Nubia: The Land Upriver
The Kingdom of Kush: Napata
The Rise of Kush
Power Vacuum in Nubia. The Egyptian New Kingdom came to an end in ca. 1070 BC. The succeeding royal government of the Twenty-first Dynasty (ruling from Tanis) abandoned all claim to Nubia, apparently creating a power vacuum there that lasted over 400 years.
Since no textual records or cemeteries have been detected in Nubia for this period, most archaeologists believe that Lower Nubia was fairly deserted at this time, perhaps due to low Nile levels and increased desiccation of the region. The Nubian inhabitants, they suggest, migrated southward, where they collected around Napata. Ultimately, a strong independent state did grow up centered around that city, i.e., the resurgent Kingdom of Kush. On the other hand, some archaeologists argue that certain sites in Lower Nubia actually do show continuous Nubian occupation through this period and later--down to the succeeding Kushite kingdom, e.g., Qasr Ibrim. They suggest that Lower Nubia was not deserted at this time, but contained various indigenous polities that were absorbed even earlier than previously suspected by the growing Kushite state at Napata.
About 150 years after the fall of the New Kingdom, Shoshenq I of the Twenty-second Dynasty apparently did try to recover for Egypt some part of Nubia or, at least, access to trade in Nubia. Kenneth Kitchen argues that it is extremely likely that Shoshenq I invaded Nubia with an army in order to acquire its products and tribute for the god Amun. How successful this mission actually was is difficult to ascertain today. Certainly, it garnered trade goods for the king, but it did not reestablish Egyptian control of Lower Nubia. The question remains: if Nubia was supposed to be depopulated at this time, against whom did Shoshenq I war? And who could have been there to make his campaign less than successful? If not indigenous Lower Egyptians, then possibly Kushites from Napata. Related to this, the Bible records that when Shoshenq I later attacked Israel and Judah, among his army were Nubian or Kushite troops (Hebrew kushim). These may well have been freshly recruited from Nubia.
According to standard interpretations, the nascent Kingdom of Kush developed in isolation for about 133 years at Napata (900-767 BC). Thereafter, King Kashta extended Kushite political control northward through Lower Nubia and incorporated it into his Upper Nubian kingdom. However, those who argue that Nubia was not deserted suggest that the Kushites could have absorbed Lower Nubia as early as ca. 900-800 BC.
Archaeologists divide this later Kingdom of Kush into two main periods:
Napatan Period 900 - 300 BC Meroitic Period 300 BC - AD 350
The Napatan Period of Kush
Chronology. During the Napatan Period (also called the Kingdom of Napata), both the political capital of Kush and the Kushite royal tombs were located at the city of Napata. The three cemeteries which served the city were: Nuri, el-Kurru, and Gebel Barkal. By counting the royal burials at el-Kurru, we detect five to seven generations of unknown kings before Kashta (ca. 767 BC); hence, we infer that the Kushite state emerged ca. 900 BC. Of these kings, we know through later inscriptions only the name of Kashta's immediate predecessor, Alara. There is some circum- stantial evidence in the texts and archaeology of the period which indicates that the Kushite royal family actually originated from the region around Meroe and only subsequently established themselves at Napata by the ninth century BC.
Acculturation and Burial Customs. With the emergence of the Napatan state ca. 900 BC, the Kushites revived their tradit- ional custom of Nubian bed-burials with the corpse contracted into a fetal position. Likewise, they constructed their tombs as the traditional tumulus (circular structure, revetted with vertical slabs, filled with rubble and sand, and with a chapel on the east side). However, the Kushites did not readopt the an- cient practice of sacrificing human retainers until about the first century AD. Rather until that time, they employed the Egyptian custom of using ushabties to service the deceased ruler. However, later in the Napatan Period, the wife of the king might be expected to join her husband in death.
