Kingdom of Kush: Nubia's Great African Empire on the Nile

The Kingdom of Kush was an African state on the middle Nile, in what is now Sudan, that lasted from around 1070 BC until about AD 350. From its capitals at Napata and later Meroë, Kushite kings conquered Egypt and ruled it as pharaohs, built hundreds of pyramids and developed one of the earliest written languages of sub-Saharan Africa. For more than 1,400 years Kush was a major power linking the Mediterranean world with inner Africa.

Nubia before the kingdom

The land south of Egypt’s First Cataract at Aswan was known to the Egyptians as Kush and to the Greeks as Aethiopia. Its people had their own long history. Between about 2500 and 1500 BC the Kerma kingdom, centred near the Third Cataract, was a rich rival of Egypt with huge mud-brick temples and royal burial mounds.

Egypt’s New Kingdom pharaohs, starting with Thutmose I around 1500 BC, destroyed Kerma and occupied Nubia for nearly five centuries. They ruled it through a viceroy, the “King’s Son of Kush”, built temples such as Abu Simbel and founded a sanctuary of the god Amun at Jebel Barkal. Nubia supplied Egypt with gold, ivory, ebony, cattle and soldiers.

When Egypt’s New Kingdom collapsed around 1070 BC, its control over Nubia faded. The following two centuries are poorly documented, but local leaders gradually filled the gap, and a new Nubian kingdom took shape around Napata.

Rise of the Napatan kings

The first clear signs of the new kingdom appear at el-Kurru, a royal cemetery near the Fourth Cataract, where chiefs were buried from about the 9th century BC. Their tombs develop over several generations from mounds into small pyramids, reflecting growing contact with Egyptian ideas of kingship.

The earliest king known by name is Alara, in the early 8th century BC. His successor Kashta extended Kushite authority northward into Upper Egypt, as far as Elephantine and probably Thebes. The Kushite rulers presented themselves as devoted servants of Amun, whose great temple stood at the foot of Jebel Barkal, a flat-topped sandstone mountain believed to be the god’s dwelling.

The 25th Dynasty: pharaohs from Kush

Around 728 BC Kashta’s son Piye marched north into a divided Egypt, defeated a coalition of Delta rulers and received their submission. His long victory inscription at Jebel Barkal describes the campaign in vivid detail. The story is told in Piye’s conquest of Egypt.

Piye’s successors Shabaka, Shebitku (the order of these two is debated), Taharqa and Tantamani ruled Egypt and Nubia together as the 25th Dynasty, the “Kushite” or “Ethiopian” dynasty of ancient historians. They restored temples, revived old styles of art and writing, and built across Egypt, especially at Thebes. Taharqa, who reigned from 690 to 664 BC, was among the most active builders of any pharaoh in this late period. The Hebrew Bible mentions him as “Tirhakah, king of Cush” in the context of the Assyrian campaign against Judah in 701 BC.

The Kushite empire collided with Assyria, the great power of the Near East. The Assyrian king Esarhaddon took Memphis in 671 BC, and his son Ashurbanipal invaded again, sacking Thebes in about 663 BC. Tantamani retreated south, and by about 656 BC Kushite rule in Egypt had ended. The kings of Kush continued to call themselves rulers of Egypt for a time, but they never regained it.

Napata and the move to Meroë

Back in Nubia, the kingdom remained strong. Taharqa was buried under a large pyramid at Nuri, which became the royal cemetery for most of the next three centuries. The kings were crowned at Napata and other sanctuaries, and royal succession often passed between brothers and through the female line, with the king’s mother playing a central role.

In 593 BC an Egyptian army of Psamtik II, with Greek and Carian mercenaries, raided deep into Nubia and is thought to have damaged Napata. Over the following centuries the political centre shifted south to Meroë, a city on the east bank of the Nile between the Fifth and Sixth Cataracts. Meroë already existed as a royal residence by the 6th century BC, but around 300 BC royal burials moved there too, a change traditionally linked to King Arkamani I, called Ergamenes by Greek writers.

Meroë had several advantages. It lay in the savanna belt, where summer rains allowed cattle herding and sorghum farming beyond the narrow river valley. It controlled routes to the Red Sea and into central Africa. Nearby were good supplies of iron ore and the wood needed to smelt it.

Meroitic civilisation

The Meroitic period, from about 300 BC to AD 350, saw Kush develop a distinctive culture that blended African and Egyptian traditions with influences from the Hellenistic and Roman world. The pyramids of Meroë are the best-known monuments: more than 200 steep, narrow-sided tombs of kings, queens and nobles grouped in cemeteries east of the city.

