Meroe - 590 BC-AD 350
The detachment of this southernmost territory of the Pharaohs, which they had controlled for ;two thousand years, was complete by ‘the early eighth century BC. It had then become the land of Homer's "blameless Ethiopians" whither the gods went to feast every year; the land where the cranes found winter sunshine by "the streams of 0keanos.” Its southern capital, Meroe (the earlier capital had been further north at Napata), was the seat of that line of kings who also absorbed Egypt in the days of Assyrian expansion, and it was to them in the age when Sennacherib was devastating Judaea that Isaiah, or the men of his time, applied the scathing epithet “a broken reed.” In 590 BC an Egyptian army sacked Napata, the capital of Cush, compelling the Cushite court to move to a more secure location at Meroe near the sixth cataract. For several centuries thereafter, the Meroitic kingdom developed independently of Egypt, which passed successively under Persian, Greek, and, finally, Roman domination. During the height of its power in the second and third centuries BC, Meroe extended over a region from the third cataract in the north to Sawba, near present-day Khartoum, in the south.
The pharaonic tradition persisted among a line of rulers at Meroe, who raised stelae to record the achievements of their reigns and erected pyramids to contain their tombs. These objects and the ruins of palaces, temples, and baths at Meroe attest to a centralized political system that employed artisans' skills and commanded the labor of a large work force. A well-managed irrigation system allowed the area to support a higher population density than was possible during later periods.
By the first century BC, the use of hieroglyphs gave way to a Meroitic script that adapted the Egyptian writing system to an indigenous, Nubian-related language spoken later by the region's people. Meroe's succession system was not necessarily hereditary; the matriarchal royal family member deemed most worthy often became king. The queen mother's role in the selection process was crucial to a smooth succession. The crown appears to have passed from brother to brother (or sister) and only when no siblings remained from father to son.
Although Napata remained Meroe's religious center, northern Cush eventually fell into disorder as it came under pressure from the Blemmyes, predatory nomads from east of the Nile. However, the Nile continued to give the region access to the Mediterranean world. Additionally, Meroe maintained contact with Arab and Indian traders along the Red Sea coast and incorporated Hellenistic and Hindu cultural influences into its daily life. Inconclusive evidence suggests that metallurgical technology may have been transmitted westward across the savanna belt to West Africa from Meroe's iron smelteries.
Relations between Meroe and Egypt were not always peaceful. In 23 BC, in response to Meroe's incursions into Upper Egypt, a Roman army moved south and razed Napata. The Roman commander quickly abandoned the area, however, as too poor to warrant colonization.
In the second century AD, the Nobatae occupied the Nile's west bank in northern Cush. They are believed to have been one of several well-armed bands of horse- and camel-borne warriors who sold protection to the Meroitic population; eventually they intermarried and established themselves among the Meroitic people as a military aristocracy. Until nearly the fifth century, Rome subsidized the Nobatae and used Meroe as a buffer between Egypt and the Blemmyes. Meanwhile, the old Meroitic kingdom contracted because of the expansion of Axum, a powerful Abyssinian state in modern Ethiopia to the east. About AD 350, an Axumite army captured and destroyed Meroe city, ending the kingdom's independent existence.
So late as 1835, Mr. G. A. Hoskins favored the world with the result of his travels in Ethiopia, above the cataract of the Nile, where only two Englishmen had preceded him, Mr. Waddington and Lord Prudhoe. Hoskins had resided above a year in Upper Egypt, delineating its edifices and studying the sculptures and hieroglyphics, and was about to return to Europe, when the arrival of an Italian artist, Mon. L. Bandoni, determined him to visit Ethiopia, where he spent four months. According to his own observations, there were in Meroe remains and traces of eighty pyramids: consisting of three groups; which for picturesque effect and elegance of architecture Hoskins prefers to the stupendous pyramids of Gizeh. They vary in size from twenty to sixty-three feet square; some with, others without a portico. There are thirty-three in one group; another group of thirteen; three other groups of two each; and another of six; and at 5,600 feet to the west of the chief group, are the remains of twenty-five more, almost buried.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
