Blue Nuba and the Axumite invasion Noba glaucoma and the Axumite invasion
The underlying reasons that led to the beginning of the collapse in the Kingdom of Meroe can be seen in the shift of trade routes from the Nile to the Red Sea since the beginning of the first century AD, and the emergence of the Kingdom of Aksum as a competitor in trade across the Red Sea, and the crisis of the Roman Empire, which suffered from a lack of demand for Meroe products, and finally the obstruction of the caravan routes by the Nobad Blemmyes. All of these factors combined to ultimately lead to the isolation of the Kingdom from the Mediterranean world and the beginning of its economic collapse. This is in addition to another factor that some researchers point out, which is the change that occurred in the climate in this era, which led to a decrease in the level of rainfall and thus to a reduction in the cultivated area and the drying of pastures.
During the first centuries AD, an ethno-cultural group coming from the southwestern parts of the Kingdom began to expand northward, a group that the inscription of the King of Axum, Ezana, later called the Blue Nuba. We know almost nothing about the Blue Nuba, but we can conclude from the Izana text, which we will mention later, that at the end of the fourth century AD they controlled part of Meroe Island, that is, the area extending between the Blue Nile and the Atbara River, after their arrival from South Kordofan. However, some dialects in the current Nuba Mountains languages show similarity to the Dinglawi dialect of the Nubian language, and we do not agree with the claims that the reason for this similarity is due to the trade connections that arose after the arrival of Arab migrations to Sudan. The site of Mount Moya, where archaeological excavations were conducted at the end of the 1949 Addison, can be counted from the last century, where a residential site and a cemetery were uncovered. Among the various discoveries were pottery artifacts, some of which indicate a connection between the site and the regions farther north in the Kingdom. Many of them are characterized by a shape and style that is less similar to those found in the regions farther north. Absent from these artifacts are the Meroe models with thin walls and multi-colored painted decoration that were common in the first and second centuries AD. This may indicate that the site was inhabited in an earlier period and then migration from it to the north likely took place. The study of the burials in Mount Moya indicates burial rituals and customs that differ from those characteristic of the areas of the Meroe Kingdom farther to the north. Rather, they are rituals and customs closer to the Nuba Mountains groups and also to some of the current Nilotic groups who lived to the north, far from their current homeland.
It seems that decades before the collapse of the Meroe Kingdom, the Blue Nuba took over some of the Meroe cities, and it is possible that gradually, without resorting to the use of force, they expanded on the island of Meroe. According to the Ezana inscription, the Blue Nuba lived in thatched houses (qatati?), practiced agriculture and herding, and moved to a sedentary lifestyle. The northern depth of this expansion is still unclear, but Ezana points to the expansion of their situation next to what he called the Red Nuba (?)
The most dangerous enemy in that period was the Kingdom of Aksum, which was at the height of its prosperity. The excavations conducted in the capital of that kingdom indicate that the city was built in the middle of the first century AD and not in any case after the second century Doresse, and therefore Pliny knew nothing about it, but the Greeks quickly learned about it after that, as Axum was connected through the port of Adulis to the Mediterranean Sea, and the first mention of it came in the diary of the circumnavigation of the Eritrean Sea, which refers to the extension of Axum on the Red Sea coast starting from Suakin to Bab al-Mandab, without mentioning its extension into the interior.
We know nothing about the relationship between Kush and Aksum before the Ezana campaign, but the Circumnavigation Journal of the Eritrean Sea indicates that Aksum escaped through the port of Adulis for ivory brought, as he put it, from “that country of the Nile” (§ 4). Two bronze cups were discovered in the city of Axum, exactly identical to bronze cups found in Persia, bearing an original Meroe drawing representing a frog and a lotus flower. Alabaster amulets dating back to the 1-3 centuries AD were also found in Axum. These antiques are currently located in the Addis Ababa Museum. In his famous Ethiopian book, Gelidor describes the Aksumites as friends and followers of King Meroe and bringing him gifts. It seems that the statues of the two carved lions in a seated position, which Bruce also saw (and I believe they were of two dogs), and which are similar to those depicted by the Meroe kings in their city and in Baasa, Naqa, the yellow Musawwarat, Umm Asuda, and Soba (six of which we have displayed in the garden of the National Museum of Antiquities at the entrance to the exhibition hall), are statues that have no counterparts either in Egypt or among the Ethiopians in previous periods. Crowfoot also sees the presence of Meroe influences on the architecture of Aksum. However, the Kush-Aksumite relations during the first three centuries AD remained peaceful and friendly, although Hintza saw in the plaque engraved on top of a granite rock in Mount Qili the lining, which represents King Shirakarir, in glorification of the victory achieved by this Meroe king over the Axumites who tried to advance to the north. It is difficult for us to accept such a reading, since Aksum during the reign of Shiraker was in the process of being established, so that we do not believe that it possessed an army at that time that would make it think of advancing to such a depth to the northwest.