Kashta saw his kingdom as the successor to Egypt in Nubia. Thus, he pushed the Egyptianization of Kushite culture to its furthest extent yet. The Kingdom of Kush became bilingual. The Kushite rulership and the social elite used Egyptian language and writing in addition to their own. They adhered to Egyptian religion and the theology of kingship, and often followed Egyptian burial customs and traditions. It was the upper classes that Egyptian- ized the most, including: royalty, the court, the bureaucracy, priesthood, and tribal army. The lower classes also Egyptian- ized, although to a lesser extent than the elite.
Unlike private Kushite burials, Kashta and his royal successors adopted for themselves a royal burial style in keeping with Egyptian kings, i.e., corpse extended, mummified, placed in an anthropoid coffin, and accompanied by the usual paraphernalia of canopic jars, ushabties, and amulets--all of Egyptian manufacture. While Kashta was buried in a tumulus, his son, Piye, began a new tradition, followed by subsequent kings at Napata and Meroe, of being buried under a pyramid. In doing so, he adopted the pyramid-type tomb utilized by Egyptian officials and Egyptianized Nubians in Lower Nubia earlier in the New Kingdom (see above). Thereafter, these Kushite royal pyramids were elaborated sometimes with different architectural devices, such as stone lotus flowers and pillars growing out of the tops of the pyramids. At the base of each pyramid was a mortuary chapel for the cult of the dead king, fronted by a traditional Egyptian trapezoid-shaped double pylon (see drawing).
The Kushites were great lovers of horses, which they bred and kept for military purposes. Their care for horseflesh was so great that Piye records severely rebuking the king of Hermopolis for allowing his horses to starve during the siege of that city. Ideally, the Kushite kings even took their horses with them into death. These were sacrificed as part of the royal burials and interred near their owners.
The Kushite Conquest of Egypt
Third Intermediate Period. When Kashta came to power in Kush, Egypt was in political turmoil. This era is designated, the Third Intermediate Period (Dynasties 21-25, ca. 1070-656 BC). In Kashta's time, Egypt was fragmented into at least 11 independent kinglets and principalities, including: 3 in Upper Egypt and 2 in the Delta, as well as 5 Libyan tribal chiefdoms and a principality, also in the Delta. Centered at Sais in the western Delta was a great chiefdom of Egyptianized Libyans, whose ruler was entitled, "Great Chief of the West."
In expanding Kushite control through Lower Nubia, Kashta might possibly have penetrated north of Elephantine and extended his political influence even into Upper Egypt. While Kashta never entered Egypt, he did claim the traditional kingship of Upper and Lower Egypt, perhaps even establishing indirect friendly relations with Thebes (for which there is no clear evidence). Kashta's son and successor, Piye (ca. 753-713 BC), also claimed the title, "King of Upper and Lower Egypt." He brought Thebes under his direct protection and established a military force in the area. He also had his sister, Amenirdis I, installed as priestess-designate in the Temple of Amun at Karnak with the title, "God's Wife of Amun." This was an important political move, since the God's Wife of Amun was traditionally the daughter or sister of the legitimate king of Egypt or Thebes, and it suggests that Piye had been designated as the heir-apparent of the last Theban king. Apparently, Piye also claimed the allegiance of the petty kingdoms of Hermopolis and Heracleopolis, while the great chiefdom of Sais held the loyalties of the various polities in the Delta.
First Military Conquest. In ca. 732 BC, the chiefdom of Sais began military operations in Upper Egypt to make the kingdoms there suzerain. As a result, the Kingdom of Hermopolis joined the Saites in besieging Heracleopolis and threatening Thebes. Piye, residing at Napata, responded by ordering his army in Thebes to attack and lift the siege of Heracleopolis and to resecure the loyalty of Hermopolis. He then sent a second expeditionary force from Kush to Middle Egypt to halt the Saite advance. He departed Napata for Thebes, where he celebrated the New Year's Festival and the Feast of Opet (by which he reaffirmed his spiritual claim to the Egyptian kingship). Thereafter, at the head of his army, Piye drove the Saite-led coalition to Memphis. He besieged that city which fell to him in a bloody conflict, after which each of the coalition kings finally surrendered to him and acknowledged him as their overlord.
