Shabaka, Shabataka, and the conflict with Assyria
Unlike his brother, King Piya, Shabaka found himself forced to stay for longer periods in northern Egypt, residing in Memphis, but without losing his complete control over Thebes and Napata, as Assyrian ambitions became evident during his reign and the threat to the northern outskirts of his kingdom increased. His sister, Amenardis, was the best assistant to him from her position as a worshiper of the god, in addition to his appointing his son Charmakhes as high priest of Lamon. During the reign of Shabaka, Kush and Egypt became a united kingdom, and Shabaka placed the double Egyptian crown on his head, and thus we find the Assyrian king Sargon referring to him as the king of Kush and Egypt. If the Pharaohs of Egypt looked down on Kush when it belonged to their possessions and called it the cursed Kush, then we find that the Kushite kings were more humane and looked at Egypt, which they conquered and placed its crown on their heads, in a very different way. They treated its people well and were very patient with the always conspiring rulers of the Delta. They did not hesitate to offer precious gifts to the Egyptian temples, and they did not delay in performing good deeds that made them gain. The support and blessing of the Egyptian priestly complex. In fact, there is no reference to the Kushite kings practicing violence and cruelty except once, and it is only mentioned in the work of the Egyptian historian Manetho, when Shabaka was forced to burn the rebellious king of Sais, Bochoris.
If the political situation had forced Shabaka to pay attention to the northern regions of his possessions, and it was possible that he would remain there for longer periods, then Napata remained the capital of the kingdom and it was where the royal palace was located, and where the kings of the Twenty-Fifth Kushite Dynasty and its members were buried.
The chieftains who represented the local elites submitted to the Napata kings either directly or potentially through the governors of the various regions. The Dongola-Karima region provided sufficient products to cover the needs of the residents of the capital, and even provided a surplus that covered the needs of the army even in the period preceding the Kushites’ occupation of Egypt.
Although after the death of Bochoris, Shabaka became the only king to wear a crown on his head in Lower Egypt, comprehensive unification did not reach its full extent, because the Egyptian rulers in the central and eastern delta regions continued to enjoy a great deal of independence. It seems that this circumstance was one of the reasons that made Shabacca cautious in his relations with Assyria, whose armies were at the gates of the state of Judea at that time. Shabacca decided not to enter into skirmishes with the Assyrian king Sargon II, and then handed him over to Ashod Imaani, the rebel who seized power in the Palestinian city of Ashdod, located north of Ashkelon, and revolted against Assyria, and who sought refuge in Egypt for protection, even though Shabacca remained unwilling. He is satisfied with the fall of the last city that formed a barrier between him and the Assyrians, and it seems that by handing over Imani he succeeded in concluding a diplomatic agreement with the Assyrians. Feeling the instability of the situation in the Delta, Shabaka tried to gain the support of the priestly elite for the god Ptah in Memphis and the goddess Tast in Bubastis and others. The good biography of Shabacca remained until the Ptolemaic era, when one of the streets of the city of Memphis retained the name Shabacca. Even until the days of Herodotus, the character of this king continued to receive its due veneration, a veneration that Diodorus of Sicily spoke about, and a year or two before his death, Shabacca made his nephew Shabacca his deputy.
Information available about Shabataka is scarce, but we know that he summoned his younger brother Taharqa to come to Egypt with his army from Kush, indicating that he decided to choose a hard line in his foreign policy and take more solid positions than those of his predecessor. It seems that Shabataka decided to provide military support to the rulers of Syria and Palestine in their struggle against the Assyrian invaders, who were busy in the battles they fought in central Zagros against the state of Urartu. In the year 704 BC. King Sennacherib ascended the throne of Assyria to succeed Sargon, and the kings of Phenicia and Palestine seized the opportunity to declare their rebellion. At that time, Sidon was led by Lulli, Ashkelon was led by Zedekiah, and the Kingdom of Judah was under the rule of Hezekiah. Shabataka responded to Hezekiah's request for help, sending a military expedition led by his brother Taharqa while Sennacherib was marching on Ashkelon after expelling Lulli from Sidon. However, the army of Taharqa was defeated by the Assyrian king Sennacherib, who pointed out that that army consisted of Egyptian rulers in addition to archers, knights, and chariot soldiers belonging to the king of Kush. Sennacherib, proud of the victory he achieved, even went so far as to describe the Kushite king in his speech to Hezekiah, saying to him: “What do you put your trust in? I said, ‘The words of the lips are only advice and the strength of war. And now on whom have I leaned and disobeyed my commands? Now, behold, I have leaned on the staff of this bruised reed, on Egypt, which, if anyone leans on it, will enter into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt for all who trust in him.” [2 Kings, chapter 18: 19-21] As for the second army that Shapataka sent under the leadership of Taharqa, it did not go into battle against the Assyrians, due to a deadly disease that spread among them. Assyrian soldiers and led to the death of 18,500 soldiers.
