Dr. Loretta Kilroe
Appearances
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
That's why most of them have been damaged by treasure hunters. Unfortunately, Ferlini found huge amounts of beautiful gold and precious stone jewellery, so then he thought that he should keep going, because he'd been rewarded.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Yes, so El Kourou, there's nothing remaining of the superstructures, but we can attempt to replicate and understand how the superstructures once looked based on the foundations, based on remains of stone that are scattered around the site. It can be difficult. But what we think happens at El Coro is early superstructures are what we call mastabas.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So these are more, if you want to think of more like a little table made of stone, so a flat rectangle. And then after a couple of generations, we think they move back to pyramids. But again... It can be very difficult to be sure. What we do know is that by the 25th Dynasty, when it's in its full swing, we're seeing pyramids. And then everybody does it throughout the Kushite period.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So they occur at Jabal Barkal, they occur at Merawi, they occur at Nuri, which is where the famous 25th Dynasty King Tahaka was buried. Er ist besonders berühmt, um die Assyrien zu kämpfen und zu verlieren, leider.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Yeah, so particularly in the early periods of Kush, we're seeing huge focus on gods such as Amun, the ram-headed god who seems to appear in in Sudan in the New Kingdom again. So we're still seeing all this inspiration left over from the New Kingdom.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
And Amun was the focus of a lot of the temples that were constructed by the Egyptians at Jabal Barkal, which the 25th Dynasty and later Kushite Kings restore. There's a large interest in Isis, the goddess Isis, who is important in temples, but also seems to be important to more ordinary people. And A lot of ordinary people are not welcome in temples. It's more of a space for priests and royalty.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So ordinary people are leaving these small offerings such as an ear made of faience, which is like a bright blue or green false stone. Or sometimes things in clay. Sometimes you'll see a small woman made in clay. Sometimes you'll see pieces of female genitalia or you'll see beads sometimes or small heads. We also see Hathor, who's venerated in this way.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
And this seems to be perhaps some kind of link with indigenous women looking for somebody to pray to when they need help more informally.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Perhaps praying for their own children as well. And we have these very, very small semi-temples that we see in settlements that have hundreds, thousands of these tiny little pieces. They're cheap, they're disposable, but they're clearly very, very important. And they give us a glimpse into a part of Kush that is outside this elite wealth. und dieser eliten Macht. Und es ist ein bisschen anders.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Also ja, wir sehen viele von diesen ägyptischen und ägyptischen Eiern als Götter, besonders in der frühen Zeit. But they're not just Egyptian at this point. They have become absorbed and hybridized in local Kush pantheons.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So, the figurehead of ISIS, quite small actually, about the size of a pineapple. You can see this beautiful bronze... Missing Eyes and Missing a Headdress suggesting that it would have originally had more elements to it that have since been lost.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
It's really striking. She's got a beautiful pectoral collar and a really finely detailed wig. The eyes probably would have been a semi-precious or precious stone and then there's obviously a hole in the top of the head as well that would, I would assume, have held a wooden and perhaps golden headdress.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
This may have been removed every time it came back to the temple and then perhaps reused, lost, perhaps it was melted down or the stones were reused for something else. So, this quite small figurehead would have been added to the front and the back, so there would have been a pair originally, of a ceremonial bark, so a small boat.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
That would have had inside a small, think of it like a small room, within which a statue of a deity could be carried from temple to temple. So temples are particularly sanctified spaces. As I said before, these are not like modern churches. They're not for everyday people to go into and pray and connect with deities. Temples are restricted to priests, to members of royalty.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Ordinary people would really have only seen deities when they were traveling on processions. It's a procession, right. So when a deity had to move to a different temple, perhaps... Because the time of year changed and there was a special festival or they needed to replicate the movement of the flood of the Nile or something like that.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
