UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

The empire of Kush: Napata and Meroe
Hamitic pastoralists with an undoubted strain of black blood: marked
cheekbones, heavy chins, thick lips. They also wear ornaments characteristic
of the Sudan. A popular head-dress is a kind of close cap fitting
tightly to the neck with a sidepiece protecting the temple; a thick knotted
head-band holds it in place leaving two streamers hanging behind the
shoulders. Ear-rings and the pendants of necklaces are adorned with rams'
heads, the ram being the sacred animal of Amon. Amon is in fact the
great god of the dynasty, worshipped in four major sanctuaries - Napata,
Tore (probably Sanam), Kawa and Pnubs (Tabo in the isle of Argo). For
the service of each of these sanctuaries princesses were consecrated as
musicians of Amon. In the Sudanese part of their empire the entourages
of Kushites frequently included their mothers, wives, sisters and female
cousins. This was not so in Egypt proper, though the Kushite Pharaohs
were assisted at Thebes by the divine votaresses - princesses vowed to
virginity, with the god Amon as their only spouse. Conceded quasi-royal
privileges, the Amenirdises and Shepenoupets formed a kind of parallel
dynasty with succession from aunt to niece; but they were not eponymous
and had no functions in connection with the Nile floods. While they headed
an important establishment, their power was nevertheless limited by the
presence in Thebes itself of a prefect of the city representing the
Pharaoh.
The glory of the twenty-fifth dynasty was great; a whole tradition about
it developed among the classical authors. And in fact the art of this
epoch shows great vigour. Taking over the best of the past tradition the
Kushites gave it new power and notable force.
Napata, the firstcapital of the Kushite Empire
After the retreat of the Kushites from Egypt under the assaults of Assyrians,
their history is much more difficult to determine; even the chronology is
extremely vague. For a millennium a state survived, becoming ever more
African, the kingdom of Kush, the name of its own choice from the
ancient native name for the territory. In the eyes of conventional
Egyptology this represents a long period of decadence during which the
Pharaonic influences became progressively corrupted. In actual fact it is a
culture out of Africa which alternately entrenches itself in its specificity or
seeks to align itself with the Egyptian civilization - itself, for that matter,
African properly speaking; from time to time echoes reach it from the
Mediterranean, in particular after the foundation of Alexandria.
To begin with, the capital remained at Napata at the foot of the sacred
mountain, Gebel Barkal. Later, almost certainly in the sixth century before
our era, it was transferred much farther south to Meroe. There is little
certainty as to the extent of the Kushite kingdom and so far the differences
between its component regions are still unclarified. In the far north, Lower
Nubia, a kind of no man's land, remained in dispute between the Meroites
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