¹ A succinct summary of the present state of the controversy can be found in the review of Posener, George, De la Divinité du Pharaon (Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1960),Google Scholar by Griffiths, J. Gwyn, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 49 (1963), pp. 189–192.Google Scholar The failure of several authorities to define adequately their criteria of what constitutes “a god” has vitiated much which has been written on this subject.

² Frankfort, H., Kingship and the Gods (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1948).Google Scholar

³ Arkell, A.J., in A History of the Sudan to 1821, second edition (London, Athlone Press, 1961)Google Scholar was the first to advance this contention. Recently Oliver, R. and Fage, J.D., in A Short History of Africa (London, Penguin African Library, 1963)Google Scholar have developed the study of parallels between Africa and Egypt. The major question remains, however, in how much such parallels were caused by influence—direct or indirect—and to what extent similar institutions arose as a spontaneous response to like religious and administrative needs.

⁴ See Emery, W.B., Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 48 (1962),Google Scholar“Introduction”; also Rush, Vol. XI (1963), pp. 106–109.Google Scholar My own observations favour the conclusion that the town site of Kor, south of Buhen, which has a wall of stone not mud-brick, like Old Kingdom Buhen, almost certainly originated at that period; Vercoutter, J., in Rush, Vol. III (1955), pp. 4–19,Google Scholar hesitantly ascribed it to the Middle Kingdom. The 1st Dynasty inscription of Djer on Jebel Sheikh Suleiman also favours advancing the date. Very probably the whole region to the Fourth Cataract formed a zone of Egyptian influence in the Old Kingdom.

⁵ Those fortresses standing in the open plain (e.g., Buhen) were exceedingly heavily fortified. Others made use of strong natural positions (e.g., Semna East and West) or rocky islets in the Nile (e.g., Askut and Uronarti). Undoubtedly the Middle Kingdom Egyptians had great respect for the military prowess of their opponents.

⁶ The best study of the problem of Middle Kingdom Cush is Posener, G., “Pour une Localisation du Pays Kousch au Moyen Empire”, Rush, Vol. VI (1958), pp. 39–68.Google Scholar It is still possible to dispute how far Reisner, G.A., the original excavator of Kerma (Harvard African Studies, Vols. V and VI, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1923),Google Scholar was right in regarding it as the seat of an Egyptian viceroy, but such a plethora of human sacrifice and other non-Egyptian practices is scarcely credible except in a Nubian kingdom.

⁷ The tomb inscription of Harkhuf recording his four commercial missions to the northern Sudan under Merenre I and Pepi II— Sethe, K., Urkunden, Vol. I (Leipzig, J. Hinrichs, 1923)Google Scholar— provides much valuable information.

⁸ Reisner, G.A., Harvard African Studies, Vol. V (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1923),Google Scholar page 67 ff.

⁹ This is shown by the Kamose Stela at Karnak, Habachi, Labib, Annales du Service des Antiquités d'Egypte, Vol. LIII (1955), pp. 195–202,Google Scholar and Hammad, M., Chronique d'Egypte, Vol. XXX (1955), pp. 198–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Reisner discovered a number of Hyksos royal letter seals at Kerma.

¹⁰ See Save-Soderbergh, T., Rush, Vol. VIII (1960), pp. 25–44,Google Scholar and also Rush, Vol. XI (1963), pp. 159–174,Google Scholar for the principality of Teh-Khet. W. B. Emery (loc. cit.) mentions a stela of Akhnaten recording a victory over the principality of Akita found at Buhen, but this is not yet published.

¹¹ Gardiner, Sir Alan, in Egypt of the Pharaohs (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1961), pp. 313–314,Google Scholar examined closely the events at the end of the New Kingdom, and came to the conclusion, already adopted by Cerny on the basis of the Dhutmose letters, that the former Viceroy of Cush, Penhasi, who had quarrelled with Ramesses XI or his advisers, led the rebellion against Egypt.

¹² See Macadam, M.F.L., Temples of Kawa, Volume I (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1949),Google Scholar Plate 7, lines 21–22, for a Kawa stela of year 6 of king Taharqa (683 B.C.) referring to the importation of Egyptian craftsmen to work on the Taharqa temple of Kawa. However, although this seems to be the only explicit reference to this, there can be little doubt that the great temple of Piankhy at Napata was also designed by imported specialists.

