The unified kingdom of Napata - Meroe
Residence in Meroe arose from Neolithic times, but the large city here probably arose only in the eighth century BC, as indicated by pottery artifacts discovered in the tombs of elite people contemporary with King Piya, who were buried according to the Kushite tradition on a stick, not in a coffin. It seems that in times before the capital moved to Meroe, members of the royal family lived there. In the time of Herodotus, the city was a large city and the capital of other Ethiopians. Some researchers believe that the antiquities of King Aspalta found in the city may indicate that the move of the capital there took place during his reign. However, others do not agree with such a hypothesis and say that Meroe became the capital of the kingdom during the reign of King Malinaken after the two branches of the royal family in Napata and Meroe were joined. However, it seems more likely to us at the present time to move away from trying to determine an accurate date for the move and to maintain that this took place on some date in the second half of the sixth century or the beginning of the fifth century B.C. Birth. As for Napata, it remained the main religious center of the kingdom, as kings were crowned there in the Temple of Amun over a long period of time to come. Immediately after their coronation, crowned kings continued to order the construction of pyramids for themselves and their wives in the royal cemetery of Nuri. This situation continued until the middle of the sixth century BC. After Malinaken (555-542 BC), some of the king's wives were buried in Nuri, while many of them were buried in Meroe. The last pyramid in Nuri belonged to King Nestasen (335-310 BC), while his successors preferred to bury them there, where they ruled in Meroe, and initially chose the southern cemetery and then, starting from the middle of the third century BC, the northern cemetery.
Regarding the burials of those kings in Al-Kurru and Nuri, they seem to have possessed great power and wealth, which is evident, for example, in the pyramid of King Maloib Amani in Nuri (463–435 BC), which reached a volume of 26.8 cubic metres. There remain traces of the architectural activities he carried out in the Sanam Temple and in Barkal. Amtalka and his successor Malinakin also contributed to the construction of palaces in Meroe.
Cambyses and the aborted Persian campaign
If we adopt Herodotus's account of Cambyses the Persian's campaign against Kush, which is a correct account since it was mentioned by other ancient historians, then the Kushite king who confronted Cambyses was Amani Nataki Labti. Cambyses' army moved south from Egypt in 524/523 BC. Herodotus's novel provided many details related to popular folklore that glorified Ethiopians throughout the ages. The campaign was not successful because, as Herodotus put it, Cambyses was provoked by the message sent to him by the Kushite king with his messengers whom he sent to Meroe, which we mentioned earlier. So he led his army before completing the necessary preparations in terms of provisions and supplies and followed the Bayuda Desert Road from Wadi Halfa south, bypassing the Great Bend of the Nile away from traveling along the Nile, and thus he followed a road through the desert. Which Crawford described as “an area that is considered one of the most barren spots on the surface of the Earth, an area that, with its rough, bleak plateaus and thirsty sands, forms a landscape with a lunar character” (1951 Crawford).
After a march of less than two months (52 days), in which Cambyses' army covered a fifth of the distance, according to Herodotus, all its supplies of food ran out and the soldiers became hungry and began to eat animal remains before they dried. Then the soldiers turned into man-eaters, which forced Cambyses to retreat. Herodotus wonders why Cambyses rushed into his campaign before preparing it, without taking into consideration that he was “leading a war at the end of the world.”
Although Strabo suggests that Cambyses may have reached Meroe, this could not be further from the truth. As we mentioned, the more well-informed Herodotus explained that Cambyses’ army covered only a fifth of the distance, which is confirmed by other sources. Since the army followed the desert road, it ended somewhere south of Wadi Halfa. It is possible that some of the northernmost regions of Kush, as Herodotus says, formally recognized Persian sovereignty after the Persians failed to establish themselves in the Kushite land. The Persian garrisons in the border areas were not spared from attacks by the Kushites on the one hand and the Bedouin tribes living in the eastern desert on the other. Thus, we find in a Demotic papyrus dating back to the seventeenth day of the sixth month of the thirty-sixth year of the reign of Daria I (i.e. the seventh of June 486 BC) information about unrest in the Fennin, which probably occurred with the support of the Kushites coming from the south.
Unfortunately, there is no information about the reality of the situation in this era in Lower Nubia between the first and second cataracts, where the Kushites and Egyptians met face to face. Mostly, throughout that period (eighth-sixth centuries BC), there was no fixed authority in Lower Nubia. In some cases, Kushite forces appeared, and in other cases, Egyptian forces appeared to protect the caravans, repel Bedouin attacks, or resolve this or that border clash. The words of Emery and Kirwan in 1935 when they described Lower Nubia as containing very few antiquities covering the gap between the New Kingdom of Egypt and the Ptolemaic era (1935 Emery-Kirwan) still express the reality of the situation today. Since Reisner's discovery in the 1907-1908 season of no more than fifty burials dating back to that period, exploration and excavation work has not uncovered many antiquities in this region specific to the period in question.
