Méroé

Méroé is an ancient of Nubie, capital of a late kingdom and known city for its necropoles with steeply sloping pyramids still relatively intact.

Historical context

A state, independent of its powerful neighbor the Egypt, had developed from -2500 to -1500 in the zone of current the Sudan, its capital was Kerma. A time even, the sovereigns of this kingdom took possession of the capacity on all Egypt, from -747 and, during nearly one century, five Pharaons Noirs will reign. Demolished by the Assyrian , the Nubie NS ebb towards the south. Then begin the time from the kingdoms of Napata then of Méroé.

The site of Méroé

This city, located downstream from the sixth cataract in Nubie, gives its name to a brilliant African civilization which develops since the first cataract to the confluence of the two Nile and undoubtedly more in the south, between of our era. Influenced by its neighbors, especially Roman Egypt lagide of the Ptolémées then, but also the Middle East and the Persian , it knows a golden age with I er.

The city was discovered by the French explorer Frederic Cailliaud in 1822.

The site of Méroé is very wide and the excavations effleuré only hardly the vestiges. Many sanctuaries were released outside the city and approximately two hundred pyramids are listed in the three necropoles.

Far towards the east, closing this immense plain, the royal pyramids, built at the top of two small hills, were still quasi intact before in 1834, Giuseppe Ferlini, an Italian adventurer, army medical officer with the service of the army of Mohammed Ali, does not discover a treasure in the burial of the queen Amanishakhéto while making use of the drawings and plans of Cailliaud. For that purpose, Ferlini ordered the dismantling of the pyramid, transforming it into a heap of stones. The jewels of the queen are currently exposed to Munich and Berlin (Ägyptisches Museum). All the tombs were then systematically plundered.

The kings and queens who follow one another, are often for us only one name on a table of funerary offerings or the decoration of a pyramid. The knowledge of the compartmental Méroïtique remainder.

Several women reach the capacity under the title of Candace. In -33, the candace Amanishakhéto refuses to be submitted to the Romans. The kingdom saw two more hundred years, before dying out for reasons still badly known.

Towards 350, Ezanas, the king of Axoum, affirms on two steles that it fought victoriously Noba (Nubians), crossing the old territory of Kasou (Koushites). One concluded from it that at that time, the kingdom of Méroé had succumbed under the blows of the Ethiopian .

See too

External bonds

History of Nubie
the civilization of Méroé per Claude Rilly, In charge of research at CNRS.
Voyage to the country of the black Pharaons Récit of voyage and notes on the history of Nubie and of Méroé

Simple: Meroë

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