were promptly extinguished, and authority passed entirely into the hands of Egyptian overlords. The fortresses of the Middle Kingdom were repaired and enlarged, and new towns and temples were built at strategic points. Napata, at the upstream limit of Egyptian control, was established as the administrative capital for the whole region, and an enormous temple was built to the god Amon there. This deity, known to Nubians as Amani, was to remain the principal state god of Nubia, as he was also in Egypt, for centuries to come.

Under the colonial regime the Nubian population was acculturated to Egyptian standards of dress, religion, and burial, and most vestiges of the indigenous cultural traditions disappeared. In later years, particularly in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties (ca. 1340–1085 b.c.), Nubian dignitaries were increasingly co-opted into the colonial administration itself, and the ethnic Egyptian population substantially declined.

Around 1000 b.c., beset by internal political troubles, the Egyptians withdrew as colonial masters from Nubia, but they left behind a typical postcolonial population that continued to follow Egyptian cultural practices and to worship Amon and other Egyptian gods. Political circumstances are obscure for about 200 years, after which time there arose a new indigenous monarchy based at Napata, evidently in alliance with the priests of Amon there. Perhaps a century afterward, one of the new Nubian rulers, a certain Kashta, took possession of Upper Egypt and was recognized as pharaoh there. His successor, Piye, conquered the whole of Egypt in 751 b.c. and became the first ruler of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, known to historians as the Ethiopian Dynasty. The Nubian pharaohs ruled both Egypt and Nubia from a capital in Lower Egypt, but after death their bodies were returned to their homeland for burial in the great royal cemeteries at Napata. Piye adopted the Egyptian practice of building the royal tomb in the form of decorated, underground chambers surmounted by a pyramid, and this custom continued to be followed by all his successors until the final end of the dynasty a thousand years later.

Nubian rule in Egypt lasted just under a century and was terminated by a series of Assyrian invasions. Within their own country, however, the erstwhile pharaohs continued to maintain a pharaonic-style state and civilization for almost a millennium longer. Their domain was now officially called the Empire of Kush. The rulers kept up the worship of the Egyptian gods, built additional temples as well as pyramids, and for several centuries wrote their royal annals in hieroglyphic characters.

In time, the center of gravity in the Empire of Kush shifted to the south. A new royal capital was established at Meroe, some 300 miles upriver from the old capital of Napata. There a huge new temple of Amon and a walled palace complex were constructed, and all of the later rulers of Kush chose to build their pyramids there. The subsequent, later phase of Kushite civilization is usually referred to as Meroitic, after the new royal capital. Eventually, a new alphabetic form of writing, also called Meroitic, was developed. Unfortunately, it remains largely undeciphered at the present time.

The Alexandrian and Roman conquests of Egypt ushered in a new era of flourishing trade with the Mediterranean world, as is attested by the wealth of Greco-Roman goods found in the later Kushite royal tombs. A newly important commodity in the export trade was cotton, which was highly prized by the Greek and Roman settlers in Egypt but had not yet been introduced as a crop in the north. It was at this time, too, that Aethiopia and Meroe became known to Greek and Roman scholars through the writings of Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, and other classical authors. Graffiti of many Greek and Roman visitors have been found in the temple ruins at Meroe and neighboring settlements.

In the earlier years of the Kushite Empire, the northern part of the country had become very much a political and economic backwater and seems in fact to have been largely depopulated. Then, in the last century b.c. and the first two centuries a.d., there was a virtual land rush of repopulation, possibly brought about by the introduction of the saqia (ox-driven waterwheel) for irrigation. The repopulated north soon became especially prosperous because of its advantageous position for trading with Roman Egypt, and at the same time, the south was