What is the difference between nubia and kush

The newly won land was divided into two territories: Wawat in the north and Kush in the south. Resources were intensively exploited by the Egyptian empire. Many native inhabitants were recruited into Egyptian armies or employed as laborers on Egyptian civil and religious estates. Many Nubians embraced the language, religion and forms of aesthetic expression of their overlords.

This vase shows strong Egyptian influence in shape and style; to ancient Egyptians the lotus was symbolic of rebirth and new life. The Egyptians withdrew from Sudan around B.

Taking advantage of instability and political disunity in Egypt, the Kushite king Kashta extended his control to Thebes in Egypt by the mid-eighth century B. He and his three successors, Shabaqo, Taharqo and Tamwetamani, were acknowledged as the legitimate sovereigns of Egypt, forming the Twenty-fifth Dynasty.

Their capital was the important religious centre of Napata, near the Fourth Cataract of the Nile. Kushite control of Egypt ended when Assyrian forces invaded between and B. After BC, the Kushite rulers were buried at Meroe in a fertile grassland region northeast of Khartoum. Meroe became the centre of a flourishing economy and developed commercial links with the Mediterranean world.

Art and architecture displayed Egyptian influence, but archaeology also points to a growth of local traditions. A strong local element was apparent in religion, with Nubian deities such as the lion-headed Apedemak appearing alongside the Egyptian Amun, Osiris and Isis. The Kushite dynasty ended around C. The large eyes are typical of Kushite art and the piece bears a cartouche of the Kushite ruler Arnekhamani — B.

The term aegis is used in Egyptology to describe a broad collar surmounted by the head of a deity, in this case a goddess, possibly Isis. Representations in temples show that these objects decorated the sacred boats in which deities were carried in procession during festivals. An aegis was mounted at the prow and another at the stern. The head of the deity identified the occupant of the boat and it is likely that this example came from a sacred boat of Isis.

The eyes and eyebrows of the goddess were originally inlaid. The large eyes, further emphasized by the inlay, are typical of later Kushite art. The rectangular hole in her forehead once held the uraeus , which identified her as a goddess.

The surviving part of her head-dress consists of a vulture—the wing feathers can be seen below her ears. The vulture head-dress was originally worn by the goddess Mut, consort of Amun of Thebes, but became common for all goddesses. The piece bears a cartouche of the Kushite ruler Arnekhamani reigned about — B. The early Kushite kings were buried on beds placed on stone platforms in the tombs under their pyramids.

These structures were based on the pyramids of Egyptian private tombs of the New Kingdom about — B. King Taharqo — B. These figures were in the style of the Middle and New Kingdoms, the era that the Kushites considered the height of Egyptian culture. These pharaohs modified the distinct ive headdress to reflect their dual kingship of Egypt and Kush.

The traditional pharaonic headdress features the Uraeus , a stylized depiction of a cobra. Many pharaonic headdresses also feature a vulture, symbolizing Upper southern Egypt.

The Assyrians and Egyptians of the Late Period attempted to erase Kushite leadership and the 25th Dynasty from history by destroying their statues, stele s, and even their names from the historic record. The most significant artifacts of Meroitic culture are probably its pyramid s. More than a dozen Kushite kings, queens, and other nobles are inter red with pyramids.

Although unlike Egyptian pyramids, Meroitic pyramids do not hold the tomb itself. The burial chamber lies beneath the pyramid, making the pyramid less a tomb than an enormous headstone. Kushite pyramids are notably smaller and steeper than their older Egyptian cousins. The base of Meroitic pyramids is also smaller than Egyptian pyramids—about 7 meters 22 feet wide, while the step pyramid is about meters feet and the Great Pyramid is meters feet.

Kush had its own dynastic leaders, trade systems, adaptations of Egyptian religion, and even its own alphabet and languages. Kush became weaker as Egypt was absorb ed into the Roman Empire and Rome came to dominate trade to the north. The harsh Saharan climate threatens the stability of Kushite monumental architecture. Centuries of rain and wind have reduced some deffufas to unrecognizable towering lumps. Powerful sandstorms have blasted the pyramids for centuries, and shifting sand has accumulated around many structures, obscuring and even burying them.

The profound legacy of Kush and other Nubian civilizations was historically ignored and even denied until relatively recently.

Modern Sudan is forced to balance its economic and political growth with its archaeological history. This has resulted in larger urban areas and a much greater demand for electricity to power homes, businesses, schools, and hospitals. Urban development, meanwhile, has uncovered Nubian sites and artifacts—including mummies. Kushite artifacts have been stolen for centuries. More recently, grave robbers armed with metal detectors have excavated both Kushite sites and the remains of nearby ancient trade routes.

The Kingdom of Kush is often noted for its powerful warrior-queens. The veracity of these encounters is debated. Also called ventilation. Cataracts of the Nile.

Lower Egypt. Near East. Roman Empire. Upper Egypt. Media Credits The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit.

Media If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. Yet whether judged as "white" or "black," Nubian civilization could not have received much popular interest at the time. If it were merely an offshoot of a "white" Egypt in central Africa, as Reisner theorized, then it would inevitably be judged as late, decadent, and "peripheral" i.

If it were "black," then in the minds of his contemporaries it would be utterly irrelevant to history. In either case, it seemed to offer few attractions as an area of study for Egypologists of that generation, and almost none pursued it.

Contemporary books on Egyptian history virtually ignored it. Even as late as the s and 50s, the racial identity of the Nubians remained problematic for "white" scholars. For example, when the bones of the Kushite royalty, recovered from Reisner's excavations, were sent for analysis to the specialists at the Peabody Museum at Harvard, the latter identified them as belonging to the "basic white stock of Egypt".

In this case, the osteologists, like Lepsius, Taylor and Reisner, evidently wished to claim them for their "own race. But his dominion was not for long.

Their kings were said never to have condemned prisoners to death; they forgave their enemies and allowed them to retain their offices; they also actually gave public credit for achievement in their inscriptions to individuals other than themselves. Such characteristics among other ancient monarchs of Egypt or the Near East are unheard of, and we can only assume these were native Nubian qualities. Yet for Egyptologists of the first half of the 20th century, the fact that they were "negro" marked this period as the lowest level to which Egyptian civilization had sunk in all its history.

When the mass of material from Reisner's excavations in the Sudan was sent back to the Boston Museum in , most of it went into storage and was all but forgotten. When in the late s it was rediscovered by the Museum's curators, they joyously identified it as one of the Museum's most important and unique treasures, assigned it to several national and international touring exhibitions, and finally installed it in a special permanent gallery.