Creative Assembly / Sega
When Roman Egypt was attacked by the Kushites, in what is currently Sudan, Roman forces responded by destroying a city Kushita – or so thought. Apparently they will only have pretended to do so.
An excavation in northern Sudan suggests that There were limits to military power of the Roman Empire – even if the Romans were not prepared to admit them.
Imperial forces said they had destroyed an ancient city controlled by their enemies, but After all they did not.
After Cleopatra’s fall and death in 30 BC, Egypt became a province of the emerging Roman Empire. But Roman Egypt was relatively weak and its southern borders were attacked by forces from the Kush kingdomwhich controlled what the north of Sudan is today.
When Augusto, the first Roman emperorI learned of this, required that his armies in Egypt respond with a Military Strength Demonstrationexplains a.
Old, copied and transmitted records over time, indicate that the Campaign was a success: According to the Arrabian chronicler, the Romans penetrated deeply in the Kush kingdom before attack and destroy Napataan important Kushita city, in 23 AC
But Did they destroy?
Napata is now part of an archaeological site that is being investigated by researchers of the archaeological project of Jebel Barkal (). Recently, the team escaped traces of the last centuries AC
“There should be indications of the supposed destruction of the city,” says Geoff Emberlingresearcher at the University of Michigan and co-director of JBAP.
But actually There were no signs of catastrophic damagesuch as abandoned weapons scattered around the place or evidence that the buildings had been looted and burned down.
“There are no signs of destruction even in what would have been the most important building of the site, the Napata’s temple,” says ELAMIN SAMEmember of JBAP and researcher of the National Corporation of Antiquities and Museums of Sudan. The investigation has not yet been published, but is mentioned in the JBAP blog.
It is not known for sure Why did Napata escape destructionsays in turn Tim obed, member of JBAP and independent researcher. “The Roman and Kushita armies were both on the ground, so it does not seem to me that Napata was well defended.”
“The Romans would have to cross several hundreds of miles of desert to reach Napata. It is possible that they have decided that It was not worth the effort and just have pretended that they had destroyed the cityDiz commit.
“We should not expect the reports of the successes of the Roman expedition to correspond to reality on the ground,” he says David Mattinglyfrom the University of Leicester, in the United Kingdom, which was not involved in excavation. “I think the report of total destruction It was probably very exaggerated – For the benefit of the Roman audience. ”
Making such a statement was risky, says Emberling, but perhaps the Romans in Egypt were confident that Emperor Augusto, thousands of kilometers away, in Rome, I would never know the truth.
And we only knew it two thousand years later.
