1. 2. xxiii. AND THE LIBYAN ELEMENT 23

sister 1), the last king of the twenty-fifth dynasty, came to the throne

in 663 B.C., and, though in name he ruled over both Egypt and the

Sudan^, in fact the only result of his attempts to recover Lower

Egypt was that he was driven back and Thebes was sacked by the

Assyrians.

By 654 B.C. Tanutamon was dead and buried with his great fore-

fathers Piankhi, Shabaka and Shabataka near Gebel Barkal, and the power of the Sudan over Egypt had come utterly to an end.

The Meroitic Period and after

XXII On the final separation of Ethiopia from Egypt Psammetichus

(Psamtik) I, who had been installed by the Assyrians as King of

Sais and Memphis and become founder of the twenty-sixth Egyptian

dynasty, did not concern himself greatly with the Sudan. The rulers

of that country, too, turned their attention southwards and the

province of Meroe was consolidated and developed near the junction

of the Atbara and the Nile^. It was

made an integral part of Ethiopia as Ethiopia had been of Egypt. Meroe was Ethiopianized, that is, brought under the influence of the Egyptian

culture which had been inherited from the days of the viceroys. But this Egypto-Ethiopian culture...was certainly greatly diluted by its extension

to Meroe. Meroe was Ethiopianized, not Egyptianized.

About 440 B.C., as Reisner believes, and certainly before 350 B.C.

:

Meroe had in its turn absorbed Ethiopia itself, just as Ethiopia, three

centuries before, had absorbed its mother country Egypt. The degeneration

of the culture became more rapid... even the race was changing. The Egyptian element was being overborne by others, Libyan, Nubian, negro, or whatever it may have been. The fine traits of the educated and skilled Egyptian were visibly fading into the coarse features of a negroid race which may have been slow at forgetting but was incapable of giving a

creative impulse to art, learning, or religion.

XXIII We now have, as a result of Reisner's work at Nuri and the

vicinity, an almost complete list of the kings that followed Tanutamon,

but there is no point in recording them here. More important is the

fact that certainly by the time of Nastasenen (Nastasen), who reigned from 298-278 B.C., and probably by about 440 B.C., the political

capital was at Meroe while the religious capital remained at Napata.

The temples of Napata with their endowed bodies of priests and crafts- men educated in the learning of Egypt remained the cultural centre of the

^ Breasted, A. R. iv, 920, ?iote. - Ibid, iv, 920.

* The date of the actual foundation of the city of Meroe is not known. For further details as to Meroe and for the settlement of the Automoloi in the south see the following chapter.