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“The Kush people are an indigenous African population and one of the earliest civilizations to develop in the Nile River Valley. They are located in what is today North Sudan. Kush peoples have occupied the middle portion of the Nile Valley since at least 6000 BCE and likely much longer. At least one Egyptian inscription refers to Kush by the old Egyptian term for the area south of the frontier, Ta Sety, meaning “the Land of the Bow.”
Kushite tradition is one of the oldest in the world.… The civilization of Kush represented an indigenous culture that also incorporated elements borrowed from its northern neighbor, Egypt, and from deeper into the south of the African continent. The Kushites buried their kings along with their possessions, servants, family members, and courtiers. A burial practice common to the people is what archaeologists refer to as “pan-grave culture.” This involved digging pits and placing stones around them in a circle. Kushites also built burial mounds and pyramids and shared some of the same gods worshipped in Egypt, especially Amun and Isis. The Kush rulers were regarded as guardians of the state religion and were responsible for maintaining the temples.
Around 727 BCE, the Kushite king Piye (also known as Piankhy) invaded Egypt and seized control of Thebes and eventually the Delta. This is the Twenty- Fifth Dynasty of Egypt…that continued until about 671 BCE, when the Kushites were defeated by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Following the defeat the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty was moved to Napata, in Nubia, which is now Sudan. The Kushite kingdom reached the apex of its glory during the reigns of Piye and his successor, Taharka (Taharqa), the two early pharaohs of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty. This dynasty ushered in the renaissance period of ancient Egypt. Religion, the arts, and architecture were restored to their old glory. For example, Taharka built or restored temples and pyramids throughout the Nile Valley, including in places such as Memphis, Karnak, Kawa, Jebel Barkal, etc. Writing was introduced to Kush through Egyptian influence in about 700–600 BCE, although this was mostly confined to the royal court and major temples. By 700 BCE, war between Kush and the Assyrians erupted. Between 674 and 671 BCE the Assyrians succeeded in driving Taharka from power; he fled to Napata, where he died a few years later. One of the famous descendants of Taharka was his greatgrandson, Aspelta, who ruled from 600 to 580 BCE. About 591 BCE the Egyptians invaded Nubia, and Aspelta’s armies were defeated. His new palace in Napata was destroyed, and he was forced to relocate south to Meroë.
Far from the reach of enemy forces and unable to return to Egypt, the Kushites established a royal court in Meroë. It is possible that Meroë had always been the Kushite capital or a royal center of some sort. But it is also believed that the Kushite rulers may have chosen Meroë as their political center because it had enough wood to provide fuel for ironworking. Furthermore, Kush no longer needed the Nile for trading with the outside world, as most goods were being transported from Meroë to the Red Sea, where Greek merchants were available in large numbers. In about 300 BCE the move to Meroë was made more complete when the monarchs began to be buried there instead of at Napata. One theory is that this represents the monarchs breaking away from the power of the priests at Napata. At that time, King Arkamani was said to have received an order from the gods to commit suicide. But Arkamani instead marched on the temple and killed the priests. During this same period, Kushite authority extended some 1,500 kilometers along the Nile River Valley from the Egyptian frontier in the north to areas far south of modern-day Khartoum and probably also substantial territories to the east and west.
Women held very high status in the Kushite culture and played a key role in the governance of the kingdom. They determined who was going to be the next king or queen. Customarily, the throne was passed on from the ruler to the child of a sister. However, in some cases, one brother might be chosen to succeed another on the throne, as was the case with King Aspelta and King Anlamani. Women could also be rulers themselves, and many queens ruled the Kushite kingdom. One well-known queen was Amanitore, who reigned at about the time of Jesus. She was the daughter of a queen and became queen herself. The mother of the king and the sisters of the king also held very prominent positions in society. During the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty they placed the Theban area under the control of a royal Kushite princess. She was given the title “God’s Wife of Amun.”
In the Napatan period Egyptian hieroglyphs were used, and writing seems to have been restricted to the court and temples. From the second century BCE there was a separate Kush writing system. The Meroitic alphabet is composed of 23 symbols, written in both a hieroglyphic and a shorthand, or cursive, form. Some of the signs were adapted from Egyptian hieroglyphs, though the Meroitic language itself appears to be much different than Egyptian. To date, the Meroitic writing system remains one of the great ancient mysteries.
-Aribidesi Usman, Kush