With the death of Shabataka and his burial in the Al-Kurru cemetery, Taharqa, the son of Piya and Abar, became a crowned king, and the most famous among the kings of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. As we mentioned, Taharqa had been summoned from Kush to Egypt with his army, and he was not yet twenty years old at the time. Taharqa headed first to Thebes and from there to Memphis. What is striking is that we know how Taharqa became crowned king of Egypt, while we do not know how he was crowned in Kush itself. It is clear that when he left Napata, as evidenced by his stele from the sixth year of his reign, he was not yet king. After ascending the throne in Egypt, it seems that Taharqa decided that his residence would be in the Delta, in the city of Tanis, which indicates circumstances that imposed such a choice on him. It also seems that Taharqa decided to follow a policy with the rebellious rulers of the Delta, which consisted of taking their wives hostage to Kush, as he recorded in one of the inscriptions in the Kawa Temple: “I made the wives of the rulers of (Uru) Lower Egypt servants in the temple.”
There is no doubt that the wars and uprisings in the Assyrian Empire distracted Sennacherib and after him Isarhaddon in the first days of his rule from invading Egypt, which gave Taharqa the opportunity to engage in civil activities and he was able to build many temples in both Kush and Egypt, as his predecessors were not able to do. We will not go into the details of these enormous architectural works now. But we say that in comparison with the size of the gifts and donations that Taharqa gave to the Temple of Amun in Kawa, and in comparison with the construction work that he directed to be carried out there, he possessed a huge amount of wealth, a wealth that was available to the state from the taxes imposed on citizens in both Kush and Egypt, in addition to the extensive work in the gold mines in the Eastern Desert. Among the gifts were many Asian artifacts and materials brought to Kush, including cedar wood and Asian bronze, items that were most likely acquired through trade, since the highlands of Lebanon were not at that time under the control of the Kushites.
During the reign of Taharqa, the borders of the Kingdom of Napata extended to the south to a place called Rtihu Qabat (?) and to the north to a place in Asia called Kabt Hor, and the actual location of the two places is still undetermined. At the beginning of his reign, the kingdom reached the height of its prosperity and power, and it is possible that iron smelting works in Meroe (present-day Kabushi) began in his days, as the circumstances of the ongoing military conflict with the Assyrian Empire forced work on developing the weapons industry. As is clear from the texts that were revealed in Kawa, the economy of the temples witnessed prosperity, and the temples in Kush, as in Egypt, became scientific centers. In the Temple of Amun in Kawa, there were four astrologers who were able to determine time by the movement of the spheres with the help of specialized devices. It is noted that all the obelisks in the niche date back to the first ten years of the Taharqa era, i.e. the period from 689 to 679 BC. Was that just a coincidence? We do not think so, since after the Assyrian Sennacherib was killed in a palace coup, his son Esarhaddon assumed power in 681 BC. Once again, the Assyrian threats began to affect the Kushite properties in Egypt, which forced Taharqa to pay attention to protecting the borders of his northern kingdom in the eastern Delta, which led to a reduction in the financial and in-kind support he provided to the temples. It seems that Esarhaddon realized that as long as the Kushite power remained in control of Egypt, the Assyrian Empire’s sovereignty over Syria and Palestine would not be stable. Therefore, in 647 BC, as soon as he had eliminated