The deity would be placed within this mini-sanctified space in the boat and carried by priests to the next spot. Sometimes the bark would be put on an actual boat as well. So you've got a boat within a boat like Russian Dolls.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Exactly. If you think about the strength of the sun in Sudan, these rays bouncing off this polished bronze, it would have shone out, it would have been really striking for a lot of people.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Yes, so particularly in later periods of Kush we start to see Einige dieser Kushite-Deinheiten steigen zu einer größeren Bedeutung auf. Z.B. Apedamak, der lionhafte Gott von Krieg und Fertilität. Krieg und Fertilität, wow. Es ist sehr interessant, in vielen Religionen weltweit, Krieg und Tod und Fertilität und Leben sind fast gleich. Es ist faszinierend, tatsächlich.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Apedamak wird sehr populär in dem, was wir die Meroitik nennen, in der späteren Zeit des Kushite-Kinders. Und Apedemak entsteht an Tempeln, besonders im Süden in Sudan. Also sehen wir diese um die Meroe-Area. Diese sind als Lion-Tempel. Und wir bekommen noch Inskripte an diesem Punkt, was großartig ist. Also, als wir in der Kusho-Periode kommen, beginnen wir endlich, Inskripte zu bekommen.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Wir können die ältere Sudanese hören, durch ihre eigenen Worte, was großartig ist. So they're all enduring side by side and that lets me go on to a bit of a tangent because you mentioned language there.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
The Kushite language is very indigenous, but the actual alphabet originally comes from Egyptian hieroglyphs. So it's using Egyptian hieroglyphs to write a local language.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Exactly. Later, shortly after, it also is written in cursive. So think of cursive more like shorthand. It looks almost a little bit like Arabic, less joined together. And we actually do see kursive Meroetik in Inskriptionen in späteren Zeiten geschrieben. Es gibt also einen unglaublichen Stehler im britischen Museum, der vollständig in kursive Meroetik ist.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Und ich denke, viele Leute gehen davon aus, dass es, anders als hieroglyphische, die wie Bilder aussehen, ziemlich schwer zu sehen ist und es ziemlich schwer zu engagieren wird. Aber diese erzählen die Geschichte von Cushoart in ihren eigenen Worten und sie sind absolut faszinierend.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Ja, zu einem gewissen Punkt. Ja, sie benutzen die gleichen Wörter. Aber wir denken tatsächlich, dass Meroetisch von einem völlig anderen Weg kommt. Von Ägypten. Verstanden. I will start by saying I'm not a linguist, so I would not trust my detailed linguistic analysis of this. But we are starting to understand Meroitic a lot better than we used to. It's semi-translated.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
There's unfortunately no Rosetta Stone of Meroitic, so we're still missing a lot of vocabulary. A lot of particularly non-royal inscriptions are quite formulaic, so they don't have a huge amount of information. But we are starting to understand spells. We have names. They're all very, very different from Egyptian names, obviously. But it's nice to see it kind of confirmed.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
We're starting to see the importance of different elements in religion. So they're thinking of, there's a lot of emphasis on water. There's some particularly interesting stele that talk about the importance of horses. Because Kush seems to be famous for breeding horses and they are actually... Really popular around the entire Mediterranean.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
They seem to be in demand massively. As far as Assyria, you've got the Assyrians trying to get Kushite horses.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Es ist fast ähnlich mit Ägypten, dass, weil viele Geburtstätten von Archäologen gefunden wurden, sie sind versichert und versichert, denken wir oft, dass die Ägypten mit der Tod besessen sind. And you get that in Kush as well to a certain extent. We have a lot of pyramids, we have a lot of temples, we have a lot of graves that have been excavated.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
But we have to remember this is such a bias of archaeology. These are the things that survive. And they're the things that archaeologists were interested in excavating. Nobody for hundreds of years wanted to excavate a poor settlement. Now we do. But it's obviously a little bit more difficult to excavate places at the moment.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
But they're the things that tell you the diet that people were having, the way ordinary people saw the world, the way that certain vessels meant things to people, certain pots meant things to people instead of just being a jar. We just tend to ignore them and we look at the inscriptions of gods and the pictures of kings and queens and the grand pyramids.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
