Egypt and Nubia

Two recent documentaries promote a “Black Pharaohs” theme in which Kushite rulers overthrew the superior Egyptians and ruled Egypt (25th dynasty), but the Egyptians later erased their reign from history. This narrative undergirds “The Rise of the Black Pharaohs” produced by National Geographic and “Lost Kingdom of the Black Pharaohs” by the Science Channel. This article argues that these documentaries employ the principle of presentism--the imposition of current perspectives and attitudes--to depict and interpret past events. The two documentaries highlight the fascinating archaeological finds in the Nile Valley while also resurrecting the now-discredited views on race and Egyptian- Kushite interactions during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The earliest Egyptologists (e.g., Petrie, Smith, Reisner) advance the theory that dynastic Egypt emerged from the migration of a white race into the Nile valley, bringing the elements of civilization superior to that of the indigenous blacks. While these documentaries condemn Reisner’s racist views on Kush, they largely accept this theory on Egypt’s origins and transfer this thinking onto the ancient Egyptians. These documentaries ignore the archaeological evidence showing that Egypt and Kush have shared origins,, and that Ancient Egyptian Civilization arose from a Pastoral Neolithic cattle-based culture encompassing present-day Sudan up to Middle Egypt. Presentism in the documentaries uses current racial constructs to interpret Egyptian–Kushite interactions. For example, the oppressive relationship between the colonizer and colonized that characterized European colonialism over the past five hundred years was assumed to apply to Ancient Egypt during its colonization of Kush. This review article highlights archaeological findings that challenge these views of Egyptian-Kushite relationships. Examples of Kushite influences on Egyptian cosmology are presented to demonstrate millennia of cultural exchange between the two. I argue that  Ancient Egyptians did not think of “race,” as illustrated in these documentaries. The pharaohs from earlier dynasties shared phenotypic features with Kushites, considered “Black” by current Eurocentric criteria.

The article discusses an assemblage of pottery recovered from unit B.I.41, a room in the palatial building B.I excavated on the citadel of Dongola in the 2011 and 2012 seasons. Exploration started with the fill of the room, followed by the fill of structures belonging to an earlier building below it. A well dated sequence of layers from the 6th through 7th centuries was identified. The pottery assemblage proved to be very abundant, composed of table vessels, cooking pots, storage and transport containers; the lattermost group included imported examples, mainly from Egypt. Most of the finds represented Dongolan ceramic production from the period in question.

In this paper, I interprete the C-Group people’s response to the shifting political climate during the Middle Kingdom and the Second Intermediate Period with special reference to the shifting relationships to Kush in Upper Nubia and the Theban dynasty in Upper Egypt. Furthermore, I clarify two common misunderstandings of the relationship between the C-Group people and their neighbors: 1) that the trade between the Egyptians and the C-Group people ceased during the Middle Kingdom, and 2) that the Kushites occupied Lower Nubia during the Second Intermediate Period.

Archaeological fieldwork in the Kushite temple in Soniyat (Tergis 40) was conducted from 1997 to 2001 with an additional short season in 2013. A team supervised by Bogdan Żurawski returned to the site in 2016 to continue the excavation of the southern section of the complex. Remains of substantial mud-brick architecture were discovered together with large quantities of small finds (potsherds and objects made of metal, stone and faience) and faunal remains. A compact layer of Nile alluvial deposits, about 0.10 m thick, covering the remains represented evidence most probably of a flood. A single stone column was visible at that level. The spatial distribution of the discovered architectural features matches the temple orientation; they can be interpreted as the remains of a pylon with an entrance flanked by columns.

The medieval monastery at Ghazali in Sudan is one of the best preserved archaeological sites in the country. A new project of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw, and the National Corporation of Antiquities and Museums of Sudan revisited the ruins with a site presentation project coupled with excavation geared to bringing out a final publication of the remains, which are of utmost importance for studies of medieval Nubian history. Site surveying (including geophysics) and mapping occupied most of the short season in 2012.

A brief overview and revision of the process of Egyptianisation in relation to the Pan-Grave Culture in Egypt and its "disappearance" from the archaeological record. The paper demonstrates that Egyptianisation played a less significant role than previously thought in the "disappearance" of the Pan Grave Culture. The paper also discusses the connections between Egypt and the Pan Grave population resident in Egypt.

