Outside of Egypt proper, there is evidence of extensive New Kingdom settlements, as stone temples were built throughout Nubia. With the Kerma kingdom vanquished in the early New Kingdom, Egyptian control of Nubia expanded southward from Wawat (Lower Nubia) beyond the Second Cataract into Kush (Upper Nubia). Most of the Middle Kingdom forts in Nubia were restored, but some were abandoned after the conquest of Kush. Fortresses which continued to be occupied, such as at Buhen, Mirgissa, and Semna, were extensively renovated, including the construction of new temples, and at Buhen a large settlement expanded outside of the earlier walls. Except during the short reign of Tutankhamen, Nubia was administered by high officials in fortified temple towns - Lower Nubia from Aniba, a fort built to the north of the Second cataract during the Middle Kingdom, and the whole region between the Second and Third cataracts in upper Nubia from Amara, in a region where agriculture could sustain the town’s inhabitants. Extra-mural towns also developed later around these two administrative temple centers.
At Tombos, 10 kilometers downstream from Kerma, a town was established with an associated cemetery containing ten pyramid tombs, similar in style to those known in western Thebes in the New Kingdom, which were built for high-status Egyptian officials living there. Excavations by Stuart Tyson Smith have also revealed a middle-status cemetery with Egyptian-style burials - with Egyptian grave goods and evidence of mummification. But Smith has also excavated four Nubian-style burials of women at Tombos. Although most of the associated grave goods were Egyptian, these four burials were in flexed positions with the head to the west - as opposed to the Egyptian burials there in which the bodies were extended and lying on the back with the head to the east. This evidence suggests that although Tombos was an Egyptian town with Egyptians, including high-status officials, living there, some of the population consisted of Nubians who were able to symbolically retain some of their beliefs associated with death and burial, as well as their ethnic identity.
Inscriptions of two Thutmosid kings (I and III) have been found between the Fourth and Fifth cataracts (at Kurgus upstream of Abu Hamed), but more extensive evidence in
Figure 8.22 Plan of Rameses II’s rock-cut temple at Abu Simbel in Lower Nubia. Source: Drawn by Philip Winton. richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt. London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000, p. 223.
Map 8.5 Sites and regions in Upper and Lower Nubia during the New Kingdom.
The far south is located downstream from the Fourth Cataract at Gebel Barkal, where Thutmose III set up a victory stela and erected a temple to the god Amen. During Akhenaten’s reign, Amen’s name was erased from earlier inscriptions and talatat blocks have been found at Dokki Gel, near Kerma, where an Aten temple had been erected. In the post-Amarna Period a new Amen temple (B 500, beneath which was Thutmose Ill’s temple) was begun at Gebel Barkal and was later greatly expanded by Sety I and Rameses II. Inscriptions mention a settlement and fort at Gebel Barkal, but remains of these have not been located.
The construction of imposing temples in Nubia helped to reinforce ideological control there through the cults of Egyptian gods. Although a number of temples were built in or near fortified towns in Nubia, some temples, such as Rameses II’s famous rock-cut monument at Abu Simbel, have no evidence of nearby settlements (Figure 8.22; Plate 8.13). In the 1960s this temple was rescued from flooding by an enormous UNESCO project when the Aswan High Dam was built. The living rock from which the temple was carved, including a facade with four seated colossal statues of the king (21 meters high), was sawed up into huge blocks and reassembled on higher ground, where the artificial mountain behind it is held up by a huge interior concrete dome. The smaller rock-cut temple to the north, with four standing statues of Rameses II and two of his chief queen Nefertari, was also rescued. Some of the reliefs in the main temple depict Rameses’s campaigns in Syria and Nubia and are symbolic of the role of the Egyptian king abroad.
More recent work on temple towns in northern Sudan includes re-examination of the walled town of Sesebi (ca. 100 kilomters downstream from the Third Cataract), which was constructed early in the reign of Akhenaten. The town, which includes two temples, blocks of storerooms, and domestic structures, as well as cemeteries outside the town wall, was first excavated by the Egypt Exploration Society in the 1930s. The new project (University of Cambridge), which is directed by Kate Spence and Pamela Rose, includes delineating the plan and decoration of the main temple with its well-preserved crypt. Beneath Akhenaten’s temple, there is evidence of an earlier construction, and Napatan ceramics (see 9.4) within the town demonstrate later reoccupation in the first millennium BC.
At Amara West, which was also excavated earlier by the Egypt Exploration Society, Neal Spencer (British Museum) has been directing new excavations and survey of a well-preserved town of the early Ramessid period. The 2008 magnetomer survey revealed a previously unknown western suburb with some large villas. When excavated, one of the villas contained rooms for large-scale grain processing and bread making. Within the walled town there are similar buildings to those found at Sesebi: a temple, large-scale storage facilities and houses. Names/titles found on door jambs and lintels from a large house within the town have identified it as the residence of the Egyptian deputy of Kush.
Egyptian control of Nubia ceased at the end of the New Kingdom. Gebel Barkal would later become the nucleus of an indigenous kingdom, the Napatan state, which arose there in the 10th-9th centuries BC. By the 8th century BC kings of this state became the rulers of both Egypt and Nubia.
World History