To discuss the relations between Aksum and Meroe, we think we should start with the inscription of King Ezana, which has not been translated into Arabic in its complete form. I decided to translate it from the Russian translation carried out by the researcher Бауэр in 1990 and published in an important book that included many ancient and medieval documents about the history of Africa: 1990 Бауэр
1. By the power of the Lord of the Heavens, who achieved victory in heaven and on earth against (all) creatures
2. Ezana bin Ali Amida, Sakhalina, Negus of Axum, and ruler of Himyar
3. Wraydan, Sheba, and Salihin, and the ruler of Siamo and Beja
4. Waso, Negus of the Negus, son of Ali Amida, undefeated before his enemies.
5. By the power of the Lord of Heaven, who has given me dominion over all, making me beloved by Him.
6. The undefeated king before the enemies. No enemy will stand before me, and no enemy will chase me
7. From my back, with the power of the Lord of all, I attacked the Nuba when its people waged war
8. And they bragged: The tax will not pass, saying Taxi
9. For the Nuba people. They mistreated the people of Mangurtu, the Khasa and the Baria, on the Zarq Mangurtu, Khasa and Baria
10. They attacked the Reds, and broke their covenant two or three times
11. They once again killed their neighbors without mercy, let alone our ambassador and everyone who went from our side and everyone who
12. I sent it to them to bring them back to obedience, because they robbed them, plundered their property, and stole from them.
13. Their scepters. When I wrote to them again, they did not listen to me, refused to reverse their actions, and continued to evade me.
14. And they practice evil. Then I attacked them. I embarked on a campaign with the strength of a master
15. The land, and I fought with them at the Takazi River and the Kimalki Ford until they fled and Kemalki Ford
16. They did not stop. I tracked the fugitives over a period of twenty-three days Twenty and three days
17. So I killed, captured, and seized the spoils and prisoners
18. Those brought by my forces that carried out the attack. Then his Nuba cities were burned.
19. Those built with stone and those built with hay. The forces looted their grain, silver, iron, and meat
20. Crusaders, destroyed the fees of their temples and their granaries and cotton, and threw them themselves Time
21. In the Side River, many of them drowned
22. Their numbers are unknown. Then my forces boarded their boats full of people
23. Men and women. I took two leaders captive (they had)
24. They mounted on the backs of their camels to spy out their names
25. Ayesaka and Butali. Inga also captured Bentsa the Great. Those leaders who died
26. Danukvi, Dagali, Anakvi, Hubbari, and Karkara, and the wound of their priest.
27. First, he took off his silver crown and golden ring. And those are the leaders who
28. They died, and I reached the territory of Kaso and killed them and captured them
29. The confluence of the Sida and Takazi rivers. On the second day after my arrival (here) I sent
30. My battalions: Mahaza Battalion, Hara Battalion, Damau, Falah, and Sira Battalion
31. To the heights of Side, where the cities are built of stone and those built of hay. Its cities are called Al-Kaso.
32. Built with stone, Alwa and Daru. (The forces) were killed, captured, and thrown in
33. The water returned without any losses after it had brought terror into the hearts of the enemies and subjected them to the will of a master.
34. Earth. After that, the Khalin Battalion, the Lakin Battalion, and...
35. Sabrat battalion, Falah, and march down Side to the Nuba cities
36. Built with straw: Najafs, and to the cities built with stone that belonged to the Kasu, but which the Nuba stripped away from them: Tapito.
37. Vertuti. The forces reached areas controlled by the Red Nuba, and returned For the red Nuba
38. My forces, without losses, are captured after having killed and captured their livestock with the force of a master
39. The heavens. I set up a throne at the meeting place of the rivers Sida and
40. Complaint against the stone cities that are on this island. Everything he gave me
41. Lord of the Heavens: 214 male captives, 415 female captives, all of that was 629.
42. The men killed were 602, and the women and children killed were 156. All of that was 700 and
43. 58 The prisoners and the dead were 1,378, and the spoils of cows were 10,500.