Kingdom of Meroe after Aspalta
Beyond the Second Cataract, the Kingdom of Meroe expanded southward along the course of the Blue and White Nile. These are areas that, unfortunately, are still not adequately studied archaeologically. However, the exploration work that took place here and there, in addition to some excavations conducted in isolated sites, indicates that the kingdom’s borders extended to the current Sudanese-Ethiopian border along the course of the Blue Nile, and along the course of the White Nile beyond the mouth of the Sobat River and the dam area. In the land of Butana, which extends between the Blue Nile and the Atbara River, the remains of ancient wells and excavations were discovered in many sites surrounded by traces of dwellings scattered in large quantities of pottery characteristic of the Meroe era. Likewise, similar ruins were discovered to the south of Mount Qili dating back to the Meroe era or earlier. All of this indicates the emergence of stable agricultural sites, which confirms the existence of strong state authority, and with the weakness of that authority, the deterioration is evident in the archaeological record. Which affected agriculture and the transition to a pastoral lifestyle, which happened after the arrival of Arab migrations to Kush.
Antiquities dating back to the Napata era were uncovered in Mount Moya, located between the White and Blue Nile, between Sennar and Kosti, as well as in Abu Qili, Sennar, and Kosti. It seems that Sennar was an important administrative center in the Nabataean era. As for the areas west of the Nile, they are still archaeological wasteland, but Nabataean cultural influences have reached the northern parts of Kordofan. We find scattered information about Kordofan in the works of Greek and Roman writers (Herodotus, Book II, 30-31), who referred to the arrival of caravans to Kordofan from Napata and Meroe. But we must remember what Strabo pointed out that the Nuba tribes to the west of the Nile did not submit to the Ethiopians. It is therefore likely that only north-eastern Kordofan came under the authority of the Napata Meroe kings. With regard to Darfur, some cultural remains that remained present until a late stage of the Middle Ages, such as the similarity in the distinctive architecture of the king’s palace in Uri to the architecture of the Meroe palaces, and the deification of kings in both Darfur and Meroe, indicate the emergence of cultural relations between the two. However, the data currently available do not enable us to determine the actual southern borders of the Kingdom of Kush. It is possible that the border in the Nabatean era extended to a latitude of 13º u. At Kosti and Al-Abyad, the kingdom was certainly expanded in the Meroe era to the south and southeast. The Meroe sites extended as far as Al-Rusairis in the southeast and Al-Sobat in the south. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain the success of the spies sent by Nero in collecting information about those distant regions.
If our knowledge of the period that followed the reign of Aspalta, during which ten kings ruled from 568 to 431 BC. The subsequent period, which occupied a time span extending to 120 years, is better off in terms of the availability of information about it thanks to the Annals of Kings, which shed light on some events at the end of the fifth and fourth centuries before AD. In the Kawa temples, four inscriptions were found belonging to King Eriki Amanoti (431-405 BC). The most important of them dates back to the first year of his reign and contains valuable information about the election of the new king with the participation of the army and divine revelation, as well as about the accompanying celebrations. The coronation of Ariki Amanoti took place when he was forty-one years old, after the death of his predecessor Talakamani, who did not rule for long (435-431 BC). It appears from the inscription that Talakamani’s death was followed by instability and unrest in the southern regions of the Eastern Desert, as the inscription tells of an attack launched by the Raharhas tribes (possibly a branch of the Beja) on the northern region of the kingdom and the practice of extensive acts of plundering. There. The inscription tells that after quelling these disturbances, Eriki Amanoti went to Napata, where he was crowned according to established customs. In the year following his coronation he undertook an inspection trip to the north, stopping at Kreten (the location of which is uncertain, but certainly between Napata and Kawa, which leads to its correspondence with present-day Korte), and from there he undertook a punitive campaign against the Medjay (mostly Medjay) desert dwellers.
Eriki Amanoti was succeeded by King Baskakerne, whose rule only lasted one year, and he was replaced by Horsyotef (404-369 BC), the son of Eriki Amanoti. Horsyotef left behind his tablet that was unveiled in 1862 at Gebel Barkal along with the tablets of the other kings of Kush, an inscription that covers most of the events of his reign. Horsyotev was forced to repel three attacks launched by the Raharhas tribes on the Meroe region, but the king forced their leader to submit after defeating them, capturing many of their fighters, and seizing large numbers of their livestock. In the eleventh year of his reign, Horseutef issued instructions to his army to head to a place in the north called Akna (possibly Abka at the Second Cataract), where the rulers of the region, who enjoyed a degree of independence and were nominally subordinate to Meroe, rebelled, even though the inscription called them “Bak,” meaning servants. Two rebel leaders fled to Aswan, which confirms that Lower Nubia remained a land that did not belong to anyone.
