In northern Sudan, near the border with Egypt, a vast and hot desert land extends in which the colors almost disappear between the blue of the sky and the yellow of the sand, only crossed by the narrow Nile valley and the green plains surrounding it, but nearly 5000 years ago it was home to an impressive ancient civilization in Sudan.
This part of the Nile Valley was once home to a powerful and rich African civilization called "Kush", which traded gold and relied on trade between Egypt and the countries of the Mediterranean to the north and the cities of the African Sahara to the south. It was also a great power in the region, and reached its limit when it invaded and ruled Egypt. Under the name "The 25th Dynasty" from about 725 to 653 BC, until the Assyrians expelled them to the Nubia region.
Kush was considered an African-Sudanese civilization for more than two thousand years, and it was at its beginning centered in Napata (present-day Karima in Sudan), and in the years from 300 BC to 300 AD, Kush ruled from the capital Meroe, until it disintegrated and weakened due to internal rebellions, and the Abyssinian kingdom of Axum seized it. .
In the site that was in the past the city of Meroe, the capital of the Kingdom of Kush, there are many pyramids of varying heights and an ancient royal cemetery that was subjected to many acts of vandalism by European thieves, and to the west there is the royal city, which includes the ruins of a palace, a temple and a royal bath. Each building features an architecture inspired by local, Egyptian, Greek and Roman decorative tastes, a testament to Meroe's global connections, according to a report by the Smithsonian Cultural Magazine.
Bias against Sudan
In the report written by Ismail Kushkosh, a Sudanese American born and raised in the United States and the Middle East, he says that for years European and American historians and archaeologists have viewed ancient Kush through the lens of their own biases and the prejudices of the era.
In the early twentieth century, Harvard Egyptologist George Reisner declared, upon viewing the ruins of the Kingdom of Kerma settlement, that the site was Egyptian, and it was a prosperous kingdom and a huge settlement in ancient Nubia from about 2500 BC to 1500 BC, according to the author.
Reisner wrote in the October 1918 magazine of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, "The indigenous Negro race never developed its own trade or any noteworthy industry, and it owed its cultural status to Egyptian immigrants and imports from ancient Egyptian civilization."
And this idea remained prevalent before excavations and archeology revealed the truth in the mid-twentieth century, and it appeared that Kerma, which dates back to 3000 BC, was the first capital of a strong indigenous kingdom that expanded to include the land between the first cataract of the Nile in the north and the fourth waterfall in the south. .
The kingdom competed with ancient Egypt and sometimes overpowered it. This first Cushitic kingdom traded ivory, gold, bronze, ebony and slaves with neighboring countries such as Egypt and Ancient Punt (present-day Somalia), along the Red Sea to the east, and was famous for its finely colored and polished pottery such as ceramics.
Swiss archaeologist Charles Bonnet was among those who challenged the idea of the Egyptologist Reisner, and it took 20 years for Egyptologists to accept his argument. Bonnet told the journal's reporter that "Western archaeologists, including Reisner, were trying to find Egypt in Sudan," Sudan is not in Sudan. "
Bonnet returned to the Kerma region to conduct annual field research since 1970, and made many important discoveries that helped rewrite the ancient history of the area. He discovered and excavated a fortified Cushitic city near a vine known as "Dukki Gel," which dates back to the second millennium BC, according to the author.
Kerma ancient city:
Kerma (also known as Dukki Gel, Arabic: Kerma / Dukki was said) was the capital city of the Kerma Culture, which was located in present-day Sudan at least 5500 years ago, Kerma is one of the largest archaeological sites in ancient Nubia. # SudaneseCulture # SudaneseCulture pic.twitter.com/QGdAI9T1H6
- Sudanese Culture (@SudaneseCulture) September 9, 2019
The black pharaohs
Around 1500 BC, the pharaohs of Egypt marched south along the Nile, and after the conquest of Kerma they established forts and temples, bringing Egyptian culture and religion to Nubia.
