Nok Civilization; Milesian-Hellenic Period;
The Nile Valley of the the Western body is conventionally thought to have ended in 31 B.C. when the early Roman Empire conquered and absorbed Ptolemaic Egypt as a state. Along the Nile, in the 11th millennium BC, a grain-grinding culture using the earliest type of sickle blades had been replaced by another culture of hunters, fishers, and gathering peoples using stone tools and human habitation in the southwestern corner of Egypt, near the Sudan border, pastoralism and cultivation of cereals in the East Sahara before 8000 BC. The Predynastic Period continues through 4000 BC, variously held to begin with the Naqada culture. The time of the Pharaohs stretches from before 3000 B.C. to about 30 BC.
The Nok civilization (2500 BC-200AD) of the Old Kingdom became the first iron smelting people in West Africa and on the Jos Plateau in northeastern Nigeria and mysteriously vanished in the late first millennium A.D., perhaps because of disease or famine. The Nok civilization, representing the end of the Neolithic age (Stone Age) and start of the Iron Age in Africa was considered to be the greatest sub-Saharan producer of Terracotta: a waterproof ceramic situated in dried-up riverbeds in savannahs in Northern and Central Nigeria. Some theorize that the Nok civilization is a direct descendant of the Egyptian civilization along the middle to lower reaches of the Nile River during the New Kingdom from the Nile Delta in the north. Egypt was ruled by the Third Dynasty through to the Sixth Dynasty (2686 BC–2134 BC) with administration centralized at the necropolis of Memphis during the Age of the Pyramids.
The founding date of the Armenian nation (2492 BC), and the end of the Early Dynastic IIIa Period (2450 BC) and beginning of the Early Dynastic IIIb Period in Mesopotamia as Kish is lost to Khamazi tribesmen of the Kurdistan mountains; the Elamites from Awan occupy parts of Sumer. Decades later Italy begins being settled by Illyrians and others while Megalithic culture comes to Ireland from Spain, spreading also through Europe and the western Mediterranean- the Celts begin invading Europe from the east (Golam and Scota) and the conquest of Mesopotamia begins by the time, kings in Sumer have ceased to be automatically high priests of the city deity. Amorites and Canaanites along the Phoenician coast and into Upper Galilee come out of Arabia into Syria and Lebanon. The Bible attributes the name to Canaan, the son of Ham and the grandson of Noah. Canaan is mentioned in a document from the 18th century B.C. found in the ruins of Mari, a former Sumerian outpost in Syria.
The Egyptian and Hittite spheres of influence around the time of the 19th dynasty and the Valley of the Kings or Valley of the Ancient Copper Mines from the metallurgical Chalcolithic period. Egyptian armies fought Hittite armies for control of modern-day Syria. Setnakhte's origins are not known, as the first Pharoh and he may have been a commoner or was related to the previous dynasty, the Nineteenth, through his mother and may thus have been a grand-son of Ramesses II. Ramesses II even married two Hittite princesses, the first after his second Sed Festival. His son, Ramesses III, is regarded as the last great king of the New Kingdom, though the second Pharaoh of the Twentieth Dynasty. The beginning of the Great Harris Papyrus or Papyrus Harris I, which documents the reign of Ramesses III, provides some details about Setnakhte's rise to power. Great Harris Papyru was commissioned by his son and chosen successor Ramesses IV, chronicles this king's vast donations of land, gold statues and monumental construction to Egypt's various temples at Piramesse, Heliopolis, Memphis, Athribis, Hermopolis, Thinis, Egypt, Abydos, Coptos, El Kab and other cities in Nubia and Syria. He decorated the walls of his Medinet Habu temple with scenes of his Naval and Land battles against the Sea Peoples.
Sicily was colonized by Phoenicians and Punic settlers from Carthage and by Greeks, starting in the 8th century BC. The most important colony was established at Syracuse in 734 BC. The Sea Peoples' occupation of Canaan would have taken place during the reign of Ramesses III, while partaking in maritime knowledge to importance to the Phoenicians. Tyrian merchants were the first who ventured to navigate the Mediterranean waters; and they founded their colonies on the coasts and neighbouring islands of the Aegean Sea, in Greece, on the northern coast of Africa, at Carthage (Tunis) and other places, in Sicily and Corsica, in Spain at Tartessus. The Carthage of the ancient world was originally a settlement of Phoenician colonists throughout the Mediterranean. The adjective Punic in describing anything to do with Carthaginian civilization and Phoenica are the same term by Greek and Latin. The primary cause of the Punic Wars was the clash of interests between the expanding Carthaginian and Roman spheres of influence. The Romans were particularly interested in expansion via Sicily, most of which lay under Carthaginian control.