Ancient Nubia
Ancient Nubia was a sequence of states, not an Egyptian province: Kerma from around 2500 BCE, Egyptian occupation in the New Kingdom, the Kushite kings who ruled Egypt as the 25th Dynasty, Meroe with its own still-undeciphered script, and eight centuries of Christian Nubian kingdoms writing Old Nubian in a Greek-derived alphabet.
Kerma, centred on a city in the Dongola Reach, was strong enough at its height to threaten Egypt from the south. Egyptian New Kingdom rule then held Nubia for centuries and built the temples that later had to be rescued — Abu Simbel among them.
The 25th Dynasty is the part most itineraries never mention. Kushite kings from Napata ruled Egypt for the better part of a century; Taharqa is the best known of them.
Meroitic can be read aloud and still cannot be fully understood — one of very few ancient writing systems in that position.
Chronology here is conventional and approximate, exactly as it is for Egypt.
Yes. The 25th Dynasty were Kushite kings from what is now Sudan, and they held Egypt for roughly a century in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE.
The museum opened in 1997 and was developed with UNESCO to hold and explain material recovered before the flooding.
Reviewed by no Nubian editor appointed yet · We will not mark this section reviewed until a real, named person has read it.