the resistance in Syria, he attempted to attack the Kushites in Egypt, but he was defeated. He repeated the matter again three years later, launching an attack that achieved success thanks to the assistance provided to him by the leaders of the Bedouin tribes. He provided his army with camels to enable him to cross the Sinai desert to reach Memphis, besiege it, and occupy it after he evacuated Taharqa, who left his wives and children in the city to fall into captivity. As for the Egyptian rulers of the Delta, they declared their loyalty to the new invader coming from the Euphrates Island. Concerning his victory, Esarhaddon says: “I laid siege around the city of Mumbai (Memphis), the royal residence, and captured it before half a day had passed by means of underground tunnels and loopholes opened in the city walls and storm ladders. The spoils were transferred to Assyria, including the queen, the harem of the palace, Ushi-nahor, the official heir, his other sons, his possessions, and many of his horses, pack animals, cattle, and herds. I drove all the Kushites out of the country, and I did not spare a single one of them.” To provide me with the duties of obedience and loyalty, and they were replaced throughout Egypt by new kings, rulers, officers, port controllers, employees, and administrators.” skylight
Esarhaddon immortalized his victory in two paintings, the first in Zangrili and the second in the dog's fire. In the first, Esarhaddon was depicted standing in front of Taharqa, who was on his knees, and in the second in front of Taharqa's son, Ushi Nahoro. However, Esarhaddon's victory did not last long, as Taharqa returned again to Memphis in the year 669 BC. This forced the Assyrian king to prepare an army to regain Egypt, but he died on his way there and the campaign stopped as a result.
In the year 666 BC. The son of Esarhaddon, King Ashur ibn Baal, decided to impose his control over Egypt again, which prompted Taharqa to retreat from Memphis to Thebes. Taharqa died in 663 BC. The conflict between the Assyrian Empire and the Kingdom of Napata was intense for sovereignty over Egypt. Although Taharqa was defeated twice and forced to retreat before the Assyrian armies, historical traditions view him as one of the great conquering kings. Thus, we find that Strabo mentioned Taharqa on the two occasions in which he was exposed to the deeds of the greatest conquering kings of antiquity, indicating that Taharqa had reached even the Pillars of Hercules. Also, the texts of the Egyptian priests, which did not receive attention from scholars of ancient Egyptian studies, talk about Taharqa the Great, who was considered king even under Assyrian sovereignty. Let us not forget that Taharqa, in the first ten years of his rule, made Egypt an economically prosperous country, which made his memory good for the Egyptians. Likewise, the annals that were recorded during his time reported on the flood of the Nile that occurred in the sixth year of his rule, and its height reached a dangerous level that almost turned into a disaster had it not been for divine providence, as he put it, which turned the flood to the benefit of the people. To celebrate this occasion, Taharqa erected identical inscriptions in Tanis in Egypt, in a niche in Kush, and in other Egyptian and Kushite cities, in which they said, “O Amun, O my father, O Lord of my throne of the two countries. You blessed me with four miracles within one year, the sixth year of my coronation as king, when the Nile overflowed to a level that could cause livestock to wash away and flood the rest of the country. However, the rural areas remained beautiful as far as the eye could see, and he did not allow The southern winds destroyed them, the rodents and reptiles died, and the swarms of locusts were expelled. Thus, I was able to reap an abundant harvest in inestimable quantities for the double grain house.”
