50 Fun Facts About Ancient Nubia

Which modern country, heartland of ancient Nubia, has more pyramids than Egypt?

Sudan has more than 200 known pyramids, raised by Kushite rulers over the tombs of kings, queens and wealthy citizens.

Ancient Egyptians called Nubia Ta-Seti, a name usually translated as the 'Land of' which weapon?

The Bow was so much Nubia's weapon that Egyptian armies recruited Nubian archers, and a tomb model from Asyut shows a company of them on the march.

Which title did the ruling queens of Kush hold, one of whom appears in the Book of Acts?

Kandake reached English as the name Candace, because the Book of Acts uses the Kushite title as if it were the queen's own name.

Which queen of Kush, described by Strabo as blind in one eye, raided Roman Egypt and won a peace?

Amanirenas sent envoys who met the emperor on Samos, and the treaty they won kept the frontier peaceful for about three centuries.

Kushite raiders buried a looted bronze head of which Roman emperor beneath temple steps at Meroë?

Augustus lay underfoot for more than 1,900 years: the head was buried below a temple stair, and the dry sand preserved its glass and calcite eyes.

Apedemak, the Kushite war god with a temple at Naqa, is shown with the head of which animal?

Lion heads mark Apedemak, a god with no Egyptian counterpart; one carving even gives him three of them, along with four arms.

Which rock-cut temples of Ramesses II in Nubia were cut into blocks and moved uphill in the 1960s?

Abu Simbel was taken apart in blocks of up to 30 tons and rebuilt on higher ground by 1968, inside an artificial hill raised over a dome.

The Nubian Temple of Dendur, Egypt's thank-you gift for rescue help, stands in which American city?

New York has shown the temple at the Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1978; it was one of four Nubian temples Egypt gave to countries that helped.

Which animals did the Kushite king Piye, conqueror of Egypt, have buried near his tomb at El-Kurru?

Horses were buried standing upright with all their trappings at El-Kurru, a custom that three later Kushite kings followed.

What name is given to the huge mud-brick temple at the heart of Kerma, first capital of Kush?

Deffufa is the name given to the great mud-brick monuments at Kerma; the western one, a temple, still towers over the ruins of the city that grew up around it.

What name is given to the six rocky rapids that made Nubia's Nile so hard to sail?

Cataracts are shallow reaches where boulders and rocky islets break the surface; the six are numbered going upstream, away from the Mediterranean.

Which Nubian desert people scouted for Egypt, their name later becoming an Egyptian word for police?

The Medjay began as nomads of Nubia's eastern desert, but by the New Kingdom the name had lost its ethnic meaning and was simply a job title.

Nubia traditionally begins just south of which Egyptian city, later the site of a giant Nile dam?

Aswan sits just below the first of the Nile's great rapids, the natural barrier that marked where Egypt ended and Nubia began.

Lower Nubia is named for its place along the Nile's course, so it lies in which part of Nubia?

The north is 'lower' because the Nile flows that way, down toward the Mediterranean, so Lower Nubia is the stretch closest to Egypt.

Which simple labels do archaeologists use for Nubia's earliest cultures, whose own names are unknown?

Letters of the alphabet gave history the A-Group and the C-Group; a B-Group was named too, then dropped as a mistake for poorer A-Group graves.

Which New Kingdom pharaoh destroyed Kerma and brought Kush under Egyptian rule for centuries?

Thutmose I ended Kerma's long run as Egypt's rival, and the pharaohs then governed Nubia through a viceroy later titled the King's Son of Kush.

Kerma allied against Egypt with which foreign dynasty that ruled the Nile Delta from Avaris?

The Hyksos in the Delta and Kerma far upriver left the Egyptian kings at Thebes facing two threats at once, until they defeated both.

Which American archaeologist dug Kerma and wrongly took it for an Egyptian governor's fort?

George Reisner took the Egyptian statues in Kerma's great tombs for proof of Egyptian rulers, and it was decades before scholars accepted the city as Nubian.

Skulls of which animals, thousands of them, were buried around the royal tombs of Kerma?

Cattle were royal wealth at Kerma, and study of the skulls suggests herds were driven in from far-off districts when a ruler died.

Which city below the holy mountain Jebel Barkal was Kush's capital when its kings conquered Egypt?

Napata was sacked by an Egyptian army in 593 BC, and the Kushite kings later made Meroë, far upriver, their seat, though Napata stayed their holy city.

Which Egyptian god, worshipped in ram-headed form, had his chief Kushite temple at Jebel Barkal?

Amun had a temple there begun by Egypt's New Kingdom pharaohs and greatly enlarged by Piye, the Kushite king who went on to conquer Egypt.

Which Kushite pharaoh, named in the Bible's account of a siege, built the largest pyramid at Nuri?

Taharqa is the Bible's Tirhakah, and his reign was a boom time: an unusually high Nile flood brought abundant crops to Egypt and Kush.

Which empire's armies, under Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, drove the Kushite pharaohs out of Egypt?

The Assyrians captured Memphis in 671 BC, and within a decade the Kushite kings had withdrawn up the Nile, never to rule Egypt again.

Statues of Kushite pharaohs show two of which creature rearing side by side on the brow?

Cobras in a pair, known as the double uraeus, are thought to have signalled rule over two lands at once, Nubia and Egypt.

The Shabaka Stone, a Kushite pharaoh's copy of an old creation text, was probably reused as what?

A millstone would explain the hole and radiating grooves that wiped out much of a text the pharaoh said he had rescued from a worm-eaten papyrus.

