The Kingdom of Kush ruled for nearly 2.5 millennia. Its inhabitants built hundreds of pyramids, developed their own alphabet and even conquered their neighbor Egypt. The Kushites also had a strong tradition of revering and respecting female leadership.
But for many archaeologists, the Kingdom of Kush has stayed in the shadows of Egypt, often relegated to nothing more than an ancient footnote in Egypt’s thousands of years of pharaohs, monuments and history. This perspective carries some colonial prejudice, overlooking the development of sophisticated civilization, industry and culture deeper within Africa.
“One of the pitfalls of this kind of work is only to give the Kushites importance as it relates to Egypt,” says Geoff Emberling, an archaeologist at the University of Michigan who has studied Kush for years. “There’s this long history of colonial, racist misreadings or underestimates of the power of Kush and of its importance.”
