The Cult of Amun [ancient Egypt and Nubia]

Archaeology ^ | Friday, April 17, 2015 | Daniel Weiss

[SunkenCiv]

...Through their shared history, Egyptians and Nubians also came to worship the same chief god, Amun, who was closely allied with kingship and played an important role as the two civilizations vied for supremacy.

During its Middle and New Kingdoms, which spanned the second millennium B.C., Egypt pushed its way into Nubia, ultimately conquering and making it a colonial province. The Egyptians were drawn by the land's rich store of natural resources, including ebony, ivory, animal skins, and, most importantly, gold. As they expanded their control of Nubia, the Egyptians built a number of temples to Amun, the largest of which stood at the foot of a holy mountain called Jebel Barkal...

...the kingdom of Kush rose in Nubia, with its court based in Napata, the town adjacent to Jebel Barkal. The Egyptian colonizers may have been gone, but their religious legacy lived on, as the Kushite rulers were by this time fervently devoted to Amun... During a period of discord in Egypt, the Kushite king Piye first secured Amun's northern home, in Karnak, Egypt. Then, claiming to act on the god's behalf to restore unified control of Nubia and Egypt, he conquered the rest of Egypt and, in 728 B.C., became the first in a line of Kushite pharaohs who ruled Egypt for around 70 years...

Kushite rule over Egypt reached its height under Taharqo, but his reign ended in defeat, with Egypt largely lost to Assyrian invaders. Ultimately, the Nubian expulsion from Egypt was completed under Taharqo's successor, Tanutamun (r. ca. 664-657 B.C.). The other Kushite kings whose statues were found at Dangeil are Senkamanisken (r. ca. 643-623 B.C.) and probably Aspelta (r. ca. 593-568 B.C.)...

In 593 B.C., the Egyptian pharaoh Psamtek II invaded and defeated Nubia.

[Fred Nerks]

from your link:

...The reign of kings of the 25th synasty chronologically belongs to the Third Intermediate Period of Ancient Egypt. The rulers of this dynasty, called "Kushite" or "Nubian", unlike earlier pharaohs of the Old or the New Kingdom, did not originate from Egypt, but from Kush. From there, approximately in the mid-eighth century, they conquered Egypt. Nearly 100 years of the rule of Ethiopians in Egypt ended with the Assyrian invasion, which forced the "black pharaohs" to withdraw to Ethiopia, where they ruled for the next ten centuries...

Only a hundred years? Not much time to leave a lot of evidence behind...?

Rulers or slaves?

[SunkenCiv]

The length of the 25th dynasty is slightly more than that of Ramses II, who followed them, and he left his mark the length of Egypt, either in new stuff, or in adapting monuments of earlier rulers (including Tut’s columnade at Luxor, and at least one monumental head of a Middle Kingdom pharaoh, that latter one has visited Grand Rapids in years past).

[Fred Nerks]

Probably totally unconnected, but I found this image of the reconstructed features of Ramses III fascinating:

[SunkenCiv]

Warp factor 6!