A small settlement arose at Kerma, to the south of the Third Cataract in Upper Nubia, after ca. 2500 bc (Early Kerma phase), with round houses made of reeds and wood. unlike in Lower nubia, Kerma is located in a region with a broad floodplain where large-scale agriculture was possible. By Middle Kingdom times (Middle Kerma), the growing power of Kerma was a significant reason for Egyptian takeover of Lower nubia, and this polity is probably to be identified as the Kush of Egyptian texts. Kerma society had become more complex by then, as evidenced in burials: some adults were buried with whole herds of sacrificed sheep and as many as seven sacrificed children. By Classic Kerma times (ca. 17501550 Bc) a large settlement existed at Kerma (Figure 7.15) and the cemetery contained huge tumuli of kings, which were excavated by George Reisner 1913-1916 (see Box 7-D ). During Egypt’s Second Intermediate Period, when a small kingdom was located at Thebes, Kerma controlled nubia, with the Kushite state extending as far south as the Fourth Cataract, which has been demonstrated by recent archaeological survey in this region. According to Egyptian sources, Kush was allied against the Thebans with the Hyksos state in northern Egypt.
Reisner also excavated a huge mud-brick structure at Kerma, known as the Western Deffufa, which was preserved up to 20 meters in height. Excavations at Kerma since the 1970s by Charles Bonnet and now Matthieu Honegger have demonstrated that this structure was a temple complex with at least 12 building phases. A huge wall 5+ meters thick enclosed the temple, where Reisner found evidence of craft workshops, including bronze production (Figure 7.16). The city center that Bonnet has excavated covered an area of almost 9 hectares, and was surrounded by a defensive wall with a gateway and massive towers, and a 5-meter-deep ditch. Unlike planned state towns of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, the city of Kerma shows no evidence of town planning. Houses in the city were mostly of mud-brick, with exterior courtyards for cooking, grain storage, and livestock tending. A circular structure made of wood and mud-brick, over 15 meters in diameter, may have been a royal audience hall, and a large palace with massive pillars for the throne room was also located in the city in Classic Kerma times. Along the river there were harbor buildings, including a large residence (palace?) containing storerooms and sealings with Egyptian inscriptions. The seal impressions provide evidence that Egyptians were employed at Kerma, probably as artisans and administrators. Sealings of Hyksos kings of the 15 th Dynasty have also been excavated at Kerma, demonstrating extensive connections with northern Egypt, involving trade and possibly political alliance, which are also suggested by the Kerma pottery and nubian arrowheads excavated at the Hyksos capital of Avaris (Tell el-Dab’a).
Reisner thought that Kerma was an Egyptian outpost in the Middle Kingdom, controlled at one time by an Egyptian governor, Djefaihapy of Asyut, whose fragmented statue had been found along with that of his wife, Sennuwy, in a Kerma royal tomb (III). But this tomb dates to a later period than the Egyptian statues, which had probably been robbed from a tomb or temple in Middle Egypt, and by Middle Kerma times Kerma was a powerful independent state that arose in competition with Egypt, what neo-evolutionary archaeologists would call a secondary state. The wealth of the Kerma kingdom was based on Nubian
Box 7-D Kerma burials
Charles Bonnet has estimated that the Kerma cemetery contained more than 20,000 burials - many more than are known for cemeteries in Egypt. In the southern part of the Kerma cemetery where George Reisner excavated were four huge tumuli (III, IV, X, and XVI) of rulers from Classic Kerma times (ca. 1750-1550 Bc) (Figure 7.13).
Figure 7.13 Plan of the royal tomb K X and the funerary temple K XI excavated by George Reisner at Kerma. Source: Timothy Kendall, Kerma and the Kingdom of Kush, 2500-1500 bC: The Archaeological Discovery of an Ancient Nubian Empire. Washington, DC: National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1996, p. 63.
Unlike Egyptians, who were buried in an extended position in coffins and sarcophagi, Kerma kings and elite were placed on wooden beds in a contracted position (with the exception of Tumulus X at Kerma, which was a coffin burial). The Kerma royal burials were in low, circular tumuli. Kerma elite were not mummified, but human remains were often well preserved in the extremely dry environment of the region.
While Egyptians wore linen garments, Kerma people were buried in both linen and leather items, including caps. In some burials, mica ornaments in the shape of animals and deities(?) were sewn on the caps. Similar ornaments in ivory were inlaid in some wooden beds. Large amounts of Kerma Ware were placed in burials, and grave goods included toilet articles and items of personal use, such as ostrich feather fans. Males were often buried with short bronze daggers.
The largest Kerma tumulus (K III) was ca. 70 meters in diameter, but only ca. 3-4 meters high. Ox skulls were laid around the tumulus, possibly from a funerary feast. The circular mound was built with parallel walls of mud-brick filled with rubble. The burial chamber, which contained a bed made of glazed quartz, was in the center of the tumulus. Bisecting the structure was a corridor which contained the remains of 12 sacrificed humans (mostly females) and rams. A life-size seated statue of an Egyptian woman named Sennuwy, and part of the statue of her husband Djefaihapy, the nomarch of Asyut during the reign of Senusret I, were also found in the tumulus (see 7.12). Although some Kerma grave goods consisted of Egyptian artifacts that had been robbed from earlier Egyptian graves in Lower Nubia, these statues came from a much greater distance - the nomarch’s tomb or a temple in Middle Egypt.