The Kingdom of Meroe and defending its entity against the Greek tide
Nestasen, son of Horseoteph, ascended the throne of Meroe (335-310 BC) to become a contemporary of Alexander the Great and the Greek ruler of Egypt. Nestasen continued the campaigns of his ancestors aimed at securing the loyalty of the tribes to the state, and in his inscription he mentions the names of many tribes whose identification still represents one of the problems of ancient Sudanese studies, the tribes of Al-Makhandakent, Al-Rabar, Akerkeri, Iris, Al-Mahs-Hart and others, all of which appear to be pastoral tribes due to the huge quantities (hundreds and thousands of livestock) that Nestasen captured. Here it is worth noting that the annals of Nestasen are the last of the annals of the Kush kings that were written in hieroglyphic script and in the Egyptian language. He was also the last of the kings who were buried in the royal cemetery in Nuri (Pyramid 15).
With the seizure of Egypt by Alexander the Great, the hopes of the Kush kings about the possibility of restoring their sovereignty over the land of the Pharaohs, who considered themselves their legal heirs, and thus the trustees responsible for the artistic and religious heritage of the Egyptian Pharaonic civilization, evaporated. Thus, attention began to be paid to the country's economic and cultural potential, and Nilotic Ethiopia, as the Greeks called it, began to feel its way in the midst of the Hellenistic-Roman culture that swept the Mediterranean world. Due to the continuous campaigns led by Horsyotef, his son Nestasen, and subsequent kings, the foundations of stability were established throughout the kingdom and the underlying economic potential was developed. The Ptolemies, who had established power in Egypt, remained in dire need of African products, and since they failed to obtain them by force, they resorted to consolidating friendly relations and cooperation with the Kingdom of Meroe, which provided them with their needs of ivory, wild animal skins, ebony, incense, and gold. Exchange trade operations contributed to the prosperity and well-being of the Kingdom of Meroe, which was reflected in the wealth that distinguished the tombs of its kings in Al-Bajrawiya.
The complete break with the heritage of the Egyptian Pharaonic civilization occurred during the reign of the Greek king of Egypt, Ptolemy IV (221-205 BC). When, according to the story of Diodorus, the king of Meroe Arkamani (218-200 BC) declared a revolt against the priests and attacked the main temple of the god Amun in Gebel Barkal, where the kings of Kush [Osama of Light] were crowned, and declared the lion god Abademak the official god of the Kingdom of Meroe. The fact is that Arkamani received a large amount of Greek education, including philosophy, which led some to assume that he traveled to Egypt to receive his education. However, the facts indicate that commercial connections between the Kingdom of Meroe and the Mediterranean world flourished, and that many Greek and Egyptian merchants were present in the lands of the Kingdom, in addition to Greek opportunist adventurers seeking fame, as well as many Greek scholars, travelers, and writers. For example, the Greek scholar Simonides lived for five full years in Meroe and wrote an entire book about Kush and its culture, a book that Pliny benefited from and used as his reference. Likewise, we do not believe that Arkamani needed to travel to Egypt to seek knowledge there, but rather he acquired his knowledge of the Greek language, culture, and philosophy in his home in Meroe. However, Diodorus of Sicily did not mention anything to us in this regard, and if Arkamani had been present in Egypt, Diodorus would not have mentioned such an incident. Osama Elnur
The greatness of Arkamani is that he was the first among the kings of Kush to declare a revolution against the religious state and called for the separation of religion from the state, and established the reality of separation between religious and political practices. His revolt against the priests and the destruction of the Nabataean temple of Amun in which they took refuge was not a revolution against religion as a religion, but it was a revolution to eliminate the claim of the priestly class not only to appoint kings but to sentence them to death whenever they saw through the traditions of ritual assassination of the king according to the divine revelation of which they were the interpreters. Thus, after the elimination of the priests, Arkamani issued his decree banning the tradition of ritual assassination of the king, and abolishing the role of the god Amun, the patron of this tradition, as the primary god of the kingdom, and replacing him with the lion god Abadmak as the patron of the state and its authority, thus declaring his rejection of the mind of returning to the remnants of the primitive clan structure that lies at the base of the ideological and political influence of the priestly class.