¹³ Piankhy Stela lines 149–152. Piankhy considered that the Libyan princes would defile his palace because they were uncircumcised and ate fish. Schaefer, H., Urkunden der aethiopischen Koenigen (Leipzig: J. Hinrichs, 1905),Google Scholar gives hieroglyphic texts of the Piankhy Stela, the Aspelta “Election” Stela, the Harsiotef Stela and the Nastasen Stela (in part). For the Nastasen Stela see also Schaefer, H., Die aethiopische Köninginschrift in Berlin (Leipzig: J. Hinrichs, 1901).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Cf. Zylarz, E., “Sudan-Ägyptisch im Antiken Äthiopenreich von K'ash”, Kush, Vol. IX (1961), pp. 226–257,Google Scholar who reaches the opposite conclusion that Egyptian was widely spoken among the educated classes of Napata until late Napatan times (c. 315 B.C.). To the present writer the rapid loss of understanding of the Egyptian language after the time of Aspelta seems to show that it was not a spoken language in Cush even in the XXVth Dynasty. Later revivals were probably made possible by the import of Egyptians.

¹⁵ M. F. L. Macadam, op. cit., Plate 9, lines 16–22. See also idem., Plate 15, line 22 for a similar account in the Kawa Stela of Anlamani.

¹⁶ Piankhy Stela lines 98 and 103–105.

¹⁷ Reisner, G.A., “Discovery of the Tombs of the Egyptian 25th Dynasty at El Kurru in Dongola Province”, Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. II (1919), pp. 237–257.Google Scholar Also Dunham, D., The Royal Cemeteries of Rush, Vol. I, El Kurru (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1950).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Reported in the press, January 1964, by the Michaela Schiff Giorgini expedition. Unpublished as yet: but photographs of the coffin shown to me by Professor Y. Leclant prove the identification.

¹⁹ M. F. L. Macadam, op. cit., Plate 7, line 17. In this stela of his regnal year 6 king Taharqa tells how the chieftain Alara entrusted his sister-wives (“the mothers of my mother”, Taharqa calls them) to Amen and prayed that their children might prosper as he himself had done. In line 9 of the same inscription Taharqa tells how he became king because “king Shebitku preferred him to all his brothers and all his children”. These happenings were quoted because they were held to strengthen the right of Taharqa to the throne. The Napatan royal relationships have been well studied by Dunham, D. and Macadam, M.F.L., in “Names and Relationships of the Royal Family of Napata”, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 35 (1944), pp. 139–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar M. F. L. Macadam, op. cit., Appendix.

²⁰ Her full title was, “Foremost Great Queen of His Majesty Piankhy, may he be given life, daughter of Alara, born of Kasaqa (?), Great Chieftainess of the Desert-Peoples”. Seemingly Alara was the uncle of Piankhy and predecessor of Kashta. Very probably his much vaunted success brought the Napatan rulers from local chiefs to the threshold of kingship.

²¹ M. F. L. Macadam, op. cit., Plate 7, line 17.

²² Ibid., Plate 15, The Anlamani Stela at Kawa.

²³ Aspelta “Election” Stela, lines 2–5.

²⁴ Aspelta “Election” Stela, lines 8–9.

²⁵ Aspelta “Election” Stela, lines 11–13. This appears the most probable translation. However, the rendering, “The kings of Cush whom he has made his beloved sons are in his hands” cannot be ruled out for the last sentence.

²⁶ The position in recent African kingdoms is well summarized in Mair, L., Primitive Government (London, Penguin Books Ltd., 1962), pp. 205–213.Google Scholar Many surprisingly close parallels to the procedure in Cush are immediately apparent.

²⁷ Roscoe and Oberg described ritual combat as the usual means of selection in Buganda and Ankole.

²⁸ Diodorus Siculus, Book III, 5, “Not a few of the customs of the Ethiopians (Cushites) seem very different from those of other men, and especially in respect of the choice of kings. For the priests previously select the best of them, and from those that are summoned the people take as king the one whom the god chooses as he is carried round in procession according to some traditional rite. Straightway they address and honor him as if he were a god since the kingdom has been entrusted to him by the will of divinity.” Diodorus visited Egypt in 59 B.C.

