Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

The Nubian kingdom of Kush, south of Egypt on the Nile, was long treated as an Egyptian offshoot by archaeologists who could not credit an independent African power. Its roots reach back to Nabta Playa around 7500 BC, with deep wells and astronomical stone circles, and to the Kerma culture, builders of mud-brick deffufas, until Thutmose I destroyed Kerma around 1504 BC. Kush endured centuries as a colony under a viceroy, kept its archers in the land Egypt called Ta-Seti, and rose again at Napata. Around 727 BC Piye used siege towers to conquer Egypt, founding the 25th Dynasty, and Taharqa revived temples and pyramids.

Assyria’s iron-armed forces under Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal drove the Kushites out by 656 BC, and the capital moved south to Meroe, an iron-smelting center with summer rains and Red Sea trade. Kandake Amanirenas led 30,000 troops to sack Roman-held Aswan, buried a bronze head of Augustus under a temple threshold, and secured a treaty with no tribute and a border that held nearly 300 years. Deforestation for smelting, Noba incursions and Aksumite raids broke the state by the fourth century AD, and the Meroitic language remains undeciphered.

• Nubian mummies hold dense traces of tetracycline from beer brewed in jars colonized by Streptomyces.
• The Great Hafir at Musawwarat es-Sufra reservoir measured 250 meters across.
• The ox-driven saqiya wheel lifted water up to eight meters.
• Meroe’s steep pyramids followed harmonic ratios engraved in surviving plans.
• Kush split into Nobadia, Makuria and Alodia.