The active trade exchange with Egypt and the Mediterranean world, the arrival of the Greeks and Egyptians to the capital of Kush, in addition to the movement of the Kushites to repopulate the northern outskirts between the Third Cataract and the Dodekaschoinos, which they had abandoned for a long time due to the aggressive policies of Egypt, as we explained earlier, contributed to the emergence of cultural friction between the local Kushite culture and the Hellenistic culture, which led to a tangible development in all areas of economic, cultural and social life in the Kingdom of Meroe.
Economic prosperity and artistic and technical development were reflected in the tombs of the Kushite kings, especially the pyramid of Arkamani (Al-Bajrawiyah, Sh. 7) and the pyramids of his successors Adikalamani (Al-Bajarawiyya, Sh. 9), Shanakdakheti (Al-Bajarawiyyah, Sh. 11), Bakrinsana (Al-Bajarawiyya, Sh. 13), and Tanid Amani (Al-Bajrawiyya, Sh. 20).
The actual relations between the Kingdom of Meroe and Ptolemaic Egypt during the reign of its kings Ptolemy II and III are still unclear. Diodorus of Sicily says that no Greek had succeeded in crossing Egypt's southern borders before the reign of Ptolemy II, as beyond that extended areas inhospitable and extremely dangerous for foreigners, but Ptolemy II had accumulated some information about Kush, apparently thanks to a report sent to him by Petra, son of Arnovis, commander of the border forces. The report talked about an attack launched by the Kushites and a siege they imposed on the southern fortifications. However, the reasons that led to the Ptolemies entering into hostile relations with the Kushites are still not completely clear. The expedition sent by Ptolemy II, led by Philo, had the declared and actual goal of exploring the Red Sea route to the interior of Africa, and the areas located on both banks of the Nile to the south of Egypt were not among the goals of Philo’s trip. Ptolemy III (246-221 BC) also followed the same policy towards maintaining good relations with the Kingdom of Meroe, while the relationship between the two countries witnessed a peaceful development that was evident in the joint activity that took place between Ptolemy IV (221-205 BC) and Arkamani in the construction of two temples in Dhaka and Philae.
Although Arkamani was depicted on the walls of the Temple of Dikka wearing the Pharaonic uraeus on his forehead and was called the King of Two Faces and Lord of the Two Lands, and he claimed in his inscription in the temple itself that the goddess Isis had granted him sovereignty over the territory of Dodekaschoinos (the twelfth territory of Roman Egypt), all of this may have been a kind of symbolic possibility rather than the actual reality. This does not mean denying the Meroe military presence in the northern outskirts of Kush, as it is possible that there are forces with the aim of protecting trade routes and providing supplies to the Meroe border garrisons.
Peaceful relations continued between the Kingdom of Meroe and Ptolemaic Egypt until the beginning of the second century BC, when manifestations of hostility began to loom on the horizon during the reign of Ptolemy V (205-180 BC). This is reflected in the fact of the deliberate removal of the name and titles of Arkamani from the walls of the temple that he participated with Ptolemy IV in building in Philae. In a partial text from Agatharchide's work on the Red Sea, it is stated that Ptolemy V sent five hundred Greek knights against the Ethiopians.
Most likely, Ptolemy's new hostile policy towards the Kingdom of Meroe was linked to the events that took place during his reign in Thebes in Upper Egypt, events that were echoed in many Lacau documents. The Greeks did not find a feeling of love towards them from the Egyptians, who saw in them foreign invaders who differed from them in language, religion, and traditions, and who practiced harsh exploitation over them. Hence, what was not surprising was the emergence of resistance to Greek rule and the occurrence of a series of uprisings that lasted in some cases for decades, especially in Upper Egypt, where the Greek grip was weaker than it was in Lower Egypt, and where the Theban priestly class enjoyed widespread influence and great respect among the citizens. It was a class hostile to the Greeks on the one hand, and on the other hand it maintained a good memory of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty and its Kushite kings. The Nabateans, especially the memories of the venerable treatment of the god Amun of Thebes and the gifts they lavished on his priests.
There is a series of legal documents from Thebes dating back to the reign of two kings, Armakhes and Ankhemakhes, about whom we know nothing from other sources, but there is no doubt that they were contemporaries of Ptolemy V. In all of those documents related to them that have reached us (ten papyri), the protocol followed was the beginning of the text: King Armakhis, may he live forever, the beloved of Isis, the beloved of Amun-Ra-Suntir, the greatest god Lacau.