A largely fictional ancient romance pits which conqueror against a queen of Meroë, though he never marched on Nubia?

Alexander the Great went no further south than the oasis of Siwa in Egypt; the tale of his Nubian encounter comes from a romance written centuries after his death.

Meroë's furnaces reportedly led one scholar to call it the 'Birmingham of Africa' for which metal?

Iron ore and hardwood for the furnaces lay close at hand, one reason given for moving the Kushite capital there, though the industry's true scale is debated.

Which Red Sea trading kingdom left inscriptions at Meroë that point to a fourth-century AD campaign?

Aksum is often credited with ending Kush, but historians still argue over whether its army delivered the blow or struck a kingdom already in decline.

Carvings of which animals abound at Musawwarat es-Sufra, once thought a training camp for them?

Elephants appear so often in the sculpture that a training camp was one early guess, alongside a college and a hospital; the site's purpose is still debated.

Which Italian treasure hunter demolished pyramids at Meroë in the 1830s, some with explosives?

Giuseppe Ferlini struggled to sell his haul because buyers refused to believe such fine jewellery was made so far south; it ended up in Munich and Berlin.

Compared with the pyramids of Giza, the smaller royal pyramids of Meroë have what kind of sides?

Much steeper sides, at about 70 degrees, rise from small bases and give Kushite pyramids the tall, narrow outline that sets them apart.

Which Roman emperor sent soldiers up the Nile past Meroë until the swamps of the Sudd stopped them?

Nero had a motive that ancient writers disagree on: Seneca says the men sought the source of the Nile, Pliny that they were scouting for an invasion.

Herodotus says which Persian king, conqueror of Egypt, saw his invasion of Kush fail in the desert?

Cambyses II may have fared better than the story says: a fortress on a Nile island in Lower Nubia seems to have marked Persia's southern boundary.

In Genesis, the Cush whose name is linked with the kingdom of Kush is the son of which figure?

Ham has four sons in Genesis, and another of them, Mizraim, bears the Hebrew name for Egypt, so the Bible makes the two Nile neighbours brothers.

Meroitic was written in hieroglyphs and which other script, used for nine inscriptions in ten?

Cursive Meroitic grew out of Egyptian Demotic; its sounds were worked out in 1909, yet the language behind them is still poorly understood.

Which Christian Nubian kingdom, ruled from Dongola, repelled an Arab army at its capital in 652?

Makuria then agreed a peace with Egypt's new Muslim rulers that kept the border largely quiet until the 13th century.

Which treaty between Christian Nubia and Muslim Egypt is said to have held for nearly 700 years?

The Baqt worked as an exchange: Nubia sent 360 slaves a year, and one version has Egypt sending wheat and lentils south in return.

Which country's archaeologists rescued the wall paintings of Faras Cathedral in Nubia from flooding?

Poland kept part of the find: the National Museum in Warsaw shows the paintings in a dedicated Faras Gallery, after a dig led by Kazimierz Michałowski.

Which UN agency led a 50-nation campaign to rescue Nubia's monuments from rising water in the 1960s?

UNESCO saw 22 monuments moved to safety, and the effort led to the 1972 World Heritage Convention; the rescued Nubian temples joined the list in 1979.

Which reservoir drowned most of Lower Nubia in the 1960s, forcing tens of thousands of Nubians out?

Lake Nasser is named after the Egyptian president who ordered the dam that created it; the stretch beyond Egypt's border is known as Lake Nubia.

Which goddess's temple at Philae drew Nubian pilgrims until the emperor Justinian ordered it shut?

Isis kept her worshippers at Philae until AD 537, and in earlier centuries her sanctuary drew pilgrims from as far away as Crete and Anatolia.

In the Book of Acts, who baptises a Kushite queen's treasurer on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza?

Philip found the official sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah, explained the passage, and baptised him at the man's own request.

Archaeologists reach King Nastasen's tomb beneath his pyramid at Nuri by which unusual method?

Diving underwater is the only way in, because rising groundwater has filled the chambers; divers have brought up a bone fragment thought to be the king's.

The Nubian Temple of Debod, a gift from Egypt for rescue help, was rebuilt in which European capital?

Madrid received the temple in 1968; it was taken apart, shipped and rebuilt in the Parque de la Montaña between 1970 and 1972.

Which prized hardwood reached Egypt through Nubia from tropical Africa, along with incense?

Ebony was one of the cargoes that made Nubia's middlemen rich: at its height, Kerma completely controlled the southern trade with Egypt.

Meroë's heartland, bounded by the Nile, the Atbara and the Blue Nile, is traditionally called what?

An island in name only: the Butana region earned the title because three rivers hem it in.

Which young pharaoh wrote eagerly to the explorer Harkhuf about a pygmy he was bringing from Nubia?

Pepi II was so keen to see the newcomer that Harkhuf had the royal letter copied onto the wall of his own tomb, where it survives.

Which pharaoh fixed his border at Semna in Nubia and disowned any heir who failed to defend it?

Senusret III had the warning carved on a boundary stela, and he loomed so large on the frontier that later generations at Semna worshipped him as a god.

Which pharaoh's army invaded Nubia in the 590s BC, looting temples and smashing royal statues?

Psamtik II meant to end any Kushite hope of retaking Egypt, and the Kushite kings later made Meroë, far upriver, their seat.

The bronze head of a Roman emperor dug up at Meroë in 1910 is now a star exhibit of which collection?

The British Museum received the head in 1911, a year after John Garstang dug it out of a pocket of clean sand outside a temple doorway.