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European authors contemporary to Ancient Nubia were well aware of its existence – the Greeks called the entire area south of Egypt, regardless of culture, “Ethiopia” (“the land of those burned by the sun”). Herodotus, Diodorus, Strabo, Cassius Dio and Pliny all described it, and it even gets a mention in the Bible:”… and lo, a man from the land of the Moors, a Chamberlain and high official of the Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians [Meroë], who was in charge of her Treasury, had come to Jerusalem to worship.” [Acts 8:27]. Later, numerous Church authors reported on the Christianisation of the Sudan in the 6^th century; of particular importance are the works of John of Ephesus.

In more modern times, James Bruce was the first to recognise Ancient Meroë in the pyramid field of Begrawiyah in 1722. When Mohammed Ali sent his troops into the Sudan in pursuit of the last of the Mameluks in 1821 – and conquered the Funji Sultanate of Sennar in the process – European adventurers among the soldiers were curious about the ruins and wrote the first reports about them, sparking more interest in Ancient Nubia.

The most prominent of these pioneers in archaeology is French naturalist Frédéric Cailliaud whose work, published in 1826, remains indispensable today, as it documents both in writing and sketches many sites that are now destroyed. Linant de Bellefonds, Waddington, Hanbury and Hoskins as well as Lord von Prudhoe all travelled the Sudan at the same period and published their experiences. Giuseppe Ferlini, a military doctor from Bologna, came to Meroë in 1834 where he discovered the treasure of the Meroitic queen Amanishakheto.

The history of the cultures of the Ancient Sudan forces us to reconsider the traditionally-held views on the history of the Nile Valley, which historically focuses mostly on Ancient Egypt. Nubia, the area between the First Cataract in the North and Khartoum in the South, encompassing southern Egypt and northern Sudan, has always stood in the shadow of the Pharaonic Kingdom, which had in fact conquered Nubia several times. It was the gold deposits in the Nubian desert that made the land so attractive to its powerful northern neighbour.

The Egyptians generally called the land “Kush” and – in the official records at least – tended to look down on their southern neighbours. One important reason for this was the fact that the Nubian cultures did not have a writing system. Despite knowing about the Egyptian writing system, it wasn’t until the 2^nd century BC that they eventually invented their own script. There seems to have been no need for one before – they simply used Egyptian hieroglyphs if they needed to communicate in written form.

The fate of being considered second-rate has affected Nubia again much more recently: Egyptology, traditionally a philologically-centred subject, tended to parrot the views of the Ancient Egyptians, according only a cursory interest to the cultures of the Ancient Sudan. The individuality of their culture was considered minimal or entirely overlooked; even the influences of Black culture on Egypt itself has barely been the object of scientific research.

Recent excavations have shown that the prehistorical cultures of the Sudan are much older than those of Egypt; high-quality pottery was being made in the Sudan several millennia before Egyptian ceramic production began. However, until recently, examples of this high-quality ware, used as funerary offerings, were not well-known among scholars. In the area of pottery, Nubia would remain superior to Egypt throughout its ancient history.

At the beginning, we have the Khartoum Neolithic culture, often named after its main site Shaheynab, south of the Sixth Cataract. Finds reach back to the 6^th millennium BC. Other important sites are Early Neolithic Kadero (5^th millennium BC) at the northern edge of the city of Khartoum, joined in the first half of the 4^th millennium BC by el-Kadada in the area around Shendi, about 180 km down the Nile. In parallel, research has concentrated in the past few years on Kadruka below the Third Cataract. In 2006, in the area just around Kerma, potsherds were found at el-Barga that have been dated to the Late Palaeolithic Period – the 10^th to 9^th millennium BC.

Most finds come from tombs in extensive necropolises. The way the tombs are arranged often gives insight into the social structure of these Neolithic cultures. For the first time, tombs are round – this would remain a characteristic element of Nubian funerary culture for the next two thousand years. Pottery, weapons and tools have all survived, as have early examples of sculpture, already quite advanced. The figures are all female with exaggerated secondary sexual features. A corpus of recently-discovered idols, now in the National Museum of Khartoum, is the largest find of statuettes to date.

The names for the Nubian cultures currently in use hark back to American Egyptologist George Reisner, who excavated many sites along the Nile at the beginning of the 20^th century. A-Group sites are concentrated in the area between the First and Second Cataracts. Their historical development is divided into three stages: Early (3700-3250 BC), Classic (3250-3150 BC) and Late A-Group (3150-2800 BC).

The A-Group culture at first parallels the prehistorical Naqada cultures of Egypt, with whom they engaged in a lively trade. This is evident from finds of typical Egyptian pottery – such as cylindrical vases with a painted net pattern – brought into A-Group land as imports and then deposited in Nubian tombs as funerary offerings. The A-Group’s territory lay along a trade route channelling wares from central Africa and the Red Sea (such as ivory, ebony, incense, skins and, for the first time, gold) into Egypt and beyond.