Tanut Amani and loss of sovereignty over Egypt
Taharqa ordered the construction of his pyramids in Nuri, not far from Nabta, in the highest location. The reason behind this appears to be the lack of a high place in the El-Kurru cemetery on the bank facing the Nile, where the remains of his ancestors rest. Unfortunately, the tomb of Taharqa, like the tombs of his ancestors, was completely plundered in ancient times, and all that remained of the body of this king, whose fame spread throughout the horizons and whose name was mentioned twice in the Bible, were parts of his leg bones, and nothing remained of the funerary enclosures in his tomb except a large number of vessels made of stone and some funerary statues. Taharqa, shortly before his death, probably in the last year of his life, appointed his nephew Tanot Amani as his deputy. There is still disagreement over whether the latter was a son of Shabaka or Shapataka, but researchers specializing in studying this period specifically believe that he was a son of Shapataka. About the accession of Tanut Amani, we talked about the obelisk known as the Dream Tablet, which was found with the tablets of the other Kush kings in Gebel Barkal in 1862. The tablet dates back to a period after his accession to the throne. The tablet refers to a dream that the king had: “In the year of his coronation, his majesty saw in a dream two huge snakes, one on his right and the other on his left. His majesty woke up and searched for them to no avail. His majesty wondered: What happened? Some people gave him this explanation: The country is in your grip, and all that remains is for you to open its left side. They are the two women who appeared above your head to give you the country without dispute.”
The phrases of the tablet indicate that Tanut Amani, as soon as he heard the news of the death of his uncle Taharqa, returned to Kush from Upper Egypt, where he was crowned king in Napata. After the coronation, he left for Egypt and visited the temple of the god Khnum in Thebes and left heading to the north, where the situation was complicated. This is because the rulers of the Delta, after they had tasted the two aspects of Assyrian rule, repeated, as they did in the days of Taharqa, their request to the Kushite kings to save us from Asian tyranny, which deprived them of independence in managing their property, an independence they enjoyed under the rule of the Kushite kings over Egypt. It is clear that Tanut Amani did not face significant resistance on his way to the north of Thebes until he reached Memphis, laid siege to it, and took control of it again. However, this did not move the rulers of the Delta, who were waiting for the outcome of the military dispute between the Kushites who came to help them and the Assyrians occupying their country, so they took shelter in the walls of their cities away from the battlefield, contenting themselves only with showing their loyalty to Tanut Amani, which is confirmed by the gifts. Which they presented to His Majesty as shown in the dream tablet.
What happened in the aftermath of that, we know about from the annals of the Assyrian king Assyria bin Baal, who sent an army to restore his control over Egypt, and fought a battle with the Kushites on the outskirts of Memphis, in which the Kushites were defeated and retreated to Thebes, and the Assyrian forces followed them there, where the latter were able to enter the city and destroy it, and Tanut Amani retreated to Kush. We no longer know anything about the last years of his rule, and he died in about 653 BC. He was buried in the Al-Kurru cemetery, and with his death, Kushite control over Egypt ended, and with it the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty.
What were the reasons that led to the defeat of the Kushites in their struggle with the Assyrian Empire for sovereignty over Egypt? The Napata kings, who considered themselves the legitimate heirs of the Egyptian crown, also claimed the legitimacy of their sovereignty over the former Egyptian possessions in Syria and Palestine, which explains the active movements of Shabaka, Shapataka, and Taharqa in areas that became affiliated with the Assyrian Empire, which became the major military power in the East in that period. However, the Kushite kings did not possess the enormous military power nor the human and material resources that would enable them to withstand for a long time in the face of the striking Assyrian force. In addition, the rulers of the Delta, instead of providing support to the Kushite forces, on the contrary, continued to constitute a source of weakening them by entering into conflicts among themselves. The Kushite kings were busy controlling them all the time.
Kingdom of Napata after the retreat from Egypt
Unfortunately, the period of the seventh and sixth centuries BC, during which the capital was moved from Napata to Meroe (Kabuchi-Bajrawiya), is still poorly documented due to the scarcity of information. Only four inscriptions are known, three of which date back to one king, in addition to a small number of brief Egyptian inscriptions. Only thanks to excavations in the royal cemeteries at Napata and Meroe has it been possible to determine the succession of kings who succeeded Tanut Amani, and to some extent confirm the dates of their reign and their genealogy.
Tanut Amani was succeeded by his cousin Atlanersa (653–643 BC), who in turn was followed by his son Senkamaneskan (643–623 BC). Then his two sons Anlamani (623–593 BC) and Aspalta (593–568 BC) ascended the throne successively. Despite the loss of the Kushites to Egypt, these kings possessed enormous power and wealth. It enabled them to accomplish massive works, primarily on the temples of Gebel Barkal.
