List of monarchs of Kush
Kush reached the apex of its power c. 739–656 BCE, when the Kushite kings also ruled as the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt.
The kingdom remained a powerful state in its heartland after Kushite rule in Egypt was terminated and it survived for another millennium until its collapse c. 350 CE.
Egyptian culture heavily influenced Kush in terms of its royal and monumental iconography, though indigenous elements were also used and became increasingly prominent in the Meroitic period (c. 270 BCE–350 CE).
[1] There are no preserved Kushite lists of rulers and the regnal sequence is instead largely reconstructed based on evidence such as royal inscriptions and burials.
[4] There are no known administrative documents or histories written by the Kushites themselves;[5] because very little of the royal genealogy can be reliably reconstructed, it is impossible to determine how the system functioned in theory and when or if it was ever broken.
[12] According to the archaeologist Robert Morkot, the heir who succeeded in claiming the throne might simply have been the strongest eligible royal descendant, instead of there being a clear succession system.
The Early Napatan[20] period began with Kush becoming autonomous or independent in the wake of the collapse of the New Kingdom of Egypt,[23] c. 1069 BCE.
There may have been several local Kushite political units, not properly unified into a single kingdom until the beginning of the later Middle Napatan period.
[20] This list includes the conventional speculative patrilineal relationships between some of the rulers; these are not accepted by all scholars and it is possible that as many as three intermarrying families were involved in the early stages of the kingdom.
[32] The Late Napatan period[20] encompasses Kushite history after the loss of Egypt, for as long as Napata remained the site used for royal burials.
[100] This marked the final step in a more gradual transfer of political authority and wealth to Meroë and is regarded as the beginning of the Meroitic period.
[102][9] Queens regnant retained their earlier style (often kandake) when becoming rulers, though they also adopted the kingly title of qore to indicate their new authority.
Given that the throne appears to have been able to pass through male, female,[18] and indirect lines,[13] this list simply records the parents (if known) of each monarch in the 'filiation' column, without speculation on their overall relations.
[180] Circumstantial and indirect evidence also dates the end of Meroitic political authority to the middle decades of the fourth century CE.
Josefine Kuckertz, for instance, instead dates the disintegration of the kingdom to already in the middle fourth century CE, at the same time as the fall of the Meroitic dynasty.
[166] Around 420 CE, the aforementioned elites or deputies began assuming royal insignia of their own, resulting in the disintegration of the supposed successor state (if one existed) into the later kingdoms of Nobatia (north), Makuria (center), and Alodia (south).
[180] Out of these three, Nobatia is in particular sometimes considered a small post-imperial remnant of Kush, maintaining some aspects of Kushite culture but also exhibiting Hellenistic and Roman influences.
