Meroe: Kingdom, Economy, and the Meroitic Script

After losing Egypt, the Kushite kings kept Napata as their religious capital through the seventh to fifth centuries BCE, until the Saite pharaoh Psamtik II sacked it in 592 BCE, badly damaging its monuments and royal statues. The political center of power gradually shifted south to Meroe, a process completed by around the fourth century BCE under King Arakamani; Napata nonetheless retained its role as a religious center and coronation site even as Meroe became the administrative and residential capital. Meroe offered strategic advantages — greater distance from Egypt, iron resources, pastureland, and trade routes toward the Red Sea and Africa's interior — and the shift is reflected in the move of royal cemeteries from Nuri and El-Kurru to Meroe itself from the third century BCE onward. The Napatan period (roughly 900-300 BCE) and the Meroitic period (roughly 300 BCE-350 CE) constitute the two great phases of the kingdom of Kush.