MC_A Concise History of Africa

A Concise History of Africa

Luxor, such as the Karnak Temple and the Valley of the Kings. Today, what was once the ancient land of Nubia is divided between Egypt and the Republic of the Sudan. In ancient times Nubia, also known as Kush or the Southern Lands, was the territory below the First Cataract of the Nile, and during the Greco-Roman period in Egypt was part of Ethopia. Nubia was important to Egypt as early as the 1st dynasty, and Egypt was to plunder Nubia many times for her bountiful natural resources. Egypt, however, was never fully in control of Nubia, and during Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period Nubia invaded Egypt itself, and several Nubians became pharaohs of Egypt’s 25th dynasty. Nubian rule was established in the northern part of Sudan in about 300 BC and the kingdom lasted for 900 years, being predominantly Christian until the 14th century. Today the modern inhabitants of southern Egypt and northern Sudan still refer to themselves as Nubians, speaking the Nubian language as well as Arabic. Nubia was the homeland of Africa’s earliest black culture, with a history that can be artifacts, also through the written records of the Egyptians and the Greeks and Romans who subsequently came to rule in Egypt. A dam was constructed at Aswan, Egypt, in the 1960s, creating the 500- mile-long Lake Nasser, which permanently flooded ancient temples and tombs as well as hundreds of modern villages in Sudan. While the dam was under construction, hundreds of traced from 3100 BC onward through its monuments and

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