Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt

"Kushite Empire" redirects here. For the kingdom south of Egypt, see Kingdom of Kush.

Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt
754 BC–656 BC
Statues of various rulers of the late 25th Dynasty–early Napatan period. From left to right: Tantamani, Taharqa (rear), Senkamanisken, again Tantamani (rear), Aspelta, Anlamani, again Senkamanisken; Kerma Museum.[1] of Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt
Statues of various rulers of the late 25th Dynasty–early Napatan period. From left to right: Tantamani, Taharqa (rear), Senkamanisken, again Tantamani (rear), Aspelta, Anlamani, again Senkamanisken; Kerma Museum.[1]
Kushite heartland, and Kushite Empire of the 25th dynasty of Egypt, circa 700 BC.[2]
Kushite heartland, and Kushite Empire of the 25th dynasty of Egypt, circa 700 BC.[2]
CapitalNapata
Memphis
Common languagesEgyptian, Meroitic
Religion
Ancient Egyptian religion Kushite religion
GovernmentMonarchy
Pharaoh 
• 744–712 BC
Piye (first)
• 664–656 BC
Tantamani (last)
Historical eraThird Intermediate Period of Egypt
• Established
754 BC
• Disestablished
656 BC
Preceded by		 Succeeded by
Twenty-second Dynasty of Egypt
Twenty-third Dynasty of Egypt
Twenty-fourth Dynasty of Egypt
Kingdom of Kush
Late Period of ancient Egypt
Assyrian conquest of Egypt
Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt
Kingdom of Kush

The Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XXV, alternatively 25th Dynasty or Dynasty 25), also known as the Nubian Dynasty, the Kushite Empire, the Black Pharaohs,[2][3] or the Napatans, after their capital Napata,[4] was the last dynasty of the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt that occurred after the Kushite invasion.

The 25th dynasty was a line of pharaohs who originated in the Kingdom of Kush, located in present-day northern Sudan and Upper Egypt. Most of this dynasty's kings saw Napata as their spiritual homeland. They reigned in part or all of Ancient Egypt for nearly a century, from 744 to 656 BC.[5][6][7][8]

The 25th dynasty was highly Egyptianized, using the Egyptian language and writing system as their medium of record and exhibiting an unusual devotion to Egypt's religious, artistic, and literary traditions. Earlier scholars have ascribed the origins of the dynasty to immigrants from Egypt, particularly the Egyptian Amun priests.[9][10][11] The third intermediate-period Egyptian stimulus view is still maintained by prominent scholars, especially that excavations from el-Kurru cemetery, the key site to the origin of the Napata state, show sudden Egyptian arrivals and influence during the 3rd intermediate period, concurrent with the Egyptianization process.[12][13]

The 25th Dynasty's reunification of Lower Egypt, Upper Egypt, and Kush created the largest Egyptian empire since the New Kingdom. They assimilated into society by reaffirming Ancient Egyptian religious traditions, temples, and artistic forms, while introducing some unique aspects of Kushite culture.[14] It was during the 25th dynasty that the Nile valley saw the first widespread construction of pyramids (many in what is now Northern Sudan) since the Middle Kingdom.[15][16][17]

After Sargon II and Sennacherib defeated attempts by the Nubian kings to gain a foothold in the Near East, their successors Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal invaded Egypt and defeated the dynasty, in the Assyrian conquest of Egypt. The fall of the 25th Dynasty marks the start of the Late Period of ancient Egypt. The Twenty-sixth Dynasty was initially a puppet dynasty installed by and vassals of the Assyrians, and was the last native dynasty to rule Egypt before the invasion by the Persian Achaemenid Empire.

The traditional representation of the dynasty as "Black Pharaohs" has attracted criticism from scholars, specifically because the term suggests that other dynasties did not share similar southern origins[18] (see Ancient Egyptian race controversy). They also argue that the term overlooks the genetic continuum that linked ancient Nubians and Egyptians.[19][20]

