Since the first century b. c.e. the name Nubia has been applied to a thousand-mile (1,600-kilometer) stretch of the Nile Valley lying between Aswan and Khartoum" and straddling the southern part of the modern nation of Egypt and the northern part of Sudan (see Map 3.2). Nubia is the only continuously inhabited stretch of territory connecting sub-Saharan Africa (the lands south of the vast Sahara Desert) with North Africa. For thousands of years it has served as a corridor for trade between tropical Africa and the Mediterranean. Nubia was richly endowed with natural resources such as gold, copper, and semiprecious stones.
Nubia’s location and natural wealth, along with Egypt’s quest for Nubian gold, explain the early rise of a civilization with a complex political organization, social stratification, metallurgy, monumental building, and writing. Nubia traditionally was considered a periphery, or outlying region, of Egypt, and its culture was regarded as derivative. Now, however, most scholars emphasize the interactions between Egypt and Nubia and the mutually beneficial borrowings and syntheses that took place, and there is growing evidence that Nubian culture drew on influences from sub-Saharan Africa.
' The central geographical feature of Nubia, as of Egypt, is the Nile River. This part of the Nile flows through a landscape of rocky desert, grassland, and fertile plain. River irrigation was essential for agriculture in a climate that was severely hot and, in the north, nearly without rainfall. Six cataracts, barriers formed by large boulders and rapids, obstructed boat traffic. commerce and travel were achieved by boats operating between the cataracts and by caravan tracks alongside the river or across the desert.
In the fourth millennium b. c.e. bands of people in northern Nubia made the transition from seminomadic hunting and gathering to a settled life based on grain agriculture and cattle herding. From this time on, the majority of the population lived in agricultural villages alongside the river. Even before 3000 b. c.e. Nubia served
Khartoum (kahr-TOOM)
Map 3.2 Ancient Nubia The Land route alongside the Nile River as it flows through Nubia has Long served as a corridor connecting sub-Saharan Africa with North Africa. The centuries of Egyptian occupation, as well as time spent in Egypt by Nubian hostages, mercenaries, and merchants, led to a marked Egyptian cultural influence in Nubia. (Based on Map 15 from The Historicat Atlas of Africa, ed. by J. F. Ajyi and Michael Crowder. Reprinted by permission of Addison Wesley Longman Ltd.)
The Kingdom of Meroe,
800 b. c.e.-350 c. e.
As a corridor for long-distance commerce. Egyptian craftsmen of the period were working in ivory and in ebony wood—products of tropical Africa that had to have come through Nubia.
Nubia enters the historical record around 2300 b. c.e. in Old Kingdom Egyptian accounts of trade missions to southern lands. At that time Aswan, just north of the First Cataract, was the southern limit of Egyptian control. As we saw with the journey of Harkhuf at the beginning of this chapter, Egyptian noblemen stationed there led donkey caravans south in search of gold, incense, ebony, ivory, slaves, and exotic animals from tropical Africa. This was dangerous work, requiring delicate negotiations with local Nubian chiefs in order to secure protection, but it brought substantial rewards to those who succeeded.
During the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2040-1640 b. c.e.), Egypt adopted a more aggressive stance toward Nubia. Egyptian rulers sought to control the gold mines in the desert east of the Nile and to cut out the Nubian middlemen who drove up the cost of luxury goods from the tropics. The Egyptians erected a string of mud-brick forts on islands and riverbanks south of the Second Cataract. The forts protected the southern frontier of Egypt against Nubians and nomadic raiders from the desert, and regulated the flow of commerce. There seem to have been peaceable relations but little interaction between the Egyptian garrisons and the indigenous population of northern Nubia, which continued to practice its age-old farming and herding ways.
Farther south, where the Nile makes a great U-shaped turn in the fertile plain of the Dongola Reach (see Map 3.2), a more complex political entity was evolving from the chiefdoms of the third millennium b. c.e. The Egyptians gave the name Kush to the kingdom whose capital was located at Kerma, one of the earliest urbanized centers in tropical Africa. Beginning around 1750 b. c.e. the kings of Kush marshaled a labor force to build monumental walls and structures of mud brick. The dozens or even hundreds of servants and wives sacrificed for burial with the kings, as well as the rich objects found in their tombs, testify to the wealth and power of the rulers of Kush and suggest a belief in some sort of afterlife in which attendants and possessions would be useful. Kushite craftsmen were skilled in metalworking, whether for weapons or jewelry, and their pottery surpassed anything produced in Egypt.
During the expansionist New Kingdom (ca. 1532-1070 b. c.e.) the Egyptians penetrated more deeply into Nubia (see Chapter 4). They destroyed Kush and its capital and extended their frontier to the Fourth Cataract. A high-ranking Egyptian official called “Overseer of Southern Lands” or “King’s Son of Kush” ruled Nubia from a new administrative center at Napata°, near Gebel Barkal°, the “Holy Mountain,” believed to be the home of a local god. In an era of intense commerce among the states of the Middle East, when everyone was looking to Egypt as the prime source of gold, Egypt exploited the mines of Nubia at considerable human cost. Fatalities were high among native workers in the brutal desert climate, and the army had to ward off attacks from desert nomads.