But there's a whole undercurrent of Kush that we're We sometimes struggle to appreciate.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Well, I think, and I will say I'm coming at this from a very biased point of view because I'm a pot specialist, but I think that pottery can really give you an insight into how ordinary people were viewing the world because it's unconscious. People are not making pots to Ja, genau. Pots will show how people are eating and drinking. And that's such a huge part of culture.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Yes, to some extent, but also the shape of the pots. So particularly in Sudan... Es ist ein sehr anderer Küchen-Trend. Es ist ein sehr anderer Essen-Trend. Und der Fakt, dass diese Dinge von Vater zu Kind übernommen werden... often from mother to daughter, gives us an insight into ordinary people and the things that concerned them. We also have pottery decoration, particularly handmade pottery.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
I think it's very, very interesting into telling us about indigenous ways of understanding the world around them. We call it a symbolic worldview. We don't really understand some of it, but they mean something. And that's what my research is on at the moment, trying to understand cushite worldviews based on this indigenous pottery.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So yeah, to some extent. And we do actually tend to think of handmade pottery as very domestic and made by women. And then you often get archaeologists thinking, Well, it's domestic and made by women, it's cheap and it doesn't mean anything. Which is obviously a massive bias. We're actually thinking a lot of these women are highly skilled.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
And some of these handmade pots get imported huge lengths of the Nile and Sudan. So there's clearly a market for them. They're clearly wanted.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So, what we know about the food of an everyday Kushite is slightly different from what we know about the food of an elite Kushite.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So, if we look at wealthy burials, royal burials, we'll often find particularly things like wine, I'm afraid. We'll find imports from Egypt and the Near East and the Mediterranean.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Yes, sometimes from Egypt. There seems to be an attempt to grow grapes in Sudan occasionally as well, but the weather is not ideal for it. So it doesn't seem to have taken off massively. So we're still getting grain coming in from Egypt sometimes. We're getting oil, special oils, perhaps flavoured oils coming in from further north.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
And this is what you see, particularly when we start to get to later periods and there's a strong relationship with Rome. We're starting to get Roman fashions coming in. And this is what always happens. This is what always happens in diet. People adopt fashions. People adopt high trends. Es ist wie heute, wenn... Es gibt einen echten Trend für Menschen, die Sushi essen.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Oft haben Menschen ein paar Teile Topsticks in ihrem Zuhause und eine Sushi-Matte, auch wenn sie keine japanische Angehörigkeit haben. Während wenn wir schauen, was normale Menschen essen, gibt es viel Sorghum und Millet im Süden. Es ist ein anderer Art von Gras. Weh ist sehr populär und üblich in Ägypten und dem Nahen Osten.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
But Sorghum and Millet grow much better in the different climate in Sudan. And we're seeing flatbreads being made, flatbreads and porridges being made out of Sorghum and Millet. And we still see that in Sudan today. So you can get Kisra, which is made of this Sorghum flour that is almost like a springy bread. Like Indira in Ethiopia, that people are more familiar with.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Yeah, so there's always beer. There's millet. Millet beer is very popular. But beer is popular, I mean, in the ancient world everywhere. Partly as well because water is not always safe to drink. And partly because beer is quite easy to make. If you're growing sorghum or millet or wheat, you can make beer. You often make beer out of old bread. And it's very, very nutritious.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Like we've talked about the wheel-made and the handmade pottery, you're getting two completely different symbolic repertoires on these. So the crocodile pot that we have in the exhibition is part of the wheel-made repertoire. This is what we looked at, the crocodile pot, yeah. So this is quite a bulbous jar with a small neck and slightly flared rim.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
And around the top there is a painted register showing two quite large crocodiles. looking quite happy in red and black no teeth shown which i would guess is done on purpose to neutralize them but a little turned up snout these really big eyes And then, just so you don't forget how dangerous they are, these very, very large claws.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Absolut. Und je mehr du in das Königreich von Kush und dem alten Sudan schaust, desto mehr faszinierend ist es. Und ich denke, viele Leute werden wirklich in diese tollen Geschichten gefangen.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
It's quite interesting in this part that the top is the only bit that's decorated. Usually wheel-made pots are decorated around the body. So I would suggest that this is probably meant to be put in a pot stand, maybe even half buried in the ground, so that you could see the top. But the fact that it's decorated means it's meant to be seen. This is not a kitchen object. You are supposed to see this.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
