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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Sudan
Index
Northern Sudan's earliest historical record comes from
Egyptian sources, which described the land upstream from the
first cataract, called Cush, as "wretched." For more than 2,000
years after the Old Kingdom (ca. 2700-2180 B.C.), Egyptian
political and economic activities determined the course of the
central Nile region's history. Even during intermediate periods
when Egyptian political power in Cush waned, Egypt exerted a
profound cultural and religious influence on the Cushite people.
Over the centuries, trade developed. Egyptian caravans
carried grain to Cush and returned to Aswan with ivory, incense,
hides, and carnelian (a stone prized both as jewelry and for
arrowheads) for shipment downriver. Egyptian traders particularly
valued gold and slaves, who served as domestic servants,
concubines, and soldiers in the pharaoh's army. Egyptian military
expeditions penetrated Cush periodically during the Old Kingdom.
Yet there was no attempt to establish a permanent presence in the
area until the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2100-1720 B.C.), when Egypt
constructed a network of forts along the Nile as far south as
Samnah, in southern Egypt, to guard the flow of gold from mines
in Wawat.
Around 1720 B.C., Asian nomads called Hyksos invaded Egypt,
ended the Middle Kingdom, severed links with Cush, and destroyed
the forts along the Nile River. To fill the vacuum left by the
Egyptian withdrawal, a culturally distinct indigenous kingdom
emerged at Karmah, near present-day Dunqulah. After Egyptian
power revived during the New Kingdom (ca. 1570-1100 B.C.), the
pharaoh Ahmose I incorporated Cush as an Egyptian province
governed by a viceroy. Although Egypt's administrative control of
Cush extended only down to the fourth cataract, Egyptian sources
list tributary districts reaching to the Red Sea and upstream to
the confluence of the Blue Nile and White Nile rivers. Egyptian
authorities ensured the loyalty of local chiefs by drafting their
children to serve as pages at the pharaoh's court. Egypt also
expected tribute in gold and slaves from local chiefs.
Once Egypt had established political control over Cush,
officials and priests joined military personnel, merchants, and
artisans and settled in the region. The Coptic language, spoken
in Egypt, became widely used in everyday activities. The Cushite
elite adopted Egyptian gods and built temples like that dedicated
to the sun god Amon at Napata, near present-day Kuraymah. The
temples remained centers of official religious worship until the
coming of Christianity to the region in the sixth century. When
Egyptian influence declined or succumbed to foreign domination,
the Cushite elite regarded themselves as champions of genuine
Egyptian cultural and religious values.
By the eleventh century B.C., the authority of the New
Kingdom dynasties had diminished, allowing divided rule in Egypt,
and ending Egyptian control of Cush. There is no information
about the region's activities over the next 300 years. In the
eighth century B.C., however, Cush reemerged as an independent
kingdom ruled from Napata by an aggressive line of monarchs who
gradually extended their influence into Egypt. About 750 B.C., a
Cushite king called Kashta conquered Upper Egypt and became ruler
of Thebes until approximately 740 B.C. His successor, Painkhy,
subdued the delta, reunited Egypt under the Twenty-fifth Dynasty,
and founded a line of kings who ruled Cush and Thebes for about a
hundred years. The dynasty's intervention in the area of modern
Syria caused a confrontation between Egypt and Assyria. When the
Assyrians in retaliation invaded Egypt, Taharqa (688-663 B.C.),
the last Cushite pharaoh, withdrew and returned the dynasty to
Napata, where it continued to rule Cush and extended its
dominions to the south and east.
Data as of June 1991
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