Subsidiary graves were cut into the royal tumuli, probably for servants and other dependents, but also for a few high-status burials. In his analysis of the associated burials, David o’connor has also noted satellite cemeteries associated with each of the enormous royal tumuli, with burials of different sizes/rank that he thinks belonged to high-status officials, army officers, and priests. Large satellite tumuli may have contained the burials of important royal relatives.
Reisner also excavated two rectangular mud-brick mortuary temples in the southern cemetery, one next to K X and the other near K III. No other structures in the Kerma cemetery are rectangular in design, and o’connor thinks that these were the type of mortuary structures built in Egypt in the Middle Kingdom, and later built at Kerma by Egyptian architects.
Gold and probably control of overland trade with Punt and other southern regions. Sherds of a prestige ware called Kerma Ware, a distinctive highly polished black-topped red ware made in the form of thin-walled flaring beakers and bowls, have been excavated by Rodolfo Fattovich (University of Naples “l’Orientale”) at Kassala (in the Gash River Delta), in eastern Sudan near the Eritrean border. The Kassala region was probably in the hinterland of Punt, known in Egyptian texts as the source of many exotic raw materials, and Kerma Ware sherds there demonstrate a trade connection with the Kerma culture.
Figure 7.14 12th-Dynasty statue of Lady Sennuwy found in a royal burial (K III) at Kerma by George Reisner. Source: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, uSA/Harvard university - Museum of Fine Arts Expedition/The Bridgeman Art Library.
The Second Intermediate Period was also a time of change in Lower Nubia. Kerma gained control of Lower nubia, probably in alliance with powerful c-Group chiefs or as their overlords. The larger c-Group graves of this period represent the greater wealth of some c-Group individuals, who probably controlled the economy in Lower nubia more directly than in Middle Kingdom times.
Fortified late c-Group settlements have been excavated, including the site of Areika, which its excavators in the early 20th century thought was a nubian chief’s castle. Josef Wegner’s analysis of the Areika evidence, where 30 percent of the ceramics were Egyptian “tablewares” and the rest were c-Group, suggests another interpretation, as a c-Group garrison under the control of Egyptian officers. Some Egyptians also remained in Nubian forts. Stelae from Buhen from this period, which are inscribed in Egyptian hieroglyphs, give Egyptian names of officials who served the king of Kush, and at the Mirgissa fort a Kerma culture cemetery was excavated. Thus the archaeological and textual evidence suggests complex interaction among the different populations living in Lower Nubia in the Second Intermediate Period - and the political and economic control of the region.
Further complicating the picture are burials of people known as the Pan-Grave culture, and Egyptian texts about the Medjay. Pan-Graves, so-called because the burial pits are shallow and round, were first excavated by Flinders Petrie in Upper Egypt at Hu (Hiw) (Figure 7.17). The contracted burials were not mummified, and the grave goods, including rectangular-shaped shell beads and a distinctive Pan-Grave pottery (Black-topped Red Ware with a thick lip), are not typologically Egyptian. Pan-Grave burials, which date to the
Figure 7.15 Plan of the central city of Kerma, as revealed by excavations completed by Charles Bonnet in 1994. (1) the Lower Deffufa, (2) its temple complex, (3) the round hall, (4) the later palace, (5) its associated warehouse, (6) a group of small shrines, (7) residential areas, (8) exposed parts of the defensive wall, and (9) deep defensive ditches. Source: Timothy Kendall, Kerma and the Kingdom of Kush, 2500-1500 bC: The Archaeological Discovery of an Ancient Nubian Empire. Washington, Dc: National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1996, p. 47.
Second Intermediate Period and early new Kingdom, have been found in Lower nubia, and in upper and Middle Egypt. These burials have been interpreted as those of the Medjay, who after the Middle Kingdom began to settle in the nile Valley in Lower nubia. G-Group
Figure 7.16 View of the Western Deffufa temple at Kerma. Source: Mission archeologique de I’Universite de Neuchatel au Soudan. Photo Bernard Noel Chagny.
Figure 7.17 Pan-Grave excavated at Abydos. Grave goods: (1) large pink-ware jar, (2) travertine jar, (3) hard drab clay jar, (4) Kerma Ware spouted jar, (5-14) Kerma Ware bowls, (15) travertine cosmetic jar, and (16) 19 spherical blue faience beads. Source: Walter B. Emery, Lost Land Emerging. New York: Scribner, 1967, p. 182.
And Pan-Grave cemeteries recently excavated at Hierakonpolis are evidence of both of these foreigner groups in southern Egypt in the Second Intermediate Period. Egyptian texts mention Medjay as employed in the army of the Theban 17th Dynasty. Later in the early New Kingdom they were used as policemen, and the term Medjay remained the word for policeman throughout the new Kingdom. Although there is nothing that directly connects the Pan-Grave burials with the term Medjay, the burial evidence seems to fit with what is known about them textually.
World History
