Along the Nile River, in what is now northern Sudan,
lay the ancient civilization of Kush.
Though they were once conquered by a powerful neighbor,
the kings and queens of Kush would go on to successfully challenge
two of the most dominant empires in history.
From 1500 to 1100 BCE, Egypt controlled Kush,
introducing many Egyptian cultural and religious practices.
The civilization of Kush was more than a thousand years old at that time.
Its early capital city at Kerma had impressive temples, palaces, and houses,
including a massive mudbrick temple structure that had a chapel deep inside,
reached by a long staircase at the center.
Rich gold mines helped the Kushites build a flourishing commercial network,
making bronze weapons and tools and trading materials like incense,
animal skins, ivory, and ebony wood from sub-Saharan Africa.
The tide started to change for Kush as Egypt descended into civil war.
By 750 BCE, Egypt was divided into local kingdoms with fluctuating alliances.
The Kushite king Piankhy saw an opportunity.
He led his navy, flanked by horsemen and archers,
up the Nile to the gateway city of Khemenu.
As Piankhy’s army constructed siege ramps and battle towers,
the city’s ruler sent his wives and daughters to negotiate—
not with Piankhy, but with the women of his royal household,
later known as kandake,
who were extremely influential in military affairs and political succession.
At the end of a long siege, Piankhy entered the conquered city
and bitterly criticized the conditions in its stables.
From there, Piankhy and the Kushite forces
conquered the Egyptian capital of Memphis.
Piankhy installed his sister, Amunirdis, as priestess of the great god Amun,
in the Egyptian city of Thebes,
and left other Kushite officials there before returning to live in Kush.
His successors extended control all the way to the Nile Delta.
This was a high point for the Empire of Kush:
trade thrived, and they built magnificent temples,
palaces, and pyramid tombs all along the Nile.
But the Assyrian army was approaching Egypt in its annual campaigns.
When the Assyrians began to encroach on trade routes near Jerusalem,
the Kushite king Taharqo moved to stop them.
The Assyrians defeated him with the help of some rebelling Egyptian princes,
and drove him out of Egypt in the 7th century BCE.
The Kushites continued to rule in their homeland for nearly 1,000 years
that were prosperous and innovative.
They moved their capital farther south to the city of Meroe,
where they built temples to a new god called Apedemak.
They built new cities in the savannah south of the Sahara Desert,
some of which contained huge reservoirs for water.
When the Roman Empire conquered Egypt in 31 BCE,
Kushite armies again traveled north, led by Queen Amanirenas.
She led them to success in battle against the Romans,
capturing the bronze head of a statue of the Roman emperor Augustus,
and bringing it back to Kush.
They buried it under the doorway of a temple in the capital,
so that worshippers would step on it as they crossed the threshold.
After brokering peace with the Romans, Kush continued to prosper.
Over time, however, groups of people called the Noba raided from the west,
and trade routes were disrupted by the rising kingdom of Aksum.
Around 350 CE, the Aksumite king sacked Meroe,
effectively bringing Kushite rule to an end.
Since then, some have argued that Kush’s history has been overlooked
by generations of European and American scholars
who promoted the idea that Egypt was part of the origin of Western civilization,
while Kush, as an African culture, was excluded.
Today, there’s still much to learn about Kush—
including a writing system we haven’t deciphered fully.