The ancient Nubians – Universal History

The ancient Nubians lived in a region of northeast Africa which lies south of present-day Egypt and north of present-day Sudan. Nubia was bordered on the west by the Nile and the Sahara desert, and on the east by the Red Sea, an area that is now the Nubian desert.
The black-skinned kingdom of the Nubians was invaded around 1920 BC, when King Senuseret of Egypt sent his armies up the Nile. The Egyptians called this region Kush and for them it was an important source of valuable metals and minerals, especially gold. For hundreds of years there were reciprocal raids between the two kingdoms, and the Kushites managed to capture some Egyptian treasures, which they brought back to their capital, Kerma, near the third cataract of the Nile, in present-day Sudan.
Back then Kush was a powerful state, ruled by kings who lived in luxury. Evidence of this was discovered at the beginning of the 20th century, when the American archaeologist George Reisner found a castle-like structure and a royal cemetery with many burial mounds, containing the skeletons of people and sacrificed animals. Kings were found buried in larger tombs. The sovereign’s body rested on a bed in a small room; near it were found the skeletons of hundreds of men, women and children, all of them buried next to the sovereign as a sacrifice. Historians believe that they were buried alive.
The Kushites adopted some of the religious and artistic customs of the Egyptians. Then, around 740 BC, the Kushite king Piankhi succeeded in conquering Egypt itself. The Kushites founded the Egyptian 25th Dynasty, but their rule did not last long. About 654 BC they had to retreat to the south pushed by the Assyrians. They were forced to locate their capital much further south, at Napata, near the fourth cataract of the Nile. Around this time the Kushites adopted Egyptian as their official language and began building pyramids as royal tombs, just as the ancients had done. Egyptians many hundreds of years before.

The Kingdom of Meroe of the Nubians

But perhaps Napata was too close to Egypt, for in 590 BC the Kushites moved their capital again, this time to Meroe, between the fifth and sixth cataracts. His smaller kingdom flourished again, free of Egyptian influence. The Kushites found iron ore, which they melted down to create iron tools and weapons (this may have been where the practice of iron smelting began in ancient Africa).
Meroe and Napata were linked by an old caravan route. At Meroe, the Kushites built a royal palace of brick and stone, as well as a river dock and many stepped pyramids. These pyramids were built on top of the tombs and were much smaller and steeper than their Egyptian counterparts. But unfortunately some 19th century explorers removed the tops of many of them in their vain and headlong search for hidden treasures. The Meroeans also built temples to the sacred Egyptian bull Apis and the goddess Isis, who represented to them the feminine force of nature. Another temple was also dedicated to a deity that was distinctly African and seems to have been worshiped only by the Meroeans, the lion god Apedemak.
Gradually, the Meroeans became less influenced by Egypt: they created new artistic and architectural styles, used their own language, and developed their own alphabet and writing system based on Pharaonic hieroglyphs. Meroitic signs appear on stone stelae, but specialists have not yet been able to fully decipher them. Meroean merchants traded their fine iron products both in the Mediterranean region and in Asia. Farmers from outside the city channeled water from the nearby Nile and used oxen-driven waterwheels to bring the water to their fields. They grew cotton and other products; they also raised cattle.

In 45 BC, Amanishakhete became the queen of the Kushite Meroe, increasing, like his successors, contact with Egypt. However, in 30 BC, the great Egyptian kingdom fell to Rome, and seven years later the Roman prefect Petronius led an expedition to the region of Meroe. The Romans captured several cities and destroyed Napata. They soon withdrew to the north, but thereafter the power and wealth of Meroe slowly declined. It is possible that the decline had to do with a decrease in harvests; the land may have been devoid of trees and over-exploited, so desert took over the region. In the third century, nomads from the Arabian desert moved here, and then, around AD 350, forces from the powerful kingdom of Aksum destroyed Meroe itself.

The rise of Aksum

The city of Aksum was located 600 kilometers southeast of Meroe, in the northern mountains of present-day Ethiopia. The mountainous kingdom that surrounded the city was located between the Blue Nile and the Red Sea, occupying parts of present-day Eritrea, Djibouti, and Sudan. By the first century AD, the people who inhabited this region had become a major trading power. They used the Red Sea port of Adulis for trade with the Roman Empire, Arabia, and India. The conquest of Meroe gave the Aksumites greater control over the Nile Valley trade routes.
Around the same time as the conquest of Meroe, King Ezana of Aksum converted to Christianity. His kingdom became an ally of the Eastern Roman Empire, administered from Constantinople. Over the following centuries, Aksum increased his power and conquered part of Arabia. The monuments of the capital, its churches and its 20,000 inhabitants were maintained with the taxes paid by both the conquered territories and its own successful merchants. However, after the Persian conquest of Arabia in AD 575, it became difficult for the Aksumites to trade along the Red Sea. In the seventh century, Muslim Arabs conquered the Persians, destroyed the Aksumite fleet, and cut them off from the rest of the Christian world. The Aksumites could no longer compete with Muslim power, and by AD 1000 their civilization had lost all its power.

Aksum stelae

Aksum is famous for its gigantic granite stelae – ancient pillars with carved inscriptions that look like stylized skyscrapers. The monuments date from before the fourth century AD and their engravings contain scenes including Aksumite limestone, mud and wooden buildings, similar to those still to be seen in the highland villages of northern Ethiopia.
The tallest of the stela still standing is 21 meters high. Some of the stelae may have been even taller, but now they lie broken on the ground.
Historians are not sure what their purpose was, but believe they marked Aksumite royal tombs. In the 1970s, archaeologists found a series of tombs beneath the stelae, some eight meters deep.
One of the largest stelae was brought to their country by the Italians in the 1930s, during their occupation of Ethiopia as part of Italian East Africa. This ancient Aksumite monument stands today near the Arch of Constantine in Rome.