IN THE YEAR 730 B.C., A MAN NAMED PIYE DECIDED THE ONLY
way to save Egypt from itself was to invade it. The magnif-
icent civilization that had built the Pyramids at Giza had
lost its way, torn apart by petty warlords. For two decades
Piye had ruled over his own kingdom in Nubia, a swath of
Africa located mostly in present-day Sudan. But he consid-
ered himself the rightful heir to the traditions practiced by
the great pharaohs.
By the end of a yearlong campaign, every leader in Egypt
had capitulated. In exchange for their lives, the vanquished
urged Piye to worship at their temples, pocket their finest jew-
els, and claim their best horses. He obliged them and became
the anointed Lord of Upper and Middle Egypt.
When Piye died at the end of his decades-long reign,
his subjects honored his wishes by burying him in an
Egyptian- style pyramid at a site known today as El Kurru.
No pharaoh had received such entombment in more than
500 years.
Piye was the first of the so-called Black pharaohs, the
Nubian rulers of Egypt’s 25th dynasty. Over the course of 75
years, those kings reunified a tattered Egypt and created an
empire that stretched from the southern border at present-
day Khartoum all the way north to the Mediterranean Sea.
Until recently, theirs was a chapter of history that largely
went untold. “The first time I came to Sudan, people said,
You’re mad! There’s no history there! It’s all in Egypt!”
says Swiss archaeologist Charles Bonnet. But he and other
modern researchers are now revealing the rich history of a
long- ignored culture. Archaeologists have recognized that the
Black pharaohs didn’t appear out of nowhere. They sprang
from a robust African civilization in a land the Egyptians
called Kush that flourished on the southern banks of the Nile
as far back as the first Egyptian dynasty, around 3000 B.C.
730 -656 B.C. SUDAN AND EGYPT
In a long-
ignored chapter
of history,
kings from a
land to the south
conquered
Egypt, then kept
the country’s
ancient burial
traditions alive.
60 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC