The Kerma Culture and the Kingdom of Kush

The site of Kerma is probably to be identified as the capital of the first Nubian Kingdom of Kush, which first appeared in Egyptian records during the Twelfth Dynasty and then became an increasingly powerful political entity during the Thirteenth Dynasty.

There are still many questions regarding, first, whether the state of Kush was the dominant power in Upper Nubia; second, whether there were a number of independent polities in Nubia at that time; and third, whether this area became a centralized state at that time or earlier. But it is clear that this Nubian kingdom was the first to rival Egypt for control of the Nubian Nile Valley.

Two sites that were inhabited about 2050 BC reflect the two different polities found in Nubia at the time: the С-Group site of Areika in Lower Nubia, excavated in the early twentieth century by David Randall-Maclver and C. Leonard Woolley; and Kerma in Upper Nubia, originally excavated by George Reisner and later by Charles Bonnet and the Sudanese Antiquities Service (discussed below).

There are two areas of Areika: the eastern half and the western half were together surrounded by a fortified wall. The eastern half consists of rectangular buildings and seems to have been the center of food production, as indicated by the presence of hearths and bread ovens, a granary, and a courtyard (possibly to hold animals).

The western half had irregular and sometimes curved buildings in which people lived, perhaps in a fort. Josef Wegner proposes that the large amounts of Egyptian pottery uncovered in the western half belonged to Egyptian officers, probably sent to supervise the Nubian troops and the building of the fortress. O’Connor believes that the Nubian populace maintained congenial contact with Egyptians during this period as indicated by their cohabitation at that site.

The cemeteries associated with Areika contain grave goods that offer evidence for С-Group populations in the area: pottery, figurines of animals and people, sandals, jewelry, stone tools, and implements used for making linen. The figurines have been associated not only with burial practices but possibly also with non-funerary religious activity. They were embellished with impressions and marks to imitate tattoos. (Actual tattoos were also found on some of the women buried at Areika.)

During the Egyptian Second Intermediate Period (Fourteenth-Seventeenth Dynasties, ca. 1685-1550 BC), Egypt was politically decentralized, with competing rulers in Lower and Upper Egypt. Because the Egyptians were thus coping with domestic struggles, Nubian groups were once again able to lay claim to Lower Nubia. At some point, the Egyptian soldiers still stationed in Second Cataract forts appear to have switched their allegiance to the increasingly powerful kings at Kerma.

This era is considered the apogee of Nubian power in Kush, as indicated by the royal city at Kerma, which was the earliest and largest city in Upper Nubia. Kerma-culture political groups, apparently dominant in all of Upper Nubia, expanded their territorial control throughout Lower Nubia as far north as Aswan. There are four phases of the Kerma culture: Pre-Kerma (midfourth millennium to ca. 2600 BC), Early (Ancient) Kerma (ca. 2500-2050 BC), Middle Kerma (ca. 2050-1750 BC), and Classic Kerma (ca. 1750-1450 BC); a final phase, the Late or Post-Classic Kerma phase, postdates the Egyptian New Kingdom conquest of Nubia.

The city of Kerma was strategically located just south of the Third Cataract, beside a wide fertile plain. Very few settlements of the Kerma culture have been excavated, but at the city of Kerma, during the Pre-Kerma and Early Kerma phases, houses appear to be made of mud and reeds, while later, in the Classic Kerma phase, they are made of stone or mud brick. By the seventeenth century BC, the city had reached its zenith in terms of size and impressive architecture.

In the center of the fortified city was a massive mud- brick temple, the Lower or Western Deffufa, which had a pylon-like facade, although unlike Egyptian temples, it was entered from the sides rather than the front. Palace and audience halls were also within the city walls. Residences within the city housed not only the ruler of Kush, but also his family and courtiers, priests, court officials, officers, and soldiers, as well as artisans and servants, all sharing the same urban landscape.

