Here is an interesting find, camel/livestock branding practices of Somalis:
I can't find the source anymore since it was a Twitter post, not a study (the art, that is).
Not only is there branding for the livestock of Somalis, they also branded territory with the same brands:
This has historically been interpreted as lineage/clan/tribe signature that goes back all the way to Nile Valley among the pastoralists.
Reading about Blemmyan history through review and synthesis of documentation of coastal trade networks primarily via Berenike sea access, I came across good historical texts that went into territorial kingdoms on those ancient Eastern Desert peoples describing land e and political size, a kingdom that would span 800 years from the middle of the Egyptian Eastern desert, all the way to a region north of Eritrea, a region historically undermined and not understood in history, often classed as periphery, when it was, in fact, a separate power-region. Leaving from that context backdrop, let's get to the matter. One peculiar document in Egypt showed that a king named Kharakhen had signed a document using a symbol:
"A key piece of evidence for this kind of tribal rulership and administration is the signature that the king Kharakhen left on one of these documents, a ‘royal disposition’ with an extant pictorial monogram comprising a royal signature next to his name. The king’s signature appears alongside that of the ‘secretaries’ (domesticus) Laize and Tiutikna. It was Hans Winkler who first noticed that the signatures on this document bear a strong resemblance to geometric symbols common in local rock art, sometimes called wasm (‘marks’ in Arabic) and given to be similar in practice to the markings that Arab tribes use to brand camels and inscribe tribal territory in Arabia and Palestine. The Blemmyes possibly even learned these symbols and practices from Arabs who had frequented their deserts since the Ptolemaic period. Kharakhen’s specific ‘tribal symbol’, a circle with a line emanating from the circumference, is also found at a number of diverse rock art sites throughout the Nile Valley and Eastern Desert. At most of these sites, Kharakhen’s tribal mark is associated with camel depictions and other distinct wasm. Most of these locations are either in Blemmyean desert lands or near known Blemmyean haunts near the Nile Valley. These marks are found in so many diverse locales that they are unlikely to have belonged to Kharakhen himself; rather the monogram may likely be the symbol for the royal or lead tribe. This royal tribe had marked sites over a wide territory, almost the totality of the Blemmyean desert" - Cooper, Julien (2021), "
A Nomadic State? The 'Blemmyan-Beja' Polity of the Ancient Eastern Desert"
I do disagree that Arabs influenced these systems because we see it among Somalis, we have it among many different groups in Sudan as well. Arabs and Cushites had many similarities. These types of symbols were found as far as the Neolithic in the Nile Valley with pastoralists engraving or painting symbols in rocks thousands of years ago, assuming those were the origins of such developments. There could have been, and probably was, a bi-directional influence that was deep in ancient pre-history between Arabia and Nile Valley but not after, in my assessment. That said, the rest is accurate.
Such evidence shows signatures of Blemmeyan chieftains signing their diplomatic messages with epithets that reflect epigraphic signifiers that were attested to be the branding of livestock, which were sort of symbolic representations of the specific agnatic status of the people and their extent, and/or structured into higher institutional systems as it indicates as well.
These salient features speak to a strong deep-cultural continuity. The Blemmyes and their descendants were seriously our parallels in ways that are almost too striking to be separate trajectories, but they were, separated from us in their ancestral times 3000 years ago. It speaks to the strong common cultural background of practices existing deep in time with their persistence.
These brandings were important for recognizing who they belonged to. It assured less theft of camels unless you were ready for conflict.
These markings also portray an understanding of symbolic significance, especially if you mark your territory, livestock and sign with it in contractual documents, not only does it convey a form of language of meaning but it also conveys a state of asserted meaning that justifies itself as being self-important, an internal cultural signifier that demands respect. It is inherently, cultural mechanisms that can scale for all forms of traditional to structural and institutional legitimiacy. It also portrays a shared understanding of vernacular for ownership. Symbols are meaningless in that regard unless people respect the conditions of that language. This inherently means the people of the region had a common language and understanding of ownership as well. These are strong sub-globalized cultural-civilizational markers.