About 1500 B.C.E., Egypt conquered the area above the cataracts known as Kush. The purposes of this expedition were to establish frontier forts to protect against the aggressive Nubians and to gain access to the gold of Kush. Egypt dominated the area for about 400 years, until the collapse of the New Kingdom. In the meantime, they introduced Egyptian civilization into Kush, and the Kushites found it attractive. By the 700s B.C.E., Kush had grown in power and invaded Egypt in turn. Starting about 725 B.C.E., Kushites conquered Thebes and Memphis, establishing themselves as rulers of Egypt and beginning the Twenty-fifth Dynasty. Their occupation was relatively short-lived, thanks to the Assyrians who invaded in 664 B.C.E. and forced the Kushites to return home, behind the protective barriers of the Nile cataracts.

Nubia was lost to Egypt about 1080 BC after a civil war between its viceroy (titled “The King’s Son of Kush”) and the Libyan-connected High Priest of Amun at Thebes. The later partly-Egyptianised Kings of Kush adopted many of the trappings of Egyptian kingship and were fanatically devoted to the Egyptian religion. When the Libyan Pharaoh Tefnakht attempted to extend his control to southern Egypt, till then ruled by the priests of Amun as vassals of Kush, the Kushite King Piye retaliated by sending a crusading army down the Nile in 730 BC to restore the decadent northerners to godliness, defeated their combined armies and became Pharaoh of Egypt as far north as Thebes. His successor Shabaqo finished them off in 712 and extended the dynasty’s rule to the whole of Egypt. A series of wars with Assyria for control of Syria followed, with eventual defeat for the Kushites, who were driven right out of Egypt in 664 BC, but continued to rule in the Sudan, moving their capital south to Meroe circa 593 BC to found the Kingdom of Meroe. Assyrian depictions of Kushite troops show charioteers, archers, and infantry with pairs of javelins and smallish round shields. The few armoured infantry are probably officers. Nubian royal monuments show large numbers of ridden horses.

Though no longer a major factor in Egyptian history, the Kushites established a strong civilization along Egyptian lines. They copied Egyptian religion and government, and built temples and tombs heavily influenced by Egyptian architecture. Their capital at Napata, just south of the fourth cataract, was a major religious center for the worship of Amonre. When a later Egyptian ruler raided into Kush with the aid of Greek mercenaries, the capital was moved from Napata to Meroe, which became not only the political but the mercantile center of the Kushite Empire. In the few centuries prior to the Christian era, a succession of kings established their control over outlying areas and peoples, and recorded these exploits on inscribed memorials.

Kush reached the height of its civilization at the beginning of the Christian era, when a series of military encounters with Roman forces in Egypt brought about a treaty establishing exact borders between the two powers. By this time, Meroe was the major supply center for gold as well as precious and semiprecious stones from the interior of Africa to the Mediterranean world. The profits from this trade translated into elaborate buildings and artwork. Kush made a name for itself throughout the known world, and references and artistic depictions of them spread widely. Indeed, it is from the Greeks that the name for the peoples of this area comes: Ethiopians, or “men with burnt faces.” Kush was the first essentially Negroid nation to reach a powerful status. They were the first Africans to mine and smelt iron; that, in addition to their ability to buy horses, gave them a better armed, more mobile army than any of their neighbors.

Kush eventually fell owing to circumstances beyond its control. The area the Kushites controlled was fertile enough to support extensive agriculture and flocks at the time, but today it is almost totally desert. Historians hypothesize that overgrazing and a shift in weather patterns began to rob the land of its fertility, making it impossible to support the population. Also, the trade routes Meroe controlled along the Nile began to fall from favor after easier, seagoing trade established itself along the Red Sea coast. This lack of income, coupled with decreasing arable land, spelled the Kushites’ doom, and they fell easy prey to Axum about 350 C.E. For 2,000 years, Kush had been virtually the only point of contact between Africa’s interior and the civilizations of the Middle East. Almost nothing is known of their posterity, though legends relate that the ruling families traveled west into the Sudan and were instrumental in establishing nations in central Africa.

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