Pyramids and Elephants: The Kingdom of Kush (ARC2128)

15 credits

The Kingdom of Kush was centred in the Nile Valley, in what is now southern Egypt and northern Sudan (Nubia). One of several early states that formed in the region, Kush flourished for centuries until its collapse in the 4th century AD/CE. In this module you will explore the Kushite Empire from its formation and early Kerma state (3500-1500 BCE) through to the Napatan and Meroitic periods (from the Bronze Age to end of the Roman Empire). The emphasis is on the period from 1000 BCE to around 500 AD/CE, during which the Kushite kingdom expanded to dominate Egypt, and its succeeding phase – kingdom of Meroe – which had strong cultural and economic interactions with the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. Although Kush was on the periphery of the ‘Classical’ worlds of Greece and Rome, its archaeology and cultural production reveals a complex blending of indigenous, Egyptian and ‘Classical’ influences.