Black Pharaohs
I saw an interesting article in National Geographic this month, and thought I'd share. It's about the so-called Black Pharaohs of Egypt, who were actually Nubians from the kingdom of Kush in what is now the Northern Sudan. Their capital was actually outside of Nuri, the village where my father grew up.
Growing up, my Dad would constantly be telling me about Taharqa, the Nubian king who is mentioned in the Old Testament. In the Book of Kings he is referred to as a fierce warrior, and he saved Jerusalem from the Assyrians. At one point the Kushites' kingdom extended well into the Levant. He would tell me all the local words we had for things that weren't Arabic but derived from the "old languages". I guess my old man was trying to give me a sense of where our people came from, and to form a bond of pride. When I visited the village the winter before last I took a walk with my cousins down by the river and we came upon a sandbar that someone had inscribed with this figure seated on a low platform. The platform could be a low bed made of wood and rope, sort of like the ones that my grandmother sat on in her house.
There was text below saying "Taharqa, King of Nuri".