An outline, era by era

Kingdom of Kush (Napata, later Meroë); Nok culture (Nigeria)

Iron Age · ~1200 – ~500 BCE

Kush was a kingdom on the Nile in what is now northern Sudan, south of Egypt. After centuries of Egyptian rule over Nubia in the New Kingdom, a Kushite state arose with its capital at Napata, near the Fourth Cataract and the sacred mountain of Jebel Barkal. Around 750 BCE its kings expanded into Egypt, and the 25th Dynasty, including Piye, Shabaka and Taharqa, ruled Egypt until the Assyrians drove it out in the 660s BCE. The Kushite kings then ruled from Napata, and later from Meroë, farther south, where iron working, a distinct script and a long-lived kingdom flourished into the early centuries CE.

The Nok culture flourished in central Nigeria, roughly from about 1500 BCE to the early centuries CE. It is known above all for its fine terracotta sculptures of human figures and animals, among the oldest large-scale figurative sculpture in sub-Saharan Africa. Excavations have also found evidence of early iron smelting, with dates from around the middle of the first millennium BCE, though how iron working began in West Africa is still debated. The two cultures were far apart and are not known to have been linked, but both show that complex societies and early ironworking developed in Africa south of the Sahara in the Iron Age.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. Piye and the horses of Memphis

    Heroic tale

    The legend

    Piye, king of Kush, hears that rival rulers in Egypt are seizing cities. He sails north with his army and takes city after city. At Memphis he storms the walls. Entering Hermopolis, he is angered to find that the besieged ruler has starved his horses, and he cares more about the horses than about the ruler's surrender. The Egyptian princes bow before him, and he refuses to enter the house of a king who has eaten fish.

    The rest is history

    This story comes from the Victory Stele of Piye, set up at Jebel Barkal and now in the Cairo Museum, which dates to about 728 BCE. It is a real royal inscription, written to present Piye as a pious and merciful conqueror, so it flatters him. It is nonetheless our best account of how the Kushites took control of Egypt. Piye then returned to Napata rather than staying, and his successors Shabaka and Taharqa held Egypt, with Taharqa fighting the Assyrians until Ashurbanipal's armies expelled the dynasty.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryVictory Stele of Piye. Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription, Jebel Barkal, c. 728 BCE. Egyptian Museum, Cairo (JE 48862).The king's own account of his conquest of Egypt.
    2. BookLichtheim, Miriam. Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume III: The Late Period. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.English translation of the stele.
    3. BookTörök, László. The Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan-Meroitic Civilization. Leiden: Brill, 1997.

  2. The Black Pharaohs

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Kush is often described as a forgotten African empire that suddenly conquered Egypt. In this telling its kings are called the Black Pharaohs, and Egypt's later history is sometimes said to have hidden them.

    The rest is history

    The Kushite kings did rule Egypt as the 25th Dynasty, from about 744 to 656 BCE, and they were not erased. They took the traditional pharaonic titles, restored temples at Karnak and elsewhere, and built pyramids at Nuri and El-Kurru, in a Nubian style. But Kush was not a sudden arrival. Nubia had been ruled by Egypt in the New Kingdom, and Kushite culture had absorbed Egyptian religion, especially worship of Amun, for centuries. Kush also outlasted Egypt's Late Period, for roughly a thousand years after the dynasty ended. Early European scholars often downplayed Kush, and modern excavation, such as George Reisner's work at El-Kurru and Nuri in the early 1900s, restored its history.

    Sources

    1. BookMorkot, Robert G. The Black Pharaohs: Egypt's Nubian Rulers. London: Rubicon Press, 2000.
    2. BookWelsby, Derek A. The Kingdom of Kush: The Napatan and Meroitic Empires. London: British Museum Press, 1996.
    3. BookTörök, László. The Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan-Meroitic Civilization. Leiden: Brill, 1997.

  3. Meroë, the great iron-making city

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Meroë is often called the Birmingham of ancient Africa, a city whose huge heaps of slag show that it made iron on an industrial scale and spread ironworking across the continent.

    The rest is history

    The comparison to Birmingham was made by the archaeologist A. H. Sayce in the early 1900s, after he saw the slag mounds at Meroë. Iron working there is real, and large slag heaps do survive. But later research found that iron smelting in the Nile valley was not older than elsewhere in Africa, and that Meroë was not the origin of African ironworking. Radiocarbon dates from places such as Nigeria and Niger-Chad suggest iron was being made independently or at similar times. Meroë's own importance lay in its royal pyramids, temples, and its Meroitic script, which can be read but whose language is still poorly understood.

    Sources

    1. BookShinnie, P. L. Meroe: A Civilization of the Sudan. London: Thames and Hudson, 1967.
    2. BookWelsby, Derek A. The Kingdom of Kush: The Napatan and Meroitic Empires. London: British Museum Press, 1996.

  4. The Nok heads and a lost civilization

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Tin miners in Nigeria in the 1940s dig up strange clay heads, and they are said to belong to a lost civilization that built an early African kingdom and taught iron working to its neighbours.

    The rest is history

    The first Nok terracotta was found in 1928 at Jemaa, in tin-mining country, and the archaeologist Bernard Fagg named the culture after the village of Nok in the 1940s. The figures are real and impressive, with elaborate hair and jewellery. But we know little about Nok society. It is not known that Nok formed a kingdom, and the claim that it taught ironworking to others is unproven. Recent German-led excavations from Goethe University Frankfurt have dated the sculptures to about 900 BCE to the first century CE and shown that the figures were mostly found in settlement refuse and not in graves. Looting has destroyed much context, which limits what can be said.

    Sources

    1. BookBreunig, Peter, ed. Nok: African Sculpture in Archaeological Context. Frankfurt: Africa Magna Verlag, 2014.
    2. BookFagg, Bernard. Nok Terracottas. Lagos: Ethnographica, for the Nigerian Museum, 1977.

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