Ancient Nubia: Egypt's Rival in Africa.

AuthorDepuydt, Leo

Only two African civilizations have so far yielded significant archaeological or written records from before about 1000 C.E., Egypt and Nubia, and their histories are to a considerable extent intertwined. Nubia, a name of unknown etymology, denotes the region along the Nile from the First to the Sixth Cataracts. It is the Kush of Assyrian, Egyptian, Hebrew, and Persian; the Ethiopia of Latin and Greek. The land is located mostly within the boundaries of the modern Sudan. It can be subdivided, from north to south, into Lower Nubia, Upper Nubia, and Southern Nubia. In chronological terms, the period in antiquity following the climate deterioration of about 45003500 B.C.E., which confined human activity largely to the river valleys, can be subdivided into two epochs: the Bronze Age (ca. 3000-1000 B.C.E.) and the Napatan and Meroitic periods (ca. 1000 B.C.E.-350 C.E.).

Competition for territory with its northern rival, Egypt, played a prominent role in Nubia's history throughout these two epochs, as did extensive trade and cultural relationships between the two states. The political and military rivalry is manifested in three long episodes of Egyptian intrusion and conquest during the Old Kingdom (ca. 2550-2150 B.C.E.), the Middle Kingdom (2000-1650 B.C.E.), and the New Kingdom (ca. 1550-1000 B.C.E.), during which Lower - in the New Kingdom also Upper - Nubia came under Egyptian rule. But in the first millennium, the situation was temporarily reversed. A powerful, unified Nubian kingdom came into existence that first had its center at Napata in Upper Nubia and, from about 250 B.C.E. onwards until about 350 C.E., further south at Meroe in Southern Nubia. For a period of about seventy years, at the latest by 712 B.C.E., and until about 650, Nubia conquered all of Egypt, after already having gained control of southern Egypt for a number of years, thus creating the largest empire the Nile Valley had ever seen. Nubians did not express themselves in writing until after the Bronze Age. Before then, our sources come from the propaganda machine of the Egyptian occupying forces. In the Napatan period, Nubians began using the Egyptian language in the hieroglyphic script. About 100 B.C.E., the Meroitic script, derived from hieroglyphic writing but alphabetic in character, was invented to write the Meroitic language. Although the script has been deciphered by...

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