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Sudan
The area was known to the Egyptians as Kush
and had strong cultural and religious ties to Egypt. In the 8th century BC,
however, Kush came under the rule of an aggressive line of monarchs, ruling from
the capital city, Napata, who gradually extended their influence into Egypt.
About 750 BC, a Kushite king called Kashta conquered Upper Egypt and became
ruler of Thebes until approximately 740 BC. His successor, Piankhy, subdued the
delta, reunited Egypt under the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, and founded a line of
kings who ruled Kush and Thebes for about a hundred years. The dynasty's
intervention in the area of modern Syria caused a confrontation between Egypt
and Assyria. When the Assyrians in retaliation invaded Egypt, Taharqa (688-663
BC), the last Kushite pharaoh, withdrew and returned the dynasty to Napata,
where it continued to rule Kush and extended its dominions to the south and
east.
In 590 BC, an Egyptian army sacked Napata, compelling the Kushite court to move
to Meroe near the 6th cataract. The Meroitic kingdom subsequently developed
independently of Egypt, and during the height of its power in the 2nd and 3rd
centuries BC, Meroe extended over a region from the 3rd cataract in the north to
Sawba, near present-day Khartoum (the modern day capital of Sudan).
The pharaonic tradition persisted among Meroe's rulers, who raised stelae to
record the achievements of their reigns and erected pyramids to contain their
tombs. These objects and the ruins of palaces, temples and baths at Meroe attest
to a centralized political system that employed artisans' skills and commanded
the labour of a large work force. A well-managed irrigation system allowed the
area to support a higher population density than was possible during later
periods. By the 1st century BC, the use of hieroglyphs gave way to a Meroitic
script that adapted the Egyptian writing system to an indigenous, Nubian-related
language spoken later by the region's people.
In the 5th century AD, the people known as the Nobatae occupied the Nile's west
bank in northern Kush. Eventually they intermarried and established themselves
among the Meroitic people as a military aristocracy. Until nearly the 5th
century, Rome subsidized the Nobatae and used Meroe as a buffer between Egypt
and the Blemmyes. About CE 350, an Axumite army from Abyssinia captured and
destroyed Meroe city, ending the kingdom's independent existence.
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