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The Ancient Kingdom Of Kush (Sudan)

ramonmercado

ramonmercado

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Ancient Gold Center Discovered on the Nile
Dan Morrison in Merowe, Sudan
for National Geographic News

June 18, 2007
Evidence of large-scale gold extraction in the ancient Nubian kingdom of Kush has been found along the Nile River, archaeologists announced today.

The discovery is part of a race to save as many antiquities as possible before a dam inundates a hundred-mile (160-kilometer) stretch of the Nile in northern Sudan.

The presence of gold in the African region "may have been one of the main reasons for the colonization of Sudan by the ancient Egyptians," said Salah Mohammed Ahmed, the head of Sudan's antiquities agency.

Spreading out from the Nile, ancient Nubia followed the river from southern Egypt deep into what is now northern Sudan (Africa map). In the time of the pharaohs, Nubian lands were the subject of numerous incursions from the north by the Egyptians.

Renowned for Gold

Archaeologists from the University of Chicago found more than 55 grinding stones at Hosh el-Geruf, about 225 miles (362 kilometers) north of the Sudanese capital of Khartoum (Sudan map).

Date from between 2,000 and 1,500 B.C., the stones were used to grind ore, the team said. The ore then would have been washed with water to tease out gold flakes.

"Nubia was renowned for its gold deposits," said Geoff Emberling, a leader of the expedition.

After Egypt's New Kingdom (1539 to 1075 B.C.) conquered the southern Nubian kingdom of Kush, "they took in tribute hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds of gold each year."

The first recorded kingdom in sub-Saharan Africa, Kush was one of the first civilizations to take hold in the Nile River Valley.

The kingdom "was unusual in that it was able to use the tools of power—military and governance—without having a system of writing, an extensive bureaucracy, or numerous urban centers," Emberling said.

Before the Deluge, a Flood of Finds?

The new discovery is part of an international effort to salvage artifacts before the Merowe Dam creates a 108-mile-long (174-kilometer-long) reservoir south of an area of rapids known as the Fourth Cataract.

The inundation is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2008. It may be delayed, though, because members of a river tribe, the Manasir, have refused to be moved to an agricultural site off the river.

Some Manasir leaders charge that the archaeological effort provides political cover for the construction of the dam, and they have banned salvage efforts in their territory.

When Emberling's group arrived in Sudan in January, Manasir representatives told them to find a new dig—the site they'd planned to work at was off-limits.

"They were very firm in their stand. We had to go to Plan B," said Emberling, whose research was funded in part by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.)

The project was saved when Henryk Paner—director of a team from Gdansk, Poland's Archaeological Museum—invited Emberling's team to work on one of the Polish sites, just outside Manasir territory.

(Related: "Four Killed Over Nile Dam Project That Threatens Nubian Towns" [June 15, 2007].)

More Finds Nearby

One of the biggest surprises of the expedition was the discovery, in a cemetery at a nearby site called Al-Widay, of jars and tulip-shaped beakers from the Kushite capital of Kerma.

The Kerma artifacts suggest that Kushite leaders were able to project their control more than a hundred miles (160 kilometers) farther up the Nile than previously thought, Ahmed said.

Archaeologists will only be able to excavate a fraction of the estimated 2,500 sites in the area before the flooding begins.

Ahmed, of Sudan's antiquities agency, said that past archaeological efforts had illuminated the lives and funerary practices of Kushite elites. But recent digs have also shed light on rural life in those civilizations.

"It's very important to see the other face of the coin," he said.

Archaeologist Emberling added, "Studying Kush helps scholars have a better idea of what statehood meant in an ancient context outside such established power centers of Egypt and Mesopotamia."
Click to expand...

news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... -nile.html
Link is dead. The first portion of the story (only) can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2008031...raphic.com/news/2007/06/060719-gold-nile.html
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The inundation is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2008. It may be delayed, though, because members of a river tribe, the Manasir, have refused to be moved to an agricultural site off the river.

Some Manasir leaders charge that the archaeological effort provides political cover for the construction of the dam, and they have banned salvage efforts in their territory.

When Emberling's group arrived in Sudan in January, Manasir representatives told them to find a new dig—the site they'd planned to work at was off-limits.

"They were very firm in their stand. We had to go to Plan B," said Emberling, whose research was funded in part by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration.
Click to expand...

You'd think it would work the other way 'round, since a really major world-class archaeological discovery might delay the dam for months, years or even decades.
 
By Sorin Furcoi at Al Jazeera
This article is mainly some very impressive photos.
The Nubian Meroe pyramids, much smaller but just as impressive as the more famous Egyptian ones, are found on the east bank of the Nile river, near a group of villages called Bagrawiyah. The pyramids get their name from the ancient city of Meroe, the capital of the Kingdom of Kush, an ancient African kingdom situated in what is now the Republic of Sudan.

