POW: Kemet

(Above) Nubian Brown Girl of Egypt

OBG's POW (Place of the Week) is Kemet, one of the ancient names for the country of Egypt, the first great civilization in Africa.  Kemet (km.t), or "black land", refers to the fertile black soils of the Nile flood plains, which is distinct from the deshret (dšṛt), or "red land" of the desert.  Kemet is realized as kīmi and kīmə in the Coptic (final) stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the seventeenth century. Egyptian began to be written using the Greek alphabet in the first century and Kemet appeared in early Greek as Χημία (Khēmía).  More than two millennia ago, when the Ptolemaic Greeks came to rule Egypt, they extensively adopted and interpreted Egyptian spiritual, material, political, aesthetic, and intellectual systems. 

Beginning in ancient times, Kemet/Egypt was a genuine crossroads of peoples and cultures, and its peoples were multiethnic and multiracial, as depicted in dynastic drawings of their rulers. They came from as far way as Asia Minor and Nubia, in the upper Nile Valley. As a prosperous, advanced society with an enviable commercial and strategic location, Egypt attracted many conquerors who would come with their booty and advance technology.  Egypt anyone?  [Sources: Wikipedia & http://dickinsg.intrasun.tcnj.edu/]