And it will add to an individual's reputation. So it shows how wealthy somebody is and how much power they have.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Yes, so we think the wheel-made pots are made in centralized workshops, fully controlled by the state, because we see some of the same motifs across Sudan. We get a lot of animals, we get crocodiles, giraffes. We get a lot of plants. We get wine vines and grapes in particular. That's very popular.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Sometimes we get people and they're shown quite different from the standard we're perhaps used to in Egypt. And that's again a really nice example of how Of course, she's doing their own thing. They're showing people in the way that they want to. The wheel made material also often shows a lot of symbols that we're familiar with from ancient Egypt. We get Ankh signs, the sign for life.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
We get the Saar sign, the sign for endurance. Sometimes these are stamped as well. They're so thin. I mean, they would have been very, very difficult to make. And they're made on the wheel, which is the first sign. So interesting. Spoken like a true pottery expert right there.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So you'd put objects from daily life. You'd obviously put textiles. You'd put... Ja, genau. So this was placed outside the tomb chapel. So this is more open to your relatives who would come and make offerings to you to try and make sure that you receive nourishment in the afterlife. So we have one of these offering tables in the exhibition.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So we're looking at about 790 BC to about the 4th century AD. But obviously throughout that there are a lot of changes in political rule, rises and falls, extensions of empire. This isn't a static kingdom that we're looking at.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
This is a square piece of sandstone, grey inscribed on the top. About a meter in diameter. You can see on the top, it's really beautifully inscribed. Inside the center of the offering table is this beautiful cartouche basin depressed into the stone itself.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Exactly, which is why it's very interesting that it's on this offering table, which is not a royal offering table. This belonged to a member of the elite. an dem Ort Pharaos, welches jetzt eine reiche Necropolis ist, unter Lake Nasa, Lake Nubia, in Lower Nubia, Norden Sudan. Die Offering Table zeigt auch die Götter Nephthys und Anubis.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Genau, aber wir sehen wieder diese Hybridisierung. Anubis und Nephthys sehen ähnlich aus, wie wir es vielleicht von älterem Ägypten kennengelernt haben. Anubis hat seinen Jackal-Head. Neftis hat einen sehr well-known Headdress, which is like a series of interlocking squares, but they look distinctly cushite. Anubis has quite a fringe dress. Neftis is holding a curved staff.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Above them we have bread cones. So bread, as I mentioned before, bread is not as common in Sudan as it is in Egypt, but once we start to get This influx of Egyptian traditions, this hybridization shows that bread becomes important in elite contexts. So you would pour your libation into the basin. It would overflow over the inscription of the deities and the bread, nourishing the deceased.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
And it would go out into this little channel around the outside. And outside the channel, almost like a border around the offering table itself, you can see an inscription. So this is in cursive Meroitic, as I said, that looks almost like Arabic. There are no recognisable images, like pictures, like you see in hieroglyphs.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So it's been quite difficult to translate, but we now thankfully can translate a good chunk of the language. So this one tells us that it belongs to an individual known as Kenabalile. So what's interesting about Meroitic is we're not sure of the gender, there's no gender. So Kenabalile could be a man or a woman. And it mentions praying that he receives bread and water.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So it's not a huge inscription, quite formulaic, but it was clearly quite important to the people who placed this here. und wir können die Kinder, die Großeltern, vielleicht sogar die Großeltern von Kenabalilay bilden. Sie würden an besonderen Festivaldagen kommen und sie würden Wasser, Bier, vielleicht Wein, vielleicht sogar Milch, Milch ist sehr wichtig in der Kushe-Kultur, in die Basis bringen.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Es würde überfließen und runtergehen. Es gibt einen Spalt am Fronten. Es würde symbolisch die Angehörige, die du versuchst zu erinnern, zu ernähren.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Ja, also Sandsturm ist sehr normal in Sudan. Es ist ein sehr normaler Stein, den Menschen accessieren können. Das bedeutet oft, dass viele Monumenten erodiert werden, besonders, ich meine, es gibt viele Sandstürme in Sudan. Es ist sehr, sehr windig und wenn Objekte oder Tempels unbeleuchtet sind, besonders von Touristen und nicht wiederbeleuchtet von Sand, können die Sandstürme absolut strecken.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So we always, when we're excavating, try and cover things back up to make sure they're protected for the future. The offering table, we're very, very lucky. This was excavated in the early 1900s by Francis Llewellyn Griffith. Found in situ in front of the tomb chapel, which is amazing. So where somebody thousands of years ago laid their last libation.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
