Roman relations with Nubia

The geographical region of ancient Nubia covers the area from the First Cataract at Aswan in the north, to the Blue and White Niles at Khartoum in the south, and adjacent deserts.

Archaeological excavations and written accounts by Classical authors such as Strabo, Pliny the Elder, and Diodorus are important sources of information about Roman relations with Nubia.

During the Meroitic period, the city of Meroe,[3] located at Upper Nubia and about 200 km north of Khartoum, was the political, religious, and cultural center of the kingdom.

The Romans attempted to solidify their authority in Nubia by appointing a local ruler and forcing Kushite officials to pay tribute to Rome.

Led by Publius Petronius, the governor of Egypt, Roman soldiers fought back by capturing several cities, including Pselcis, Primis, Abuncis, Phthuris, Cambusis, Attenia, and Stadissias, and he reached as far as Napata and taking captives.

[4] During the series of conflicts, the Kushites crossed the lower border of Egypt and looted many statues (among other things) from the Egyptian towns near the first Cataract of the Nile at Aswan.

This bronze head belongs to an over-life-size statue of Augustus, originally standing in one of the Egyptian towns near the first cataract of the Nile, the area under Roman control at that time.

Strabo mentions a Kushite queen (also known as Candace) and describes her as a masculine sort of woman with one eye blind, who played an important role in the Roman-Kushite encounters and negotiating with the Romans (Geography 17.54.1).

Peace was finally restored when emperor Augustus met with Kushite ambassadors and granted them all they pled for, and ‘he even remitted the tributes which he had imposed’ (Strabo, Geography 17.1.54).

The kingdom of Kush fell in late antiquity due to attack from the Nobadians and Blemmyes, and the Roman frontier to the south of the First Cataract was under threats, which led to the abandonment of the region under Diocletian.

[9] With the withdrawal of Roman force from Egypt and the expansion of the kingdom of Axum, whose territory included most of present-day Ethiopia and Yemen, in the third century CE, Nubia continued to be a contested region.

Burstein suggests that the success of both the kingdoms of Kush and Axum was due to their ability to maintain control of the pastoral nomads between the Nile and the Red Sea.

In 530/31 CE, Emperor Justinian I of the Byzantine Empire sent an ambassador Magistrianos Julian down the Nile to see Arethas, the king of Axum to ask for his assistance in a war against the Persian ruler Dhu Nuwas.