Often overshadowed by the grandeur of ancient Egypt, the land of Cush in modern-day northern Sudan was no less impressive in its cultural achievements. From at least the third millennium BCE, the Cushites grew wealthy and powerful from the region’s rich mineral deposits, especially gold, as well as their control over strategic trade routes that linked sub-Saharan Africa with the Nile Valley. Although Egypt’s pharaohs partially occupied this rich land through much of the second millennium, the kings of Cush became the Nile’s dominant power in the mid-first millennium, even conquering Egypt in the eighth century BCE to become its […]
