The empire of Kush was finally overrun and destroyed by barbarian invaders in the fourth century ce, but some of its traditions persisted until the coming of Christianity two centuries later.ĭetailed information about the religion of Kush is scanty. The earlier and later phases of Kushite civilization are often designated as Napatan and Meroitic, after the respective capitals. Later, as the empire expanded southward, the capital was moved to Meroe, near the mouth of the Atbara River. The original capital of Kush was at Napata, near the Fourth Cataract of the Nile, where a great temple of Amun had been erected during the Egyptian colonial regime. Kushite authority in Egypt was ended by an Assyrian invasion, but the empire later expanded southward at least as far as the confluence of the Blue and White Niles, and possibly much farther. The Kushite rulers assumed all the titles and trappings of the pharaohs, and for a brief period (751 –656 bce) were even accepted as rulers in Egypt itself.
When the colonial overlords departed, around 1000 bce, they had laid the basis for an Egyptianized successor-state that was to emerge a little later as the empire of Kush. Egyptians did not settle in the country in large numbers, but they oversaw the building of temples, towns, and fortresses and the inauguration of the typical pharaonic system of administration and of worship. The northern part of Kush was under direct Egyptian control during the New Kingdom (c. Its peoples were and are African in race and language, but since very early times their culture has been strongly influenced by that of their northern neighbors. It is the Aethiopia of Herodotus and other classical writers, and it corresponds in a general way to the Nubia of today. Kush was the name given in ancient times to the area of northeast Africa lying just to the south of Egypt.
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