There was a time when this newspaper, in its international pages, arranged articles by continents. Egypt then figured under the Near East header, although, except for Sinai, its territory was in Africa. Nothing new: from Antiquity, the country of the pharaohs is presented facing the Mediterranean and its eastern rivals, much less towards the continent to which it geographically belongs. There is a sort of blindness about Egypt’s African neighbors and in particular the peoples who also lived on the banks of the Nile, but further south. They will be called Nubians, even Ethiopians, these inhabitants of the kingdom of Kush.
“These neighbors have always existed, but we hear their voices less strongly. Our time is particularly forgetful… However, the kingdom of Kush is well known, the Bible often mentions it and one of its kings, Taharqa, is mentioned there. And if one reads the Greek authors, one hears abundantly about these kingdoms in the south of Egypt”, recalls Vincent Rondot. The latter, director of the department of Egyptian antiquities at the Louvre, is curator of the exhibition that the Parisian museum devotes to these Nubians, who, for a few decades, conquered Egypt and made themselves its sovereigns. An exhibition that gives back to ancient Egypt a part of its Africanity.
Revenge of the Kushites
From the XVe century BC, the pharaohs Thutmose Iis, II and III become masters of their southern neighbors. A long phase of domination begins, during which the vassals pay tribute. A phase of acculturation too, because the religion and the Egyptian aesthetic codes reach these territories which, today, are in Sudan.
But nothing lasts forever and, in the VIIIe century BC. J.-C., the immense Egypt is weakened, divided, dislocated in small kingdoms. Weak dynasties follow one another, which lose their hold on the Kushites, who will then take their revenge.
As well as the narration – in hieroglyphics – the molding of an imposing so-called “triumphal” stele, a veritable historical document engraved on both faces and sides, around 720 BC. AD, King Piankhy descended the Nile from his capital, Napata, and conquered Egypt, city after city, to Memphis, that is to say to the entrance to the delta.
The Kushites have adopted the habits and customs of the Egyptians as well as their pantheon
“His successors take possession of Egypt and found the twenty-fifth dynasty, which will include four kings whose names sing: Chabaka, Chabaka, Taharqa, Tanouetamani… They govern Egypt with the name of pharaoh”, says Vincent Rondot. If we are not careful, nothing really seems to differentiate this dynasty from the previous ones, as the Kushites have adopted the habits and customs of the Egyptians as well as their pantheon. “One of Piankhy’s concerns is to ensure that the Egyptians of the North respect their own gods. He is more pharaonic than the pharaohs! »says the commissioner.
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