In 760, Kashta raided Thebes where he forced the Egyptians to accept his daughter as God’s Wife of Amun and proclaimed himself King of the Two Lands. Kashta and his heirs claimed to be protectors of ancient gods, but the dynasty never presented themselves as Egyptian: in her statue at Karnak, Kashta’s daughter, Amenirdis, depicted as God’s Wife of Amun, is dressed like an Egyptian but her face in unmistakably Kushite.
Fifteen years later, Kashta’s son King Piye, invited by one of the Egyptian factions to intervene, advanced into Egypt, presenting himself as more Egyptian than the Egyptians, respectfully honouring Amun. Kings made obeisance to him in Thebes as pharaoh – as he boasted on Jebel Barkal. Married to a cousin, and to his own sister, Piye was content to leave his Egyptian vassals to rule on his behalf until challenged by the rulers of Memphis. In 729, he personally led the storming of Memphis. All the potentates of the delta submitted to him, promising to ‘open our treasuries and bring you the choice of our studs and the best of our horses’. He loved horseflesh more than jewels or women: ‘The king’s wives and daughters came to him and paid honour but His Majesty did not pay them attention. Instead he went off to the stables where he saw that the horses were hungry.’ In a city stinking of dead bodies, he could barely tolerate any cruelty to animals. ‘It’s more painful to me,’ he wrote on his pyramid in Napata, ‘that my horses should be hungry than every ill deed you have done.’ When he died, he was buried in his Napata pyramid with his favourite squadron of horses.
His brother Shabaka did not stay in Napata but marched north, enforcing direct rule and religious purity by burning one of his opponents alive, installing his son as high priest and female cousins as God’s Wives of Amun. House Alara now ruled all of modern Egypt and Sudan, at least 2,100 miles of the Nile – one of the largest African empires of world history. The royal archives at Nineveh show friendly contacts between Shabaka and Assyria, but the titans were bound to clash. Shabaka was unlikely to be threatened by the new Assyrian king, who was said to be a weakling. But first impressions can be deceptive.
His name was Sennacherib. When the news spread that Sennacherib was king, the entire Assyrian empire flickered into rebellion – and Hezekiah, king of Judah, asked for Shabaka’s help.
In 701, the pharaoh’s army of Kushites and Egyptians under Prince Taharqo, younger son of Piye, marched north across Sinai just as Sennacherib fought his way south-west towards Jerusalem. The two greatest families, one Asian, one African, were now to fight for the world.
AFRICA VERSUS ASIA: SHABAKA VERSUS SENNACHERIB
It was hard to be Sennacherib: his father was Sargon II, a triumphant warlord who had conquered Cyprus, Phoenicia and the rest of Israel, ethnically cleansing it and deporting 29,000 of its elite to Assyria, before turning to Urartu. In a spectacular exploit, Sargon had led his army into the mountains to destroy the kingdom before returning to the heartland to found his own new capital, Dur Sharrukin – Fort Sargon – where he declared himself King of the World. But predators can never rest. Now old, but drawn to one last campaign in Tabal (Türkiye) in 705, he was killed during an enemy raid on his camp, his sacred body lost.*
Sennacherib must have loathed the old monster: he never praised or mentioned his father. But he possessed all the atrocious grandeur of his father and grandfather, lashing out at Babylon, independent-minded city state of the god Marduk, whose blessing the Assyrians could never quite ignore. Then Sennacherib hacked his way southwards, consuming Phoenicia and Judah, city by city.
As the King of the World approached Jerusalem, the House of David prayed for deliverance from God and for a relieving army from Egypt. The Kushite Prince Taharqo, aged twenty, raced towards Jerusalem.
Kushite prince and Assyrian king met at Eltekeh near Ashdod; the Kushites were defeated and pursued back to Egypt. Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem but then, paid off with Temple gold, he withdrew, returning laden with booty to pay for the embellishment of his capital, Nineveh, sacred to the goddess of love and war, Ishtar. Building massive walls, with eighteen gates, decorated with winged apotropaic bulls, and a new palace, Sennacherib was surprisingly green-fingered for a blood-soaked conqueror: he prided himself on the city’s gardens, irrigated by fifty-five miles of viaducts and canals to bring water from the mountains; his own in his palace contained rare plants, while he promised every Ninevite an allotment garden. Supernatural protection was essential at all times in a world threatened by evil spirits. Like the city gates, his palaces were magically protected by pairs of human-headed winged bulls – lamassus – weighing thirty tons – ‘a wonder to behold’, said Sennacherib. Sennacherib’s city, with its 120,000 inhabitants, was so big it is only partly covered by modern Mosul.
Blessed with at least seven children, he placed his eldest on the Babylonian throne, but a Babylonian faction arrested the boy and sold him to the king of Elam, who hated the Assyrians and executed him. Now it was personaclass="underline" ‘I put on my coat of mail … my helmet,’ Sennacherib recorded. ‘I hurriedly mounted my great battle chariot’ and ‘stopped their advance, decimated them with arrow and spear. I slashed their throats, cut off their precious lives as one cuts a string.’ In 689, he destroyed Babylon. ‘Like the waters of a storm, I made the contents of their gullets and entrails slither along the earth,’ he wrote with macabre Assyrian glee. ‘My prancing steeds plunged into their blood. The wheels of my chariot … were spattered with blood … Their testicles I cut off; I ripped out their genitals like seeds of summer cucumbers.’
Sennacherib was supreme: yet it is one of the ironies of power that kings of the world struggle to cope with their own children.
DEPRESSION OF A WORLD KING: ESARHADDON AND TAHARQO
Sennacherib first favoured one of his surviving sons, Ardamullisi, then changed his mind and appointed the younger Esarhaddon: ‘This is the son who shall succeed me.’ But ‘Jealousy overcame my brothers,’ recorded Esarhaddon, ‘plotting evil.’
Ardamullisi decided to assassinate his father and brother. Oblivious, Sennacherib was praying at a Nineveh temple, kneeling, when his eldest son hacked him to death. But Esarhaddon exterminated his brothers and their entire families, though by the standards of House Tiglath-Pileser he was a milksop: the stress took its toll. He suffered fevers, loss of appetite, blisters and paranoia – what we would call depression. ‘Is one day not enough for the king to mope and eat nothing?’ wrote his doctors. ‘This is already the third day!’
In Nineveh, he trained his youngest son, the remarkable Ashurbanipal, who now moved into the heir’s residence, the House of Succession. ‘I cantered on thoroughbreds, rode stallions raring to go,’ recalled Ashurbanipal. ‘I held a bow … I threw quivering lances; I took the reins of a chariot and made the wheels spin.’ But he also studied. Even the most brutish dynasties become cultivated in the end. ‘I learned … the hidden and secret lore of all the scribal arts. I’m able to recognize celestial and terrestrial omens and can discuss them with an assembly of scholars.’ Ashurbanipal was also trained in vigilance and security by his grandmother, Naqia. Now he watched his father’s back, as Esarhaddon marched against Egypt. Pharaoh Taharqo, son of Piye, was preparing to restore Egyptian power over Judah.