Atlanersa built a pyramid for himself near the pyramid of his father Taharqa, and so did his son Senkamaneskin and his two sons Anlamani and Aspalta in Nuri. In terms of the size and distinctive architecture of these pyramids, it becomes clear the extent of the wealth and power that these kings enjoyed. For example, the two coffins of the two kings, Senkamaneskin and Aspalta, each weighed 15 tons and were covered with wonderful inscriptions of the type characteristic of the funerary rituals of the period of the Twentieth Dynasty and the twenty-sixth dynasty. They contained some texts of curses and phrases from the texts of the pyramids, the Book of the Dead, and the texts of the coffins.
Thanks to Anlamani's painting that was revealed in a niche, we can get a general picture of him and the system of government during his reign. Anlamani begins the text of his stela, like Taharqa, by offering his gratitude, gratitude and respect to his mother Tasalsi, who is depicted next to him twice at the beginning of the stela, which is natural given the special role of the queen mother Kandake in Kush. Anlamani expresses his concern for the prosperity of the people and the rule of order in the country: “In my era, no citizen should be killed except those who are rogue and anyone who causes trouble. No widow should be angered, and no one should be slandered during my era.” This is how the king addressed officials in the palace before leaving on an inspection mission. The text contains information about the only war that Anlamani fought. He sent a military expedition to the country of Pelhi (the Blemmyes), which seems to have been of a normal disciplinary nature, since after all the talk about “the severe beating inflicted on this notorious man,” only four men were taken prisoner.
Aspalta and the Kushite-Egyptian conflict
As for Aspalta, three long texts from Gebel Barkal have reached us, the first of which contains information about the process of electing the king, and the second, the Tablet of Exclusion, like the first, contains information of importance for the study of the composition and structure of the state in Kush. The process of electing Aspalta as king was carried out according to the established tradition, by being first indicated by the divine spirit and then approved by the warriors (the army), a system of government that received the name military democracy in specialized literature. The priestly class gained importance through its influence on political events as the expression of the divine spirit. However, Aspalta kept them under his complete supervision and control, which is what we infer from the content of the third text, which became known as the text of the consecration, according to which he appointed his sister, his wife Madikin, as a high priestess of the god Amun, and specified the tasks assigned to her to carry out, which are to be bequeathed to whoever succeeds her among her descendants.
It seems that the first clash that occurred with Egypt about which we have information was during the reign of Aspalta. It is known that after the retreat of Tanut-Amani from Egypt to Kush, relations between the two countries remained at least non-hostile, to the point that the worshiper of the god Shenupet (the daughter of King Pia) adopted Nitocris, the daughter of Psamtik I, and that when the authority of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty extended to include all of Egypt, the members of the Kushite aristocracy who remained in Thebes were not removed from the high positions in which they held. Whether in the priestly or administrative corps, Mutemhat, who became ruler of the city of Thebes, was of Kushite origin, and Hotserdes, who belonged to the aristocratic Kushite family, remained ruler of Edfu in Upper Egypt. However, the kings of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty in Sais continued to feel that the Kushite kings had still not abandoned their claim to the legitimacy of their inheritance of the Egyptian crown, which constituted a constant threat to their authority, and their fears increased due to this feeling. The general opinion in Egypt, in the priestly and popular circles, was that they were loyal to the Kushites as those who stood against the Assyrian aggression, which is something that neither the rulers of Sais, the predecessors of Psamtik, nor the latter himself could claim. In addition, the Kushite kings of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty remained in the eyes of the priestly circles the protectors of religion and traditions.
