simply as the A-, B-, and C-Groups. The B-Group is no longer generally accepted as a distinct cultural horizon, but the categories of A-Group and C-Group remain in use down to the present day. Both cultures are known very largely from cemetery sites, and they are distinguished from each other partly by grave types and partly by their distinctive pottery wares. The graves of both horizons contain an abundance of Egyptian-made goods, including wheel-made pottery, copper implements and weapons, and faience ornaments, while the Nubian-made goods are mostly handmade pottery and objects of stone.

On the basis of imported Egyptian goods, the A-Group has been dated to a time corresponding to the late Egyptian Predynastic period and the First Dynasty (ca. 3600–3000 b.c.) while the C-Group coincides with the subsequent Egyptian dynasties down to the beginning of the New Kingdom (ca. 3000–1580 b.c.). Although there is evidence of a powerful but short-lived chiefdom during the time of the A-Group, the graves from both periods generally give evidence of an egalitarian society without marked distinctions of rank and without centralized political institutions. Subsistence depended primarily on cereal agriculture, although cattle raising also played an important role, especially in the C-Group. Settlements in both periods seem to have been small encampments of tents or of grass structures with rather irregular mud-brick houses appearing only late in the C-Group period. Nothing that can be interpreted as a religious structure has been identified from either period.

The Egyptian pharaohs traded regularly with Nubia from at least the Sixth Dynasty (ca. 2400 b.c.) onward, and there were intermittent raiding expeditions as well. During the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2000–1800 b.c.), the Egyptians took temporary possession of the northern part of the country and built a chain of enormous fortresses in order to protect their trade route to the south. However, this incursion had almost no effect on the indigenous C-Group culture, which did not begin to show evidence of Egyptianization until after the time when the Egyptian garrisons were withdrawn.

Remains of the A-Group and C-Group cultures have been found only in the northerly parts of the country, the region traditionally called Lower Nubia. Further to the south, a somewhat similar culture made its appearance at Kerma, near the Third Cataract of the Nile, around 2500 b.c. The earliest Kerma graves and pottery types were generally similar to those of the contemporary C-Group further north although distinguished by a few unique pottery types and by details of burial practice. But while the C-Group culture remained little changed for over a thousand years, Kerma rapidly developed into a powerful and autocratic chiefdom, which at times treated on equal terms with the Egyptian pharaohs. The culture reached its apogee in the time of the Egyptian Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1800–1580 b.c.), when the site of Kerma comprised an enormous sprawling townsite with houses, granaries, and workshops of mud brick as well as massive brick temples and a series of monumental royal tombs, some of which contained literally hundreds of sacrificial human burials.

Kerma was evidently the main depot for the shipment of Nubian goods to Egypt, and the power of its chiefs depended on the control of that trade. Finds within the townsite indicate that there was a resident colony of Egyptian artisans, shipping agents, and ambassadors, but the place was always independent of Egyptian political control. When the pharaohs withdrew their garrisons from the Lower Nubian forts, in the Second Intermediate Period, the Kerma rulers themselves took possession of the installations. Kamose, the last pharaoh of the Egyptian Seventeenth Dynasty, complained that he sat between an Asiatic (the Hyksos ruler in the north) and an African (the Kerma chieftain), each in possession of a slice of the Nile.

Some time shortly after 1580 b.c., the cultural and political autonomy of Nubia came to an abrupt end. Pharaoh Ahmose not only reoccupied the fortresses of Lower Nubia but extended Egyptian dominion upriver as far as the Fourth Cataract of the Nile. For the next five centuries, Nubia was to be an Egyptian colony administered by a viceroy called the King’s Son of Kush. The Kerma chiefdom as well as the independent C-Group polities of Lower Nubia