  1. ^ Elshazly, Hesham. "Kerma and the royal cache".
  2. ^ a b "Dive beneath the pyramids of Sudan's black pharaohs". National Geographic. 2 July 2019. Archived from the original on 2 July 2019.
  3. ^ Morkot, Robert (2000). The black pharaohs : Egypt's Nubian rulers. London: Rubicon Press. ISBN 0-948695-23-4. OCLC 43901145.
  4. ^ Oliver, Roland (5 March 2018). The African Experience: From Olduvai Gorge to the 21st Century. Routledge. p. 66. ISBN 978-0-429-97650-6. The Napatans, somewhere around 900 BC conquered both Lower and Upper Nubia, including the all-important gold mines, and by 750 were strong enough to conquer Egypt itself, where their kings ruled for nearly a century as the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty
  5. ^ "Nubia | Definition, History, Map, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  6. ^ Bard, Kathryn A. (7 January 2015). An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. John Wiley & Sons. p. 393. ISBN 978-1-118-89611-2.
  7. ^ Török, László (1998). The Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan-Meroitic Civilization. Leiden: BRILL. pp. 132–133, 153–184. ISBN 90-04-10448-8.
  8. ^ "King Piye and the Kushite control of Egypt". Smarthistory. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  9. ^ Heinrich, Brugsch (1902). A history of Egypt under the Pharaohs. John Murray London. p. 387.
  10. ^ Breasted, J.H. (1924). A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest. Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 538–539.
  11. ^ Drioton, E. (1962). Drioton, E; Vandier, J – Les Peuples de l'Orient Méditerranéen II L' Egypte. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. pp. 524, 537–538.
  12. ^ Assmann, Jan (2002). The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs. Metropolitan Books. pp. 317–321.
  13. ^ Wenig, Steffen (1999). The origin of the Napatan state: El Kurru and the evidence for the royal ancestors. In Studien zum antiken Sudan: Akten der 7. Internationalen Tagung für meroitische Forschungen vom 14. bis 19. September 1992 in Gosen/bei Berlin. Harrassowitz; Bilingual edition. pp. 3–117.
  14. ^ Bonnet, Charles (2006). The Nubian Pharaohs. New York: The American University in Cairo Press. pp. 142–154. ISBN 978-977-416-010-3.
  15. ^ Mokhtar, G. (1990). General History of Africa. California, USA: University of California Press. pp. 161–163. ISBN 0-520-06697-9.
  16. ^ Emberling, Geoff (2011). Nubia: Ancient Kingdoms of Africa. New York: Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. pp. 9–11. ISBN 978-0-615-48102-9.
  17. ^ Silverman, David (1997). Ancient Egypt. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 36–37. ISBN 0-19-521270-3.
  18. ^ Logan, Jim (21 September 2020). "The African Egypt". The Current / UC Santa Barbara. Smith, who has been excavating the ancient site of Tombos in modern Sudan (Nubia) since 2000, has focused his research on questions of identity, especially ethnicity, and intercultural interaction between ancient Egypt and Nubia. In the 8th century BCE, he noted, Kushite rulers were crowned as Kings of Egypt, ruling a combined Nubian and Egyptian kingdom as pharaohs of Egypt's 25th Dynasty. Those Kushite kings are commonly referred to as the 'Black Pharaohs' in both scholarly and popular publications. That terminology, Smith said, is often presented as a celebration of black African civilization. But it also reflects a longstanding bias that holds the Egyptian pharaohs and their people weren't African — that is, not Black. It's a trope that feeds into a long history of racism that traces back to the some of the founding figures of Egyptology and their role in the creation of "scientific" racism in the U.S. [...] 'It has always struck me as odd that Egyptologists have been reluctant to admit that the ancient (and modern) Egyptians were rather dark-skinned Africans, especially the farther south one goes," Smith continued.
  19. ^ "One of the other problems with the "Black Pharaohs" monikor is that it implies that none of the other Predynastic, Protodynastic, or dynastic Egyptian rulers could be called "black" - in the sense of the Kushites - which, while not particularly interesting, is not true. Even Sir Flinders Petrie, father of the Asiatic "Dynastic Race" theory of dynastic Egypt's foundation, stated that various other dynasties were of "Sudany" origin or had connections there, based on phenotype; which implies [incorrectly] that particular traits could not have been Egyptian i.e. been a part of its ancestral biological variation".Keita, S. O. Y. (September 2022). "Ideas about "Race" in Nile Valley Histories: A Consideration of "Racial" Paradigms in Recent Presentations on Nile Valley Africa, from "Black Pharaohs" to Mummy Genomest". Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections.
  20. ^ Crawford, Keith W. (2021). "Critique of the "Black Pharaohs" Theme: Racist Perspectives of Egyptian and Kushite/Nubian Interactions in Popular Media". African Archaeological Review. 38 (4): 695–712. doi:10.1007/s10437-021-09453-7. ISSN 0263-0338. S2CID 238718279.