The record of this campaign was recorded on a victory stela found at the Temple of Amun at Napata. Copies of the text were also erected in the sanctuary of the Temple of Karnak and probably in the Temple of Ptah at Memphis. According to the text, Piye's conquest was a religious crusade against Egyptian rebels on behalf of Amun. After he effected the surrender of all the petty dynasts, Piye he had himself crowned King of Upper and Lower Egypt in a traditional coronation held at the Temple of Ra at Heliopolis.
The crowning of Piye in ca. 732 BC marked the beginning of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egyptian history. In capturing Egypt and adding it to his own kingdom, Piye united the entire Nile Valley into one state from Meroe to the Mediterranean Sea--for the first time in history ( see map). He generously appointed four of the former kings as governors of their territories to rule for him in Egypt, including the troublesome Great Chief of the West in Sais. He then returned to Napata in triumph loaded with the spoils of his campaign and with tribute from his new vassals.
Second Military Conquest. Piye's reunification was short- lived. Because he maintained Napata at his political capital, he was unable to govern Egypt effectively from so far up the Nile River. He did not learn the lesson of history that had been apparent to the Upper Egyptian kings of the First, Twelfth and Eighteenth Dynasties, which was that a united Egypt could only be effectively governed from the north, not the south. With Piye residing at such a great distance away, his governors, who were the former kings that fought against him, lost no time in rebelling against his authority and declaring a measure of independence. The Great Chief of the West in the city of Sais even declared himself King of Upper and Lower Egypt, founding the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. Evidently, Piye was willing to accept this situation, so long as the Delta dynasts continued to recognize his overall authority or did not attempt to expand into Upper Egypt.
In ca. 713 BC, Piye was succeeded by his brother, Shabako. In a tradition new to the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, the inheritance of the throne was transmitted not from king to king's son directly, but from king to brother to king's son (see family-tree of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty). Shabako, intent on consolidating Kushite authority in Egypt, invaded Egypt in his second regnal year and reconquered it. By ca. 712 BC, he was residing in Memphis, which he designated his residence and royal capital. He took more effective control of Egypt than had his brother; he removed the disloyal governors of the Delta, some of which were executed, and he replaced them with his own Kushite governors.
Shabako apparently also campaigned on the Sinai frontier in order to secure it from migrating bedouin, and he engaged in a modest amount of royal building projects in Egypt. Among other things, he had the ancient Memphite Theology (detailing the cosmogony of the god Ptah) copied from papyrus to a slab of basalt and erected in Memphis.
Outside of Egypt at this time, the neo-Assyrians were consolidating their empire in the Near East. The principalities and kingdoms of Phoenicia, Israel, Judah and Philistia (i.e., the territories adjoining the Egyptian frontier) were suzerain to the Assyrians, albeit contentious and rebellious against them. Shabako, cautious and wary of the Assyrians--and perhaps as a means of ingratiating himself with them--maintained a policy of neutrality and non-interference. Thus, when the rebellious ruler of Ashdod fled to Egypt to avoid capture by the Assyrians, Shabako extradited the Philistine ruler back to them.
Shebitku and Taharqa. Shebitku, the son of Piye, succeeded his uncle on the throne ca. 698 BC, perhaps after a two-year coregency with Shabako. By this time, the hereditary rulers of Sais seem to be back in power, as were other Delta princes. Shebitku maintained his predecessor's policy of a modest amount of royal building projects, mostly in Memphis and Thebes. However, he departed from Shabako's overly cautious foreign policy and adopted a new and more aggressive posture against Assyria. Around 701 BC, when Judah and the Philistine cities rose up against the Assyrians in a coordinated revolt, Shebitku provided them with military assistance in the form of troops for their allied forces. He also dispatched an Egyptian army led by his brother, Taharqa, to halt the Assyrian reinvasion of Phoenicia and Palestine. However, the Assyrians defeated the allied force and accomplished their objectives before the arrival of the Egyptian army. The Egyptians withdrew back to Egypt, unwilling to battle the Assyrians alone. Because of Egypt's assistance to the rebellious states, for the first time, she came into direct political and military conflict with Assyria.