Near the fourth waterfall, the Egyptians built a sacred temple at Jebel Barkal, a small flat mountain located in a unique place where the Nile heads south before turning north again, this was the place where the sun was born from the "West Bank" - which is usually associated with sunset and death - Which the ancient Egyptians believed to be the source of creation.
Egyptian rule prevailed in Kush until the 11th century BC. With the decline of Egypt and the weakening of its empire, a new dynasty of Kushite kings arose in the city of Napata, about 120 miles southeast of Kerma, and asserted itself as the legitimate heir and protector of the ancient Egyptians.
The 25th Nubian Dynasty, or "black pharaohs", ruled Egypt and Sudan, and built more than 200 pyramids in and around the city of Nabata in northern Sudan, and its influence extended to parts of the Levant, and it became one of the most powerful empires in the world in its time, and it competed with the Roman and Persian empires.
The king of the Kushites defeated the war with the Persians, and the war was an argument between the Romans and the Kushites, but they were later defeated in their war with the Assyrians, and they retreated to southern Egypt and northern Sudan to establish the Kingdom of Napata (656-590 BC), then the Kingdom of Meroe (590 BC). To the fourth century AD).
Taharqa is mentioned in the Bible as an ally of the King of Jerusalem, Hezekiah, and he moved the royal cemetery to Nuri, 14 miles away, and he had built a tomb for himself that was the largest of those erected to honor the Kushite kings. When Napata was threatened repeatedly by the Egyptians, Persians, and Romans, the kings of Kush gradually moved their capital south to Meroe.
The city, located at the intersection of many important trade routes in a region rich in iron and other precious metals, became a bridge between Africa and the Mediterranean Sea, and it grew and prospered.
"They shaped their very own unique ideas, architecture and art," says Arnulf Schlotter of the State Museum of Egyptian Art in Munich.
Meroe
The pyramids at Meroe, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2011, are without a doubt the most eye-catching sign in the region.
Although not as old or as large as the pyramids in Egypt, they are unique in that they are steeper, and not all of them were intended for the royal family, so nobles (at least those who could afford them) were buried in the pyramids as well.
Today, many Sudanese are quick to point out that the number of ancient pyramids in the country - more than 200 - exceeds the number of pyramids in Egypt.
On the other side of the pyramids is the royal city, with surrounding lands still covered in slag, evidence of the city's large smelting industry and a source of its economic strength.
The queens called Kandaki played a vital role in Meroitic political life. The most famous of them was Amanirenas, a warrior queen who ruled Kush from about 40 BC to 10 BC, according to the American Journal report.
Decline and absentee
By the fourth century AD, the power of Cush began to wane. Historians offer various explanations for this, including drought and famine resulting from climate change and the rise of a rival civilization in the east, and Axiom in modern Ethiopia.
For years, the history of Kush and its contributions to world civilization were largely ignored. The first European archaeologists could not see it as more than a reflection of Egypt, while political instability, neglect and backwardness in Sudan prevented adequate research into the country's ancient history, according to the report.
However, the legacy of Kush is important due to its distinct cultural achievements and civilization; It had its own language and writing, an economy based on trade and skilled work, an agricultural model that allowed raising livestock, and a distinctive kitchen with foods that reflected the local environment such as milk and dates.
It was a differently organized society from its neighbors in Egypt, the Levant and Mesopotamia, with unique city planning and a strong royal family.
While Egyptian civilization has long been explained in light of its connections to the Near East and the Mediterranean, Cush illustrates the role black Africans played in an ancient, interconnected world.
"Nubia has given blacks a place of their own at the table, even if it does not eliminate the racist critics," says Edmund Barry Geather, director of the National Center for Afro-American Artists at the Boston Museum.
"Just as Europeans symbolically view ancient Greece as their father or mother, Africans can view Cush as their great ancestor," French archaeologist Claude Riley told the cultural magazine.
Intissar Saghiroun, an archaeologist and member of the Sudanese transitional government, says that rediscovering the country's ancient roots helped fuel calls for change.