By the eleventh century BC, the more-Egyptianized Kingdom of Kush emerged, possibly from Kerma, and regained the region's independence from Egypt.

The level of affluence at the site demonstrated the power of the Kingdom of Kerma, especially during the Second Intermediate Period when the Kermans threatened the southern borders of Egypt.

However, recent survey and excavation work has identified many new sites south of Kerma, many located on channels of the Nile, now dry, which lay to the east of the modern course of the river.

Survey work in advance of the Merowe Dam at the Fourth Cataract has confirmed the presence of Kerma sites at least as far upriver as the Abu Hamad/Mograt Island area.

[5][6] Numerous village communities scattered alongside fields of crops made up the bulk of the realm, but there also seems to have been districts where pastoralism (goat, sheep and cattle) and gold processing were important industries.

At Kerma and Sai, there is much evidence of wealthy elites, and a class of dignitaries who monitored trade in merchandise arriving from far-off lands, and who supervised shipments dispatched from administrative buildings.

Evidently, Kerma played an important intermediary role in the trade of luxury items from the Central African interior to Egypt.

[14]: 77 The Gash Group, a neolithic culture that flourished from 3000 to 1800 BC in Eritrea and the Eastern Sudan, had contacts with Kerma during the whole period of its development.

[15] For many centuries, the Gash people were included in the circuit of interchange between Egypt and the southern regions of the Nile valley, so Mahal Teglinos became an important commercial partner of the Kerma state.

[14]: 89, 91 The long history of Egyptian military activity in Lower Nubia may indicate that Kerma was perceived as a threat to Pharaonic Egypt at varying times.

An inscription in the tomb of the ancient Egyptian governor Sobeknakht II at Nekheb reports that Kerma invaded deep into Egypt between 1575 and 1550 BC.

This eventually resulted in the Egyptian annexation of Nubia (Kerma/ Kush) c. 1504 BC, and the establishment of a southern frontier at Kanisah Kurgus, south of the Fourth Cataract.

According to Peter Behrens (1981) and Marianne Bechaus-Gerst (2000), linguistic evidence indicates that the Kerma peoples spoke Afroasiatic languages of the Cushitic branch.

[21][22] They propose that the Nilo-Saharan Nobiin language today contains a number of key pastoralism related loanwords that are of proto-Highland East Cushitic origin, including the terms for sheep/goatskin, hen/cock, livestock enclosure, butter and milk.

They argue that this in turn suggests that the Kerma population—which, along with the C-Group Culture, inhabited the Nile Valley immediately before the arrival of the first Nubian speakers—spoke Afroasiatic languages.

[25] Julien Cooper (2017) also suggests that Nilo-Saharan languages of the Eastern Sudanic branch were spoken by the people of Kerma, as well as those further south along the Nile, to the west, and those of Saï (an island to the north of Kerma), but that Afro-Asiatic (most probably Cushitic) languages were spoken by other peoples in Lower Nubia (such as the Medjay and the C-Group culture) living in Nubian regions north of Saï toward Egypt and those southeast of the Nile in Punt in the Eastern dessert.

Thus, scholars accepted the view that Kerma was a trading outpost of the Egyptians, being too small and far away from the known borders of ancient Egypt to be more directly linked to it.

[29] Craniometric analysis of Kerma fossils comparing them to various other early populations inhabiting the Nile Valley and Maghreb found that they were morphologically close to Predynastic Egyptians from Naqada (4000–3200 BC).

The results of the study determined the predominant pattern of the First Dynasty Egyptian crania was "Southern" or a "tropical African variant" (though others were also observed), which had affinities with Kerma Kushites.

The general results demonstrate greater affinity with Upper Nile Valley groups, but also suggest clear change from earlier craniometric trends, with numerous 1st dynasty crania from Abydos classified into the "northern Egyptian-Maghreb" series.