New Perspectives on Ancient Nubia

Knowledge of the societies of ancient Nubia is regrettably narrow due to a variety of reasons. Ancient Egyptian royal propaganda expressed prejudices that held Nubia as “wretched Kush,” subsidiary to Egypt’s political power and cultural flourishing. Egyptologists tend to interpret ancient Nubian political and social achievements as derivative of Egypt as a result of this ancient bias and due to modern views of “Egyptian exceptionalism.” Finally, there is a structural absence of Kush from general spheres of knowledge transmission: university departments, academic and public libraries, and the wider discourse about the ancient world, render Nubia all but invisible. Located at the nexus of the Nile Valley and savannah corridors, ancient Nubian peoples traded east African goods to Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Near East. The powerful Kushite empire attained political hegemony over Egypt in its 25th Dynasty (ca. 760–656 BCE), which saw the Kushite pharaohs engaging in international displays of power in the Levant, bringing them into direct conflict with the Assyrian empire. Commentary on these clashes is recorded in the Hebrew Bible, while the Christian New Testament speaks of the conversion of a treasurer of the “Candace of the Aethiopians”. This volume seeks to present current research that centers Nubian history and archaeology and imparts this information from postcolonial and anti-racist perspectives.  By publishing these studies in Gorgias Studies in the Ancient Near East series, we aim to bring research on Nubia to a wider scholarly audience, with the goals of broadening Nubiology’s impact on Egyptological, classical, and biblical scholarship, while challenging scholarly biases and disseminating knowledge of this ancient culture. By lifting up and centering the contributions of ancient Nubia, we expand our understanding of African achievements and influences on the ancient world.