Once the sun slipped down below the dry hills to the west and the heat of the day began

to slip away, the desert evenings cold-erided, hard-edged, and biting.

The women and men leading the train of loaded-down oxen pushed on down the dry water course.

They shivered, pulling their cow-hide garments close around them to ward off the cold, as

the wind whipped through the dusty valley. Just a bit further said the woman at the head of the oxen,

there was a green oasis around that next bend, a place where the water still bubbled up to the

surface in this arid landscape. They could stop for the night, make sure the oxen were foddered

and watered, build a fire to ward off the cold. One more day of traveling would carry them out

of the desert and back to the great river valley at the heart of their world.

The oxen bellowed and protested, plotting weirdly along the rocky pathway.

Unlike the human travelers, they didn't know that the end of their day's labors was at hand.

And again, the human travelers weren't loaded down with gifts and trade goods,

since south from the kings at Abidost to the neighboring kings who ruled the lands around the

first cataract of the Nile. Fine decorated pottery, pungent incense, and a beautifully carved stone

macehead, among other things, were the bread and butter of the trade that tied together the entirety

of the Nile Valley around 3200 BC. Gold from the desert sources went north, and the products of

the society that would soon become Egypt went in the other direction, toward the country they called

the land of the bow. One of the travelers, armed to prevent an attempt at thevery,

propped his bow against one of the trees that sprouted at the edge of the water.

He rubbed an aching leg, careful not to wipe off the elaborate pattern of white body paint that

decorated his skin. The woman who had led the caravan to the oasis knelt down and cupped her hands

together to take a drink. The water splashed under the red paint streaked across her face, and a droplet

...