44, 60, and 51,500 sheep. And I set up a throne here in Shadow
45. By the power of the Lord of the Heavens, who granted me help and endowed me with royalty.
This is followed by six more lines in which Ezana expresses his gratitude to the Lord of the Heavens.
The text indicates that Ezana saw himself from the beginning as the king of Kush, which probably means that the Axumites arrived in Kush before Ezana. In addition, he does not refer to an attack launched on Meroe, as his enemies are the Blue Nuba who seized the Kaso cities. The conflict was not between the Ezana and the Meroes, as it seems that at this time the Kingdom of Meroe had completely disintegrated and the Blue Nuba took control of large parts of it, and the last two kings sitting on the throne of the kingdom, Kiribar and Akidektival, became merely formal kings of a kingdom that had disintegrated into emirates and sheikhdoms that were not concerned with status.
The subsequent fate of the island of Meroe is largely unclear. The local population probably intermingled with the new group, and the kingdom disintegrated into separate regions under the command of local princes or chieftains, such as those buried in the huge tumulus, starting from the northern outskirts of Kush in Plana and Qastal and along the Nile south to the junction of the White and Blue Nile and to the south from Khartoum along the course of the White Nile to beyond the two mountains on both banks. The White Nile in the south at least as far as Malakal and Sobat, and inland away from the Nile on the edges of the valleys, and in Bahr el-Ghazal at the confluence of the Bongo River with the Goul River and towards the east to the Jur River, as well as in the plain and desert away from the Nile. These tumuli represent the Kushite burial method that we have observed since the late Neolithic era and which was previously mentioned.
It is not unlikely that members of the royal family, fleeing from enemies, found a safe haven with the leaders close to them somewhere to the west of the Nile in North Kordofan or even Darfur. Such a hypothesis was put forward by Arkell, who tried to support it by referring to some traditions and oral traditions inherited among some ethnic groups in those areas remote from Meroe, which indicate that they came to their current place of residence under the leadership of a queen who was buried in a huge tumulus on Mount Kabweya. In North Kordofan, a scribble written in the ancient Nubian language in Greek letters was uncovered, mentioning Kush 1951 Arkell, which confirms that the memory of Kush did not fade even after the collapse of Meroe. In Abu Sufyan, vessels of the type characteristic of Egypt in the Ptolemaic era were found, and the remains of buildings from what are likely to be the ruins of a pyramid built of unfired bricks (1931 Penn). Other ruins were found in the King's Valley in Zangor.
The popular story recorded by Frobenius in 1912 in Kordofan in 1912 indicates the preservation of memories of their great, powerful and famous state. What is noteworthy is that the events narrated in the story are linked to the name Napata, not Meroe, but what is more important is that the story has been preserved in oral tradition for fifteen centuries. The story revolves around the king of Napata, from Kordofan. “He ruled a vast country inhabited by many diverse groups. He was richer than other kings. He owned gold and silver, which he sent across Nubia to the west. In the south, iron weapons were made for him, and from there large numbers of slaves arrived to him.” All these distinctive features of the Kingdom of Meroe, in addition to the existence of the custom of ritual assassination of the king, leave no doubt about the reliability of the Kordovan story. However, we still think about the reason that made Frobinus believe that the source of the story is the south of the Arabian Peninsula, insisting that “the form of the story has nothing to do with Napata Meroe because people in that period told different stories, since this type of narrative had not appeared in the classical era,” and then he comes to the conclusion that this Kordovan story came from the south of the peninsula. Arabic in a period extending between the eighth and fourteenth centuries, based on the existence of the custom of ritual assassination of the king in the south of the Arabian Peninsula. However, as we indicated in our research on Arkamani and the ritual assassination of the king in Kush mentioned above, the custom of ritual assassination of the king spread and was practiced in Africa and in Sudan until recently, and it is a custom whose practice dates back to ancient times. Although Arkamani had abolished this custom, the Funj Muslim kings in Sennar returned to practicing it, while the Shilluk continued to practice it until the late 1930s. 1923 Frobenius
Although the events of the distant past were lost long ago, as well as the knowledge of the Meroe script, which had mostly ceased to be used by the end of the fifth century AD, lingering memories of a great kingdom remained, which were reflected in the precise description of the Kingdom of Kush in the Kordofan novel recorded by Frobenus, which says: “Now in Kordofan there are few scattered shrubs, then there were many more trees. Now the land in Kordofan is barren, then the lands were fertile. Now in Kordofan there are few villages. Small, then there were cities larger than the cities of Egypt. Now in Kordofan there are no people capable of making copper, gold, iron, and bronze. At that time, all the copper, all the gold, and all the bronze in the land came from Kordofan. In those times, Kordofan was ruled by great kings to whom all people brought gifts. “Frobinus says that the people in the Fertit region to the southwest of Kordofan called the Nuba Naftasan. Will the relationship of this name to the Kushite king be hidden from us? Nstassen!
