Last night’s TV watching was so interesting that I decided to embark on Gus Casely-Hayford’s series, Lost Kingdoms of Africa. The first episode was about Nubia. Possibly we should call it Kush, because “Nubia” appears to be an Egyptian word meaning “land of the slaves”, but the Nuba people of southern Sudan carry the name with pride today and if they are happy with it I guess we can be too.

Nubia is familiar to anyone who has studied Egyptian history, but the program gave us far more background on this once-great civilization that has been destroyed by the encroaching Sahara. Casely-Hayford took us back to an 8,000 year old archaeological site in northern Sudan, an area that is now a baking desert but which once clearly, from rock paintings, supported cattle and even elephant.

Around 2000 BC the Nubian city of Kerma was so wealthy that the burial of one ruler was accompanied by the sacrifice of 5,000 cattle and 300 servants. 500 years later Nubia was conquered by Egypt, but the Nubians later turned the tables on their conquerors founding their own dynasty. The Nubian holy city of Jebel Barkal contains a temple dedicated to the Nubian pharaoh Taharqa clearly showing him wearing the combined crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. Wikipedia says that Taharqa fought wars against the Assyrians.

As the desert encroached, Nubian civilization retreated southwards, first to Meroë and eventually down the White Nile to where the Nuba still herd the same cattle, and play the same wrestling sport, that their ancestors did millennia ago.

As with yesterday, apologies for the Wikipedia links. I haven’t had time to do my own research (yet).