Between Two Worlds: The Frontier Region Between Ancient Nubia and Egypt, 3700 BC-AD 500

Front Cover
BRILL, 2009 - History - 651 pages
The Egyptological literature usually belittles or ignores the political and intellectual initiative and success of the Nubian Twenty-Fifth Dynasty in the reunification of Egypt, while students of Nubian history frequently ignore or misunderstand the impact of Egyptian ideas on the cultural developments in pre- and post-Twenty-Fifth-Dynasty Nubia. This book re-assesses the textual and archaeological evidence concerning the interaction between Egypt and the polities emerging in Upper Nubia between the Late Neolithic period and 500 AD. The investigation is carried out, however, from the special viewpoint of the political, social, economic, religious and cultural history of the frontier region between Egypt and Nubia and not from the traditional viewpoint of the direct interaction between Egypt and the successive Nubian kingdoms of Kerma, Napata and Meroe. The result is a new picture of the bipolar acculturation processes occurring in the frontier region of Lower Nubia in particular and in the Upper Nubian centres, in general. The much-debated issue of social and cultural "Egyptianization" is also re-assessed.
 

Contents

A Nubian Worshipper of Isis from the Second Century BC
1
Chapter Two Frontiers
7
AGroup Lower Nubia and the Emerging Egyptian State c 3700 2800BC
23
Chapter Four Old Kingdom Domination and the Rebirth of the Native Polities c 2800 2160BC
53
Chapter Five Lower Nubia and First Intermediate Period Egypt c 2160 2055BC
75
Chapter Six Lower Nubia between Kerma and Middle Kingdom Egypt c 2055 1650BC
79
Chapter Seven Kerma Domination in Lower Nubia in the Second Intermediate Period c 1650 1550BC
103
Some Preliminary Conclusions
119
Chapter Thirteen Lower Nubia under the TwentyFifth Dynasty and the Napatan Kings c 795 332BC
311
Chapter Fourteen The Neighbour of Ptolemaic Egypt c 332 30BC
377
Lower Nubia in the Time of the Meroitic Viceroys c 30BC to the Middle of the AD Fourth Century
427
Chapter Sixteen PostMeroitic Lower Nubia before the Advent of Christianity
515
The AGroup and CGroup Chiefdoms and the Kingdom of Noubadia
531
Abbreviations
543
Index of Names
581
Plates
585

Chapter Nine New Kingdom Egypt in Nubia c 1550 1069BC
157
Chapter Ten Religion and Society in New Kingdom Nubia
209
The Degrees of Egyptianization
263
Chapter Twelve A Long Silent Interlude? Lower Nubia in the Third Intermediate Period c 1069 795BC
285

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About the author (2009)

László Török, Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1992), Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2004) is Research Professor at the Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He has published extensively on the history and archaeology of Ancient Nubia and Hellenistic art in Egypt, including The Image of the Ordered World in Ancient Nubian Art (Brill, 2002) and Transfigurations of Hellenism. Aspects of Late Antique Art in Egypt AD 250-700 (Brill, 2005).

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