Dotawo/content/issue/dotawo8.md

---
title: "Dotawo 8: War in the Sudan"
editors: ["henriettehafsaas.md"]
has_articles: ["HafsaasWar.md", "honegger.md", "urosmatic.md", "tsakos.md", "roksana.md"]
---

# Preface by the Editor

War has been a recurring form of violent interaction between communities
in the Sudan since the Stone Age, and many chronological divisions in
the history of the country are set at events such as wars, battles,
conquests, and peace treaties. Still, warfare has often been an
overlooked topic among researchers working in Sudan and Nubia. An
explanation is possibly that periods of stability or evolving complexity
are usually longer than episodes of war, which occur during relatively
short timespans at irregular intervals. Another reason may be that
contemporary Sudan has been a violent place, and this has possibly made
war in the country a sensitive topic and restrained researchers from
making warfare their research object.

The modern borders of the Sudan are a construct of war. First through
the conquests by the Ottoman rulers of Egypt between the 1820s and the
1870s. Then the Anglo-Egyptian conquest in 1898, which also incorporated
the independent sultanate of Darfur in 1916.[^1] The borders of the
Anglo-Egyptian condominium were maintained when Sudan became independent
in 1956, but the northern and southern parts of the independent country
thereafter fought on and off in the longest civil war in Africa. The war
was terminated with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, which
culminated with a referendum where the southern part of the country
voted for secession. The country was split in two in 2011. Nevertheless,
violent conflict and war continued as the new states of South Sudan and
Sudan were fighting over territory and oil fields in the border regions.
Since late 2013, South Sudan has become deeply split in a civil war that
is dividing the country along ethnic boundaries with great human
sufferings. In the north, Sudan had a central government at war with
systematically marginalized peripheries and a suppressed population.
Increasing resistance from the inhabitants resulted in the toppling of
the old regime in 2019. The transitional government failed to install
civilian rule in Sudan, and the military took full control of the
government in a coup in October 2021. The Sudanese people have taken to
the streets numerous times since 2019 demanding civilian rule, and their
persistence brings hope for a civilian government and democratic state
in Sudan.

War has deep roots in Sudan. An Upper Paleolithic cemetery at Jebel
Sahaba in the far north of the country is often quoted as the earliest
evidence of war in world history.[^2] Around 25 victims at Jebel Sahaba
exhibited injuries from attacks with bows and arrows.[^3] The
extremities of the earliest war and the violent conflicts in modern
times demonstrate that war in the Sudan covers a great time span and
various levels of organization -- from violent clashes between ethnic
groups to warfare between states and civil wars. However, exact evidence
for violent conflict and war in Nubia and Sudan is limited for all
periods. Iconography and texts are often our only indications for
warfare, but these data are indirect sources and not always reliable
information. Although historians have researched the wars that have
ridden the country in modern times, the time is ripe to study wars in
the Sudan from a broader academic perspective. I hope the articles in
this volume of Dotawo will stimulate to provide more attention to
warfare in scholarship on the Sudan, as this will increase our
understanding of interaction between people in this land.

# About the Issue

Despite being delayed by the pandemic and its consequences for research,
we are delighted to finally publish this *Dotawo* volume on "War in
Sudan". Five articles are included after some contributors were
prevented from completing their articles. The aim of this thematic issue
is to offer new insights on wars and violent conflict in the Sudan
either as case-studies or as broader historical patterns.

The volume is chronologically structured, beginning with the editor's
contribution on the mid-4th millennium BCE border war between peoples
in Nubia and Egypt. Then follows Matthieu Honegger's presentation of the
famous archers from Kerma during the latter half of the 3rd millennium
BCE. The bows and arrows in these earliest Kerma graves have never been
presented in such detail before, and the appearance of the archers are
linked to the emergence of the kingdom of Kerma. Next, Uroš Matić offers
a fresh perspective on warfare and gender in textual and visual media
during the Napatan and Meroitic periods (8th century BCE to 4th
century CE), followed by Alexandros Tsakos\' article on warfare terms in
medieval sources (ca. 5th century CE to 15th century CE). The volume
concludes with Roksana Hajduga\'s presentation of the art of the
2018/2019 revolution in Sudan. She explores how the war between
non-violent protesters and a brutal regime caused a change in the
freedom of expressions and greater creativity in Fine Arts, Street art,
and online art. The volume thus covers some major chronological phases
of Nubia and Sudan from the earliest Bronze Age until today.

The articles in this issue also cover a wide geographical area along the
Nile. The first article by Hafsaas focus on the First Cataract region in
the northernmost part of Nubia and outside the borders of today's Sudan.
Honegger's article on the archers is set at Kerma above the Third
Cataract. In the article by Matić, we move further south to Napata below
the Fourth Cataract and Merowe between the Fifth and the Sixth
Cataracts. The article on the medieval era by Tsakos covers all of
Nubia, while the last article by Hajduga considers the southernmost
region in the volume by focusing on the capital Khartoum.

**Dotawo's Open Access Commitment**

*Dotawo: A Journal of Nubian Studies* has been a journal with open
access to both readers and authors since its launch in 2014. Since the
previous volume, *Dotawo* has been even more committed to open
scholarship by linking the references in the journal to records with
open access, as far as possible. The aim is to give access to research
to those without privileged access to institutional libraries.[^4] This
great work to make the research openly available has largely been
undertaken by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei, managing editor from 2014 to
2022. I am grateful to managing editor Alexandros Tsakos for the
typesetting in an open-source infrastructure. Personally, publishing
openly in this way is incredible despite the additional efforts. I hope
the readers find the result accessible and appealing.

**Acknowledgements**

I wish to thank the peer-reviewers who spent their time and used their
knowledge to improve the quality of the articles in this issue of
*Dotawo*.

**References**

Crevecoeur, Isabelle, Marie‑Hélène Dias‑Meirinho, Antoine Zazzo, Daniel
Antoine, and François Bon. "New Insights on Interpersonal Violence in
the Late Pleistocene Based on the Nile Valley Cemetery of Jebel
Sahaba." *Scientific Reports* 11/9991 (2021): pp. 1-13.

Gat, Azar. *War in Human Civilization*. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2008.

Van Gerven Oei, Vincent W.J. "Preface by the Editor." *Dotawo: A Journal
of Nubian Studies* 7 (2020): pp. 1-10.

Hafsaas-Tsakos, Henriette. *War on the Southern Frontier of the Emerging
State of Ancient Egypt. A Warfare Perspective on the History of the
A-Group People in Lower Nubia during the 4th millennium BCE*.
Ph.D-thesis. Bergen: University of Bergen, 2015.

Otterbein, Keith F. *How War Began*. Texas: A&M University Press, 2004.

[^1]: Hafsaas-Tsakos, *War on the Southern Frontier of the Emerging
    State of Ancient Egypt*, p. 3.

[^2]: E.g., Otterbein, *How War Began*, pp. 74-5; Gat, *War in Human
    Civilization*, p. 15.

[^3]: Crevecoeur et al., "New Insights on Interpersonal Violence in the
    Late Pleistocene Based on the Nile Valley Cemetery of Jebel Sahaba."

[^4]: Van Gerven Oei, "Preface by the Editor," pp. 1-3.