The Black Pharaohs of Egypt
In 730 B.C., Piye became the first of what is known as “the Black Pharaohs” — who were a number of Nubian kings who invaded and ruled over all of Egypt for 75 years as its Twenty-fifth Dynasty. At this point in history the ancient Egyptian civilization that had built the great pyramids was being torn apart by continued fighting between warlords. For two decades Piye had ruled over his own kingdom in Nubia, part of Africa in what is mostly the Sudan, the country south of Egypt, and had the desire to expand his power.
Piye’s military forces attacked Thebes first, as it was the centre of power of Upper Egypt. By the end of the 12-month campaign every warlord in Egypt had been defeated —including even the most powerful warlord of the Nile Delta region. From these leaders, whom he allowed to live, he confiscated all their riches, and best horses for himself. He then returned home to Nubia, and never returned. When Piye died at the end of his 35-year reign over Nubia, his subjects buried him in an Egyptian-style pyramid, with four of his best horses. He was the first pharaoh to receive such entombment in more than 500 years.
Piye’s brother Shabaka continued the 25th dynasty by moving to the Egyptian capital of Memphis. Like his brother, Shabaka took on the ancient ways of the pharaohs. And rather than execute his enemies, he used their forced labour for building dikes to seal off Egyptian villages from Nile floods. Under his rule the cities of Thebes and Luxor were filled with new building projects. At Karnak he had a statue erected depicting himself wearing a crown of two cobras signifying his legitimacy as Lord of the Two Lands.
Taharqa, Piye’s son, succeeded Shabaka but was ultimately vanquished by the Assyrians, the evidence of which is illustrated on rocks showing him defeated, kneeling before an Assyrian with a rope tied around his neck. Through inscriptions carved on memorial rocks, by both the Nubians and their enemies, it is possible to map out these rulers’ history on the African continent. The black pharaohs were responsible for reunifying a tattered Egypt and filling its landscape with glorious monuments, creating an empire that stretched from the southern border at present-day Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, all the way north to the Mediterranean Sea.
Their story was unknown to the modern world until 40 years ago when archaeologists began discovering the history they made and realizing there had been a thriving civilization that had flourished on the southern banks of the Nile for 2,500 years, going back at least as far as the first Egyptian dynasty. Sudan’s pyramids actually outnumber those of Egypt but remain unknown and unvisited by tourists.
Unfortunately the world’s archaeologists have not yet had a chance to uncover all that could tell of this culture’s history, and now the Sudanese government is building a hydroelectric dam along the Nile, which will cover those sites with water when it is complete in 2009. This will tragically submerge forever the thousands of unexplored sites, so archaeologists from all over the world have made their way there to explore as much as they can while they still have access.
Rev The Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes, A.C., M.L.C.
References:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/02/black-pharaohs/robert-draper-text/1, http://www.archaeologychannel.org/content/film/BlackPharaohsclip.htm,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kush