The struggles between the rulers of the Delta for power prompted Samtik to search for an effective military force to rely on, so he resorted to using Greek mercenary soldiers, which meant marginalizing the role of the Libyan soldiers whom he sent to the southern garrisons, especially the Fenians. It seems that Psamtik aimed for this policy to achieve two goals: killing two birds with one stone: on the one hand, removing unwanted Libyans from their base in the Delta, and on the other hand, securing his southern borders to exclude the Kushite danger. However, this did not satisfy the Libyan soldiers, so they fled from service and headed south to Kush, where they were accommodated inside the country. They are the group named according to Herodotus’s account of the Ismachai, and who are said to be the soldiers of the garrison in Fennin. After their shift, which extended for three years, in a place that, in their opinion, was their exile, they became somewhat dissatisfied with the situation they had found themselves in, and then they announced their revolution, and marched up the Nile to Napata, where they offered their services to The king of the Ethiopians accepted it and gave them a piece of land that was inhabited by enemies of the king, and asked them to expel those enemies. They were able to achieve success and settled in that region. Historical reports put their number at about two thousand and four hundred fighters, but it is a number that is clearly exaggerated, as Crawford put it.
During the reign of Psamtik II, it seems, circumstances arose in Napata that could be considered reassuring for the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty of Egypt, as an inscription was found in Tanis dating to the third year of the reign of Psamtik II, which read: “We have come to tell His Majesty in the third year of his coronation: The country of Kush is considering a fight with you.” Truth be told, such a text must be read in light of the ideological campaign that Psamtik announced the beginning of against the Kushite kings of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty by issuing his orders to remove the names of those kings wherever they exist and replace his name in their place. This campaign aimed to change the image imprinted in oral traditions about the Kushite kings as protectors of ancient beliefs and liberators of Egypt from the Assyrian invaders, and to replace a new image that sees them as bloody invaders who usurped power from the legitimate Egyptian rulers. Thus, Psamtik II began preparing public opinion in Egypt to declare war against Kush, a war that had strategic military and economic significance. From a military perspective, Egypt participated in the ongoing conflict in Asia to divide the legacy of the dying Assyrian Empire by providing support to one or another of the combatants, which required the Egyptian rulers to secure their back line in the south. From an economic standpoint, the need for Kush gold and its other products desired in global markets, such as ivory, ebony, elephant skins, and others, remained an important element for the Egyptian economy.
Thus, with the beginning of the rule of the Kushite king Aspalta, Psamtik II decided to wage war on Kush and personally led a large army consisting of an Egyptian legion and two other legions of Greek, Jewish, Phoenician, and Lydian mercenary soldiers. It seems that this war was so important that its memory remained until the days of Herodotus in the following century. It is not known how far the invading forces reached, but if the identification of Ta-Sash mentioned in the Tanis text with Dongola is correct, this is an indication of the advance of the Psamtik army beyond the Third Cataract. However, what is certain is the success of Psamtik in temporarily stabilizing the border at the second waterfall. However, that war determined the course of Kushite-Egyptian political relations for decades to come.
It seems that the campaign of Psamtik II contributed to some extent to the decision to move the Kushite capital from Napata to Meroe, far to the south, but it was certainly not the only factor. Meroe's location was more strategic from a military and economic standpoint than Napata. Meroe, located on the bank of the Nile, represented a meeting place for many trade routes linking the Red Sea with the far west, and routes linking the north with the south. In addition, it is located in an area with abundant rainfall, the rate of which increases as we head south, where flat lands extend between the Blue and White Nile and their tributaries and are characterized by abundant fertility for wheat, and to the northeast of it, and although the rainfall there is not sufficient to produce regular crops or for permanent residence, the environment is considered fit for life and provides extended pasture. This is while Napata, located in the region extending from Berber to the Third Cataract, is located in the middle of an area where rain is rare. Hence, we find that the Nile strip alone is permanently inhabited and agriculture in it depends entirely on the waters of the Nile.
(1) Kawa: The ancient site of Jim Aten, located on the eastern bank of the Nile facing the (modern) city of Dongola Al Ardi. This site should not be confused with the site of “Al Kawa” (formerly Al-Eis) on the White Nile to the south of Khartoum. It seems that the venerable Professor Salim Hassan did not look into the matter, so he recorded in his encyclopedia the name “Al-Kawwa” instead of “Kawwa” for the site. His writing of Gebel Barkal using the word “Al-Barakal” also caught my attention, which contradicts the correct pronunciation of Gebel Barkal, meaning “the clean mountain,” as the Egyptian inscriptions called it. Please correct.