It must have just got covered by the sand and then protected that way. So sometimes we're just lucky.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So a lot of archaeologists have studied the rise of Kush. There's been a great interest in the early cemeteries. So in particular we have a cemetery known as El Kourou. This is in central Sudan, so around between the third and the fourth cataract of the river Nile. We found a couple of hundred years ago a large cemetery that had what looked like the remains of pyramids.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
I think it would be remiss not to say I'm pretty sure they would have been terrified of them. I mean, crocodiles kill huge amounts of people and they would very much have in pre-industrialized settings where if there's just a couple of homes by the river, there's nothing to stop a crocodile from eating one of you while you're doing your laundry or collecting water.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
But there's obviously a recognition that we see on the pottery that crocodiles are linked with water. And in a desert environment, Wasser ist Leben. Wasser ist alles. Wir sehen das in Ägypten und auch in Sudan, wo viele der Nile Valley sehr, sehr breit ist, mit großen Kliffen, die auf jeder Seite des Wassers kommen. Also gibt es nicht so viel araber Land.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Deshalb, wenn wir Plätze haben, die Flutpläne haben, wie Kerma, gibt es große Mengen von Menschen, die kongregieren.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So, by this period of the 25th Dynasty is long gone, but Kush itself is still massively strong. It still controls a huge amount of the Middle Nile region. We think it controls as far south as Khartoum. It seems to have influence further south, but we're not entirely sure what exactly that means. There's obviously people pushing back and forth between what we now know as Egypt and Sudan.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
That there is a relationship with Egypt. People are still importing and exporting goods. Between the Two Kingdoms. After the 25th Dynasty, we know the names of many of the rulers, but we don't always know everything about them. And when Rome enters the scene, that's when we start to get a little bit more of an idea of some of the rulers.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
And this is when, particularly when Rome comes on the scene, we start to get these famous warrior queens who rule in their own right.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Exactly. And then Egypt becomes a province of Rome. the grain basket of the ancient world. Obviously it was a massive prize. But once you get into Rome, you realise there's this other kingdom further south. Sudan has always been pushing Egypt's borders. Kush is very powerful and it's a threat. So we think between 25 and 22 BC, Rome decides to encroach on Kush. So there is a
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
The prefect called Petronius, he brings a huge army down and begins to sack Cush. Unfortunately for the Romans, Cush wasn't as much of an easy prize as they were thinking. They seem to certainly sack several cities, but they are pushed back by what the historian Strabo calls a one-eyed queen called Candarco. So they're pushed back by this one-eyed queen called Kandake.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
They then manage to push back again, sack Napata, the capital of Kush, and then they get pushed back again.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So that was the former capital. In the earlier period of Kush, Napata is the capital. Later it moves to Merui, further south, and modern Sudan, the capital, is Khartoum. We're not entirely sure what happens at this point. Strabo talks about how the Romans are winning. And then yet somehow the Kushites decide to sue for peace and they send ambassadors to Rome.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
And the Romans agree with no terms, no tribute that has to be sent every year. Kush is just allowed to be on its own and it doesn't have to be a province. Now to me that sounds like Kush was winning and in a good position. And so they come to this uneasy alliance. And the treaty actually lasts until the end of the Kushite period.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
massive superstructures smaller accompanying burials that were perhaps for consorts and this really intrigued early archaeologists who at that time didn't know much about ancient sudan we know based on egyptian and biblical actually textual sources of the 25th dynasty who are particularly famous for invading Egypt.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So I mean throughout this war, Kush is raiding Egypt. Rome is attempting to raid Kush. It's obviously going back and forth. Very fluid, yes. Yes. Now, as we've studied ancient Sudan and Meroitic more closely, we now know that Kandake is not a name, it's a title.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Well, it's not just her, it's any queen. Kandake means queen in Meroitic. And so we actually think Strabo is getting a bit confused here. The one-eyed queen, whether she was one-eyed, we're not sure, Archäologisch, sollen wir zu dieser unglaublichen Geschichte gehen, die mit dem, was du gerade erzählt hast, verbunden ist?
