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By Root 542 0

was eventually set at the Fourth Cataract. Trade flourished; Egyptian traders, priests, and craftsmen kept the river crowded. Even during the struggles of the post-Amarna period Nubia remained peaceful, and it may have been the uninterrupted flow of riches from this region that allowed the later kings to maintain their imperial courts and raise their expensive temples, even though their sources of income to the east gradually diminished. These kings built in Nubia as well as in Egypt, and some of the temples are quite splendid. All this activity had its effect on the Nubians. As early as the Second Intermediate Period there are signs that the native peoples of the area were getting interested in Egyptian wares and opening their minds to Egyptian ideas.

Politically, the land of Nubia must have been an increasingly important factor in internal Egyptian affairs. The office of the “king’s son of Cush,” who was viceroy of all the southern lands, was established during the Eighteenth Dynasty. During the Twentieth Dynasty, Nubian strong-men had a hand in the harem conspiracy that ended the rambunctious career of Ramses III, and also in the establishment of Herihor, viceroy of Nubia and high priest of Amon, in control at Thebes.

The collapse of Egyptian unity and prestige in the years that followed—remember poor Wenamon and his journey to Byblos—is reflected in Nubia by a failure of inscriptional and other material. We do not know exactly what was going on down there.

When the curtain does rise, it is upon a scene which we have never observed before in our study of Nubia. The locus is neither town nor Egyptian fort, but a handsome city, with a royal palace and a great temple to Amon at the base of a high, flat-topped hill. The hill is now known as Gebel Barkal, and the ruins of the city of Napata are to be found near the Fourth Cataract, at the far end of the fertile Dongola Reach. To the north is the royal cemetery; the tumbledown pyramids once housed the bodies of the kings of Napata.

The kingdom of which this city was the capital is that which the Greeks later called Ethiopia. We usually apply this term to Abyssinia, but the Greeks evidently used “Ethiopians” to designated any dark-skinned people in remoter Africa. We will avoid confusion by referring to this Nubian nation by its Egyptian name—Cush.

So much for the scenery and the program notes. Now let the play begin.

There is a Prologue, whose details are vague; it concerns a king of Cush called Kashta, whose mission it was to carry regeneration into Egypt. We have no inscription of his, so we do not know when, or even if, he invaded Egypt; but we think he got as far as Thebes, since his daughter was adopted by the God’s Wife as her successor. The real protagonist of act one is Kashta’s son, once known as Piankhi. You will find him referred to, in more recent works, as Piye.

See him as he occupies the seat of Pharaoh—he claims those titles and wears the full regalia of an Egyptian king. The great god Amon extends his protecting hand over Piye, his son; and Piye worships the god devoutly and purely. The petty bickering of the local nobles far to the north keeps them occupied and allows them no time for transgression upon the realms held by Cush.

Then, in the first month of the twenty-first year of Piye, comes ominous news. One has arisen among the dynasts of the Delta, a man named Tefnakhte, of Sais. He has seized the whole west, coming southward with a numerous army, while the Two Lands are united behind him, and the princes of walled towns are as dogs at his heels. Herakleopolis is besieged, and Namlot, prince of Hermopolis, has submitted himself to Tefnakhte as his lord, forswearing his allegiance to Piye.

Piye received this news with a shout of laughter.

His loyal courtiers wondered if the old gentleman had lost his wits. But Piye was only expressing his nonchalance. The stela describing his reaction and future actions—one of the most remarkable historical documents ever found in Egypt—is a little vague on the subject of precisely how much of Egypt was subject