Five hundred years of Egyptian domination in Nubia left many marks. The Egyptian government imposed Egyptian culture on the native population. Children from elite families were brought to the Egyptian royal court to guarantee the good behavior of their relatives in Nubia; they absorbed Egyptian language, culture, and religion, which they later carried home with them. Other Nubians served as archers in the Egyptian armed forces. The manufactured goods that they brought back to Nubia have been found in their graves. The Nubians built towns on the Egyptian model and erected stone temples to Egyptian gods, particularly Amon. The frequent depiction of Amon with the head of a ram may reflect a blending of the chief Egyptian god with a Nubian ram deity.
Egypt’s weakness after 1200 B. C.E. led to the collapse of its authority in Nubia. In the eighth century b. c.e. a powerful new native kingdom emerged in southern Nubia. The story of this civilization, which lasted for over a thousand years, can be divided into two parts. During the early period, between the eighth and fourth centuries b. c.e., Napata, the former Egyptian headquarters, was the primary center. During the later period, from the fourth century b. c.e. to the fourth century C. E., the center was farther south, at Meroe", near the Sixth Cataract.
For half a century, from around 712 to 660 b. c.e., the kings of Nubia ruled all of Egypt as the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. They conducted themselves in the age-old manner of Egyptian rulers. They were addressed by royal titles, depicted in traditional costume, and buried according to Egyptian custom. However, they kept their Nubian names and were depicted with physical features suggesting peoples of sub-Saharan Africa. They inaugurated an artistic and cultural renaissance, building on a monumental scale for the first time in centuries and reinvigorating Egyptian art, architecture, and religion. The Nubian kings resided at Memphis, the Old Kingdom
Napata (nah-PAH-tuh) Gebel Barkal (JEB-uhl BAHR-kahl)
Meroe (MER-oh-ee)
Capital, while Thebes, the New Kingdom capital, was the residence of a celibate female member of the king’s family who was titled “God’s Wife of Amon.”
The Nubian dynasty made a disastrous mistake in 701 B. C.E. when it offered help to local rulers in Palestine who were struggling against the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians retaliated by invading Egypt and driving the Nubian monarchs back to their southern domain by 660 B. C.E. Napata again became the chief royal residence and religious center of the kingdom. Egyptian cultural influences remained strong. Court documents continued to be written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the mummified remains of the rulers were buried in modestly sized sandstone pyramids along with hundreds of shawabti° figurines.
By the fourth century b. c.e. the center of gravity had shifted south to Meroe, perhaps because Meroe was better situated for agriculture and trade, the economic mainstays of the Nubian kingdom. As a result, sub-Saharan cultural patterns gradually replaced Egyptian ones. Egyptian hieroglyphs gave way to a new set of symbols, still essentially undeciphered, for writing the Meroitic language. People continued to worship Amon as well as Isis, an Egyptian goddess connected to fertility and sexuality. But those deities had to share the stage with Nubian deities like the lion-god Apedemak, and elephants had some religious significance. Meroitic art combined Egyptian, Greco-Roman, and indigenous traditions.
Women of the royal family played an important role in Meroitic politics, another reflection of the influence of sub-Saharan Africa. The Nubians employed a matrilineal system in which the king was succeeded by the son of his sister. Nubian queens sometimes ruled by themselves and sometimes in partnership with their husbands. Greek, Roman, and biblical sources refer to a queen of Nubia named Candace. Since these sources relate to different times, Candace was probably a title rather than a proper name. At least seven queens ruled between 284 b. c.e. and 115 C. E. They played a part in warfare, diplomacy, and the building of temples and pyramid tombs. They are depicted in scenes reserved for male rulers in Egyptian imagery, smiting enemies in battle and being suckled by the mother-goddess Isis. Roman sources marvel at the fierce resistance put up by a one-eyed warrior-queen.
Meroe was a huge city for its time, more than a square mile in area, overlooking fertile grasslands and dominating converging trade routes. While much of the city is still buried under the sand, in 2002 archaeologists using a magnetometer to detect buried structures discovered a large palace. Great reservoirs were dug to
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Gebel Barkal This model of Gebel Barkal, the "Holy Mountain" of Nubia, made of sandstone and with traces of the original paint, was deposited in the Temple of Amon at Gebel Barkal by a Nubian king. The original door is missing, as well as a seated figurine inside, possibly an image of Amon. Resting on a band representing a swamp with papyrus reeds, the doorway is flanked on either side by relief images of a winged goddess and a king wearing a short kilt. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Harvard University Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition, Maria Antoinette Evans Fund. Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 21.3234)
Catch precious rainfall. The city was a major center for iron smelting (after 1000 b. c.e. iron had replaced bronze as the primary metal for tools and weapons). The Temple of Amon was approached by an avenue of stone rams, and the enclosed “Royal City” was filled with palaces, temples, and administrative buildings. The ruler, who may have been regarded as divine, was assisted by a professional class of officials, priests, and army officers.
Meroe collapsed in the early fourth century c. e. It may have been overrun by nomads from the western desert who had become more mobile because of the arrival of the camel in North Africa. Meroe had already been weakened when profitable commerce with the Roman Empire was diverted to the Red Sea and to the rising kingdom of Aksum° (in present-day Ethiopia). In any case, the end of the Meroitic kingdom, and of this phase of civilization in Nubia, was as closely linked to Nubia’s role in longdistance commerce as had been its beginning.
World History