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So, in the 1900s, an archaeologist called John Garstang was excavating at the site of Meroe, capital of ancient Kush. Und während er einen Tempel entdeckte, im Vordergrund des Tempels, unter den Sternen des Portico, fand er diese unglaubliche Erfindung. Es ist der bronzene Kopf einer romänischen Statue, größer als das Leben, das wir jetzt denken, ist der Kopf des Empörers Augustus.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Genau. Genau. This was amazing. Nobody expected to find this in Sudan. It's so classically Roman. It looks like it would not be out of place in a Roman city. It's very much designed to tell you that the Romans are present, they're in control, and yet it's buried under this temple.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Now, when you look more closely at it, this head, which, as they say, is larger than life-size, bronze and still has... The beautiful inlaid eyes. So these haven't, this has never been found before, before the early 1900s, because they would have been removed. Made of calcite and glass. Still staring out. It's very powerful, this statue.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
And we know, based on Strabo's story, that Sandake, probably, and Manirenas, had swept into Egypt. Und wir denken, was passiert ist, dass sie diesen Kopf zurückgebracht hat als Symbol und es unter den Steinen dieses Tempels gebrannt hat, um symbolisch auf ihre Feinde, auf die Romer, zu treten. Every time she enters it.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
And actually there are traces inside the temple of paintings of foreigners, similar to how you see in earlier Egyptian scenes of prisoners and tributes, where the Egyptians are marking their power over the rest of the world. The Kushites do something similar. There's rows of these foreigners, these prisoners, with their arms tied behind their back. And one of them looks very Roman.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Yeah, absolutely. So as I said, the treaty lasts until the end of the Kushite period. The border is at the beginning set at Khazru Brim, an ancient premise, which is now in modern Egypt. And then good sweep between the kingdoms. We see in Meroe, the capital of the later period of Kush, something that we call the Bath House. We now know it's not a bath house, but it was originally thought to be.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
It seems to be some kind of water sanctuary. But it's this very, very large swimming pool, basically, surrounded by statuary and statuary-like lounging figures in togas with their hair swept to the side and There's a statue of Pan, the faun, playing panpipes. There's grapes. Everything's in blue, painted in blue. It looks very, very influenced by Rome.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
And this is again what we were talking about earlier, the height of fashion among the elites. Lastly, do we know what ultimately happens to the Kingdom of Kush? Yeah, so to start with, we're not entirely sure who else is around Kush to the south. Again, it's the problem with having a lack of textual sources and a lack of archaeological excavation.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So the 25th Dynasty are Sudanese kings who suddenly turn up in Egyptian and later biblical sources as ruling Egypt. And this is when we start to get dates in, once we start to get these rulers with inscriptions written in hieroglyphics and in den biblischen Geschichten.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
There's not been time, it's not been safe to excavate in some places, but there will be kingdoms, there will be these amazing cultures and civilizations that we just don't know anything about in all these places. Everywhere has them. Und wir wissen, dass Kusch mit den Menschen nach Süden handelte, weil wir das in den Objekten in ihren Zettelungen sehen können.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Nun, mit Äthiopien scheint es etwas anders zu sein. Es scheint nicht so viel Kontakt in den frühen Perioden zu haben. Vielleicht weil der Mountain Rangers die Könige separierten. Äthiopien war ein riesengroßer König in seinem eigenen Recht. By the end of Kush, there seem to be a lot of raiding groups incurring into the Nile Valley. We know that some of the rulers are busy fighting them off.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
We're not entirely sure where they're coming from. Perhaps the changes in weather have driven them closer to the river, as happens in every kingdom. But for Ethiopia, we find a couple of Aksumite, so ancient Ethiopian objects, coins and a few graffiti. And there's a Steeler. We're not entirely sure of the original fine spot of the Steeler, which problematizes that, obviously.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
But there seems to be this idea that King Azuma of Aksum sweeps into Push and conquers Meroe. Now, this is what early archaeologists have thought. We think it's a lot more complicated than that. We think there may have been some strife with Ethiopia and there's certainly evidence they were there to a small level based on a few of the objects.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
