounds like exactly the kind of pompous attitude that gets your western borders raided. And oh look, the Egyptians got their western borders raided. Shocking. Indeed, many a Pharaoh made quite the career out of counter-raiding the raiders. Merneptah is the first to make a real big fuss about this, including the Libu in his big list of people he bullied into submission: the Merneptah Stele. In 1177 BCE, Ramesses III had to contend with a Meshwesh uprising in collusion with the onslaught of Sea Peoples during the Bronze Age Collapse. The Amazigh would rebound to prominence a couple centuries later, however, as a Libyan chief named Shoshenq ascended to the Pharaoh's throne in 943 BCE. This established Egypt's 22nd Dynasty, and the 23rd Dynasty would be Amazigh in origin too. Shoshenq himself is the oldest person in the Hebrew Bible for whom we have archaeological proof of his existence, though we can't say for certain if he had as close contact with King Solomon's heirs as is described in scripture.

Regarding the Amazigh tribes further west, they primarily came into contact with colonists from Phoenicia and Greece. The city of Carthage was founded by Tyrian immigrants in 814 BCE, established on a land grant from the Numidian king Iarbas… which the Carthaginians kinda cheated on. Still, while relations between neighbors were often tense, Carthage would incorporate Amazigh mercenaries into their military. The Numidian Cavalry, renowned horseback archers, would be the scourge of Rome during the Punic Wars. The Greeks meanwhile would colonize the coast of what we'd today call Libya in 631 BCE. They called it Cyrenaica, named for a spring in the area which they believed was sacred to Apollo. The Greeks actually accredited a surprising amount of their mythology to the peoples of North Africa, likely because it was seen as a land of great mystery and antiquity. Which to be fair, it is. Atlas, the Titan who held up the Earth, was traditionally said to reside in the appropriately named Atlas Mountains, a range which extends over much of modern Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Herodotus tells us that there was an Amazigh tribe in this region called the "Atlantes" because they worshiped Atlas as the god of the mountain. It's possible that this tribe was the inspiration for the setting of Plato's Atlantis narrative. We can't know that for sure, but Diodorus Siculus certainly seems to have taken it that way. His narrative describes an Amazonian warrior queen named Myrina who fought a war to liberate an African Atlantis from Medusa and her empire of Gorgons. How this has not become a popular narrative, I have absolutely no clue, but you can bet your ass I'm absorbing that into the Drake Hero Universe.

All of these foreign colonists could only really control ports on the fertile Mediterranean coast, however. The interior of Africa, with its sandswept dunes and scattered oases, were firmly in control of the indigenous population who had spent millennia learning how to cross the Sahara on their terms. The first major independent states in Amazigh territory were the kingdoms of Numidia and Mauretania. Numidia came to prominence during the Second Punic War between Carthage and Rome. The two major tribes of the region were the Massylii and Masaesyli, and they were often played against one another by the two big kahunas on the block, until a Massylii king Masinissa subjugated his rival. Thus the two tribes were united as the Kingdom of Numidia in 202 BCE, and Masinissa would serve as a powerful ally to an expanding Roman Empire. Mauretania meanwhile was founded by the the local Mauri tribe (which is where we get the English term "Moor"), at some uncertain point in the past. The first historically attested king of the Mauri was a man named Baga, who lent aid to Masinissa during the Punic Wars. However, Greco-Roman chroniclers claim that the Maurs were the successors of the same state of the semi-mythical Atlantes founded by the god-king Atlas sometime in the 17th century BCE. This is obviously unverifiable, so take that origin story with a grain of salt.

Julius Caesar defeated the Numidian king, Juba I, in battle in 46 BCE, effectively making the kingdom a client state of Rome. Juba's creatively-named son, Juba II, was later reinstalled by Augustus, and the kid even got to marry Cleopatra's daughter, making him one lucky son of a bitch. Evidently though, shagging Cleopatra's daughter eats up just about every ounce of good karma anyone can build in a single lifetime, and the Romans decided to just annex his kingdom into the province of Africa. Fun fact, the word "Africa" itself may derive from an Amazigh word, "ifri" meaning "cave-dwellers", a nod to the underground dwellings of desert towns like Tataouine, which yes, is where George Lucas got the name from. A lot of scenes set on Tatooine in Star Wars were in fact filmed in Tunisia. See, learning is hip! What was not hip, though, was the Romans plopping Juba on Mauretania's throne only to decide meh we'll take that too. In 40 CE, Juba's son Ptolemy was executed by the Romans and Mauretania was incorporated into the Empire. I'm telling ya, getting a Cleopatra in your bed eats up every bit of luck you've ever accumulated. It is so worth it though.

By the 4th century, Christianity had firmly established itself throughout the Roman Empire, and that included Africa. Indeed, the Amazigh can boast Augustine of Hippo as one of their own. Augustine was one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Christian philosophy, and is still venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church to this day. Of course, the Roman Empire was doomed to fall not long after, and their territories in Africa were mostly scooped up by the Vandal Kingdom by the 5th century. Emperor Justinian managed to reclaim the territory in 534 thanks to the elbow grease of his top military commander, Belisarius, but their hold on it would always be tenuous. Indeed, when the Muslim army of the Umayyad Caliphate came thundering into North Africa in 647, it was not the Romans who guarded the Amazigh, but the Amazigh themselves. Perhaps their most famous resistance fighter was the warrior queen al-Kahina, or Dihya. A veritable Amazigh King Arthur of sorts, Dihya's life embodies the fierce independence that the Amazigh are so famous for, and her life is so steeped in legend that it can be hard to suss out a proper biography. She did defeat the Umayyads at Meskiana in 698, but ultimately perished in battle in 703. While the door was open for the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb to be complete by 709, the locals would accept Islam on their own terms, and would never make it easy on their various rulers to assimilate this proud and fiery people. That though, is a story for another day.

Design notes, this one fell into the same category of tricky that my drawing of Achaemenid Immortals fell into. I primarily referenced ancient Egyptian depictions of Libyan tribesmen for this, but obviously the Egyptians didn't have very appropriate opinions about the Amazigh. Most of the reliefs I came across had them in chains and loincloths, pretty obviously meant to be depicted as defeated barbarian slaves and not how your average Libyan would dress. The most conclusive image which crops up a lot is a painting found in the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I, which does depict your average Libyan. No reconstructions seem to agree on how that cloak is supposed to actually work in real life though, so I kinda just settled on what I thought looked best. The more fantastical details are supplemented from more modern era Amazigh textiles and desert wear, same with their tattoos. The Amazigh are famous for their henna tattoos, though today they are mostly worn by women. The Egyptians depict Libyan men with nearly identical tattoos, though, so I figured it was still appropriate to showcase this art form which is so quintessential to the culture. These are hardly perfect, but it can be difficult to extrapolate four unique designs from such little material. I think I did a good job with what I had, at least.