²⁹ Sauneron, S. and Yoyotte, J., “La Campagne Nubienne de Psammetique II et sa Signification Historique”, Bulletin de l'Institut français d'Archiologie orientale, Vol. 50 (1952), pp. 157–207.Google Scholar From two stelae of Psammetichus II and the important Greek graffito at Abu Simbel it can be shown that the Napata region was seized by a mixed force of Egyptians and foreign mercenaries, mostly Greek and Carian, in 591 B.C. Almost certainly the war was already in progress at the time of the accession of Aspelta in 593 B.C. On the Election Stela all the names of the Cushite royal personalities were erased—evidently when Napata fell to the Egyptians. Aspelta soon regained control of northern Cush.

³⁰ The Aspelta “Election” Stela, line 18 ff. describes the eventual choice of king and the enthronement.

³¹ L. Mair, op. cit., page 209, “To secure political control of the kingdom it was necessary to have physical possession of the sacred emblem of the nation, the royal drum.”

³² The mothers of Harsiotef and Nastasen did not claim this exalted title. The next woman to assume it was the Queen-Regnant Bartare (c. 280 B.C.). In the first and second centuries B.C. and the first century A.D. queens or Candaces were frequently the real and often the official rulers of Cush. Queens Shanakdakhete and Amanitere both called themselves sa Re, neb tawy, “Son of Re, Lord of the Two Lands”. Cf. Hintze, F., Studien zur Meroitischen Chronologie und zu den Opfertafeln aus den Pyramiden von Meroe (Berlin, Akademie-Verlag, 1959), pp. 36–39,Google Scholar and see below.

³³ M. F. L. Macadam, op. cit., Plate 15 = Kawa Stela of Anlamani.

³⁴ S. Sauneron and J. Yoyotte, op. cit., pp. 157–207 recognized “Kwr” as the Meroitic word for “king”. Griffith, F.L., Stories of the High Priests of Memphis (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1910),Google Scholar in his commentary to the second Setem story had already recognized that in that Egyptian demotic papyrus the title “kwr” was used to mean the ruler of Meroe, but since that legend was set in the reign of Ramesses II in the New Kingdom, though written in the 1st century A.D., he translated “Viceroy” rather than simply “ruler”. Evidently the Roman writer did not know that Cush had ever been administered as a province of the Pharaonic empire. In the opinion of the present writer, qer, qe and qeren (a common Meroitic title) in Meroitic are all etymologically related to the modern Alur word “ker” meaning “the quality of chiefliness”, i.e., the right descent and attributes to be a chief or ruler. Indeed, the organization of the “qerens” of late Meroitic times in northern Nubia suggests that they still formed a hereditary princely class of district rulers rather on the primitive Alur pattern, who held power essentially through the religious standing of their families.

³⁵ Harsiotef Stela, lines 111–114, “Year 35, month 1 (?) of Winter, day 5, of the Son of Re, Harsiotef, may he live forever, I had Amennape brought forth and said, ‘Shall I send my army against the desert lands of Mekhety?’. He turned in the direction to indicate that I should send it.”

³⁶ The Harsiotef Stela, lines 146–161, gives a list of the festivals which the king celebrated throughout Cush. Most of the temples belonged either to Amen or to Osiris, Horus and Isis.

³⁷ Nastasen Stela, lines 4–6.

³⁸ Nastasen Stela, lines 17, 23, 26, 28–29.

³⁹ Nastasen Stela, line 32.

⁴⁰ Nastasen Stela, lines 8–12.

⁴¹ Diodorus Siculus, Book III, 5–7.

⁴² Especially the Yoruba kings of Old Oyo in Nigeria where the custom persisted until the mid–eighteenth century.

⁴³ Reisner, G.A., Excavations at Kerma (Harvard African Studies, Vol. 5) (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1923),Google Scholar page 72.

⁴⁴ Dunham, D., Royal Cemeteries of Kush, Vol. IV: Royal Tombs at Meroe and Barkal (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1957), page 222.Google Scholar The body that he regards as that of Harsiotef cannot have belonged to the king since from his stela at Napata he is known to have reigned at least 35 years. Cf. F. Hintze, op. tit., page 24, Note.

⁴⁵ For details of his methods see Reisner, G.A., “Preliminary Report on t he Harvard-Boston Excavations at Nuri: the kings of Ethiopia after Tirhaqa”, Harvard African Studies, Vol. II (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1918), pp. 1–64.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ F. Hintze, op. tit., page 23.