But regardless, by around 350 AD, Kush is starting to lose power and eventually it fragments into smaller kingdoms.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Ja, wir werden eine Ausstellung besprechen, die in Portsmouth auf dem 31. Januar beginnt und dann in Stirling am 8. August beginnt. Das zeigt eine Selektion unserer tollen Teile aus dem alten Kush. Wir zeigen die Figur, die wir erwähnten, die ISIS-Figur, den Krokodil, sowie einige Objekte aus unserer modernen Sudanese-Kollektion, die uns erzählen, wie
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Sudanese Heritage and Culture is obviously so rich and alive and well across not just Kush, but thousands of years. And not just the Nile Valley, but Darfur, the deserts around Sudan, the Nile River and further to the south. In each city, we will also be collaborating with local Sudanese communities, who will be having their own display, which I'm really excited to see.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Ja, also wenn wir auf Al-Khuru schauen, können wir Erlebnisse in Gebäuden, Feiern, Superstrukturen sehen. Die Kushiten selbst, als sie anfangen zu schreiben, fangen sie an, ägyptische Hieroglyphen zu benutzen. Und so fangen wir an, History in their own words for the first time. They talk about early ancestors, particularly a king called Alara.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
We're not sure if Alara is real, is perhaps semi-mythical, but they all seem to date their reign and their rule back to him. We think that the early ancestors of the 25th Dynasty are rulers, chiefs in this part of the Nile Valley. They ruled a small part of the Nile Valley after the Egyptians withdrew from colonial control of Sudan at the end of the Egyptian New Kingdom.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Absolutely. So for the first time, Sudan is absorbed into Egypt proper. So obviously, Egypt has had a fractious relationship with ancient Sudan for thousands of years. We know there have been a lot of wars, a lot of skirmishes, different kingdoms taking control of different parts of land. There's a huge amount of trade as well.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
There's obviously a lot of friendly relations, people moving, bringing with them goods and ideas.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So, there's an awful lot of river travel, but you have to bear in mind that the Nile in Sudan is not as smooth as the Nile is in Egypt. There are six cataracts, which are very large areas of rocky rapids in the river that make sailing a bit more difficult than in Egypt.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
And people would have to take their boats out and drag them through the desert, thus making them vulnerable to attack from different polities or nomads perhaps. Es gibt auch viele Räder, auf denen die Menschen reisen würden. Wir haben angefangen, mehr archäologische Investitionen in diese Räder zu machen. Und wir finden einige absolut unglaubliche Dinge.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Die Menschen würden wahrscheinlich Donkeys und auch Menschenpower benutzen, um Güter zwischen Ägypten und Sudan zu tragen.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Absolutely. I mean, one of the most famous earlier stories relations that we see is in the Egyptian Middle Kingdom. The Egyptians built large fortresses on the Nile to control... Middle Kingdom, how far back are we going with that? Yes, very far. The Egyptians at this period are trying to control access from the Kingdom of Kerma.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So this is around 2,500 to 1,500 BC. Oh right, okay, yeah. The Kingdom of Kerma. The Egyptians built these huge fortresses to control Kerma, to control access to the river and to control trade, because they were a little bit frightened, who were extremely powerful. And in the second intermediate period, after Egypt collapsed into smaller independent polities, Kerma raided Egypt.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
We have Egyptian statues being dragged back to Kerma and buried in local burials. So this is all something that you have to take into context when we look at later periods like the Kingdom of Kush. So once we get to the New Kingdom... The Egyptians have decided, no, the fortresses aren't enough anymore. We have to control Sudan proper.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So they come in, they colonize Sudan, they destroy Kerma, and they build colonial towns, and they settle Egyptians in these. And for the first time, Sudan is part of Egypt. And this is really important when we're looking at Kush, because people look at Kushite culture, Kushite iconography, Cushite-Objekte und Superstrukturen und Tempels.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Und sie denken, oh, sie sind Ägypten, sie kopieren die Ägypten. Aber sie sind es nicht. Die Ägypten waren in Sudan für 500 Jahre. Und bis jetzt ist die Kultur, die sich in Sudan entwickelt hat, etwas komplett Neues, das sowohl indigenische als auch ägyptische Iconography benutzt, um das, was am Ende die Cushite-Kultur wird.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So what we start to see when we look at Kushite textual sources, once they start writing things down, is that the Kushites very clearly think that they are naturally the rulers of Egypt. They are taking control over something that is rightfully theirs. This is partly linked to when you look at religious centers in Egypt and Sudan.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So the very famous religious center in Egypt is Karnak, a very large complex of temples added to by every king in every reign.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Yes, exactly. Although we obviously get a lot of reference to different gods on these temples. Beautiful, tall, postal halls, smaller sanctuaries. oft noch mit Farbe auf den Wänden. Aber als die Ägypten in Sudan fuhren, fanden sie diesen großen Berg, einen berghaften Plateau, den Jabal-Barkon. Und sie gaben ihn dem gleichen Namen wie Karnak.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Und sie dachten tatsächlich, dass es der Vorhinein zu Karnak war, die Ägypten selbst. Also, wenn man sich diesen Art von Umfeld anschaut, kann man sehr einfach sehen, wie die Kushiten dachten, dass sie ihre Rechte zurücknehmen.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
