Archaeologists are finding widespread evidence that
the kingdom of Kush once had influence over a 750-mile
stretch of the Nile Valley.

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: June 19, 2007

On the periphery of history in antiquity, there was a
land known as Kush. Overshadowed by Egypt, to the
north, it was a place of uncharted breadth and depth
far up the Nile, a mystery verging on myth. One thing
the Egyptians did know and recorded — Kush had gold.

The New York Times

Scholars have come to learn that there was more to the
culture of Kush than was previously suspected. From
deciphered Egyptian documents and modern
archaeological research, it is now known that for five
centuries in the second millennium B.C., the kingdom
of Kush flourished with the political and military
prowess to maintain some control over a wide territory
in Africa.

Kush’s governing success would seem to have been
anomalous, or else conventional ideas about statehood
rest too narrowly on the experiences of early
civilizations like Mesopotamia, Egypt and China. How
could a fairly complex state society exist without a
writing system, an extensive bureaucracy or major
urban centers, none of which Kush evidently had?

Archaeologists are now finding some answers — at least
intriguing insights — emerging in advance of rising
Nile waters behind a new dam in northern Sudan.
Hurried excavations are uncovering ancient
settlements, cemeteries and gold-processing centers in
regions previously unexplored.

In recent reports and interviews, archaeologists said
they had found widespread evidence that the kingdom of
Kush, in its ascendancy from 2000 B.C. to 1500 B.C.,
exerted control or at least influence over a 750-mile
stretch of the Nile Valley. This region extended from
the first cataract in the Nile, as attested by an
Egyptian monument, all the way upstream to beyond the
fourth cataract. The area covered part of the larger
geographic region of indeterminate borders known in
antiquity as Nubia.

Some archaeologists theorize that the discoveries show
that the rulers of Kush were the first in sub-Saharan
Africa to hold sway over so vast a territory.

“This makes Kush a more major player in political and
military dynamics of the time than we knew before,”
said Geoff Emberling, co-leader of a University of
Chicago expedition. “Studying Kush helps scholars have
a better idea of what statehood meant in an ancient
context outside such established power centers of
Egypt and Mesopotamia.”

Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute at the
university, said, “Until now, virtually all that we
have known about Kush came from the historical records
of their Egyptian neighbors and from limited
explorations of monumental architecture at the Kushite
capital city, Kerma.”

To archaeologists, knowing that a virtually unexplored
land of mystery is soon to be flooded has the same
effect as Samuel Johnson ascribed to one facing the
gallows in the morning. It concentrates the mind.

Over the last few years, archaeological teams from
Britain, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Sudan and the
United States have raced to dig at sites that will
soon be underwater. The teams were surprised to find
hundreds of settlement ruins, cemeteries and examples
of rock art that had never been studied. One of the
most comprehensive salvage operations has been
conducted by groups headed by Henryk Paner of the
Gdansk Archaeological Museum in Poland, which surveyed
711 ancient sites in 2003 alone.

“This area is so incredibly rich in archaeology,”
Derek Welsby of the British Museum said in a report
last winter in Archaeology magazine.

The scale of the salvage effort hardly compares to the
response in the 1960s to the Aswan High Dam, which
flooded a part of Nubia that then reached into what is
southern Egypt. Imposing temples that the pharaohs
erected at Abu Simbel and Philae were dismantled and
restored on higher ground.

The Kushites, however, left no such grand architecture
to be rescued. Their kingdom declined and eventually
disappeared by the end of the 16th century B.C., as
Egypt grew more powerful and expansive under rulers of
the period known as the New Kingdom.

In Sudan, the Merowe Dam, built by Chinese engineers
with French and German subcontractors, stands at the
downstream end of the fourth cataract, a narrow
passage of rapids and islands. The rising Nile waters
will create a lake 2 miles wide and 100 miles long,
displacing more than 50,000 people of the Manasir,
Rubatab and Shaigiyya tribes. Most archaeologists
expect this to be their last year for exploring Kush
sites nearest the former riverbanks.

