An outline, era by era

Nubia

Kingdom of Kerma

Bronze Age · ~3300 – ~1200 BCE

Nubia is the region of the middle Nile in present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan, stretching south of the First Cataract at Aswan. In the Bronze Age its first great state was the Kingdom of Kerma, centred on the town of Kerma above the Third Cataract. Kerma rose from earlier local cultures and was at its height from about 1750 to 1500 BCE, after emerging as a regional power around 2500 BCE.

Kerma controlled the Nile valley over a very long stretch of river, traded in gold, ivory, ebony and cattle, and was a rival and partner of Egypt. Its capital had a huge mud-brick structure, the Western Deffufa, usually interpreted as a temple, and vast burial mounds in which many people appear to have been sacrificed with the ruler. Egyptian texts called the land Kush. Around 1500 BCE the pharaoh Thutmose I and his successors conquered Kerma, and Egypt ruled Nubia for several centuries. Kerma's culture, however, shaped the later Kingdom of Kush, which in turn ruled Egypt in the eighth century BCE.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. Nubia as Egypt's backward colony

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Many people today say that Nubia was only a backward land of gold mines and servants, a mere colony existing for Egypt's use. In this telling its people built nothing great until Egypt taught them how.

    The rest is history

    This view comes largely from Egyptian royal inscriptions, which boasted of conquest and tribute and called Kush 'wretched'. Excavations at Kerma by George Reisner from 1913 first revealed a rich native culture, which Reisner wrongly thought was Egyptian. Later work, notably by Charles Bonnet from the 1970s, showed an independent kingdom with its own pottery, burial customs, towns and monumental buildings. Kerma was strong enough in the seventeenth century BCE to be a serious threat to Egypt. The Western Deffufa still stands about 18 metres high.

    Sources

    1. BookBonnet, Charles, and Dominique Valbelle. The Nubian Pharaohs: Black Kings on the Nile. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2006.Overview of Kerma and Kush from the Swiss excavations.
    2. BookWelsby, Derek A. The Kingdom of Kush: The Napatan and Meroitic Empires. London: British Museum Press, 1996.
    3. BookReisner, George A. Excavations at Kerma. Harvard African Studies 5-6. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of Harvard University, 1923.

  2. Kerma's kings and the sacrificed retainers

    Popular belief

    The legend

    It is said that when a Kerma ruler died, hundreds of his people were buried alive with him in a great mound, to serve him in the next world.

    The rest is history

    This is partly true. Reisner excavated the great tumuli at Kerma and found that the largest, the burial of a king in the Classic Kerma period, held the bodies of several hundred people, mostly in the corridor leading to the burial chamber. These are generally interpreted as human sacrifices, an inference from the burial context, and how willing or aware the victims were cannot be known. The practice is not found in Egypt at this time and marks Kerma's distinct tradition. The king lay on a bed, with weapons, ornaments and animal offerings nearby. The cemetery at Kerma holds many thousands of graves.

    Sources

    1. BookReisner, George A. Excavations at Kerma. Harvard African Studies 5-6. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of Harvard University, 1923.
    2. BookBonnet, Charles, and Dominique Valbelle. The Nubian Pharaohs: Black Kings on the Nile. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2006.

  3. Kamose and the plot of Kerma and the Hyksos

    Heroic tale

    The legend

    The Theban king Kamose tells his council that he cannot sit idle while an Asiatic ruler holds the north and a Nubian holds the south, with Egypt squeezed between. He sails north to attack the Hyksos and intercepts a letter from their king Apophis to the ruler of Kush, asking him to join the attack on Egypt.

    The rest is history

    The story is told on the Carnarvon Tablet and the Kamose Stele, written in the early sixteenth century BCE. Kamose says that the king of Kush at Kerma was in league with the Hyksos. His claim is plausible, because Kerma was then at its peak, and it held Egyptian forts in Lower Nubia such as Buhen. Kamose's own boasts are one-sided propaganda, and the letter's capture cannot be confirmed independently. His successor Ahmose expelled the Hyksos and then turned south, and the kingdom of Kerma fell to Egypt within a few reigns.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryKamose Stele and Carnarvon Tablet. Egyptian royal inscriptions, Seventeenth Dynasty, c. 1550 BCE. Translated in Simpson, ed., The Literature of Ancient Egypt, 2003.Kamose's account of Apophis's letter to Kush.
    2. BookSimpson, William Kelly, ed. The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, Stelae, Autobiographies, and Poetry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
    3. BookTörök, László. The Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan-Meroitic Civilization. Leiden: Brill, 1997.

  4. Harkhuf and the land of Yam

    Heroic tale

    The legend

    The Egyptian caravan leader Harkhuf travels south for the king and returns with three hundred donkeys loaded with incense, ebony, panther skins and ivory. He also brings back a dancing pygmy, and the boy-king Pepi II writes a delighted letter urging him to guard the dwarf carefully on the way.

    The rest is history

    The story is from Harkhuf's own tomb inscription at Aswan, carved in the Sixth Dynasty, around 2200 BCE. It is one of the earliest surviving Egyptian accounts of an expedition to the south. Yam was a southern land whose ruler, Harkhuf says, had gone to fight the Libyans (Tjemehu). Where Yam lay is debated. Many scholars place it somewhere in Upper Nubia, possibly near the later Kerma region, but the inscription does not settle the question. The tomb shows that Egypt and southern lands were trading and bargaining before Kerma became a kingdom.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryAutobiography of Harkhuf. Egyptian tomb inscription, Qubbet el-Hawa, Aswan, Sixth Dynasty, c. 2200 BCE. Translated in Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 1, 1973.Includes the text of Pepi II's letter.
    2. BookLichtheim, Miriam. Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume I: The Old and Middle Kingdoms. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.
    3. BookTörök, László. Between Two Worlds: The Frontier Region between Ancient Nubia and Egypt, 3700 BC-AD 500. Leiden: Brill, 2009.

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