The Temehu Tribes of Ancient Libya
Scene from the tomb of Seti I, Dynasty XIX.
Author: Nesmenser
Publisher: http://www.temehu.com
The following notes, prepared by www.temehu.com, may serve as a short introduction to the Libyan Berber Temehu tribes. For further information about the ancient Libyan Temehu (Temeh'w) and Tehenu people the reader can refer to the rare work of Oric Bates (The Eastern Libyans, London, 1914). The Ancient Egyptians called the land and the people west of the Nile Valley the Tehenu, whom appear to have been a numerous group, as attested by Egyptian references, such as "the countries of the Tehenu" and "the chiefs of the Tehenu". But since the Temehu were also referred to as "the Westerners", those who inhabited the area immediately west of the Nile, it becomes difficult to separate between the two Berber groups. Hence, according to Oric Bates, the ancient Egyptians often did not always discriminate between the Temehu (Tmh') and the Tehenu (Th'n).
Those writers who claimed that the Temehu tribes were comprised of two groups: the Tehenu in the north and the Nehesu in the south, were often confused and definitely misinformed, since according to the Egyptians themselves the Nehesu are a distinctive group, and in all probability what they meant to say was that the Libyans comprised two groups: the Tehenu in the north and the Temehu tribes in the south, and thus the Tehenu were rightly identified with Lower Egypt, and the Temehu with Middle-Nubia. This makes sound sense when one refers to the ancient Egyptian's classification of humankind:
The Egyptians divided the human race into four classes, namely the Egyptians, the A'mu (Semites), the Neh'esu (Nubians) and the Temeh'u (Temehu) in the country Tmh' (Libyans). The Neh'esu refers to all Africans bordering Egypt from the south, like the Ethiopians; the Temehu covers all Africans bordering Egypt from the west; and the A'mu are obviously the Semites bordering Egypt from the east (of the Middle East), like the Akkadians and the Phoenicians, whom originally were also Saharan groups, split from the Afro-Asiatic family around the 5th millennium BC. Of course, modern genetic, anthropological and linguistic evidence conclusively relates both the Egyptians and the Libyans (and all the ancient Mediterranean peoples) to the Sahara and therefore this kind of genealogy is politically motivated and serves no purpose to our present enquiry, except in that it clearly shows the Nehesu as a separate group from the Temehu, and that the Temehu designates the whole of the Libyan peoples west of the Nile - that is all the Berbers or Imazighen including the Tehenu, the Ribu, the Nasamons, the Garamantes, etc, all of whom the Egyptians were aware of as Berber groups and collectively mentioned as Temehu.
This is also apparent from the extent of the Temehu's territories, which, according to Bates, appears to have been comprised of various communities and tribes, occupying much of the Sudan and possibly all the way to Fezzan; and hence several scholars, starting from Oric Bates, have openly discussed the possibility of the Temehu being the distant ancestors of the present day Tuareg tribes of the great Sahara Desert (The Speakers of Tamaheqt), which now became Temezeght via *Temehaght > Temejeght > Temesheght > Temezeght > Tamazight (the language of the entire Berber population of North Africa, currently spanning across 10 countries, from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to Lake Chad).
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