Kushites Expressing ‘Egyptian’ Kingship: Nubian Dynasties in Hieroglyphic Texts and a Phantom Kushite King

Abstract

The Lower Nubian borderlands of the Second Intermediate Period, situated between Kush and Egypt, was witness to one of the most culturally complex episodes in the Pharaonic period. The intersection of an ascendant Kush over local Egypto-Nubian elites living in C-Group lands provided for a set of mixed cultural expressions. This region was witness to one of the few episodes in Pharaonic Egypt where Egyptian administrators served a foreign king, in this case the ruler of Kush. A number of documents produced by this elite give us unique insights into the power of Kerma and its efforts to project that power in its newly acquired territories. A reassessment of one particular stele (Khartoum no. 18) demonstrates that its ruler of Kush ‘Nedjeh’ is not a reference to an individual King at all but rather a rare title, a counterpart to the common Second Intermediate epithet ‘strong king’. This stele, along with other documents in the new Kushite realm, reveals the attempts of Nubian rulers to adopt a new elite Egyptianizing language of power to express their local dominance.

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