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either Blemmyes or Nobadae. Trigger (1969a) has argued that the X-Group should be renamed the Ballana culture in order to emphasise its Lower Nubian origins. Adams (1965, 160) thought that the Blemmyes were likely to be the same as, or linked with, nomadic Beja tribes (cf. texts from Qasr Ibrim) who themselves could be identified as the Medjay of Pharaonic Egypt. A similar argument has been made on an etymological basis (Zaborski 1989). Säve-Söderbergh et al. thought that the rulers at Ballana may have been the Blemmyes (1981, 5). In contrast, Williams termed the X-Group at Qustul Noba, because of correspondences with historical sources naming the Nobadae, and argued that the X-Group should henceforth be termed the Noubadian culture (Williams 1991c, 3, 158). Edwards also called the Ballana tombs Nobadian (Edwards 2004, 206). Sadr suggested that the Red Noba took control of Nubia from the Dodecaschoinos to Dongola in the early centuries AD but did not displace Meroites already settled there (Sadr 1991, 124).
Caught up in this debate over terminology is the problem that certain authors use terms in a manner that collapses racial group identity with cultural identity. In fact, Emery demonstrated this point in the site report from the original excavations, in which he used the term X-Group to both identify material culture with the group of people at Qustul and Ballana, and also to mark a chronological period (1938a, 18–24).
The situation regarding the terminology and spelling of the various tribal names is, therefore, rather confusing and, at times, contradictory. Ultimately, however, Adams felt that the Blemmye/Nobadae debate was rather pointless, instead preferring a definition within which the X-Group peoples “are part of a complex transformation—racial, linguistic and cultural—which affected the whole of the Nile Valley from Aswân to the junction of the Niles” (Adams 1965, 161). The term X-Group will be used throughout this book, since the terms Noubadian and Ballana culture obscure the complexities involved in the attribution of ethnicities (see Rose 1992, 3, for a similar argument). The term Ballana culture is also not a suitable substitute, privileging as it does the site at Ballana.