“Nubia: Ancient Kingdoms of Africa,” an exhibition at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, takes you deep into the history of a currently volatile part of the continent.
The show occupies just two small galleries, but spans a 500-mile stretch of the Nile River Valley (now Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt) and more than 2,250 years (from about 3000 B.C. through 750 B.C.). During that time conquerors became the conquered; trading partners were reborn as bitter enemies.
A brief summary of the period: Beginning in about 3000 B.C., Southern Nubia developed into a powerful kingdom known as Kush. Egypt, increasingly nervous about this neighbor, conquered a large swath of it in 1500 B.C. Four centuries later the Egyptian empire collapsed; a dark age followed. Then, around 900 B.C., Nubia rose again. By 750 B.C., its Napatan kings had control of Egypt — at least until the Assyrians arrived, in 650 B.C.
In addition to charting these dizzying power swings, “Nubia” reminds us how little we know about this ancient culture. For one thing, Nubians did not develop their own written language until the second century B.C.; their story has largely been told by the Egyptians, who were prolific scribes. We know, for instance, that an Egyptian official named Harkhuf was sent to Nubia to obtain incense, ebony, oils, panther skins, ivory and a pygmy.
This narrative is, of course, a biased one. To Egypt, Nubia, at its most powerful, was “vile Kush.” When Nubians appear in Egyptian murals and statues, it’s often as primitives or prisoners.
More recently, our own Western prejudices — namely the idea that geographic Egypt was not a part of “black” Africa — have contributed to the dearth of knowledge about Nubia. The early-20th-century archaeologist George Reisner, for instance, identified large burial mounds at the site of Kerma as the remains of high Egyptian officials instead of those of Nubian kings. (Several of Reisner’s finds are in the show, reattributed to the Nubians.)
In one of his catalog essays the archaeologist Geoff Emberling, who conceived the show along with Jennifer Chi of the institute, examines some of these historical errors.
“We now recognize that populations of Nubia and Egypt form a continuum rather than clearly distinct groups,” Mr. Emberling writes, “and that it is impossible to draw a line between Egypt and Nubia that would indicate where ‘black’ begins.”
“Nubia” is by no means a comprehensive picture of this ancient civilization — we haven’t had one of those since the mid-1990s — but it’s certainly illuminating. As a collaboration between the university and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, it strikes a scholarly but not overly specialized tone. The museum organized the exhibition and lent the majority of the show’s objects, many of which are rarely on view there.
The first room, of pottery and faience, offers a glimpse of Nubia before the Egyptian conquest. The Nubians, who were among the earliest peoples to fire clay, became expert shapers of it. Their tradition of hand-formed ceramics more or less disappeared when the Egyptians arrived, bringing pottery wheels, but it produced some remarkable objects while it lasted.
One of the show’s most delightful pieces is a pitcher shaped like a hippopotamus, from about 1700-1550 B.C. The creature’s mouth serves as a spout. Other vessels have incised patterns that cleverly mimic basket weaves, like the chevrons on a large redware bowl from 3100-3000 B.C.
Also here are examples of faience, a blue-green paste made from crushed quartz or sand and often substituted for the more precious turquoise or lapis lazuli. Though an Egyptian invention, faience became an important status symbol for the Nubian elite and was locally produced.
One of Reisner’s excavations turned up pieces of large-scale architectural faience, including a rosette-patterned ceiling block and a wall inlay of a lion, which are both on view. They are thought to have decorated the funeral beds of the kings of Kerma (the capital of Kush).
Many more funerary objects are on display in the second and larger gallery, which covers the period from Egypt’s conquest of Nubia through the reign of the Napatan dynasty (the Nubian kings who ruled Egypt). In this room the two cultures become harder to distinguish.
Egypt’s assimilation of Nubia into its empire prompted some political niceties. The name “Kush” remained, but the adjective “vile” was dropped; the Egyptian governor of Nubia was called the “King’s Son of Kush.” The Egyptian cult of Amun was modified to suggest Nubia’s “holy mountain,” Gebel Barkal, as that deity’s birthplace.
For its part, Nubia adopted some Egyptian dress styles and burial customs, even after conquering Egypt. One was the use of the pyramid; earlier Nubian rulers had been entombed in giant mounds. Another was the addition of shawabtis, small figures thought to work on behalf of the deceased in the underworld. The tomb of the Napatan king Senkamanisken contained more than a thousand shawabtis, slaves of the afterlife, some of which are here.
Also on display is a large statue of Senkamanisken, who ruled from 640 to 620 B.C. His one-foot-forward pose and serpent crown look very Egyptian, though there are subtle differences; the crown has two serpents, as opposed to the one favored by the Egyptian pharaohs.
Here, too, are objects recovered from the pyramids of other Nubian kings. But the real buried treasure in this show is the story of the Nubian queens; because kings often married their sisters, some scholars say that power descended through the female line.
A delicate crystal pendant showing the Egyptian goddess Hathor with a cow’s horns is one of the show’s most extraordinary objects. It was found in the tomb of an unidentified queen of the Napatan king Piye, who had at least five wives. And it reminds us that for all we know about Egypt, there’s much we still don’t know — and may never know — about Nubia.