The Kingdom of Kush
Our newspapers have featured new archaeological discoveries from central Egypt.
The Kingdom of Kush (or Cush) was one of the most important in the history of the African Continent. Its existence was closely tied to ancient Egypt. The kingdom of Kush was situated in what is the home of the Nubian people today. The Kushite kingdom originated in the fourth millennium B.C..
The name given to this civilization comes from the Old Testament where Kush was one of the sons of Ham who settled in Northeast Africa. In the Bible, a large region covering northern Sudan, southern Egypt, and parts of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia were known as Kush.
During antiquity the Kingdom of Kush, it is said, was one of the richest countries of the known world. This was due to the mineral wealth of the borderlands to the east of the Nile.
Kush was one of the main gold-producing areas in the ancient world. Gold was mined between the Nile and the Red Sea, and traces of ancient mining are to be found revealing temples with walls and statues covered by gold leaf. Gold and its export not only were one of the main sources of the wealth and greatness of the kingdom, but greatly influenced foreign relations with Egypt and Rome. It has been computed that during antiquity Kush produced about 51,440,000 ounces of pure gold, worth about $22 billion at today’s value.
Since the early 20th century archaelogists have been making new inroads into learning what this ‘land of Kush’ was all about. They’re running out of time. The Merowe Dam is going to place a 108 mile section of this land along the Nile River underwater.
Recently archaeologists from the University of Chicago have discovered a gold processing center along the middle Nile, an installation that produced the precious metal sometime between 2000 and 1500 B.C. The center, along with a cemetery they discovered, documents extensive control by the first sub-Saharan kingdom, the kingdom of Kush.
The team found more than 55 grinding stones made for crushing minerals. The ground ore was likely washed with water nearby to separate the gold flakes. Water is a key ingredient for the production of gold and it is possible that bits of gold ore were found in gravel deposits nearby in wadis (dry creek beds) and crushed on the site. Such discoveries show that the kingdom, the first in sub-Saharan Africa to control a territory as much as 750 miles in length.
The University of Chicago expedition is part of an international recovery project underway intended to find artefacts related to Kush and other civilizations that flourished in the area before archaeological sites are covered by a steadily rising Nile. The area is being flooded by the Merowe Dam. The lake to be formed by this dam will flood about 100 miles of the Nile Valley in an area that had previously seen no archaeological work. There are 2,500 archaeological sites to be investigated in the area.
The Kingdom of Kush was unusual in that it was able to use the tools of power -military and governance – without having a system of writing, an extensive bureaucracy or numerous urban centers.
Rev. The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, A.C., M.L.C.