Taharqa succeeded his brother as pharaoh in ca. 690 BC. He ruled for twenty-six years, the first sixteen of which were filled with brilliant achievement. He was a prolific builder in Memphis and Thebes, especially at the Temple of Amun at Karnak. He also rebuilt or erected anew temples and shrines throughout Nubia. He was a very capable ruler, often the model of an Egyptian pharaoh, and some archaeologists would argue that he led Egypt through its last stage of outstanding and independent cultural success.
In foreign affairs, he continued the policy of attempting to undermine Assyrian control of Palestine and the Levant. However, because the Assyrians peceived him fomenting rebellion against them among the Phoenician cities, they set upon the total military conquest of Egypt.
Assyrian Conquest of Egypt
Assyrian Attack. In ca. 677 BC, during Taharqa's thirteenth regnal year, the Assyrians, led by King Esarhaddon, attacked Egypt's eastern frontier near Sile with the intent of invasion. Here they were defeated by the army of Taharqa. Three years later, in 674 BC, they attacked again. This time they defeated Taharqa and captured Memphis. While Taharqa withdrew southward, probably to Nubia, the Assyrians seized the entire royal court, including the queen and the heir apparent to the throne, and transported them as captives to Nineveh. For the third time in its history, Egypt had been conquered by foreigners.
Esarhaddon effected the military occupation of Egypt by appointing Egyptian vassals to rule the country for him. They functioned under the aegis of Assyrian commissioners who were supported by an Assyrian military garrison. The vassals were chosen from among the earlier Delta dynasts who previously had ruled their territories as fiefs under the Kushites. The foremost of these was Necho of Sais. In reconfirming these dynasts, Esarhaddon was trying to create an Egyptian bulwark against the possible return of Taharqa, relying upon the ambitions and envy of those vassals.
Egyptian Revolts. Esarhaddon withdrew from Egypt and returned to Assyria. Within two years, Taharqa had returned to power as king in Egypt and ousted the Assyrian garrison. Due to Esarhaddon's death, the Assyrians were unable to return to Egypt for an additional two years. When they did return (ca. 670 BC), under King Assurbanipal, they defeated Taharqa again, who withdrew to Thebes. When they followed, Taharqa fled south to Napata. The rest of Egypt submitted to Assurbanipal's rule. However, after he arrived back in Assyria, most of the Egyptian vassals invited Taharqa to return to Egypt as pharaoh in some power-sharing arrangement. The plot was discovered, and the vassals were publicly executed, either in cities throughout the Delta or in Nineveh. For their loyalty to him, Assurbanipal appointed Necho I as king in Sais and his son, Psammetichus, as ruler of Athribis. Taharqa never returned to Egypt, but finished his reign as King of Kush in Napata.
Tanwetamani and the Final Expulsion of the Kushites. Upon his death, Taharqa was succeeded by his nephew, Tanwetamani (ca. 664 BC). He reinvaded Egypt with a Kushite army, captured Memphis and attacked the Delta. After he killed Necho I in battle, the Delta vassals recognized him as King of Egypt, while Psammetichus fled to Assyria. Within a year (ca. 663 BC), the Assyrians returned to quell this rebellion. Tanwetamani was quickly defeated, and he withdrew to Thebes. The Assyrians followed once again, whereupon he withdrew to his powerbase at Napata. In retribution, the Assyrians burned and sacked Thebes. The catastrophic fall of Thebes was an event incon- ceivable through its 1,500-years history, and it reverberated throughout the Near East for decades.
Tanwetamani never returned to Egypt, and any effective Kushite pretensions to the throne of Egypt ended forever. For his loyalty, the Assyrians installed Psammetichus I of the Twenty- sixth Dynasty as king of most of the Egyptian Delta.