To this day, the peoples of Sudan have preserved in their historical memory the glories of the ancient past, never forgetting their great ancestors who established authentic civil foundations in the southern reaches of the ancient world. Also, many of the customs and rituals that the Sudanese practice and adhere to in their daily lives and on their various occasions go back to that cultural heritage: carrying the body of the deceased on a saddle covered with a colored mat, the custom of breaking the soil practiced by women, the Jartq ritual with its scarab, its right and its tamper, the groom’s journey to the Nile, the cutting of palm leaves, and so on. Which helps to maintain the schizophrenia that the contemporary Sudanese mentality suffers from.
8. Al-Takazi is the current name of the main branch of the Atbara River, part of which flows in Ethiopian territory. It is known within Sudanese territory as the state. It seems that what is meant in the Ezana inscription is the Atbara River
9. Mangurtu, Khasa and Baria. Of these ethnic groups we know the last two. However, according to the narration of Ibn Sa`id al-Gharnati - the middle of the thirteenth century AD - the Khasa group, which is a branch of the Beja people, lived in his time in the Kar region. Currently we know of two groups of Khasa in the Kassala region. As for the Baria, they are a group mentioned by Ibn Hawqal who now live in Eritrea and northwestern Ethiopia between the Takazi and Gash rivers. Mangurto does not know where she lives. In a Greek text dating back to the sixth century AD, these groups were mentioned as: Mangartu, Khasa, and Parioti.
15. The location of this ford (Kimalki) has not been determined, but it is below the confluence of the empty Atbara River with Al-Sitit - Al-Takazi.
16. It is not clear the subsequent path of the Ezana forces. According to line 21, the Nuba were restricted towards the Nile (Sida) and part of them was thrown into the river. Then (line 29) the king went to the meeting place of the Atbara River (Al-Takazi) and the Nile, and from there (lines 30-32) he sent the battalions up to attack the Meroe cities that the Nuba had captured, Alwa and Daru. Thus, the conclusion is drawn that the battalions marched not directly to the west towards the Nile, but along the left bank of the Atbara River over a period of 23 days until they confined the Nuba to a narrow place to South of the confluence of the Atbara River with the Nile.
20. The Meroes had known the cultivation of cotton, which is what Ezana refers to. It is not true that the common mistake is that cotton arrived in Sudan with the Arabs or with Muhammad Ali Pasha. Rather, it is the opposite. Emile Ludwig wrote: “One day a Frenchman, like the traveler Caillaux, presented himself to the governor of Egypt with a strange gift. This was because he brought him from Sudan a bag containing cotton seeds and fruits, and it sparked in him the idea of trying to grow cotton in the Egyptian Delta” (p. 282). Emil Ludwig
37. The locations of the cities have not been specified. Virtuti may be identified with the ancient Egyptian name Bertuti (house of the god Tut). If the correspondence is correct, then Virtuti is Pennobus.
37(1). The Reds are the light-skinned Nuba, that is, the Nuba who live to the north of the Blue Nuba. It is difficult to say whether the distinction between the two peoples based on skin color arose from the time of this campaign, or whether it appeared earlier.
F.Addison: Jebel Moya, London.
J.Doresse 1957: Découvertes en Ethiopie et découverte de l’Ethiopie,- Bibliotheca Orientalis 14.
J.W.Crowfoot 1911: The Island of Meroe. London.
Г.М.Бауэр: Надписи ранных царей Аксума , In: История Африки в древних и средневековых источниках, Хрестоматия 2-е изд. Москва :Наука.
A.J.Arkell: Varia Sudanica,- Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 36.
A.E.Penn: The Ruins of Zankor.- Sudan Notes and Records 14.
L.Frobenius: Atlantis. Volksmärchen und Volksdichtungen Afrikas, Bd 4. Märchen aus Kordofan. Jena.