This book illustrates the state-of-the-art in settlement archaeology in Northeast Africa. As reflected in the title “From Microcosm to Macrocosm: Individual households and cities in Ancient Egypt and Nubia”, both a micro- approach introducing microhistories of individual sites according to recent archaeological fieldwork incorporating interdisciplinary methods as well as general patterns and regional developments in Northeast Africa are discussed.
This combination of research questions on the micro-level with the macro-level provides new information about cities and households in Ancient Egypt and Nubia and makes the book unique. Architectural studies as well as analyses of material culture and the new application of microarchaeology, here especially of micromorphology and archaeometric applications, are presented as case studies from sites primarily dating to the New Kingdom (Second Millennium BC). The rich potential of well-preserved but still not completely explored sites in modern Sudan, especially as direct comparison for already excavated sites located in Egypt, is in particular emphasised in the book.
Settlement archaeology in Egypt and Nubia has recently moved away from a strong textual approach and generalised studies to a more site-specific approach and household studies. This new bottom-up approach applied by current fieldwork projects is demonstrated in the book. The volume is intended for all specialists at settlements sites in Northeast Africa, for students of Egyptology and Nubian Studies, but it will be of interest to anyone working in the field of settlement archaeology. It is the result of a conference on the same subject held in 2017 as the closing event of the European Research Council funded project AcrossBorders at Munich.

Since I did not possess an official PDF-file, the following text is a reconstruction of the published article, on the basis of my original text in MS Word. There may be some minor alterations in typeface and spacing, but since all words are on their original pages, this text can be used for reference purposes.

Abstract
The purpose of this article is to reevaluate the Assyrian attempts to conquer Egypt in the days of Taharqa, King of Kush (690-664 B.C.) during the reigns of Esarhaddon (681-669 B.C.) and Ashurbanipal (669 - ca. 630 B.C.) kings of Assyria. The historical backbone of this article is based on the Assyrian royal inscriptions. From these sources it becomes clear that the Assyrian war-machine conquered Egypt in a swift Blitzkrieg and tried to incorporate Egypt into the Assyrian realm. The fragmented Egyptian petty kingdoms, however, resisted the Assyrian occupation with the assistance of the Kushites. It is possible to shed additional light on the continuous struggle between the Assyrian overlords and the Egyptians from Queries to the Assyrian Sun god Shamash, letters from Babylonian scholars to the king of Assyria, Kushite royal inscriptions and Egyptian priestly commemorative stelae.

Palaces in so-called nubian TemPle Towns: a ReassessmenT by Julia Budka 0. Introduction The present paper aims to reassess buildings with a palatial character that have been labelled as "governor's palace" 1 or "civil government residence" 2 in so-called Nubian temple towns of the New Kingdom. 3 This group of buildings is in my opinion particularly interesting for the general topic of "palaces" in ancient Egypt, even if they do not fall into the category of royal palatial buildings. As it was stressed by Barry J. Kemp, the Nubian temple towns offer rich information on settlement patterns and the layout of Egyptian towns, although they are situated outside of Egypt proper. Kemp evaluates the setting as follows: "Thus, in Nubia the Egyptians attempted to turn what must have seemed to them an unbearably backward land into an extension of their own country, building temple-centred towns of the type which probably now formed the backbone of urbanism in Egypt." 4 In line with Kemp's hypothesis, I think it is worth investigating whether the so-called governor's palaces in Nubia give us information about the typical setting of such buildings at sites located in Egypt-furthermore it can be considered whether they enable us to reveal "the extent to which familiar schemes are adapted to changed circumstances." 5 This question of "adaptation" of New Kingdom domestic architecture used in Egypt and transferred to Nubia is currently the focus of the European Research Council Project AcrossBorders. 6 1. Fortified towns in New Kingdom Nubia Fortified towns in New Kingdom Nubia (Fig. 1), as exemplified by Buhen, Amara West, Sai Island and Sesebi, 7 are generally associated with an orthogonal layout and urban planning, with distinct quarters 1