In the first three months of this year, archaeologists
from the Oriental Institute of the University of
Chicago scoured the rock and ruins of a desolate site
called Hosh el-Geruf, upstream from the fourth
cataract and about 225 miles north of Khartoum, the
capital of Sudan. Their most striking discovery was
ample artifacts of Kushite gold processing.

University of Chicago

‘Major Player’ The pyramids of Merowe distant
relatives of the Great Pyramids, north of Khartoum. At
a dig in the region, a University of Chicago team is
racing to uncover ruins of the kingdom of Kush, which
flourished for five centuries in the second millennium
B.C. in a state society without a writing system, an
extensive bureaucracy or major urban centers. More
Photos >

A Lost Kingdom on the Nile Gold was already known as a
source of Kush’s wealth through trade with Egypt.
Other remains of gold-processing works had been found
in the region, though none with such a concentration
of artifacts. Dr. Emberling said that more than 55
huge grinding stones were scattered along the
riverbank.

Experts in the party familiar with ancient mining
technology noted that the stones were similar to ones
found in Egypt in association with gold processing.
The stones were used to crush ore from quartz veins.
The ground bits were presumably washed with river
water to separate and recover the precious metal.

“Even today, panning for gold is a traditional
activity in the area,” said Bruce Williams, a research
associate at the Oriental Institute and a co-leader of
the expedition.

But the archaeologists saw more in their discovery
than the glitter of gold. The grinding stones were too
large and numerous to have been used only for
processing gold for local trade. Ceramics at the site
were in the style and period of Kush’s classic
flowering, about 1750 B.C. to 1550 B.C.

This appeared to be strong evidence for a close
relationship between the gold-processing settlement
and ancient Kerma, the seat of the kingdom at the
third cataract, about 250 miles downstream. The modern
city of Kerma has spread over the ancient site, but
some of the ruins are protected for further research
by Swiss archaeologists, whose work will not be
affected by the new dam.

British and Polish teams have also reported
considerable evidence of the Kerma culture in
cemeteries and settlement ruins elsewhere upstream
from the fourth cataract. Near Hosh el-Geruf, the
Chicago expedition excavated more than a third of the
90 burials in a cemetery. Grave goods indicated that
these were elite burials from the same classic period
and, thus, more evidence of the influence of Kerma. A
few tombs had the rectangular shafts of class Kerma
burials, graceful tulip-shaped beakers and jars of the
Kerma type and even some vessels and jewelry from
Egypt.

“The exciting thing to me,” Dr. Williams said, “is
that we are really seeing intensive organization
activity from a distance, and the only reasonable
attribution is that it belongs to Kush.”

The primary accomplishment of the salvage project, the
archaeologists said, is the realization that the
kingdom of Kush in its heyday extended not just
northward to the first cataract, but also southward,
well beyond the fourth cataract. At places like Hosh
el-Geruf, they added in an internal report, “the
expedition found the Kushites’ organized search for
wealth illustrated in a significant new way.”

The research is supported by the Packard Humanities
Institute and the National Geographic Society. The
Hosh el-Geruf site is in the research area assigned by
Sudanese authorities to the Gdansk Museum, which
invited the Chicago team to dig there.

By this time next year, the dammed waters may be
lapping at the old gold works, and archaeologists will
be looking elsewhere for clues to the mystery of how
remote Kush developed the statecraft to oversee a vast
realm in antiquity.

What a pity that many of the sites of antiquity in East Africa are all too often flooded and lost forever in a modern dam/ engineering development.

The same thing happened with the Aswan dam. Its also sad that many of these areas are under muslim control / as these governements dont give a damn about their ancestors or history since it is " heathen" and not valued Why else would ancient cities in Ethiopia lie in abandon at mercy to the elements. Why are not government experts pouring over them and even developing them for tourism whcih would be a good earner.