Fridays – Ancient Nubia & Ancient Egypt Foes or Friends?
8/9 & 8/16 @ 11:00 AM/CH
Instructor: Stephen “Dr. Steve” Phillips, Ph.D.,
From prehistory to the time of Alexander the Great, two mighty civilizations dominated and shared the northeast corner of the African continent along the famed Nile River: Ancient Egypt and Ancient Nubia (present day Sudan). The Kingdom of Nubia was Egypt’s neighbor to its south for some 1,000 years, occupying an area along the Nile River stretching from the First to the Sixth Cataracts (cataract = rocky shallows). Throughout its history, Nubia, also known as Kush, was a crucial center of commerce and trade between the areas south of the Sahara and Egypt itself, to Nubia’s north.
Egypt and Nubia share equally a cultural history that spans thousands of years from the pre-dynastic through the pharaonic periods. Trade in ebony, ivory, and gold flowed northward via a succession of powerful Nubian cities such as Kerma, Napata, and Meroë.
Over time, the lengthy relationship between Egypt and Nubia varied between friendly economic cooperation and cultural exchange to being foes – Nubian kings conquered Egypt in the 25th dynasty and subsequently ruled Egypt for over a century.
This highly illustrated lecture explores Nubia’s geography, its general history and relationship with Egypt, its language, religion, and funerary practices. The Nubians produced their own monumental architecture, eventually their own writing system, and their own spectacular artifacts, including gold objects equal in quality and quantity to those produced in ancient Egypt.