" To date the research on the church architecture in Nubia has consistently failed to differentiate, territorially and historically, between two different Nubian kingdoms " (Godlewski 2006b) and one could add the third, Alodian, kingdom to this. The author's involvement in a project to publish the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago excavations at the Qasr el-Wizz monastery has generated this study of the early architectural history of the katholikon at Qasr el-Wizz and its development, analyzed in the context of studies on Nubian Christianity. Due to a rampant misuse of terminology referring to the functional parts of churches in Nubian studies, a review of this vocabulary was deemed essential as a background for a presentation of the late George T. Scanlon's views on the development of this particular church, followed by the present author's addenda et corrigenda, and a discussion and conclusions for the study of Christian Nubian sacral architecture.

Supervised by: Prof. Mgr. Miroslav Bárta, Dr.
Submitted for review in: October 2014
Reviewed by: Dr. Dirk Huyge (Curator of Prehistoric and Early Dynastic Egypt, Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels, Belgium)
Prof. PhDr. Břetislav Vachala, CSc. (Czech Institute of Egyptology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague)
Defended in front of a commission on: 13 April 2015

In Egypt history, Atlas appears as Tlas the 4th king of the Second Dynasty in Manetho's chronology, in the place of King Wadjnes in other dynastic lists. This name resembles Wadjkheperre, the reign name of Kamose. Moreover, the sound "ka" in the name of Kamose in hieroglyphs is represented by two arms raised to heaven. At the beginning of Pharaoh Ahmose's reign, Kamose and Hyksos people were obliged to leave Egypt, and Kamose could reign on Nubia for forty years before returning to Egypt to ascend the throne of Thebes under the name of Thuthmose I. Likewise, Hesiod said that after the victory of Zeus against Titans, Atlas was condemned to bear the sky in the west limits of the world. Considering the close relationship of Egypt with Nubia (the Land of Kush), we intend to demonstrate that Kamose aka Thuthmose I was Atlas the Titan the first king of Atlantis (the Island of Meroe) ; this is the reason why Taharqa (Poseidon) named his eldest son Atlanersa, the second Atlas. It is a fact that thus Kushite kings is shown bearing the sky on a frescoe in a temple at Djebel Barkal.

As early as the second millennium, Kush (Upper Nubia) and Egypt were in perpetual rivalry for the domination of the Nile valley. The pharaohs of the 12 th dynasty had to build several big fortresses to protect their south frontier against attacks of the Kushite kingdom of Kerma. During the Second Intermediate Period, Kerma rulers were allied to Hyksos to strangle the frail Theban kingdom. They were defeated by Kamose circa 1550 B.C. Then, after recovering Lower Egypt from Hyksos, pharaohs of the 18 th dynasty finally subdued the kingdom of Kerma in order to avoid further attacks from South. But after the ramesside era, the influence of Egypt on Kush diminished whereas autochthonous rulers gained more and more power. So that in 741 B.C. Piankhy a Kushite king originating from Napata invaded Egypt as far as Thebes, then submitted the Delta. He was the first of the black pharaohs of the 25 th dynasty who reigned on Egypt for seventy-five years, before to be expelled by the Assyrian king Assurbanipal. However after retreating to Napata, the Kushite rulers continued to threat the south frontier of Egypt. Finally, in 593-591 B.C. pharaoh Psametik II of the 26 th dynasty helped by Greek mercenaries made a victorious military campaign against Kushites. Napata the sacred city of Kush was burnt, so Kushites decided to move their capital to their ancestral city of Meroe. The reason why the Sais priests reported this glorious event to Solon was the project of pharaoh Amasis to obtain a new military alliance with the Aegeans to contain the imminent Persian threat on Egypt.

