MIGRATION OF PRIESTS INTO THE SUDA N determined to go. We have already seen that king after king of Egypt, from the Xllth Dynasty downwards, had dedicated temples in the Sudan to Amen-Ra, and for a period of fifteen hundred years that god held paramount power in every region of the country where the influence of Egypt had penetrated. Thus it was certain that the priests of Amen would be well received in Nubia, and that the upper class of that country would welcome the leaders of the Amen cult from Thebes, the principal seat of the worship of the god. Between the First and Fourth Cataracts there was in the tenth century before Christ a long series of forts and temples, the priests attached to the latter having themselves probably come from Egypt. There were Egyptian settlements at Kartassi, Kalabsha, Garf Husn, Dakka, Kubban, Kurta, Wadi Sabii'a, 'Amada, Derr, Abu Simbel, Wadi Haifa, Ma'atuka, Semna, on the Islands in the Second Cataract, 'Amara, on the Island of Sai, at Suwarda, Saddenga, Sulb, Dulgo, Tombos, Arko, Khandak, Old Dongola, Merawi, Gebel Barkal, and probably at many other places on the river up to the foot of the Fourth Cataract, but not beyond.

Many of these settlements were occupied by miners, who were fed by food imported either from Egypt or from the south, and were unsuitable as homes for bodies of priests who had lived in comfort at Thebes, and some were merely forts which were garrisoned by soldiers. The only place at all suitable for the purposes of the priests of Amen was Napata, a town at the foot of the Fourth Cataract, which had long been regarded by the Egyptians as the capital of the Egyptian Sudan. The town of Merawi is the modern representative of Napata, and the fertility of the Nile Valley in its neighbourhood makes the site an ideal one for a Sudani town. For a few score miles down-stream the banks on each side of the river are capable of cultivation, and palm trees and vegetables of all kinds have always grown there luxuriantly. Napata stood at the end of the great valley through which caravans passed to and from the countries near the Atbara and the Blue and White Niles, and the fact that there was much gain to be made from the pious traveller and the prosperous merchant was not forgotten by the priests of Amen, when they selected that city as a place of refuge in the Sudan.

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