The rise of a centralized state centered on the ancient city of Kerma, around 2500 BC, saw the consolidation of the northern Sudanese tribes into a powerful state known as Kush, which ended up rivaling Egypt to its north. This period saw some of the first truly monumental construction activities in Sudan, organised labour, advanced metallurgy, inter-continental trade networks and the earliest, though limited adoption of Egyptian hieroglyphs as well as violent conflict with their northern neighbor, the Kushite annexation of Lower (northern) Nubia and Kushite raids as far north as Thebes and Middle Egypt.
The Eastern Cemetery of Kerma (c. 2500 - 1500 BC), located 4km east of the ancient Kushite capital, extends over 70 hectares and contains approximately 40.000 graves. Some of the largest royal burial mounds, or tumuli, reached over 90 meters in diameter, and are dated to the Classic Kerma Period, c. 1750 BC to 1500 BC. This part of the cemetery also contained monumental funerary chapels, the Eastern Deffufa’s, built from mudbrick, and in at least one example, encased in sandstone blocks.
The royal tumuli of this cemetery were ringed by thousands of cattle skulls known as bucrania. The tombs were composed of a relatively low, dome shaped earthen superstructure, topped by alternating bands of black stones and white gravel arranged in circular patterns. The largest tumuli contained multiple subsidiary graves, a wealth of grave goods, animal offerings, and even the remains of human sacrifices. These large royal tumuli were composed of complex internal structures including monumental corridors running down the center, flanked by numerous parallel rows of very long rooms, built from mudbrick, containing several hundred subsidiary graves in some cases, with a central vaulted chamber reserved for the ruler.
Grave goods included everything from leather caps and sandals, to Nubian pottery, ostrich feather fans, jewelry, funerary beds made from wood covered in gold sheet and ivory inlays, weapons such as bows and copper daggers, and Egyptian imports including entire statues looted from Egyptian graves during Kushite raids on their northern neighbors.
Approximately a thousand years after its establishment, the Kingdom of Kerma would be conquered by the Egyptian New Kingdom, reducing Kush to a provincial status as part of the newly established Egyptian empire, and leading to the abandonment of the Eastern Cemetery.
This Egyptian dominion over Kush would last until the second half of the 11th century BC, c. 450 years, after which Upper and Lower Nubia would reassert their independence, eventually coalescing in the Second Kingdom of Kush around the 8th century BC, lasting until the 4th century AD, known as the Napatan and Meroitic periods of Kushite history. This era was famous for the Kushite 25th Dynasty that conquered and ruled Egypt for almost a century, and the numerous royal pyramids that were built in Sudan until the final moments of this civilization in the 4th century AD, when the Kushite state was definitively destroyed by an Aksumite invasion from modern-day Ethiopia/Eritrea, led by King Ezana, Africa's first Christian ruler.
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