It is likely that Armakhes and Ankhemakhes were Kushites: firstly, the gods Isis and the god Amun-Ra-Suntir were mentioned in their protocols, and they are the gods who are considered the “protectors of Kush”, and secondly, the decree of Ptolemy V on the island of Philae describes the two kings as foreigners. The Greeks succeeded in capturing Ankhemakhes and his forces, and it seems that this was an event of great importance, as the decree of Ptolemy V on the island of Philae announced an amnesty for them. Unfortunately, the relationship between Armakhes and Ankhemakhes with the kings of Meroe is still unknown, but it is possible that they were subordinate to the ruling king there at that period, Adikalamani, and his successor, whose name is still unknown. In any case, the most important thing is that the Kushites not only played an active role in the liberation battle that the Egyptians fought against the Greeks, but that they became leaders of that liberation movement, which is what many specialized researchers Rostovtsef agreed on, and that Horgonphora the Kushite remained governor in Abydos for five years during the reign of Ptolemy V.
It is natural that the positions of the Kushites did not satisfy these false people or make them feel friendly towards Kush. In addition, the trade routes linking Egypt with tropical Africa were now shifting from the Nile to the Red Sea, and the desire to trade with Kush had weakened. Thus, relations began to be characterized by coldness at the beginning, turning into hostile relations in the end.
It is possible that the appearance of local Meroe hieroglyphic writing in this particular period in which Kushite relations with Ptolemaic Egypt deteriorated is not just a coincidence. The first dated inscription written in Meroe hieroglyphs depicts the name of Queen Chanakdakheti (ca. 180-170 BC) in the Naqa temple. This writing appeared on the basis of the fast (cursive) Meroe script, which had appeared not long before, using a number of demotic symbols and Egyptian hieroglyphs. This event was of great importance historically, as for the first time on the African continent an alphabetic writing containing consonants and vowels appeared. As is known, alphabetic writing in Egypt, beginning with Greek using some Demotic symbols and then Coptic, had reached its end only at the end of the second century, the beginning of the third century AD.
It seems that the steps taken by Ptolemy V did not achieve their goals. His successor, Ptolemy VI (180-145 BC), again launched a campaign on the northern outskirts of Kush, which indicates that the Kingdom of Meroe did not remain immune to the events taking place in Egypt and in this way provided support for the liberation war raging there against the Greek occupiers. In Debod, traces remain confirming the arrival of Ptolemy VI to the First Cataract, where his own obelisk was uncovered. Porter and Moss. It seems that Ptolemy VI took a precautionary measure by extending his southern borders to the Second Cataract, so that the thirteenth region, which was considered the territory of Lysis, became a part of Ptolemaic Egypt. Two small cities were established at the Second Cataract, one of which was named after Ptolemy VI (Philometor) and the other after Cleopatra (Dittenbeger). The two cities were mentioned in only one text and their locations are still undetermined. Whatever the case, they are... Apparently, they did not last long, as Egypt lost the thirteenth province shortly after, forcing Cornello Gallo to fight to regain it again in the years 27/26 BC).
Peaceful relations between the Kingdom of Meroe and Ptolemaic Egypt were restored over a period of decades, as indicated by the architectural activities carried out by Ptolemy VII (170-116 BC) in the Temple of Dikka. Our information remains weak about the Kingdom of Meroe in the period that followed the Roman occupation of Egypt. The Meroe inscriptions, which consist mostly of official and funerary texts, are still difficult to understand, except for some short words and phrases. There is also a problem facing researchers regarding its dating. Currently, the status of the Meroe language is still in place without any tangible progress, just like the Etruscan language, which is read but not understood! We believe that the development of studies in the field of current Sudanese languages, especially in Darfur and South Kordofan, may help solve the problem. Here it is worth noting that it is truly unfortunate that our Sudanese universities, due to the dominance of an Arab chauvinistic cultural mentality, are still neglecting the field of Sudanese linguistic studies in a country that is considered one of the richest countries in the world in its languages and dialects.
O.G.S.Crawford: The Fung Kingdom of Sennar. Glocester.
W.B.Emery and L.P.Kirwan: Excavations and Survey between Wadi es Sebua and Adindan, 1929-1931. Cairo.
Osama Abdel-Rahman Elnur 1974, “Arkamani and the Ritual of the King’s Assassination in Kush”, Khartoum, No. 4.
P.Lacau: Un graffito egyptien d'Abydos ecrit en lettres grecques, "Societe royale egyptienne de papyrologie. Etudes de papyrologie, t.2, Le Caire.
M.Rostowzew: Economic and Social History of the Hellenistic World, vols. I-II. Oxford.
B.Porter and R.Moss: Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs and Paintings, vol. 7, Nubia, the Desert and Outside Egypt. Oxford.
W.Dittenberger: Orientis Graeci inscriptiones selectae, vol.I. Lepzig.