New Light on a Dark Kingdom

By A.T. Baker

The slow flooding of the Nile Valley southward from Aswan's High Dam drowned many Egyptian-built temples and, in effect, the whole of ancient Lower Nubia. But instead of a total loss, the result has been something of a windfall. For the threat inspired 30 expeditions from 25 countries to excavate frantically ahead of the advancing waters, turning up a largesse of Nubian finds that gave added weight to a long held thesis: that Nubia, which extended 1,000 miles south of Aswan in what is now Egypt and the Sudan, had a rich culture as early as 3500 B.C., with a tradition and style of its own. Furthermore, there was a unified kingdom in Nubia as early as 750 B.C., making it the world's oldest black nation.

This week the Brooklyn Museum will proudly open what it can boast is the most comprehensive exhibition ever of Nubia's ancient civilization, spanning 47 centuries and comprising 250 objects borrowed from some 25 institutions, including some cajoled from museums in East Germany and Poland by Bernard V. Bothmer, curator of the museum's superb Egyptian collection and organizer of the exhibition.

Generally, whenever Egypt was expansive, Nubia was overwhelmed; when Egyptian power declined, Nubia rebounded. This it did in about 2000 B.C., when a new culture rose around the town of Kerma. In Brooklyn its manifestations are a score of objects found in the tombs of Kerma's warrior kings--circular mounds that were as much as 90 meters in diameter, complete with inner rooms containing everything that might be needed in the afterlife. (Domestic animals and the bodies of hundreds of servants were found in some of the tombs.) Just how sophisticated Kerma was is demonstrated in Brooklyn by its pottery, more luminous in color, more intricately incised and more delicately turned than any other then produced in the Nile Valley, and by a series of vivacious ivory images of mythical gods that were found inlaid on the ceremonial funeral beds. But Egypt returned in force in 1550 B.C. and Nubian power vanished, not to return for 700 years.

Then came the kingdom of Kush, which lasted 1,200 years. Storming out of Nubia's heartland, its kings conquered Egypt, reigning there for nearly 100 years until the Assyrians ejected them. Under the Kushites, Nubian art and culture reached a peak of skill and individuality. Though obviously influenced by Egypt, they were no more so, say their champions, than the Roman by the Greek.

The Nubians adopted the Egyptian pyramid, but gave it steeper sides, and built so many that there are actually more surviving pyramids in Nubia than in Egypt. A 19th century Italian named Giuseppe Ferlini knocked the top off the pyramid tomb of Queen Amanishaketo (10 B.C.-A.D. 1) and found a rich treasure trove of gold objects (so encouraged, he knocked the tops off every other convenient pyramid but found no other treasure). Brooklyn has a display of intricately designed rings and armlets from Ferlini's find. As a series of faience pendants shows, Nubia's goddesses were almost proudly naked, sprouting downturned wings and sporting two crowned cobras on their shoulders.

The show, which will later travel to Seattle, New Orleans and finally The Hague, carries the history of Nubia well past its conversion to Christianity in A.D. 543. A fresco from the cathedral at Faras depicts Christ as the protector of a Nubian viceroy. The 12th century Nubian artist has meticulously painted the viceroy's face in its proper dark shade. It is in the same Nubian tradition of realism that motivated his ancestral counterpart, whose 7th century B.C. granite statue of an official has the gross, obese power of an ancient Idi Amin.

-- A.T. Baker

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