Nubian kings ruled Egypt for less than 100 years. Their influence lasted centuries.

National Geographic

07-02-2025

(Epic engineering rescued colossal ancient Egyptian temples from floodwaters.)
In 2003 these statues of Nubian kings were found in pieces, buried in the ceremonial city of Dokki Gel, near Kerma. Now restored, they are on display in the Kerma Museum in Sudan.
National Geographic Image Collection
During the era known as the Third Intermediate Period (ca 1075–715 B.C.), Egypt's government was in the throes of political chaos and decline. Nubia was left fairly free of pharaonic intervention, and several new, independent Kushite kingdoms flourished. In one of these, near the Fourth Cataract, a dynasty of rulers emerged in the mid-eighth century B.C., this time establishing the kingdom's capital at Napata and a necropolis at nearby El Kurru. The rulers of this Kushite kingdom would eventually govern those who had once controlled them, even becoming pharaohs of Egypt themselves.
The Shabaka Stone
The Shabaka Stone, attributed to Nubian king Shabaka, is now in the British Museum.
British Museum/Scala, Florence
This black basalt slab which has greatly enhanced scholars' understanding of Egyptian theology, was inscribed on the orders of the 25th-dynasty Kushite king Shabaka. It contains the only known documented version of the Memphite Theology, a religious text underpinning the Egyptian vision of creation, which describes how the god Ptah created humans. Shabaka is said to have discovered an old papyrus bearing the text and ordered it transcribed onto the stela. The object reflects the eagerness of Kushite kings to convince Egyptians, especially in Memphis, of Nubian respect for Egyptian culture. It was likely later used as a millstone, causing the central hole and radial incisions, and was brought to the British Museum in 1805, where its faint inscriptions were translated almost a century later.
Taharqa, the conqueror
This new Kushite kingdom was founded by two kings, Alara and Kashta. Kashta's son Piye later pushed the empire's boundaries as far as Elephantine, or present-day Aswan, thereby bringing Lower Egypt under Kushite control. Piye also set his sights on Upper Egypt and, around 727 B.C., launched a military expedition in which he took Hermopolis and sacked Memphis. But Piye returned to Napata without consolidating Kushite dominion over Egypt. That mission would be accomplished by his successors Shabaka (aka Shabaqo) and Shebitku (aka Shabataka). As representatives of a new Egyptian dynasty, the 25th, these Nubian kings moved their capital to Thebes and secured control of the country as far north as the Nile Delta.
This statuette depicting the feline goddess Bastet, inscribed with the name of eighth-century B.C. Kushite king Piye, is in the Louvre Museum, Paris.
H. Lewandowski/RMN-Grand Palais
This statue of Taharqa is now in the Sudan National Museum in Khartoum.
Age Fotostock
The most renowned pharaoh of the 25th dynasty was undoubtedly Taharqa, brother of Shebitku. Many scholars believe Taharqa is the Kushite king Tirhakah, mentioned in the Bible's Book of Isaiah regarding the invasion that Assyrian king Sennacherib launched against Judah: 'Now Sennacherib received a report that Tirhakah, the king of Cush, was marching out to fight against him' (2 Kings 19:9).
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(Rival to Egypt, the Nubian kingdom of Kush exuded power and gold.)
Taharqa makes an offering to the falcon god Hemen in this bronze- and gold-leaf statuette from the seventh century B.C.
Scala, Florence
From Egyptian sources, it appears that under the reign of Shebitku, Taharqa had been charged with supporting the kingdom of Judah against the Assyrians. In the end, Jerusalem did not fall into Assyrian hands, a fact the Bible attributes to the Lord answering Hezekiah's prayers: 'The angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp . . . So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, broke camp and withdrew' (2 Kings 19:35-36).
This early seventh-century B.C. head is believed to depict the Kushite pharaoh Shebitku, the third king of the 25th dynasty. It is now in the Nubian Museum in Aswan, Egypt.
Album
This ram's head, a symbol of Amun, is part of a necklace for a Nubian king, made in the seventh century B.C.
Kenneth Garrett
Taharqa, the builder
Taharqa insisted his claim to power was not only hereditary but also divine. On a stela from the temple of Amun at Kawa, he declares: 'I received the diadem in Memphis after the falcon went up to heaven and my father Amun had ordered for me that every land . . . be placed under my feet.' This alludes to the fact that the pharaoh had succeeded his predecessor after his death. The identity of the king associated with a falcon—in other words, with the god Horus (who is often linked with another falcon-god, Hemen)—isn't specified, but the phrase likely refers to Shebitku, who, according to the same stela, 'loved him [Taharqa] more than all his [other] brothers.'
In honor of Amun
Gregory Manchess/National Geographic Image Collection