heritage by going into egypt and also restoring a lot of the temples and monuments so they're prolific builders in sudan so do we know much you mentioned all those monuments so do we have quite a lot of archaeological evidence alongside you say there's mentions in the bible which is really interesting do we have much evidence to create a really detailed story about the 25th dynasty yes and it's more than what we do get in later periods of course so it's often a period that archaeologists focus on even though
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Es ist generell... A way of also focusing on Egypt. Unfortunately, there's a lack of people studying this in Sudan as much as there is in Egypt. We have a huge amount of buildings in Sudan and Egypt with the same names of rulers. They often restore temples as well from the New Kingdom. They show themselves in very Egyptian and Egyptianized styles.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So things that we'd be familiar with from Egyptian temple reliefs, people shown on a side profile. Es gibt spezifische ägyptische Kräune, wie die mit dem Uraeus. Oh, das ist das Snake-Ding. Genau. Sie sind natürlich sehr dünn, sehr hoch. Sie beginnen mit Hieroglyphen, um Inskriptionen zu schreiben, das ist dann, wenn wir ihre Stimmen bekommen.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Und dann, wie ich schon gesagt habe, haben wir einige Referenzen zu diesen letzten Königen in der Bibel und auch in Assyrien-Texten, weil die 25. Dynastie gegen die Assyrien-Empire kommt.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So, yes, you're right. There are actually more pyramids in Sudan than there are in Egypt.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So there are 118 pyramids in Egypt at last count. There are currently estimated to be 200 in Sudan, but it seems likely there's a lot more. I've been to sites that are currently unexcavated or in the process of being excavated and you can see the remains of superstructures on the top of the graves that were clearly small pyramids. So there were a lot more than we think there were.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So, we start to get pyramids to some extent in the New Kingdom. So, rather than thinking of the very grand pyramids that you see like at the Pyramids of Giza, which are obviously much, much older, they date to the Egyptian Old Kingdom. Die Neuen Kirchen-Pyramiden sind ziemlich klein.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Sie sind groß und breit und sind generell zu einer kleinen Tumenschapel an der Front verbunden, damit man in die Kirche gehen kann und die Angehörigen anbieten kann und für ihre Angehörige beten kann. Das ist, was wir in Sudan sehen. Wir wissen, dass in manchen Fällen das Ägypten ist, die nach Süden gehen und ihre traditionellen Geburtstätten von zu Hause konstruieren.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
So at the site of Tombos, for example, in Sudan, we know an official known as Siamun was sent to run the city of Tombos. He brought his mother with him, suggesting that the city is quite safe and also really interesting elements of familiar love and how important it is to bring your family with you into Sudan at this point, which is again new.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
This is a new New Kingdom thing, a new New Kingdom phenomenon. In the Middle Kingdom it wasn't safe, so people didn't do that. Siemen builds what we think is a small pyramid superstructure. And he also constructs his tomb chapel in a very Theban way. So we can tell he's from Thebes and he's bringing his traditions with him.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
But once we get to the Kushite period, this is when you see some of the more famous pyramids probably. This is when you see the royal pyramids. So at sites such as Meroe, Das war das Kapital des späteren Kurses. Als du heute in Merui reist, reist du in die Pyramiden, wie sie genannt werden. Es gibt all diese ziemlich dunklen, tiefen Pyramiden, die aus dem Sand aussehen, als du den Hillen kreist.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Wenn du heute in Merui reist und das erste Bild, das du bekommst, ist das Pyramidenfeld.
The Ancients
The Kingdom of Kush
Genau, und das ist etwas, das deutlich inspiriert ist von den neuen Königspyramiden, die wir damals auch gesehen haben. They are unfortunately generally broken, so that the tops have often been smashed off. For example, there is a pyramid belonging to a ruling queen, a man of Shiketo, whose pyramid top was smashed off by an explorer named Fellini, looking for treasure.