Epilogue: The Paradox of Kushite Rule
Because Piye, his successors, and the Kushite leadership were so heavily Egyptianized, they saw themselves as the rightful and legitimate heirs of traditional Egyptian society and civiliz- ation. Hence, in the manner of a traditional Egyptian king, Piye believed it his duty to restore ma'at (i.e., harmony, balance, truth and justice) to the land of Egypt, which had been wracked by internal dissension and the political chaos of the Third Intermediate Period. Ideally, the Kushites did not view themselves as foreign invaders, but as restorers of order, reuniting the Two Lands in the same manner as the pharaohs of old. For this reason, Piye took, as part of his royal titulary, the Horus-name, Sema-tawy, "Uniter of the Two Lands," which was the same name taken by King Mentuhotep II after reuniting Egypt thirteen hundred years earlier.
Generally, in their royal iconography and inscriptions, the Kushites often resurrected texts and artistic representations of the Old and Middle Kingdoms, so e.g., Piye's victory stela contained poetry and phrases lifted out of earlier Egyptian literary sources. Indeed, one section was copied nearly verbatim from the Middle Kingdom composition, The Instructions of Amenemhat. The purpose of this borrowing was to justify the regime as a legitimate Egyptian institution by showing continuity and cultural identification with Egypt's past. In that regard, the Kushites were quite conservative as Egyptians and genuinely devoted to Amun-Ra.
The paradox of the Kushite regime is that despite his appeal to tradition, Piye had no intention of residing in Egypt or ruling out of an Egyptian capital in the manner of an Egyptian king, nor did he provide for the direct administration of Egypt; hence, in reality, he had only a limited interest in actively and conscientiously governing the country. As Kitchen argues, even under the later Kushite kings ruling from Memphis (e.g., Shabako and Taharqa) the Twenty-fifth Dynasty never did constitute sole kingly rule over a united Egypt in which the local dynasts were completely overthrown. Rather, the dynasts remained in their own domains as vassals of the Kushites, where they could adopt typical Egyptian royal titularies. Even where Saite "kings" were deposed by Shabako, they were permitted ultimately to return to power. Clearly, with their own self-interests in mind, the Kushites were only desirous of creating a political system in which they could superimpose their overlordship upon a series of petty kings, chiefs and governors. Otherwise, a more coherent union in Egypt would have posed a threat to their own rule.
On the other hand, it might also be argued that despite their restricted notions about integrated and solitary royal govern- ance, the Kushites, in their struggle against the Assyrians, still represented a force for the independence and unification of Egypt, whereas the Assyrians epitomized disunity and division of the country. The Assyrian policy was to divide and conquer. Thus, where the Assyrians strove to promote local self-interest among competing vassal rulers, the Kushites sought some unity. In the end, the Kushites were unable to withstand the combination of Assyrian might and the overweening ambition of the Saites, the latter which in the end perhaps surprised even the Assyrians.
Kush after the Conquest of Egypt
Saite Period. When Tanwetamani was finally driven from Egypt in ca. 663 BC, the Twenty-fifth Dynasty collapsed, and over seventy years of Kushite rule in Egypt came to an end. However, when the Assyrian army withdrew from Egypt shortly thereafter, serious political problems developed back in Assyria, precluding its ability ever to return to Egypt. Ironically for the Kushites, only a short time after their expulsion, Assyria, too, was forced to abandon its hold on Egypt entirely. This situation permitted Psammetichus I to seize power with the aid of his Greek and Carian mercenaries. He began to consolidate Egypt entirely under his royal authority. In doing so, he inaugurated the so- called Saite Period of Egyptian history. One of Psammetichus I's achievements was to install a new military garrison at Elephantine to secure the Nubian frontier. He may well have dispatched a military expedition into Lower Nubia to strike the Kushites and forestall any desire to reestablish their foothold in Egypt.
