Nubians
The Nubians are a Nilo-Saharan-speaking people in present-day Sudan and southern Egypt, some of whom are strongly mixed with Arabs and black African ethnic groups .
Nubian cultures can already be detected in prehistory. A distinction is made between the A and C groups . The ancient Egyptian name for the country south of the First Cataract (near Aswan ) is Kush . For Egypt, Nubia was an important source of gold , ivory , hides and slaves and therefore always a target of the Pharaonic expansion.
The development of the A group culture even outstripped that of prehistoric Egypt at times. The expansion of the Egyptian Naqada culture finally put a violent end to the A-group culture.
The 25th dynasty is known as the Kushitian dynasty (= Nubian dynasty). Taharqa was the 5th pharaoh of the Nubian dynasty and ruled from 690 to 664 BC. He led Egypt to economic and cultural prosperity. In 669 BC BC he was defeated by the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal . He was succeeded by his son Tanotamun , who lived until 663 BC. Ruled. He was the last "Black Pharaoh".
In the army and in the police force, the Nubians played a major role at all times. Their archers , who also played an important role in the conquest of Egypt, were particularly feared . The Nubian language is one of the Nilo-Saharan languages.
Nubians in the narrower sense (Nubia) were mentioned for the first time around the birth of Christ by Strabo , who names Eratosthenes as an informant, and described as living on the Nile north-west of Meroe .
literature
- Wolfgang Helck , Eberhard Otto : Small Lexicon of Egyptology . Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 1999, pp. 204-206, ISBN 3-447-04027-0
- Stephan Johannes Seidlmayer : Nubians in the Egyptian context in the Old and Middle Kingdom. In: Communications of the SFB 586, Universities of Leipzig and Halle-Wittenberg 2001, pp. 89–113