LEFT
About two inches tall,
an amulet found in a
Kushite queen’s tomb is
topped with a golden
head of the Egyptian
goddess Hathor.
ABOVE
Skilled goldsmiths
created masterpieces
such as this breastplate
pendant of the god-
dess Isis, which lay
across the mummy
of a Nubian king
entombed at Nuri.
KENNETH GARRETT (BOTH)In the seventh century B.C.,
Assyrians invaded Egypt from the
north. The Nubians retreated per-
manently to their homeland, but
they continued to mark their royal
tombs with pyramids, dotting sites
such as El Kurru, Nuri, and Meroë
with the steep-sided profiles that
characterize their interpretation of
ancient Egyptian monuments. Like
their mentors, Kushite kings filled
their burial chambers with treasure
and decorated them with images
that would ensure a rich afterlife.
Little was known of these kings
until Harvard Egyptologist George
Reisner arrived in Sudan in the early
20th century. Reisner located the
tombs of five Nubian pharaohs of
Egypt and many of their successors.
These discoveries, and subsequent
investigations, have resurrected
from obscurity the first high civili-
zation in sub-Saharan Africa.The Egyptians didn’t like having such a powerful neighbor
to the south, especially since they depended on Nubia’s gold
mines to bankroll their dominance of western Asia. So the
pharaohs of the 18th dynasty (1539-1292 B.C.) sent armies to
conquer Nubia and built garrisons along the Nile. Subjugated,
the elite Nubians began to embrace Egypt’s cultural and spir-
itual customs—venerating Egyptian gods, using the Egyptian
language, and adopting Egyptian burial styles.
The Nubians were arguably the first people to be struck by
“Egyptomania.” Without setting foot inside Egypt, they pre-
served Egyptian traditions and revived the pyramid—a burial
monument forsaken by the Egyptians centuries earlier—for
their royal tombs. As archaeologist Timothy Kendall puts
it, the Nubians “had become more Catholic than the pope.”
100 WONDERS OF ARCHAEOLOGY 61