Later (ca. 600 BC), Psammetichus II sent an invasion force to Upper Nubia with the clearly stated purpose of smiting the Kushites. Apparently, he was responding to some threat of a new Kushite invasion of Upper Egypt under King Anlamani, as well as to a desire to recover Lower Nubia. His significant army was composed of Greek, Carian, and Phoenician mercenaries who penetrated deeply into Upper Nubia. They met and decisively defeated the Kushites in two battles, at Tibo (the Island of Argo) at the entrance to the Dongola Reach and probably at Napata itself. Records from this campaign derive from graffiti scrawled by the victorious troops at Abu Simbel and from two series of victory stelae erected by Psammetichus II at Tanis and at Karnak and Kalabsha Temples. He recorded the defeat of the Kushites in which 4,200 of them were made captive. Another result of this bitter campaign was that the figures and names of the Kushite kings, where they were previously inscribed on the walls of Egyptian temples and monuments, were hacked away in order to expunge them from the Egyptian record. These were replaced by the name of Psammetichus II himself.
Dodekaschoenus. The Saites did not capitalize on this victory to consolidate any hold on Upper Nubia. Rather, their interest was to secure Lower Nubia and control the stretch of territory that the Greeks called, the Dodekaschoenus, the "Twelve-schoenus Stretch" (1 schoenus=10.5 km.). This was the stretch of river valley that extended ca. 126 km. south of Elephantine through Lower Nubia. From the Saite Period through the Roman Era, the rulers of Egypt always tried to hold at least this part of Lower Nubia, because it provided vital access to the gold mines of the district and in the Wadi Allaqi.
Royal Capital to Meroe. The Kushite defeat at Napata ultimately contributed to the decision of the Kushite kings in ca. 590 BC to transfer their royal residence from Napata to the city of Meroe further south. However, they did not abandon Napata entirely. It was still a holy city because of the mountain of Gebel Barkal there and the temple of Amun at the base of the mountain. The Kushites believed that the god Amun actually inhabited the interior of the mountain, accounting for its sacred status. The great table-rock that soared upward from the base of the mountain probably was even thought to be the uraeus on Amun's brow. Long after the Kushite kings moved to Meroe, they still returned to Napata to be crowned in the temple there and to be buried in the holy cemeteries nearby.
Royal Succession and the Kandake. After their sojourn in Egypt, the Kushite kings reverted from the Twenty- fifth Dynasty method of royal succession to a more traditionally Nubian method of transmitting the throne, often described as a matrilineal succession. Here the throne was passed, not from king to his son, but from king to one of his sisters sons. Thus, a kings' son could only be an heir if he was born from the king's marriage to his own sister, which often happened. At the same time the Meroitic army and the priesthood of Amun also had a say in the process. If there was no clear successor by birth, the soldiers of the tribal army of Meroe (which was the core of the Kushite army) freely elected a royal candidate who was then probably presented to the priesthood of Gebel Barkal for confirmation by the god Amun.
The relationship of the king to his mother was more significant than that of king to his wife, although the wife was still important enough often to be buried with her husband on his death. In the theology of kingship, the king and his mother were assimilated, respectively, to the god Horus and the mother- goddess, Isis. This woman, who was both sister of a king and mother of a king, often functioned as a ruling queen or co-regent with her son. She was designated with the Kushite title, kandake. Later Greek and Roman writers would confuse this title as the actual name of all the Kushite queens; hence, kandake, a Kushite title of supreme female royalty has come down through Greek and Latin to the modern world as the female name, Candace.
Kush and Persia. Despite a failed attempt by Cambyses, King of Persia, to invade and conquer Nubia, the Kingdom of Kush maintained peaceful diplomatic relations with Persia and even sent envoys to the Persian capital at Persepolis. The Persians even used Nubian or Kushite mercenaries in their grand army. On the other hand, the Kushites always idealized the notion of an independent and traditionally governed Egypt. Thus, when the Egyptians later overthrew the Persians in the fifth century BC, they had the political support of the Kushites, and when Nectanebo II was ultimately overthrown by the reinvading Persians, it was to the Kushites that he fled for safety; it was in Kush that he ended his days.