As Egypt increasingly turned its attention southwards over the course of the Early Dynastic Period, the A-Group seems to have slowly lost control over this trade, as Egyptian goods they would have received in exchange such as pottery, weapons and tools are missing from tombs of that period. The slow depopulation of Nubia starting around 2800 BC may have been a result of climatic changes; Reisner’s B-Group culture, dating to that period, has since been recognised as an impoverished A-Group rather than a separate culture.

The Egyptian view of the world revolved around the concept of “Maat”: justice and world order. To reach and uphold the state of Maat was the main responsibility of the Egyptian king. This included the destruction of chaos, symbolised by foreign enemies. While the position of northern enemies could be cast differently (Syrian, Mitanni, Hittites), the southern enemy was always the same: the Nubian.

Nubians not only appeared in the traditional motif of the “Destruction of Enemies”; the subjugation theme also appeared on various smaller objects showing bound Nubians: on figurative handles, sandals, vessels or wall or floor tiles of faience used to decorate the throne room of royal palaces. One common trope was the depiction of a bound Nubian in the shape of a “city ring”: the lower body was formed by the oval of a wall fortification, in which the name of a subjugated city or region was inscribed.

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The imposing Egyptian fortresses built on the Second Cataract during the Middle Kingdom were a rampart against a military power that had arisen during the First Intermediate Period: Kerma, the first of the Ancient Sudanese Kingdoms. Its influence stretched from the Second Cataract up to the Fourth Cataract, with its capital near the Third Cataract. In the Second Intermediate Period, Lower Nubia was also part of its territory for a time. Precursors to this culture can be documented as early as 3000 BC (Pre-Kerma culture).

The huge tumulus tombs of the Kerma kings (up to 70m or over 220 ft in diameter) have yielded rich grave goods that underline the individuality of this culture. Among them, figurative applications made of paper-thin mica. According to Nubian tradition, the kings were buried on wooden beds. The tradition of servant burials – with up to 400 people accompanying their ruler in death – can occasionally be observed in C-Group cemeteries as well. A large number of oxhorns (bucrania) ringing some of the tumuli suggest that owning cattle was a sign of wealth.

The Deffufas, were monumental cultic buildings: massive blocks of mudbrick with slim passages and columned rooms inside, their walls decorated with paintings. Large-format wall inlays of faience illustrate the high standard of Kerma technology.

When Egypt was forced to retreat from Nubia at the end of the New Kingdom (ca. 1100 BC), the resulting power vacuum in the region gave rise to a new Nubian culture, which would soon expand northwards. The Kingdom of Napata, with its capital at the Gebel Barkal (the “Holy Mountain”) was the first and only Nubian culture to have conquered Egypt and ruled it for just over a century (750-656 BC). This period is designated in Egypt as the 25^th Dynasty – the Kushites, as they were called, ruled as Black Pharaohs. In 725 BC, King Piye conquered Egypt down to the Delta.

The God’s Wives of Amun played an important role in the transfer of power. The God’s Wife was a priestly rank reserved for women which, over the course of the Third Intermediate Period, had acquired a rising political function as well. The title was passed on through adoption; the Kushite king Piye had ensured that his sister Amenirdis was adopted by the sitting Egyptian God’s Wife of Amun. The quality of the statuary of these Nubian royal princesses demonstrates the priestess’s secular power; they basically ruled Egypt as regents for the Kushite kings.

“Year 8, Month 1 of the Flood Season, day 9 under the Horus, the Strong Bull beloved of the Ennead, He Who Has Appeared in Napata, the Lord of the Crowns, the Son of Re, Nastasen, the bull who tramples his enemies under his soles, the great mauling lion, the fortifier of all lands, the son of Amun with a strong arm who expands all lands, the son of the gods. […] As I was in Meroë, my father, Amun of Napata, called to me: “Come!” I set forth… [to Napata]. I overheard travellers saying: “He is in the capital of all lands.” I set forth and soon reached Teka, the Great Lion, the garden from which the Kings Piye and Alara sprouted. Then all the people came out to me from the Temple of Amun in Napata and the cities, all of them high-ranking nobles. They spoke with me and said: “Amun of Napata, your great father, has put the dominion of Nubia at your feet.” Everone asked: “When did he land?” […] I mounted large horses and reached the great temple. All of the nobles and priests of Amun threw themselves down before me. Every mouth praised me. I told Amun of Napata, my father, everything that weighed on my heart. He listened to my speech. My father, Amun of Napata, gave me the kingship of Nubia, the crown of King Harsiotef and the power of Kings Piye and Alara.

For thousands of years, the Nubian cultures did not see the need to develop writing systems for their various languages; they remained illiterate. Yet, through their near-constant contact with Egypt, it was obvious that they were aware of the many ways writing could be of use; and in some cases they even used the Egyptian script and language for their own monuments. But it isn’t until the 2^nd century BC that written monuments appear in the Kingdom of Meroë documenting the indigenous language with its very own writing.

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After its slow dissolution (starting around 350 AD), three cultural centres became established in the area that once belonged to the Kingdom of Meroë. They are named after their most important necropolises; from north to south, they are: Ballana, between the First and Third Cataracts, Tanqasi with its centre in the Gebel Barkal area and finally the Late Meroitic culture of el-Hobagi on the Sixth Cataract.

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