This illustration, by artist Gregory Manchess for National Geographic in 2008, re-creates a religious parade led by the pharaoh Taharqa in Jabal Barkal. The procession features the sacred boat with the image of the god Amun on board. It has just set off from the temple of Amun, built at the foot of the sacred mountain Jabal Barkal, whose distinctive pinnacle was seen as having the shape of a rearing uraeus, an upright cobra. Just below the mountain's summit, the king had ordered a panel engraved with a gold-plated inscription bearing his name, to commemorate his victories over enemies from the east and west. The dual uraei on Taharqa's headdress represent the Two Lands (Upper and Lower Egypt) over which he reigns. As high priest of Amun, Taharqa wears a leopard-skin cloak and carries a staff. Behind him walk his wives rattling sistrums.
During Taharqa's reign, which lasted almost 26 years, the pharaoh commissioned numerous monuments and religious buildings. In Thebes he added new spaces to the Great Temple of Amun at Karnak, notably a structure called the kiosk of Taharqa in the first courtyard. He had the sanctuary of Amun at Napata rebuilt and constructed a temple to Amun at Kawa in about 680 B.C. In the Kawa sanctuary, a commemorative inscription reads: 'Mark you, my mind is [set] on [re] building the temple-compound of my father, Amun-Re of Kawa, because it is built of brick [only] and covered with earth.'
Necropolis of El Kurru
Rulers of the Nubian capital Napata were buried at El Kurru, primarily from about 850 to 650 B.C. Pictured here is the largest pyramid at the site, built around 325 B.C., well after the royal necropolis's prime.
Eric Lafforgue/Alamy/ACI
Taharqa had his burial pyramid built in Nuri, on the opposite bank from the necropolis at El Kurru, where his ancestors lay. What prompted the location change is unclear, but it's likely that the site of the necropolis was linked to Jabal Barkal, the 'Pure Mountain' of Napata, a natural sandstone butte that dominated the Nubian capital. The pinnacle of this mound, reaching a height of almost 250 feet, was said to resemble a rearing cobra, or uraeus, a symbol of royalty. When seen from Jabal Barkal on Egyptian New Year's Day, the sun seemed to rise directly over the pinnacle of the pyramid of Taharqa. Since the holiday coincided with the annual regenerative flooding of the Nile, this linked Taharqa with not only the sun god Re but also Osiris, the god of the afterlife and fertility.
(These mighty pyramids were built by one of Africa's earliest civilizations.)
Miraculous deeds
Taharqa makes an offering to Amun-Re in this seventh-century B.C. relief from the Shrine of Taharqa, now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Age Fotostock
The Temple of Amun-Re at Kawa,discovered in 1931 in present-day Sudan, contains stelae that celebrate Taharqa's deeds as pharaoh of Egypt. One presents him as a warrior, 'who sends forth his arrow that he may have power over chiefs, who tramples evil under foot in pursuit of his enemies, with belligerence in his strong arm, who slaughters hundreds of thousands, at the sight of whom every face is astonished.' Another relates how Taharqa brought about a miraculous flood through his petition to Amun-Re: 'His Majesty had been praying for an inundation from his father Amun-Re, . . . in order to prevent famine . . . When the time for the rising of the Inundation came, it continued rising greatly each day and it passed many days rising at the rate of one cubit every day . . . the land was (again) Primeval Waters.'
Legacy of Taharqa
This marble stela, now in the British Museum, depicts the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, who drove Taharqa from Egypt.
Scala, Florence
The death of Taharqa, in 664 B.C., marked the decline of Nubian rule over Egypt. Taharqa had already lost control of Lower Egypt to Ashurbanipal in 667 B.C. Taharqa's successor, his nephew Tanutamani, briefly regained control of Upper Egypt before being defeated once again in 663 B.C. by Ashurbanipal. Tanutamani was forced to return to Nubia, where he remained until his death.
After the fall of the 25th dynasty, the new kingdom of Meroë was established in Nubia, tending the flame of Egyptian culture until the fourth century A.D. There, the temple of Naga, where Nubian divinities such as the lion-god Apedemak are represented alongside the Egyptian god Horus, exemplifies the syncretic culture the Kushites fostered and the ways in which Nubia and Egypt are forever linked.
Jabal Barkal
When the Egyptian pharaohs of the 18th dynasty conquered Nubia, they ordered the construction of several temples dedicated to their state god, Amun. The most important of these was erected at the foot of Jabal Barkal, a mountain the Egyptians viewed as sacred, considering it a home to Amun. After the Egyptian withdrawal from Nubia, the dynasty of Kushite kings that emerged in the eighth century B.C. took over the complex as a way to legitimize their power. Under the Napata kings and later, in the Meroitic period, new temples and palace enclosures were built, as shown in this drawing.
Jean-Claude Golvin. Musée départemental Arles antique © Jean-Claude Golvin/Éditions Errance
This story appeared in the January/February 2025 issue of National Geographic History magazine.