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Ancient Egypt is the first major civilisation in Africa for which records are abundant. It was not, however, Africa's first kingdom. On 1 March 1979, The New York Times carried an article on its front page, written by Boyce Rensberger, with the headline: Nubian Monarchy called Oldest. In the article, Rensberger told the world that: "Evidence of the oldest recognisable monarchy in human history, preceding the rise of the earliest Egyptian kings by several generations, has been discovered in artifacts from ancient Nubia... The discovery is expected to stimulate a new appraisal of the origins of civilisations in Africa, raising the question of 'to what extent later Egyptian culture derived its advanced political structure from the Nubians?'."
This ancient kingdom, generally called Ta-Seti, encompassed the territory of the northern Sudan and the southern portion of Egypt. It has sometimes been referred to as Ancient Ethiopia in some of the literature, and as Cush (or Kush) in other literature. The first kings of Ta-Seti may well have ruled about 5900 BC. During the time of the fifth generation of their rulers, Upper (ie, southern) Egypt may have united and became a greater threat to Ta-Seti.
In Kush (or Ta-Seti), a number of women had the title Kentake, which means Queen Mother, and was recorded in Roman sources as Candace. Some of the women were heads of state. Kentake Qalhata (c.639 BC) had her own pyramid built at Al Kurru, as other Kushite kings did (above photo). Pseudo-Callisthenes mentions that Alexander the Great visited "Candace, the black Queen of Meroe" in the 4th century. She was apparently a "wondrous beauty".
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^ Actually Ta-Seti and Kush were two different kingdoms, with the latter developing during the Middle Kingdom.
Posts: 26307 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Actually Ta-Seti and Kush were two different kingdoms
That's why I thought you folks would abondoned the term Nubian when dealing with Kemetic era or pre Roman era nations south of Egypt.
Because the Nubian is used as a lump-em and dump-em scheme. the truth is the actual names of the different kingdoms and polities exist why not use them?
Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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^ The Egyptians had their own collective term for peoples to their south called Nhsw. But like the Egyptians I and others in this forum do use specific names of the various peoples. The Setjau and their kingdom of Ta-Seti were different from the Keshli and their kingdom of Kush.
Posts: 26307 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
That's what was discussed long bsfore I logged on and it made perfect sense,because knowing that prevents mix-ups such as the above which is easy to do when talking about very ancient people.
Posts: 6546 | From: japan | Registered: Feb 2009
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