The Church is simply known as "the body of Christ" (Ephesus 1:22-23) constituted by "the believers" (Acts 20:28; I Timothy 3:15; Ezra 5:8). The aim of this article is to investigate the concept of Church in Nobatia and its main particularities through mural art and architecture during the early Christian and Medieval ages of Nubia, for though the Church had contained the main requirements for the Christian worship which mainly coincided with the faith of the Orthodox Church, but one noticed the appearance of new themes in the Church of Sonqi Tino and Faras Cathedral in certain architectural locations in order to declare specific theological and political ideas, these new changes could therefore have influenced the faith of the Church of Nobatia, thence shedding additional light on them could reveal their origins and the reasons for their appearance as well as could give further insight for understanding the Church especially on that ambiguous part of the Christian history of not only Nobatia but also of Nubia in a whole.

Niniejszy tekst powstał na kanwie referatu "Nubijskie dziedzictwo cesarza Justyniana w świetle polskich badań archeologicznych w północno-wschodniej Afryce" wygłoszonego podczas ogólnopolskiej konferencji naukowej „Historia polskich badań nad antykiem chrześcijańskim”, zorganizowanej przez Koło Naukowe Doktorantów Uniwersytetu Papieskiego Jana Pawła II w Krakowie, która odbyła się 22 kwietnia 2015 roku w Krakowie. Chcąc oddać hołd wybitnemu polskiemu archeologowi, jakim był bez wątpienia Kazimierz Michałowski, pozwoliłem sobie zaprezentować zarówno uczestnikom sesji, jak i czytelnikom krótki biogram Profesora. Zainteresowanych poznaniem bardziej szczegółowych losów Kazimierza Michałowskiego odsyłam do literatury przedmiotu.

The preliminary report from fieldwork conducted in January 2018 at forts in Khartoum Province (Sudan). Researchers focused on Hosh el-Kab, Abu Nafisa, and Umm Marrahi sites. The report includes description of excavations, small finds, geophysical survey and an archaeological survey conducted in the forts surroundings.

El inter& por comprender las relaciones entre Egipto y Nubia ha aumentado en 10s dltimos aiios, matiz5ndose y abandonindose la tradicional visi6n que veia en las mismas una simple explotaci6n econ6mica por parte de Egipto de las minas de oro o de productos ex6ticos como especias, animales ..., originiindose posturas y premisas encontradas, como las de y Smith (1998), incidiendo el primer0 en el aspect0 ideol6gico y el segundo en el econ6mico'. En lineas generales las relaciones entre el Egipto fara6nico y Nubia pueden interpretarse desde tres ~5~ticas~.

The exhibition “From Aswan to Khartoum” maps the activities of Czech archaeological expeditions to Nubia and Sudan since the 1960s up to the present

The Czech Institute of Egyptology inaugurates in the Cross Corridor of Prague’s Carolinum a photographic exhibition From Aswan to Khartoum: Czech archaeological explorations between the Nile cataracts. The exhibition presents the main milestones in the uncovering of the civilisation developments in Nubia and Sudan where, for instance, the earliest states in Africa, after the pharaonic Egypt, emerged in the past. It was in this very region that the so far greatest rescue campaign in the history of world archaeology took place under the auspices of UNESCO in 1960s. However, the investigations of the early civilisations in the territory of Sudan continue also at the present time, and with the engagement of no less than three Czech expeditions. In the exhibition the main attention is focused on the role played in the uncovering of the past of this region by the Czech (and formerly Czechoslovak) scientific teams. Nevertheless, an emphasis is placed on the international context of the explorations. For the first time ever, therefore, the visitors have a chance to see photographs provided for the purposes of the exhibition by a number of foremost foreign scientific institutions engaged in research in the region. The exhibition is organised under the auspices of the vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, Mr. Petr Gazdík, Chairman of the Czech Commission for UNESCO.
More on the exhibition
The introductory part overviews the history of civilisation developments in Nubia and Sudan and unveils the first steps in its discovering that took place in the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. The second part is particularly dedicated to the UNESCO salvage campaign necessitated by the building of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s. At that time, the main aim was to map and explore as many sites as possible and to rescue the most significant monuments. The grand scale of this campaign is attested by the fact that more than 40 scientific teams from all over the world got engaged in the fieldwork, among them also the expedition of the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology of the Charles University. The third part provides an insight into some of the discoveries of the three scientific expeditions that have been working in Sudan since 2009. The following teams are concerned:
- Expedition under the direction of the Czech Institute of Egyptology at Jebel Sabaloka in the area of the Sixth Nile Cataract, which specialises on the exploration of the markedly significant remains of prehistoric occupation from the period of hunter-gatherers (9th–6th millennia BC) and early pastoralists (5th–4th millennia BC).
- Expedition under the direction of the Czech Institute of Egyptology working at the promising site of Usli where remains of a city with temples and palaces from the period of the Napatan and Meroitic kingdoms (9th century BC – 4th century AD) have been brought to light recently.
- Expedition under the direction of Prague’s National Museum at the site of Wad Ben Naga, which carries out exploration and conservation of temples and royal palaces in one of the key centres of the Meroitic kingdom (3rd century BC – 4th century AD).

