The lands of Khor [Syria] and Kush [Nubia] and the land of Egypt, You have set every man in his place…Tongues are separate in speech…Their skins are different, For you have differentiated the foreigners…All distant lands, You have made them live, For you have set a Nile in the sky…A Nile in the sky for the foreigners, And all creatures that go upon their feet.
-Great Hymn to the Aten [hieroglyphic inscription from the Tomb of Ay], Amarna, Middle Egypt, 18th Dynasty, Reign of Akhenaten (1353-1336 BCE)
The land of the Khawajas was presumably not part of Akhenaten’s world three thousand years ago but he still got us mostly right. Different tongues, whiter skins. And when riding north through Kush to Cairo we looked at the night sky and saw the Nile, it was our Milky Way.