Kerma and Nubia
A powerful Nubian kingdom builds in mudbrick on a monumental scale and fights Egypt for centuries.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 100 years
- Era
- Bronze Age, Holocene
Kerma, above the third cataract, becomes the capital of a Nubian state from around 2500 BCE, with a walled town, enormous mudbrick temples — the Western Deffufa still stands eighteen metres high — and royal tumuli containing hundreds of sacrificed retainers. Kerma controls the gold and ivory routes and at one point occupies Egyptian territory. It was long treated in Egyptology as peripheral; it was an independent power.