The exhibition is open daily between 13th October and 11th November 2015 from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m.  in the Gothic Cross Corridor of Charles University´s Carolinum, Ovocný trh 3, Prague 1, Czech Republic.

Admission free.

Participating institutions:
Czech Institute of Egyptology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague; National Museum – Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures; Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague, v. v. i.; and Faculty of Environment of the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem.

This book covers the interaction spheres of pre-Gerzean Nile Valley Civilization, and reconstructs the emergence of Pharonic Egypt.

https://www.amazon.com/Nubia-Egypt-000-B-C-400/dp/0773426469/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2ZSB00ZG0OXI1&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.63dUzC6u2bXQwgA5NbMrEA.-pr8VmjxKbUIFhrAzPt7mWQ_QIUTJEaTwzDtl19-pZo&dib_tag=se&keywords=Nubia+and+Egypt+10%2C000+B.C.+to+400+A.D.&qid=1725631642&sprefix=nubia+and+egypt+10%2C000+b.c.+to+400+a.d.%2Caps%2C105&sr=8-1

The absence of securely dated texts and monuments has been an obstacle in establishing the sequence and dating of Meroitic rulers.  To compensate a chronology of rulers has been created by hypothetically associating them with a relative sequence of monuments especially the 41 royal pyramids at Meroe. This lack of firm dating and attributions has led to a degree of circular reasoning in the creation of Meroe’s chronology. Investigating degrees of continuity and change in the royal pyramid chapel decorations offers a tool for sequencing pyramids that avoids iterative reasoning. Based on a visual analysis of these decorations in combination with data from Reisner’s excavations plausible solutions to some of the problems in Meroe’s relative chronology are presented; the correct sequence for BEG N 8, N 9 and N 10, the attribution of BEG N 12 to King Taneyidamani, and the relative dating of BAR 2 that challenges its attribution to King Teriteqas.

This report is concerned with the results of the recent research at the site of Usli in the Northern Sudan. Since 2009, the ancient site of Usli, discovered by the Southern Dongola Reach Survey team as late as 2000, has been the object of archaeological exploration by the mission of the Czech Institute of Egyptology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. The present paper provides an overview of the findings of the archaeological survey, archaeological excavation, and geodetic and geophysical survey of the site carried out between 2009 and 2013. In conclusion, it puts forward an evaluation of the archaeological potential of the site for our understanding of the Sudan’s past as well as of the threats to the antiquities located in the research area.

This article presents some results of a three-day survey south of the Wadi Howar to Gebel al-Ain taken out in January 2011 (during the University of Cologne mission to Gala Abu Ahmed led by Dr. Friederike Jesse). It was planned to identify some structures I discovered by interpreting remote sensing data for my M.A.-thesis. During the remote sensing evaluation, the site was labeled FJE2010-1.

The main finding during that survey was a large assemblage of ruins directly at the foot of the Gebel al-Ain hills, most probably the remains of a monastery. It consists of an elaborated sandstone church with three naves, an irregular shaped building erected of stone next to it, and a box graves cemetery, all surrounded by a large wall with a simple gate. Outside the wall other cemeteries were found, consisting of more box graves, some tumuli, and at least two cleft burials.

The ruined site seems not to be known to the scientific community so far. A Christian center so far from the Nile valley in the western desert raises several questions about the limits of control of the medieval Nubian states over that area.

Maybe two monasteries in a region named 'Tari' or 'Tahi' mentioned in medieval sources refer to those ruins.