The sophistication of life in this city center is reflected in the furniture, personal equipment, and other goods found in the extensive cemeteries east of Kerma city. Burial practices changed over time, with tombs becoming larger and more elaborate from Early Kerma to Classic Kerma.

The deceased, clothed in loincloths or leather kilts and sometimes wrapped in sheepskin, were buried on their right sides in a flexed position with their faces looking north, heads pointed east, and feet west. Accompanying them were pottery and stone vessels as well as jewelry, clothing, tools and weapons, cosmetic vessels, mirrors, and other personal belongings.

The bodies were not mummified and were placed on cowhides or on beds. Some of the deceased, most likely the rulers, were accompanied into death by animal and human sacrifices, buried alive. The largest and latest royal tombs are at the southern end of the cemetery, within which hundreds of women, children, and officials were buried.

Egyptian alabaster vases, copper daggers, statues, and statuettes found at Kerma indicate some contact between Kush and Egypt, whether through trade or spoils of war. For instance, a statue found at Kerma of Hepdjefa, a noble from Asyut in Middle Egypt, and also one of his wife Sennuwy, date to the reign of Senwosret III. Rather than being a sign that these individuals visited the city, these statues were probably pillaged from their owner’s tomb in Middle Egypt and sent to Kerma.

In fact, Egypt was attacked by Kerma, as documented in an inscription recently found at Elkab in Upper Egypt, during which the town was looted. Sobeknakht, governor and hereditary prince of Elkab, mentions how the Egyptians sent a punitive expedition into Nubia. On a vessel found in a tomb at Kerma (Tumulus Kill), dating to the Seventeenth Dynasty, the name Sobeknakht appears with these same titles, establishing that some Egyptian tomb goods were buried with Nubians in Kerma. The implication is that Kerma’s reach extended farther north beyond Aswan, possibly as far as Elkab.

In addition to the Kerma culture and the C- Group, another distinct Nubian population was also found on Egypt’s southern border at this time. References to the Medjayu appear in Egyptian texts from the late third millennium onward, but less is known of them than of the other groups. The Medjayu, believed to be nomads who acquired food and weapons by trade, first appeared as soldiers or policemen in Egyptian service in the Old Kingdom, but during the Middle Kingdom they apparently became hostile forces fighting the Egyptians in Nubia.

They were buried in shallow, round graves reminiscent of frying pans that archaeologists called ‘pan graves,’ which became a general name for this distinctive culture. The graves contained bows, arrows, and other weapons and were sometimes decorated with painted cattle skulls (bucrania) and goat skulls. They were also provisioned with distinctive forms of pottery (fine black-topped ware cups and bowls with flattened bases) and jewelry, including earrings, as well as Egyptian goods.

Pan-Grave remains are found in Lower Nubia and Egypt, as well as in the Eastern Desert as far south as central Sudan, the Red Sea Hills, and the Western Desert. Medjay Nubians are possibly referred to in Papyrus Bulaq, along with the Aushek tribe, in a list of the tribute these groups paid to Egypt.

During the Egyptian Thirteenth Dynasty, some Medjayu were guests at the Theban court. Perhaps as a result of these positive interactions, during the Second Intermediate Period the Medjayu joined forces with the Egyptian king Kamose, the last king of the Seventeenth Dynasty (ca. 1550-1540 BC), to attack the Asiatic Hyksos rulers in Lower Egypt, who were attempting to create an alliance with the Kerma ruler.

Kamose then led a campaign into the Second Cataract to recapture Buhen. In doing so, he created a buffer zone between Egypt and the Kerma culture in the south, as well as between Egyptian-ruled territory and the Hyksos in the north. Kamose’s brother or son, Ahmose I, eventually succeeded in driving out the Hyksos, and Ahmose I became the first king of a newly unified Egypt, initiating the Eighteenth Dynasty and the New Kingdom. Evidence of Kamose’s and Ahmose I’s presence in Nubia is seen on rock inscriptions at Arminna, among other places.