Unlike the Libyans, but in keeping with the Egyptian situation, the Kushites came from a stable sedentary society and were highly Egyptianized, at least at the higher levels of society. Elements of their ethnicity are, nonetheless, apparent in the ostensibly Egyptian monuments which they left behind. In two - and three-dimensional representations the king was often shown wearing a close-fitting cap-crown with a wide head-band and two uraeus serpents, their tails reaching over the back of the head and running down the back as two streamers. This headgear and the ram (of Amun)-headed amulets, usually worn around the neck, are distinctive features of Kushite royal iconography. In terms of their physical form, Pharaoh and other members of the royal family are often shown with fleshy, almost chubby cheeks; the nose is wide and flat, and in colored representations their skin is often shown as being of a darker, brown hue by comparison with the red usually used for Egyptian men.
Private statuary, from which we derive much information on non-royal individuals, particularly from Thebes, is relatively abundant during the period from the beginning of the Twenty-second Dynasty onwards. During the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, in particular, sculptors appear to have been influenced by the representation of the Kushite kings themselves; demonstrably Nubian individuals such as the priest of Amun Iryketakana, are shown with the fleshy cheeks and somewhat corpulent figure characteristic of some representations of the Nubian Pharaohs, and similar features are also manifest in three dimensional representations of Egyptians. This trend is apparent particularly in the shabti figurines of certain wealthy individuals such as Harwa, the Chief Steward of the God’s Wife, and the Chief Lector Priest Petamenophis, although both seem to have been Egyptian. Artists were also influenced by the iconographic conventions of previous eras. This phenomenon, known as archaism, would continue as a central feature of the Late Period revival in art which would flourish during the succeeding Twenty-sixth Dynasty, but it was already in evidence under the Kushite Pharaohs and perhaps had its genesis in the investment in Theban craftsmen and workshops during this period.
The Kushite kings’ mode of succession has been claimed not to follow the Egyptian model whereby the king was succeeded by his eldest son but to observe the ‘‘collateral’’ pattern in which the throne passes from an elder brother to a younger brother and then to the children of the elder brother. However, this has recently been challenged, and it is now suggested that patterns of inheritance may have followed traditional Egyptian principles (Kahn 2005:163),or even that no such system was in use and that any claimant to the throne may have had to rely on the backing of important power groups such as the military as much as legitimatizing principles of inheritance (Morkot 1999: 221).
World History
