An altar in the savannah
In the early 3 rd century the rulers of Napata moved their
capital and the necropolis with royal pyramids to Meroe, situated
in the fertile territories of Al-Butana. This date marks the beginning
of a new era in the history of the ancient Kush kingdom. An Altar of
the Sun was sais to be located near the city and there everyday huge
offerings of food were presented to the gods. The ruler (
gore )
inherited his throne by election carried out among the male relatives
of the dead predecessor and his power was supported by a strong army
and the priests whose oracle had to sanction the candidacy. The region
between the 2 nd Cataract and the border with first Hellenic and then
Roman Egypt enjoyed some autonomy and was administered by viceroy called
pesto .
Between Africa and the Mediterranean world
The mysterious land on the southern edges of the known world attracted
the attention of many ancient writers. Already Herodotus wrote down
some reports about Meroe during his stay on Elephantine, while the
geographic descriptions of the Central Sudan in Diodorus Siculus, Strabo
and Pliny appear to be even more detailed. The magnificent bronze head
of a Roman statue discovered in the ruins of a building in Meroe could
have been a war booty following the armed conflict of 25 - 21 BC between
the prefect of Egypt Gaius Petronius and the invading Meroitic army
under the queen
kandake. We know also that on Emperor Nero's
orders limited (and unsuccessful) military expeditions were undertaken
to discover the sources of the Nile. The influence of the Greco-Roman
culture is evidenced by numerous luxurious articles from the Empire
found in Meroitic graves as well as the Greek alphabet carved out on
s column drum - a proof of Greek teaching (king Ergamenes, identified
with Arkamani, must have had sme classical education).
Undeciphered script and mysterious language
Among many languages and dialects that in the ancient times
were spoken by the inhabitants of the country of Kush, only Meroitic
came to be written down. Although now we are able to assign particular
phonetic values to some of the signs, the language itself remains largely
undeciphered and only the meanings of a few words have been determined.
In the 2nd century BC a special
alphabet based on 23 hieroglyphics drawn from the Egyptian tradition
started to be used in royal inscriptions. Two centuries later there spread
a new script, commonly called the cursive, which developed from the combination
of graphically simplified hieroglyphics with 4 signs of Egyptian demotic
script. The cursive was mainly used for general records and correspondence,
and on private funerary steles and sacrificial altars. Ancient authors
claimed that the ability to read and write was much more common among
the Meroeans than among the Egyptians.
Gods of Egypt and gods of Meroe
The centuries of pharaonic rule in Lower Nubia left behind
a permanent trace in the form of the Egyptian religion, whose zealous
disciples were the rulers and the elite of the Meroitic society. The
main god of Meroe was Amon (in Meroitic
Amani), closely linked
with the ideology of the royal power, worshipped in numerous temples,
e.g. in Napata, Naga and the capital itself. The worship of goddess
Isis from the island of Philae in Lower Nubia also seems to have been
popular. Among the domestic Kush pantheon, the lion-headed Apademak
was of particular importance, with sanctuaries in Naga and Mussawarrat
es-Sufra.
Meroitic funerary beliefs were also strongly influenced by Egyptian tradition.
Graves were equipped with steles, originally shaped statuettes of the
soul
ba and stone sacrificial altars, while the splendor of gifts
placed in the pyramids of Meroe's ruler equaled that in the pyramids
of the contemporary pharaohs. Ritual human sacrifice and the tradition
of placing corpses on wooden beds seem to be a relict of old Nubian customs.