Around 1000 BCE, after the fall of the 24th Egyptian dynasty, the Nubian Kingdom of Kush arose as the leading power in the middle Nile region. The Kushite kings took over and ruled much of Egypt from 712 to 657 BCE. In 300 BCE, when the capital and royal burial ground of the kingdom moved to the Meroe region, the pharaonic tradition of building pyramids to encapsulate the tombs of rulers continued here.
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A new Smithsonian Magazine article provides an overview of the history and notable achievements of the Kush kingdom.
IN THE LAND OF KUSH

A dazzling civilization flourished in Sudan nearly 5,000 years ago. Why was it forgotten? ...

... Kerma, which dated to as early as 3000 B.C., was the first capital of a powerful indigenous kingdom that expanded to encompass the land between the first cataract of the Nile in the north and the fourth cataract in the south. The kingdom rivaled and at times overtook Egypt. This first Kushite kingdom traded in ivory, gold, bronze, ebony and slaves with neighboring states such as Egypt and ancient Punt, along the Red Sea to the east, and it became famous for its blue glazed pottery and finely polished, tulip-shaped red-brown ceramics. ...

Around 1500 B.C., Egypt’s pharaohs marched south along the Nile and, after conquering Kerma, established forts and temples, bringing Egyptian culture and religion into Nubia. ...

Egyptian rule prevailed in Kush until the 11th century B.C. As Egypt retreated, its empire weakening, a new dynasty of Kushite kings rose in the city of Napata, about 120 miles southeast of Kerma, and asserted itself as the rightful inheritor and protector of ancient Egyptian religion. Piye, Napata’s third king, known more commonly in Sudan as Piankhi, marched north with an army that included horsemen and skilled archers and naval forces that sailed north on the Nile. Defeating a coalition of Egyptian princes, Piye established Egypt’s 25th Dynasty, whose kings are commonly known as the Black Pharaohs. Piye recorded his victory in a 159-line inscription in Middle Egyptian hieroglyphics on a stele of dark gray granite preserved today in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. He then returned to Napata to rule his newly expanded kingdom, where he revived the Egyptian tradition, which had been dormant for centuries, of entombing kings in pyramids, at a site called El-Kurru. ...

For years, Kush’s history and contributions to world civilization were largely ignored. Early European archaeologists were unable to see it as more than a reflection of Egypt. Political instability, neglect and underdevelopment in Sudan prevented adequate research into the country’s ancient history. Yet the legacy of Kush is important because of its distinctive cultural achievements and civilization: it had its own language and script; an economy based on trade and skilled work; a well-known expertise in archery; an agricultural model that allowed for raising cattle; and a distinctive cuisine featuring foods that reflected the local environment, such as milk, millet and dates. It was a society organized differently from its neighbors in Egypt, the Levant and Mesopotamia, with unique city planning and powerful female royals. “At its height, the Kingdom of Kush was a dominant regional power,” says Zeinab Badawi, a distinguished British-Sudanese journalist whose documentary series “The History of Africa” aired on the BBC earlier this year. Kush’s surviving archaeological remains “reveal a fascinating and uncelebrated ancient people the world has forgotten.”
Click to expand...

FULL STORY: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/trav...oe-ancient-civilization-overlooked-180975498/
 
First built before the rise of Kush .

A smattering of ancient rock walls along the river Nile in Sudan appear to represent the oldest known hydraulics system of their kind.

New findings suggest people living in the ancient empire of Nubia in northern Sudan were manipulating the river to their advantage as far back as 3,000 years ago.

River 'groynes' are rigid structures, laid perpendicular to a shore or bank, that humans still use to this day to manipulate the flow of water and silt. They're highly useful, and farmers and boaters along the Nile have known that for much longer than we ever knew.


The Yellow River in China used to have the oldest known groynes in the world. But not anymore.


Researchers in Australia and the United Kingdom have found evidence that Nubians were using groynes 2,500 years before farmers in China were doing the same. Using satellite data, local surveys, and previous studies, the team revealed hundreds of groynes that still stand in Sudan to this day. Some are buried under the waters of the Nile, while others stand on ancient riverbeds that have long since dried out.


Their shape, orientation, and size say a lot about their possible purposes. Researchers suspect they were used to trap fertile silt, to irrigate land, to limit bank erosion, to defend against seasonal floods, to create optimal fishing pools, or to stop winds of sand from smothering crops.

Groyne Walls


Examples of different groynes found in Sudanese Nubia. (Dalton et al., Geoarchaeology, 2023)

The system is so effective, it's actually still employed by locals, although not in the same spots. Climate changes over the past three millennia have significantly altered the flow of the Nile in this region.

"From speaking with farmers in Sudanese Nubia, we also learned that river groynes continued to be built as recently as the 1970s, and that the land formed by some walls is still cultivated today," says archaeologist Matthew Dalton from the University of Western Australia.

https://www.sciencealert.com/ancien...-nile-is-oldest-hydraulics-system-of-its-kind
 
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