Religion combined Egyptian gods such as Amun and Isis with local deities. The most important local god was Apedemak, a lion-headed war god whose temples at Naqa and Musawwarat es-Sufra show him with a lion’s head on a human body, or as a serpent with a lion’s head. Musawwarat’s Great Enclosure, a vast complex of courtyards and ramps, remains only partly understood.

From around the 2nd century BC the Kushites wrote their own language, Meroitic, in two scripts derived from Egyptian signs: a hieroglyphic form for monuments and a cursive form for everyday use. The British Egyptologist Francis Llewellyn Griffith worked out the sound values in the early 20th century, but the language itself is still only partly understood.

Economy and trade

Kush’s wealth rested on farming, herding and its position between Africa and the Mediterranean. Along the Nile, farmers grew barley, wheat and later sorghum, watered by the annual flood and, in the Meroitic period, by water-lifting wheels. In the savanna of the Butana region, between the Nile and the Atbara River, cattle herding was central to life, and huge artificial reservoirs called hafirs stored rainwater for the dry season.

Kush exported gold from the eastern deserts, ivory, ebony, incense, animal skins and exotic animals, which reached Egypt and later the Greek and Roman world. Its kings also controlled the movement of people and goods along the river and across desert routes. In return they imported fine pottery, wine, bronze vessels, glass and luxury goods, many of which have been found in elite tombs at Meroë.

Queens and war with Rome

Royal women held exceptional power in Kush. The title kandake, which became “Candace” in Greek and Latin, was used for royal mothers and ruling queens. Several reigned in their own right, including Shanakdakhete in the 2nd century BC and Amanishakheto around the late 1st century BC, whose pyramid at Meroë yielded a famous hoard of gold jewellery.

After Rome annexed Egypt in 30 BC, Kushite forces attacked Roman positions around Aswan in 25 BC and carried off statues of Augustus. The Roman prefect Gaius Petronius counter-attacked and sacked Napata, but the war ended with a negotiated peace at Samos in 21 or 20 BC that was favourable to Kush. The episode, led on the Kushite side by the queen Amanirenas, is covered in Kandake Amanirenas’ war with Rome. A bronze head of Augustus, buried under a temple step at Meroë, is now in the British Museum.

Decline and end

From the 2nd century AD Meroë’s fortunes faded. Roman Egypt’s economy weakened, Red Sea trade increasingly passed through the rising kingdom of Aksum in the Ethiopian highlands, and nomadic peoples such as the Blemmyes and the Noba pressed on Kushite lands. Royal pyramids became smaller and poorer.

The last royal burials at Meroë date to the mid-4th century AD. An inscription of King Ezana of Aksum, from around AD 350, records a campaign along the Nile against the Noba and the “Kasu”, showing that the old kingdom had broken down. In the following centuries Nubia was reorganised into the kingdoms of Nobadia, Makuria and Alodia, which adopted Christianity in the 6th century.

Myths and facts

Myth: Kush was simply a copy of Egypt. Kushite kings borrowed Egyptian titles, gods and art, but they also kept their own languages, gods such as Apedemak, burial customs, succession rules and the strong position of royal women.

Myth: Meroë was the “Birmingham of Africa”. The phrase, coined by early 20th-century writers impressed by Meroë’s slag heaps, is a misleading comparison with industrial Britain. Iron was certainly smelted there on a significant scale over several centuries, but its scale, dating and role in the economy are still being studied.

Fact: Sudan has more pyramids than Egypt. Counting all royal and elite tombs, Nubia has around 200 or more pyramids, although they are much smaller than those of Giza.

Timeline

• c. 1500 BC: Egypt destroys the Kerma kingdom and occupies Nubia.
• c. 1070 BC: Collapse of the New Kingdom ends effective Egyptian rule in Nubia.
• c. 760 BC: King Kashta extends Kushite power into Upper Egypt.
• c. 728 BC: Piye conquers Egypt; start of the 25th Dynasty.
• 690–664 BC: Reign of Taharqa, pharaoh of Egypt and Kush.
• c. 663 BC: Assyrians sack Thebes; Kushite rule in Egypt ends by about 656 BC.
• 593 BC: Egyptian army of Psamtik II raids Nubia.
• c. 300 BC: Royal burials move to Meroë.
• 25–21/20 BC: War between Kush and Roman Egypt, ended by the peace of Samos.
• c. AD 350: Aksumite campaign of Ezana; the kingdom of Kush has broken up.

Why it matters

Kush was one of the great civilisations of ancient Africa and the longest-lasting state of the Nile valley outside Egypt. It shows that power on the Nile did not flow only from north to south, and its pyramids, script and queens make it central to the history of Sudan and of the African past as a whole.