⁴⁷ Reisner provisionally identified this king with Tabirqa (c. 200–180 B.C.) because he could find no tomb to allot to him. D. Dunham, op. tit., omits him without comment, as also F. Hintze, ibid., page 33. A. J. Arkell, op. cit., page 157, tentatively identified him with Amenitekha (c. 275–263 B.C.). More recently Hintze, F., Die Inschriften des Lowen-Tempels von Musawarrat-es-Sufra (Berlin, Akademie-Verlag, 1962), page 17,Google Scholar follows Reisner in identifying him with Tabirqa. However, there are now several kings of this period who cannot be allocated tombs, and this identification is very uncertain. The latest king-list of Hintze is attractive, but may have to be fundamentally modified. Gadallah, F., Kush, Vol. XI (1962), page 205Google Scholar writes, “It appears that Meroitic chronology will remain for a long time subject to changes and modifications whenever new evidence appears.”

⁴⁸ Hintze, F., “Preliminary Report on the Excavations at Musawwarat Es Sufra, 1960–1961”, Kush, Vol. X (1962),Google Scholar Plate LIV.

⁴⁹ F. Hintze, Ibid., page 183. However, the Hymn to Apedemac is much more original and was probably composed by a Cushite scribe, even if he made plentiful borrowings from Egyptian compositions.

⁵⁰ Griffith, F.L.L., The Meroitic Inscriptions, Vol. II: Napata to Philae and Miscellaneous (London, Egypt Exploration Society, 1912), Inscriptions 97–111.Google Scholar

⁵¹ The Candace Bartare, who live about 280 B.C. and called herself sa Re, nswbit. “Son of Re and King”, was an isolated example of a female ruler after whom the power returned to kings. Cf. F. Hintze, Studien zur Meroitischen…, op. cit., page 37.

⁵² F. Hintze, 1bid., pp. 36–39.

⁵³ Meroitic “paqar”.

⁵⁴ Strabo, Geography, XVII, 54.

⁵⁵ The present writer is indebted to Dr. M. F. L. Macadam for the suggestion that Amanitere may have been the mother not the wife of Natakamani and also of the other princes of the professional scenes at El Naga and elsewhere, who were subsidiary kings, brothers of Natakamani. The status of Amanitere would have corresponded closely to that of Shanakdakhete who had similar titles. However, Meroitic relationships are always rather obscure and hypothetical.

⁵⁶ A plaque showing Arikhankarer in Meroitic dress smiting an enemy is in the Worcester Museum of Art; the famous Jebel Geili relief showing a king receiving dhurra and prisoners from the Sun-God Ariten is attributed to Sherekarer by Professor Hintze, Hintze. F., “Preliminary Report of the Butana Expedition, 1958”, Kush, Vol. VII (1959), pp. 189–190.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Griffith, F. LI., Catalogue of the Demotic Graffiti of the Dodekaschoinos, Vol. I (Cairo, Service des Antiquités d'Égypte, 1935),Google Scholar Graffito Philae 416, also Vol. II (Cairo, Service des Antiquités d'Égypte, 1937), page 118, gives details of what references are known to this office.

⁵⁸ Pliny, , Natural History, VI, 186,Google Scholar “regnare feminam Candacen, quod nomen multis iam annis transit”.

⁵⁹ F. Hintze, Studien zur Meroitischen…, op. cit., pp. 27–28, could not believe that there were 45 other rulers and tries to understand the passage “Reges Aethiopum XLV et Hodie traduntur” as meaning that there had been forty-five kings of Cush since Tanwetamani.

⁶⁰ F. LI. Griffith, The Meroitic Inscriptions, op. cit., graffiti, Philae 97–111. Also F. Hintze, ibid., page 32.

⁶¹ Harsiotef stela, lines 146–end.

⁶² Emery, W.B., Royal Tombs of Ballana and Qustul (Cairo, Service des Antiquités d'égypte, 1938);Google ScholarKirwan, L.P., Vanished Civilizations. Forgotten Peoples of the Ancient World (London, Thames and Hudson, 1963), pp. 55–78.Google Scholar For a critical evaluation of the conclusions of Emery, see Villard, U. Monneret de, in Orientalia, Vol. IX (1940), pp. 61–75.Google Scholar