Napata
| Author:Laxman Burdak, IFS (Retd.) |
Napata was a city of ancient Kush at the fourth cataract of the Nile.
Variants
Location
It is located approximately 1.5 kilometers from the right side of the river at the site of modern Karima, Sudan. It was the southernmost permanent settlement in the New Kingdom of Egypt (16th–11th centuries BC) and home to Jebel Barkal, the main Kushite cult centre of Amun.
History
It was the sometime capital of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt and, after its fall in 663 BC, of the Kingdom of Kush. In 593 BC, it was sacked by the Egyptians and the Kushite capital was relocated to Meroë. Even after this move, Napata continued to be the kingdom's primary religious centre.[4] The city was sacked a second time by the Romans in 23 BC but was rebuilt and continued as an important centre of the Amun cult.[5]
The terms "Napata" or "Napatan period" can also refer to the Kushite polity from its rise around 750 BC until 270 BC, when Napata finally lost its symbolic significance as the location of royal burials to Meroë. The subsequent period of Kushite history is called Meroitic down to the collapse of the kingdom.[6]
Mention by Pliny
Pliny[7] mentions....The Roman arms also penetrated into these regions in the time of the late Emperor Augustus, under the command of P. Petronius,8 a man of Equestrian rank, and prefect of Egypt. That general took the following cities, the only ones we now find mentioned there, in the following order; Pselcis,9 Primis, Abuncis, Phthuris, Cambusis, Atteva, and Stadasis, where the river Nile, as it thunders down the precipices, has quite deprived the inhabitants of the power of hearing: he also sacked the town of Napata.10 The extreme distance to which he penetrated beyond Syene was nine hundred and seventy miles; but still it was not the Roman arms that rendered these regions a desert.
8 Dion Cassius calls him Caius Petronius. He carried on the war in B.c. 22 against the Æthiopians, who had invaded Egypt under their queen Candace. He took many of their towns.
9 Du Bocage is of opinion that this place stood not far from the present Ibrim.
10 Supposed by Du Bocage to have stood in the vicinity of the modern Dongola.
Pliny[8] mentions.... They state also that the island of Gagaudes lies at an equal distance from Syene and Meroë, and that it is at this place that the bird called the parrot was first seen; while at another island called Articula, the animal known as the sphingium16 was first discovered by them, and after passing Tergedus, the cynocephalus.17 The distance from thence to Napata is eighty miles, that little town being the only one of all of them that now survives. From thence to the island of Meroë the distance is three hundred and sixty miles. They also state that the grass in the vicinity of Meroë becomes of a greener and fresher colour, and that there is some slight appearance of forests, as also traces of the rhinoceros and elephant.
16 See the Notes to the preceding Chapter, in p. 95.
17 Or dog's-headed ape, described in B. viii. c. 80. It is supposed to be the baboon.
References
- ↑ "Napata" in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2020).
- ↑ Strabo, Geography, §17.1.54
- ↑ Stephanus of Byzantium, Ethnica, §N469.1
- ↑ Kendall, Timothy (2016). A Visitor's Guide to The Jebel Barkal Temples. Khartoum. p. 7.
- ↑ Timothy Kendall (2001), "Napata", in Donald B. Redford, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, Oxford University Press.
- ↑ Richard A. Lobban, "Napata", Historical Dictionary of Ancient and Medieval Nubia (Scarecrow, 2004), pp. 274–276.
- ↑ Natural History by Pliny Book VI/Chapter 35
- ↑ Natural History by Pliny Book VI/Chapter 35