Kush

(noun)

An ancient Nubian kingdom situated on the confluences of the Blue Nile, White Nile, and River Atbara in what is now the Republic of Sudan. It was centered at Napata in its early phase. After its King Kashta invaded Egypt in the 8th century BCE, its emperors ruled as pharaohs of the Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt for a century, until they were expelled by the Assyrians under the rule of Esarhaddon.

Related Terms

Examples of Kush in the following topics:

  • Nubia

    • This is the earliest Egyptian reference to Kush.
    • During the New Kingdom of Egypt, Nubia (Kush) was an Egyptian colony, from the 16th century BCE.
    • In addition, Kush was no longer dependent on the Nile to trade with the outside world.
    • Christianity began to gain over the old pharaonic religion, and by the mid-6th century CE the Kingdom of Kush was dissolved.
    • Explain some of the sources of wealth that the Kingdom of Kush had access to

  • The Achaemenid Empire

    • This expansion continued even further afield with Anatolia and the Armenian Plateau, much of the Southern Caucasus, Macedonia, parts of Greece and Thrace, Central Asia as far as the Aral Sea, the Oxus and Jaxartes areas, the Hindu Kush and the western Indus basin, and parts of northern Arabia and northern Libya.

  • Kingdom of Aksum

    • The state established its hegemony over the declining Kingdom of Kush and regularly entered the politics of the kingdoms on the Arabian Peninsula, eventually extending its rule over the region with the conquest of the Himyarite Kingdom.
    • By 350, Aksum conquered the Kingdom of Kush.

  • Expansion and Decline of the Kushan Empire

    • The Yuezhi reached the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, located in northern Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, around 135 BCE, and displaced the Greek dynasties that resettled to the southeast in areas of the Hindu Kush and the Indus basin, in present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan.

  • The Third Intermediate Period

    • Rulers under this dynasty originated in the Nubian Kingdom of Kush.

  • Rise of the Maurya Empire

    • At its greatest extent, the empire stretched to the north along the natural boundaries of the Himalayas, to the east into Assam, to the west into Balochistan (southwest Pakistan and southeast Iran) and into the Hindu Kush mountains of what is now Afghanistan.