Dan talks with writer, broadcaster and journalist Zeinab Badawi about the ancient African kingdom of Kush and her book on African history.
Full Episode
It's hardcore history. So I've been looking for someone to talk with me about the ancient kingdom of Kush for years. The good news is I finally found the perfect person to do that, and I'm having them on the show today.
The bad news is this person has actually written a brand new book that encompasses the entire history of Africa, basically, from the beginning to recent times, from top to bottom, side to side. and I'm going to monopolize the conversation to talk about this one region and this one era.
So I apologize for all the stuff you're not going to get today that's in the book that we could have touched upon, but I've been trying for years to get somebody on this show to talk about this little pet issue of mine. So I'm afraid not only do I monopolize the conversation on the subject, but I dive right into it and don't give any background.
So let me do a little of that real quickly so that we know what we're discussing. The kingdom of Cush is a kingdom that's located, well, it starts in ancient Egyptian times. It's a contemporary, it's really the next door neighbor of the ancient Egyptians. Back to prehistoric times. Their relationship is as close as close can be.
You can see carvings of the troops of some of these pharaohs from the Old Kingdom that are buried with them. And, you know, Old Kingdom pharaohs, you're talking 2300, 2400 BCE, 2200 BCE, really old stuff. Old Kingdom, right? But in their tombs, you can see Kushite soldiers in their armies already buried. and already famous for the weapon that they are known for.
This is the land, the Kushites, or Kush, where they're from, is often called the land of the bow. And in the old kingdom pharaoh tombs, there they are, armed with their bows. Thousands of years later, Herodotus describing the great king of Persia's army and trying to emphasize the exoticness and the far-flung nature of his empire and all the troops that he could call upon.
He talks about a contingent from a place he calls Ethiopia, which is what the Greeks called the region that's now sort of Sudan and that encompasses the Kushite people. And he describes their soldiers similarly. says that they are black-skinned, that they paint their body in war paint from top to bottom.
I think it was one half red and one half white, and that they are carrying their bows that are as long as a man. They had a reputation for shooting at the eyes of their opponent, and one can imagine that that must have been something that earned you a lot of kudos with your You know, fellow warriors. I mean, oh my God, he got the eye, right? He shot at the guy's eye and he got it.
I mean, that's what you're aiming for. And the arrows are supposedly poisonous. That's quite a reputation to have from thousands of years ago. Now, I discovered the Kushites because a person who war-gamed at the shop where I war-gamed had an army that attracted all of our attention. It was a fascinating army that, on the surface, looked like a standard biblical Egyptian army.
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